WikiBird:Design Goals

From WikiBird

Design
An attempt has been made to enable the general bird information to be shared by multiple lists where specific local information can be added. In some regions there is a different common name for the same bird and there are different spellings as in color for the U.S. and colour for the U.K. Currently these differences are handled by using template parameters so that each area can use terms that are familiar to the region. This results in a slightly more complicated structure for the pages show in the Structure diagram of the bird pages.

Since range maps can be global or regional they are also passed as template parameters. Hopefully in the future this will become easier with default template parameters for a global maps and passed parameters for a regional range map.

Categories and Indices
Another reason for the page names and structure is that automatic indices can be maintained by strategically placing categories in the pages. The category for scientific bird names is placed in each "template" page that used the binomial name and contains the general bird information. This generates the Category:Bird names (scientific) link in each of these pages that leads to a page containing an alphabetised list of all the birds by the scientific name. This is also done for the common names and can be done for each regional guide and list as well as other categories of pages.

Wiki Engine
After evaluating several wiki engines MediaWiki was chosen because of the features, ease of installation, and the fact that it was a well-known and stable product. It is the engine used for the Wikipedia online encyclepedia so the format for editing is fairly well known.