Friday, April 15, 2011

#eol will be the next project for #translatewiki.net

It is a proud moment when you can announce that the Enclyclopedia of Life is the next project for translatewiki.net. We are ready to make the messages available today but, we are going to wait a bit.

As the software is undergoing massive changes at the moment, we were asked to wait a few weeks. This does impress us because the time and effort our localisers will put into it is considered. It is a valuable resource that will be optimally used.

At the question what the next formalities are, we found no need for them. We are willing and happy to start. We agree with EOL and the Library of Alexandria that it will be motivating to our communities when new localisations become often and regularly available.

Anolis carolinensis Voigt, 1832

There will be challenges ahead, one of them will be the static content that is maintained in a CMS. They are the things that describe what EOL is about, how to donate, how to cooperate ... Technically this will be interesting. As there is not the same structure in such text, making sure that we get the updates in and the translations out will be more of a challenge.

The Wikimedia community will find in the Encyclopedia of Life many references to Wikipedia articles. The fusion of many sources is what makes the EOL so interesting. I wonder if the EOL will eventually also support Wikipedia information in other languages. When it does, it will bring even more sources to the Encyclopedia of Life.
Thanks,
        GerardM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's really great.
How does the licensing work for websites such as Europeana and EOL, which don't seem to be free software/content?
I see that translatewiki uses CC-BY which is less strict than GPL, but still it doesn't seem obvious.
Thank you!

GerardM said...

The code for both Europeana and EOL is open source.

We publish code in the license of the project we support. At that we are really strict. Our localisers are in the business of making software available in their language. That much should be obvious.
Thanks,
GerardM

GerardM said...

As this post did not become visible I post it from the message that I received about it GM

"Katja Schulz (EOL Species Pages Group) has left a new comment on your post "#eol will be the next project for #translatewiki.n...":

EOL content is either in the public domain or released under a creative commons license that allows derivative works. Each data object (e.g., text section, image) has a specific license attached to it. Some materials are only available for non-commercial purposes. There's an API for downloading the content."