October 1, 2005 (Vol. 25, No. 17)
URL:
http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Rating:
Strong Points: Free,free,free
Weak Points: Sparse offerings at present
Summary:
If you haven’t yet checked out the free, online encyclopedia called Wikipedia (www.widipedia.com), you should. This isn’t a write-up of Wikipedia, however, but instead a report on one of its interesting offspring. Wikispecies aims to do for biology what Wikipedia did for general information—provide free access to species and taxonomic information. A positive sign is that the targeted audience is scientists. A downside, at the present time, however, is that the pages are just getting started, so visitors get “invited” to contribute content for many of the pages they seek. This has been cited as a shortcoming of the main Wikipedia site as well, but it has grown tremendously and is, in fact, now an excellent starting point for information. Hopefully the same thing will happen here.
