Ahner has asked for a clarifications of the organizational structure so here it is.
The Wiki or as I prefer The Iris Encyclopedia came about 4 years ago just after I joined the board of directors. As a director I felt it necessary to evaluate the condition of the society. My conclusion was my famous Chicken Little post which to sum up, said the Iris Society was falling behind the society at large. It was failing like some other plant societies mainly because it had failed to address the internet culture in a robust way.
About 3 years ago the wiki was approved by the board. I likened it to the Wikipedia and stated that its goal was to become the primary resource for Iris information on the internet. I have always stated, that although it contains an illustrated checklist of all irises it ultimately it is more than just that. I say it is part of a plan to save the Iris societies. Not just AIS, but all Iris specialty societies. Specialty plant societies used to be where one came for information. Hopefully the wiki will be able to compete with the rest of the world wide web, to make Iris societies relevant again.
The Wiki falls under the Public Relations and Marketing Committee and as such is paid for and owned by AIS. I am the chair of the PRMC and serve at the pleasure of the president with board approval.
The Iris Register falls under the Electronics Committee. John is its chair and serves at the pleasure of the president with board approval.
Neither committee originates registration information. All the data that John has is exactly what is in the R & Is. On the other hand while the wiki utilizes the R & I information it will not ultimately be exactly as in the R & Is, for two reasons. First abbreviations are being replaced by words so that someone unfamiliar with Iris can easily read and understand the entries. Second, I have been working on checklists for 20 years and have accumulated additional data that is utilized. The copyright holder is not John but the Iris registrar and both John and I have permission to use that information. If I am said to be stealing the information from the Iris Register, than John is stealing the information from the R & I. The word stealing is totally inappropriate in either case.
The issue of copyright is a red herring. John does not own the Iris register. I do not own the wiki. AIS owns both. One does not sue oneself for copyright infringement.
The issue is whether there is a risk to the Iris Register because of the Wiki. The Iris Register was a risk to the R & Is but it was approved by the board. The Wiki was approved by the board 3 years ago and has taken an enormous effort to get up and running. Before I started enlisting docents I demonstrated to the board at the board meeting what the wiki looked like and showed several entries. I gave out the url a month before in my committee report so that board members could look at it at their leisure. I continue to give out the url. If the majority of the board is unaware of what we are doing with the wiki, it would be a total surprise, and unlikely, since I know that many have gone to the wiki several times to view it and see our progress.
It is obvious that the wiki will be a great success, because in just two months we have 70 wikiusers forty five which are docents and all of which contribute. In this short time we have put up 5,000 pages and sometimes now averages a 1,000 pages a week. The number of man hours invested is heroic on the part of several wiki-workers. If there was a concern about the way the wiki was being constructed the appropriate time to voice that concern would have been in November or shortly thereafter. I have said many times that the wiki can expand membership. But that only happens fully if we complete the creation of the add-on electronic service membership. There is still so much work to do and to me this discussion is a distraction from what we need to be doing.