Greetings, Although I'm not an academic, I've been following developments here with some interest. I'm not sure whether this is the time or place to discuss this issue, but as a Wikipedian I'm hoping that a mistake over there will not be repeated here. It concerns the naming convention for articles on biological organisms.
Over at Wikipedia, they have a guideline which suggests that, if available, common names should always be used for article titles instead of scientific names. There are so many problems with this, yet it is argued that presentation is more important (than science?). To me this is a prime example of how, at Wikipedia, a majority of people with no knowledge of the subject has interfered profoundly with the way those of a particular discipline would otherwise organize and present their information. It is my hope that Citizendium will eventually be able to attract a sufficient number of botonists and zoologists to cover the entire tree of life. After that, in order to remain as neutral as possible, the most authoritative taxonomies should be applied to the various branches of the tree, with good articles for the higher taxa so that we can avoid repeating information, and lots of redirects and disambiguation pages for synonyms and common names. Is this issue going to be handled properly at Citizendium? If so, I'd be more than happy to contribute here instead. Cheers, Jaap Winius The Netherlands _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
