"Imagine a world...."

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment"     ~Wikimedia Foundation

Wikispecies was the first place I looked.  It's the biology teacher in me.

It isn't as extensive as other online sources, but what they may lack in content they make up for it in external links.  Also, it was encouraging to see that they have very defined goals.  On the site there is a link highlighting the do's and dont's for wikispecies along with a forum to ask questions and highlight important details about the project.  From my experience, this site has a lot potential because it does call on people to contribute and challenges the old dogma that only professionals are a legitimate source of information.  There are people that have spent their lives studying species or living in close contact with them and yet those individuals chances of sharing the wealth of knowledge may be limited.  Granted the wikispecies project is focused on classification, there is still a place for collaboration and the proliferation of knowledge.  It's also a great place to see images of animals and brush up on a species classification.


After searching through some of the other wikimedia projects I found myself going back to and spending more time on wikinews.

"We are a group of volunteers whose mission is to present reliable, unbiased and relevant news."
~wikinews

Now, I know that it can be hard to write an unbiased report when you work for a specific news syndication.  There are usually special interest groups and target audiences to appeal to, and that is why I can appreciate the goal of wikinews.  This is a place for people all over the world to potentially write about first hand accounts of local events.  Plus, their news is free and created under a creative commons free license.  In other words, the content is free and available to redistribute and/or share without any laws being broken.  I really like the websites interface.  It is easy to understand how to navigate around to find specific news articles and also to just quickly get a digest of world news.  It is impressive how much media they have especially since it is all free.  You should check it out and explore some of the current events and associate images.