[Taxacom] iSpecies with Wikipedia

[Richard Pyle]

> If we don't like the status quo - if we perceive it as an 
> impediment to our community's ultimate goals - then we can 
> and should act to change it.

I don't mind the status quo, and do not in any way see it as an impediment.
I continue to read articles about how cosmologists are re-thinking the big
bang, super strings, etc.  Reasonable physicists may disagree. Locking into
one classification with an implied "authoritarian wall" to encourage
stablility is NOT my idea of good science.  And we've got other things
working against us.  Most cosmologists have a common sense of the known
physics.  We can't even agree on how we *should* apply names to taxa, even
if we did known the phylogeny with certainty.

On the horse-race between informatics technology that accomodates multiple
classifications with an acceptible algorithmic "IFL" classification for the
masses; vs. getting the broad taxonomic community to actually agree on a
single classification for most/all taxa -- my money is on the informatics
solution.  Besides, the former can easily exist without the latter, whereas
the latter is only enhanced by the former. Indeed, the latter will much more
likely emerge from having he former in place, than it would with the "status
quo" (which, I hope is obvious, I am not advocating).

Rich