Harvard University and a group of other institutions have announced the launch of an ambitious project that realises the dream of biologist E. O. Wilson. The Encyclopedia of Life is to be a freely accessible Wikipedia-style web resource aiming to catalogue evry single living species on the face of the planet. Planned to be built over the next decade, and moderated by experts in the relevant topics, Wilson hopes it will become “the key tool that we need to inspire preservation of Earth’s biodiversity.” I can’t argue with that. I can, however, wonder how dated the wiki format will look in a decade – I hope they’re building it on a non-proprietory database.