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Ornithologists and Wikipedia (1 Viewer)

It sounds like the birdforum Opus is more complete than the wiki birds area, so where should people with knowledge direct their effort ...

Niels
 
The Opus is much more complete already. The only problem is that if you search for a bird in google, Wikipedia is always the first result (even if the article is a stub) and the Opus is somewhere behind, usually on the second or even third page....

André

Compare this: Velvet Asity on Opus, Velvet Asity on Wikipedia
 
The Opus may be more complete than WikiProjects Birds, but what the author of his paper was identifying was firstly the now accepted accuracy of Wikipedia as a whole is as good as any other tertiary reference source, and secondly, and more importantly, Wikipedia reaches a far wider audience than projects such as The Opus which will be largely accessed by the BF community. So Wikipedia's role is vital in providing accurate bird references to the wider web community.

As well as looking at ways of getting The Opus further up the search results (however, non-BF users will almost certainly select Wikipedia ahead all other results regardless of position), perhaps the BF community needs to add The Opus as a reference to all the WikiProjects Birds pages and benefit from indirect access.

I agree with the author that it is the responsibility of the ornithological and birding communities to add to Wikipedia and ensure that content on Wikipedia is as accurate as possible.
 
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As well as looking at ways of getting The Opus further up the search results (however, non-BF users will almost certainly select Wikipedia ahead all other results regardless of position), perhaps the NF community needs to add The Opus as a reference to all the WikiProjects Birds pages and benefit from indirect access.

...

I agree with Steve's point in adding Opus (and any other reliable source) to the Wikipedia entry, if for no other reason than providing additional material for those searching.
 
The Opus is much more complete already. The only problem is that if you search for a bird in google, Wikipedia is always the first result (even if the article is a stub) and the Opus is somewhere behind, usually on the second or even third page....

I never understood why this site is doing "Opus" when contributing to wikipedia would be much more efficient, effective and useful to other people, IMO.
 
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