Encyclopedia of Life Launches First 30,000 Pages

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that the Encyclopedia of Life opened up to the public today with its first 30,000 pages in place — and, according to the AP, promptly crumbled even before being Slashdotted. (The site seems fine now.) We discussed this project last year when it was announced. The Telegraph has an overview of the launch, and reports that only 25 "exemplar" pages on the site are fully fleshed out to the extent scientists hope eventually to attain for all species; the other few tens of thousands are expanded placeholders. The project hopes to begin taking input from citizen-scientists late this year.

Dupe?

[Wolfbone]

Not the story - the project. What I mean is: how is this new project related to this one: http://tolweb.org/ [tolweb.org] if at all?

Re:Wikipedia, anyone?

[owlnation]

Because the elephant population has, in fact, _NOT_ tripled the past few years.

Exactly, and in all seriousness there is so much sleaze, agenda-ism, corruption and mismanagement in Wikipedia (already well documented, and proven here), that it is far better to start a new project that has a chance of not making the same mistakes. One that has a chance of maintaining a good reputation and high standards, something Wikipedia has completely failed to do.

This project sounds like a great idea -- and if nothing else it is ALWAYS good to have competition.

Great effort

[Psychotria]

My love of the "natural" sciences is not something I hide. My respect for E.O.Wilson is also something I do not hide. Wilson frequently mentions his wish for this project to become true, and I can understand his reasons for doing so. Wilson, I admit, is not without critics (but who of us are?). I only mention Wilson because this is a project he has often spoken of. Despite varying opinions on him, he DOES believe in biological information (and, yes, probably data) for the masses. Not to mention that he has a writing style to die for...

Anyway, back on topic. This project is grand in its scope and bold in its objectives. Whether it fails or succeeds is beside the point really... the project is a challenge to all of science and is quite like open-source software. The more shoulders (of giants) we can sit on, the better the end result will be.

Great project. Worthwhile project. I take my hat off to all involved. Thank-you.

Re:Badly designed...

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you expect from academia? biologists?

I mean, there are computer scientists who can't program....

Re:Badly designed...

[Psychotria]

You're correct of course. But look beyond the HTML/XHTML... This project isn't about that, it's about sharing of biological information and data.

That's all I see, what about anybody else?

Well, actually, I see much more. I see a project that seeks to gather every single scrap of data or information about every single taxon on Earth; a database of LIFE, of everything that we know about organisms that share this planet with us. At this point I can gloss over the malformed pages etc etc... that will sort itself out in time. The important thing is that the information and data is available.

oh, flash-tastic!

[dwater]

More flash crap.

"Oh good, the page has finished loading. Bollocks, there's still some flash left to load."

Will we ever be free of this crap?
It's made a sort of 'two-stage' internet - load the html, then load the flash baggage.

Re:Wikipedia, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

sleaze, agenda-ism, corruption and mismanagement in Wikipedia (already well documented, and proven here), that it is far better to start a new project that has a chance of not making the same mistakes.

Those are the hallmarks of people. So where are you planning on finding the aliens or AIs to run your new fairy tale project, because that would be only way to start one that will not make them? (not just _chance_, mind you, it's inevitable)

Re:Badly designed...

[juhaz]

You're correct of course. But look beyond the HTML/XHTML... This project isn't about that, it's about sharing of biological information and data.

If someone criticized building a skyscraper on mud would you dismiss them as irrelevant and tell it isn't about that, it's about building the tallest building in the world?

You can't "look beyond" the foundations of something. The data is useless if it's so bad it can't be easily worked on, and the information might as well not exist if it's hidden in the bad data.