[Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

Mon Sep 20 20:36:25 UTC 2004

So, in the interest of the Anglo-Saxon wikipedia, how do I, personally, set
it up outside the wikimedia foundation, so that I can get it started?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Evan Prodromou
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 2:16 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

Tim Starling wrote:

> People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.

Once again I'd like to point out that having a language-specific Wikipedia
is 
not usually the best way to organize, promote, or develop a language.

It's probably much better for a group of interested people working on a
small or 
endangered language to set up a general-purpose wiki that encompasses the 
Wikimedia ideas of a Wikipedia, Wiktionary, a language-learning Wikibook,
and 
perhaps a few other community- or discussion-oriented purposes.

There are a _lot_ of free or low-cost PHP hosting services that can host a
wiki. 
Mediawiki can be hard to set up on these services, since MySQL usually costs

significantly more, but there are a number of other wiki engines* that work
with 
  flat files and don't require a database.

Anyways: I think the best strategy is to tell people who want to have a 
Wikipedia in their language to go start a wiki somewhere else. If they can
show 
that they have a robust community that can support a Wikipedia, then they
should 
get an xx.wikipedia.org domain (as well as other xx.wikisomething.org
stuff).

~ESP

* I can hear it now: "Huh? There are other wiki engines? There are other
wikis? 
I can set up my own? Huh?"