[Taxacom] Google, Wikipedia, and EOL

Wed Sep 2 04:06:26 CDT 2009

Dear Kevin,

My argument is that if EOL sees itself as being the first port of call  
to answer questions such as "what is this?, "what does it look like?",  
"where does it live?", "where can I find out more?" then it has no  
advantages in its present form. Wikipedia is more useful, flexible, up  
to date, and often more thoroughly referenced. I think this niche is  
taken. If this is the rationale for EOL's existence, then I don't see  
that it has much future.

This is not to say that EOL couldn't do great things. There's enormous  
scope for useful tools and services. In a sense, I think it's original  
conception ("a web page for each species") was a mistake, and the best  
thing EOL could do is back away from that idea (or accept that  
Wikipedia will own this space, and build upon that).

Wikipedia has all sorts of flaws and inconsistencies, and there's lots  
that can't be done with it. I've only been able to do my analyses by  
grabbing and trying to parse large chunks of it. It doesn't support  
any decent queries. But it also has enormous power.

As Tony Rees pointed out http://markmail.org/message/wzxzuvvhcqpjq2xd  
in many ways it would be great to have a "killer app" that combined  
the openness and flexibility of a wiki with features of a database  
such as the ability to propagate changes down the taxonomic hierarchy.

Regards

Rod

On 1 Sep 2009, at 22:12, Kevin Richards wrote:

> Rod
> Are you suggesting that there is no advantage whatsoever of an EoL  
> web portal?
> What about added functionality and services that can be much more  
> oriented towards taxonomy than can be done with a generic service  
> like wikipedia.  Are there none?  Can "everything" be done through  
> wikipedia?
>
> Kevin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> ] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 September 2009 1:47 a.m.
> To: Paul Kirk
> Cc: TAXACOM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Google, Wikipedia, and EOL
>
> Dear Paul,
>
> In once sense, yes, Wikipedia has been around longer than EOL. But
> this rather strengthens my argument that trying to compete against
> Wikipedia is foolish, EOL is too late to market (if the market is
> defined as web pages about individual taxa).
>
> Furthermore, time itself isn't enough. ITIS has been online since the
> late 90's, before Wikipedia even existed (which went live Jan 2001),
> yet ITIS has nothing like the search visibility of Wikipedia.
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
>
>
> On 1 Sep 2009, at 14:33, Paul Kirk wrote:
>
>> interesting ... but where is the temporal element in the analysis? Is
>> not Wikipedia 'older' than EoL and that fact partly explains the
>> results?
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
>> Sent: 01 September 2009 13:57
>> To: TAXACOM
>> Subject: [Taxacom] Google, Wikipedia, and EOL
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I've written a short blog post looking at what sites Google returns
>> when
>> you search for all mammal species by scientific name. Can't say I'm
>> surprised by the results, but the magnitude of the difference between
>> Wikipedia and the rest is quite striking.
>>
>> The post is at
>> http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-wikipedia-and-eol.html
>> (or http://tinyurl.com/n7ey68 is that gets mangled).
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Rod
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> Roderic Page
>> Professor of Taxonomy
>> DEEB, FBLS
>> Graham Kerr Building
>> University of Glasgow
>> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>>
>> Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
>> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
>> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
>> AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> DEEB, FBLS
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
> Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html