[WikiEN-l] NuNotNuPedia (again) (was The whole point of wikipedia)

Mon Oct 24 09:19:40 UTC 2005

Martin Richards wrote:

>I think it is only a matter of time before a clone of wikipedia pops up with
>restricted editing, gains some popularity (especially with academics), and
>over time makes Wikipedia start to look like the urban dicionary.

There's probably a happy medium between Wikipedia and Nupedia,
actually. I can easily picture something using MediaWiki or a variant
with a workflow something like Wikinews. Get academics to write and
sign articles. Release the results under GFDL and maybe CC-by-sa.
Source Wikipedia articles (under GFDL only, of course) that pass
muster. It could be quite complementary to Wikipedia.

(The Britannica model of encyclopedia writing is to get a smart
person, give them a topic, an outline and a word count and then edit
them as needed. And only a fool would claim Britannica isn't a great
encyclopedia, and indeed one of the great books of Anglophone culture.
Its economic condition is a different matter, of course, but not one
relevant to my point here.)

However, someone needs to (1) set it up (2) have a good sense of what
it will take to build a new community and make it sustainable. I've
often thought some of our more possessive academic editors with a bad
case of expert syndrome seem to be asking for such an environment.
Though I'm not going to bother and I wonder if anyone here will
bother. Mind you, MediaWiki is ridiculously easy for any
junior-to-middling Linux sysadmin to set up, so the means of
production are not an issue ... just finding people to work at them.

- d.