[WikiEN-l] Re: Reliable, selectable content

Fri Apr 8 10:33:44 UTC 2005

On Apr 8, 2005 1:13 AM, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> Is there a way around this which doesn't require someone making the
> decision and choosing between pissing off half the community and pissing
> off half the community?

One could argue that making this, or any "version" is a distraction
we, the wikipedia community, rightly should devolve to others.

Armed with a suitable tool for managing lists of versions (which,
incidentally, I'd argue shouldn't be part of the database, but another
program and datastore altogether) anyone can come up with an
subcyclopedia (a subset of wikipedia) tailored to their target
audience.  So people can come up with a "world places encyclopedia", a
"basic knowledge encyclopedia", a "southern baptist convention
encyclopedia", whatever. As these groups have a more specific model of
their target audience and the purpose of their subcyclopedia, they can
pick articles that suit that.

So really I'm arguing that Wikipedia should be a supplier only of raw
material, not of finished product.  It will undoubtedly be orbited by
related satellite wikireaders, subcyclopedias, and ambitious
superprojects, but a generic "Wikipedia 1.0" seems to me to be a lot
of work to produce a jack-of-all-trades product that meets no-one's
needs terribly well.
-- 
John Fader