Matt wrote:
The problem with a fork is that you'd leave most
of the
community behind, and the community is A) large, B) full
of experts in obscure topics, and C) knowledgable about
the state of existing WP articles.
Having "stable-development" branches for articles seemed
an excellent idea, and would effectively be an "in-
project" fork...is this still under consideration?
I prefer the idea of "branching": we're writing
encyclopedia articles, not computer software. I don't
want to leave the community behind at all.
The foundation plans to hire professional editors and
writers. They'll create, say, an additional 4,000
articles (on lofty topics, no doubt ;-) and also
choose a subset of the half million Wikipedia articles
to whip into shape.
But I'm recommending to the foundation that any
articles it revises be posted back to Wikipedia
immediately - as opposed to waiting until their
publication day. (I don't know the legal niceties; is
prompt re-publication a requirement, or can they hang
on to their version in-house till the last minute?)
BOTH projects would surely benefit from this cross-
pollination.
I'd like to do whatever I can to reduce the 'forkiness' of
the foundation's project and increase the 'give-and-take-iness'
of it. Collaboration has been the key of Wikipedia's success;
let's not change horses in midstream.
Ed Poor