[Wikipedia-l] Re: Can "outsiders" build their encyclopedia on Wikipedia?

Sat Apr 24 02:53:30 UTC 2004

Karl Juhnke wrote:
> I have a hypothetical question, and wikipedia-l seems the best place to
> ask it, so I have temporarily subscribed.
> 
> Suppose a group of people wanted to build a specialized encyclopedia
> for their own purposes, and decided to create it on Wikipedia so they
> don't have to worry about hosting or software issues.  Suppose they saw
> Wikipedia as a free collaboration tool, and although they didn't mind
> releasing their work under the GFDL, they weren't specifically
> interested in creating a _general purpose_ encyclopedia.
> 
> Would this group of people and their project be welcome?
> 
> Specifically, suppose that the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada
> 
> http://www.mhsc.ca/
> 
> decided that their 2000-article On-line Canadian Mennonite Encyclopedia
> was significantly out of date, and that an efficient way to collaborate
> on getting it updated would be to pipe it into Wikipedia and work on it
> from there.  As an added bonus to them, their articles would start
> getting high rankings from Google.

It mainly depends on the attitude of the group writing the articles. 
What they have to understand is that they are not writing a Mennonite 
encyclopedia within Wikipedia, they are writing Wikipedia articles about 
Mennonites. They shouldn't expect to have any control over the content 
or organisation of the articles. They should follow Wikipedia's style 
guidelines precisely. And they should not preferentially link to their 
own article series as opposed to other articles in Wikipedia.

In Wiki theory such a series of articles is called a "walled garden":

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WalledGarden

"If you feel you have a lot of content to contribute to a wiki all at 
once, you may be tempted to write a bunch of different pages, 
interlinking them all. Don't. This is a WalledGarden, and it stands out 
in stark contrast to the areas of the wiki that are living. The living 
areas are much trafficked, edited by many and read by even more. They 
exhibit the selflessness of a living space, belonging to nobody and 
everybody. If you learn to slowly integrate your own wisdom into this 
broader space, the process will be far messier and slower, but the 
feedback you receive from others will be more considered and rewarding."

If the MHSC wishes to have editorial control over the articles, they 
should create their own wiki. Any web hosting service offering MySQL and 
PHP will do.

-- Tim Starling