The only regret I personally have about that one, is that Jimbo missed the one big opening at a knock-out punch vis a vis citizendium.

I do however in the larger scheme of things think that having a credible fork of the English wikipedia at this stage of its life-cycle wouldn't be counter-productive, ghod knows somebody needs to keep it honest. But I have very little hope of that happening in a form that is genuine, and not just a mocker.

Contributors could be offered motivation in things like 1) promises of ad-revenue share. 2) meaningful attribution, where you can personally take the kudos of writing a superb article into the real world (CV etc.). 3) Ability to publish original research. 4) Ability to reflect a POV.

If we look at the more successful wikis however the only successful ones appear to be allowing original research, Some level of POV and totaly non wikipedia style. TVTropes is probably the best example.

NPOV is our key innovation. Much more radical than letting anyone edit the website.

2009/4/5 Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com>om>: NPOV is our key innovation. Much more radical than letting anyone edit the website.

The obvious alternative is to allow point of view editing but structure the wiki to include articles from diverse points of view, not an innovation, editorial pages of major newspapers are typically structured in that way. Yes, but failures to present a complete spectrum of points of view can be balanced by including a "NPOV" article imported from Wikipedia.

That would be true if it were not for the campaign to delete external links and discourage their addition.

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 12:36 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: I agree. The only way a wiki that says "anyone can edit" can work is with NPOV. You can either enforce a POV by banning people who don't share your point of view, or you can explicitly endorse *no-one's* point of view.

(Similarly, NPOV would be extremely difficult to manage with a small base of users as discussion (and, to some extent, conflict) is essential.)

2009/4/5 Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com>om>: NPOV is our key innovation. Much more radical than letting anyone edit the website. - d.

Ray Saintonge wrote: At this stage, I'd say that the odds of a successful fork are roughly nil. The problem for a fork is that it is immediately competes with wikipedia, and is offering a product that the average reader or contributor will probably not differentiate much from wikipedia. If it takes the whole database, it won't have enough initial users to maintain it. If it doesn't, then why would anyone use it when they have wikipedia? The only real hope for a competitor would be one that offered something substantially different to both reader and writer. Only then can it overcome the "motivation problem" of getting people interested in an initially small project, when there's the giant wikipedia available. The ingredients of a "different product" are there: Contributors could be offered motivation in things like 1) promises of ad-revenue share. 2) meaningful attribution, where you can personally take the kudos of writing a superb article into the real world (CV etc.). 3) Ability to publish original research. 4) Ability to reflect a POV. Readers could be offered things like: 1) useful commercial links ("people interested in this topic might like to buy the following books") 2) a more reliable - stable product 3) a more "child friendly" product. 4) ability to know the qualifications - or even online reputation - of the author. 5) ability to read articles written from a POV you share. Now, some of those attributes were offered by veropedia, some by Citenzium, or Conservapedia, and some by others. Some are obviously incompatible, or possibly infeasible, and so far no one has found a recipe to combine any of them successfully. (I'd class all current offerings as failed or failing). However given that the rewards for success here could be remarkably high, I'd suggest that there will be more attempts in coming years, and possibly by very well-resourced players (Wikipedia is vulnerable in that the WMF is underfunded - what happens if a competitor goes for advertising with a massive publicity budget could be interesting). It is not beyond possibility that someday someone will stumble on a formula that works, and will either complement or overshadow wikipedia.