[WikiEN-l] No forks! (was: Re: Print edition)

Sat Feb 28 07:02:07 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >Why not make it equivalent to a language Wikipedia?
> >We already have the 'Simple English' Wikipedia. The
> >other language type link on an article could tell you
> >the page had been selected (or moved).
>
> No offense, but this is a horrendously bad idea. We should instead focus
on
> adding a good category system and on writing articles in news style so
that the
> first section of each article is a concise article in its own right (I
call
> this the 'lead section').
>
> I also think that Simple was a bad idea as well since the lead section can
and
> should be written in language that can be understood by an average
person - no
> special knowledge of the subject area should be required to understand the
lead
> section.
>
> In addition, it would be nice to have the ability to mark particular
versions
> of articles as "ready for print" (via a sifter-like mechanism). Then when
the
> Concise Wikipedia script parses the database it would create concise
articles
> out of the lead sections of every article version that was marked 'ready
for
> print'. That would prevent any vandalism from entering the print edition.
>
> Thus we have no forks and no freezing of Wikipedia articles. We could also
> create an updated version of Wikipedia Concise with each database backup.
Such
> a thing would be great to have in a format that could be used by PDAs and
palm
> top PCs. Hm. MediaWiki Lite...

Personally, I'd like a 'Print version' (well, actually, that name isn't
great, as we already have 'Printable version' it'd easily get confused with,
but I don't have a better suggestion for example purposes) link on each
article page. This goes to a Print: namespace. For example, article Foo, the
print version link goes to 'Print:Foo'. I haven't decided whether a
'Talk:Print:Foo' would be good, or to just use the normal Talk page
(probably the latter). The pages in the Print: namespace are absent (red
link) until someone edits, when someone makes the first edit, they get the
text of the current article revision in the edit box (possibly with some
automated change, like piped links become a (see [[blah]]) after the linked
text). Deletion of Print: pages would leave the associated normal article
and talk pages intact.
'Wikipedia:' or 'Special:List of Print version articles' would be a good
thing to have, or something along those lines.
Even if we don't use this plan, we definitely want to keep them separate
from normal articles. The print versions should be different, and we
shouldn't freeze or delete normal articles for this. I'm not keen on a
en-print.wikipedia.org type fork as was suggested, but it's at least an
option.
Personally, eventually, I forsee three versions: the Pocket Wikipedia
(basically the first-paragraph thing), the Concise Wikipedia (a big volume),
and the Unabridged Wikipedia (pretty much the entirety of the web content).
Concise will want pictures, but shouldn't overdo it.
Anyway, my thoughts on the matter.

-- Jake