NCBI Taxonomy IDs and Wikipedia
I've written a note on the Wikipedia Taxobox page making the case for adding NCBI taxonomy IDs to the standard Taxobox used to summarise information about a taxon. Here is what I wrote:
Wikipedia's taxon pages have a huge web presence (see my blog post Google and Wikipedia revisited and Page, R. D. M. (2010). 'Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia of life'. Nature Precedings hdl:10101/npre.2010.4242.1). If a taxon is in Wikipedia it is almost always the first search result in Google. Researchers in other areas of biology are making use of a Wikipedia as a tool to annotate genes Gene Wiki and RNA families Wikipedia:WikiProject_RNA, respectively. Pages for genes, such as Cytochrome_b, have numerous external identifiers in their equivalent of the Taxobox (the Pfam_box). I think we are missing a huge opportunity by not including NCBI taxonomy ids. The advantages would be:
- It would provide a valuable service to Wikipedia readers by enabling them to go to NCBI to discover more about a taxon
- It would help Wikipedia contributors by providing a standardised way to refer to NCBI (and enable bots to add missing NCBI taxonomy ids). Putting them in an External links section makes it harder to be consistent (there are various ways to write a URL linking to the NCBI taxonomy)
- It would facilitate linking from NCBI to Wikipedia. A mapping of Wikipedia pages to NCBI taxonomy ids could be added to NCBI Linkout, generating more traffic to the Wikipedia pages
- Projects that are trying to integrate information from different sources would be able to combine information of genomics from NCBI with other information much more readily
Note that I am not arguing that Wikipedia should 'follow' NCBI taxonomy, merely that where the potential to link exists, the links would create value, both within and outside the Wikipedia community.
Some discussion has ensued on the Taxobox page, all positive. I'm blogging this here to encourage anyone who as any more thoughts on the matter to contribute to the discussion.
NCBI to Wikipedia links are now live...
Linking NCBI to Wikipedia
iPhylo: NCBI Taxonomy IDs and Wikipedia
May 20, 2010 I've written a note on the Wikipedia Taxobox page making the case for adding NCBI taxonomy IDs to the standard Taxobox used to summarise
iPhylo: Linking NCBI to Wikipedia
Jun 8, 2010 In an earlier post I discussed linking NCBI taxonomy to Wikipedia. One way to tackle this is to add NCBI Taxonomy ID to Wikipedia pages.
blogs.nature.com - NCBI Taxonomy IDs and Wikipedia
May 20, 2010 I've written a note on the Wikipedia Taxobox page making the case for adding NCBI taxonomy IDs to the standard Taxobox used to summarise
Template talk:Taxobox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to NCBI Taxonomy IDs: I think we are missing a huge opportunity by not including NCBI taxonomy ids. The advantages would be:
User:WillowW/List of NCBI taxonomic journal references (part 12
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. < User:WillowW 1 NCBI Reference IDs 11001-11100; 2 NCBI Reference IDs 11101-11200; 3 NCBI Reference IDs ..... "
Phyloinformatics in the age of Wikipedia
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTMLby R Page - 2010Jun 28, 2010 NCBI taxonomy ids are linked to the equivalent URI in the Uniprot database (http
Consensus on NCBI taxonomy IDs in #wikipedia must... - Roderic
Consensus on NCBI taxonomy IDs in #wikipedia must just be breaking out http://en
Linkout
Jul 5, 2010 Linkout - A NCBI taxonomy to Wikipedia mapping. Tab-delimited text (NCBI taxonomy id, Wikipedia page, Wikipedia page id); NCBI Linkout
Template:NCBI - Wikispecies
Nov 5, 2007 the id of the taxon on NCBI web site. Nuvola apps important.svg How to retrieve the id: In the url www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser
iPhylo - Society of Systematic Biologists | Home of Systematic Biology
One way to tackle this is to add NCBI Taxonomy ID to Wikipedia pages. ..... A mapping of Wikipedia pages to NCBI taxonomy ids could be added to NCBI Linkout