[Foundation-l] When is a Wikipedia not a Wikipedia ?

Mon Apr 14 17:57:28 UTC 2008

Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Sounds like a good plan, but (as others have said) it shouldn't be
>  called "Wikipedia". It's no more an encyclopaedia than it is a
>  dictionary (etc) - they're using "Wikipedia" as the name because it's
>  the best known, which doesn't sound like a good reason to me. The name
>  should reflect the contents.

As I recall, Wikisource and Wiktionary were originally part of
Wikipedia. They were split off because there was enough community to
maintain them separately, and they felt they were better separately.
Here we have an opposite situation; the community feels they don't
have the resources to maintain them separately, and have decided to
unmerge them for that language. Another user has already pointed out
that Wikiversity was originally part of Wikibooks as well.

I think that within reasonable limits a community should decide for
itself what its criteria for inclusion are. There's no need to
strictly follow the example of the English wikis. An encyclopedia can
certainly include supporting quotations, texts, teaching materials, et
cetera. These aren't typically found in paper encyclopedias due to
limitations in the expert model (limited work hours available) and
paper form (limited size) and a lack of ambition, not because they're
inherently incompatible.

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)