User:Stho002
From Wikispecies
Hello, I am Stephen E. Thorpe, of Auckland, New Zealand, an independent entomologist and currently an honorary research associate at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland. I am happy to be contacted on relevant matters by email (s.thorpe@auckland.ac.nz).
It seems to me that Wikispecies is a very powerful (and free!) infrastructure by which a great deal of information on global biodiversity can be organised in a useful fashion. The key is in citing references for all the information given. It is then up to the user to verify the information given against the references cited (although this may be difficult in practice, but the Wikispecies pages can themselves be cited, see below, if one considers the editor of the page to be a reliable source). Information can be organised and presented on:
- classification (based in part on published phylogenetic analyses)
- nomenclature (including synonymy and homonymy) Example: Edalus
- distribution (on the associated Discussion (Talk) pages) Example: Talk:Crotonia
- bionomics, including associated organisms like parasites/hosts (on the associated Discussion pages) Example: Talk:Heteralocha acutirostris
Faunistic information can be usefully collated on pages for specific countries. So far, only one such page exists, my New Zealand page. At least for now, I can keep this page updated with changes on a virtually daily basis, whereas all other databases/web checklists I know of are rather rarely updated.
Although "open edit", the edit history of each page is saved (often for at least some years), and so pages can be cited, for example:
Thorpe, S.E. 2009: New Zealand (edit 23:59, 4 March 2009, Stho002) http://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Zealand&oldid=648685
This is a citation to an item in the edit history of my New Zealand page, and is not itself open edit.
Stho002 00:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Frequently monitored journals:
