[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[MuZemike]

On 12/28/2010 9:40 PM, Anthony wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:28 PM, MuZemike<muzemike at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> We must also take into account the popularity factor when it comes to
>> comparing WMF wikis. It is obvious of the advantage Wikipedia has over
>> all the other wikis in that is immensely more popular and is received
>> much more widely than all other wikis.
>
> You think popularity is the cause of Wiktionary sucking?  I think it's
> the effect.

In a sense, yes. The amount of influence and power Wikipedia yields on 
the rest of the Internet is amazing; we may not be aware of that as we 
tend to naturally look from the inside out and not from the rest of the 
world's POV.

And I feel that does get in the way of us trying to organize the 
information we have put together so far (as we humans like to do) - 
words and definitions in one place (the dictionary), basic descriptions 
of topics (the encyclopedia) in another place, locations (an atlas or 
gazetteer, which we still yet to find a way to incorporate a wiki 
structure for something like that), and so on.

I know people don't like what I say when I sometimes tell them to think 
of Wikipedia (or whichever wiki you are working on) sans the high search 
rankings, popularity, etc., and just concentrate on the content itself. 
Are we organizing the information in the most efficient and logical ways 
we can? Are we maintaining a stable and sustainable wiki in both content 
and community? I feel those are the questions we ultimately, as a 
collection of wiki communities, need to always keep in mind.

-MuZemike