[Taxacom] FW: Wikipedia classification

[dipteryx at freeler.nl]

At 03:06 AM 7/2/2009, dipteryx at freeler.nl wrote:
>>We get back to a question raised in earlier TAXACOM discussions: who will 
>>use which online resources, and for what purposes?

Thomas G. Lammers lammers at uwosh.edu 
Thu Jul 2 09:47:46 CDT 2009
>Students assigned research papers for course work are big users in my 
>experience.  If I assign them to select an angiosperm family and gather 
>info on it, much of what I get is derived from Wikipedia and similar sources.

***
That is a pity. One would hope that the reverse would apply, that students
(with a library at their disposal) gathering info on an angiosperm family 
would use the actual literature and then take the further step and import 
their data into Wikipedia.

However, using Wikipedia need not be disasterous if the students are handy and 
be wary as to the contents at the English Wikipedia. The French Wikipedia long
since did the rational thing and made an entry for every angiosperm family 
accepted by either Cronquist or APG and linked these up to just about anything
in sight, first and foremost the delta-intkey.com/angio/www/index.htm database
by Watson and Dallwitz, but also the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website, eFloras.org
(both at the Missouri Botanical Garden), etc. By following these links much 
valuable information can be found. 

Paul