[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia subset proposal

[Larry Sanger]

> From: David Levinson <dlevinson at mn.rr.com>
> Sign me up (I have Ph.D. Civil Engineering and teach transportation
> engineering, planning, and policy)

Great!

> It should not go under the name nupedia, nor should it go under the
> name wikipedia, but something else. According to network solutions
> metapedia.com is owned, but metapedia.org and metapedia.net are
> available.  Hyperpedia.org is also a good name and available.

We clearly need Jimbo to reply on this point.  I've got a few name
ideas myself.

> We might want to think about an updating protocol, as wikipedia
> articles evolve past the frozen versions, some sort of flagging would
> be in order of articles that diverged significantly from frozen
> articles and the "liquid" wikipedia open to edits.

Definitely--I'm sure that sort of feature will be one of the first to be
added.

> We might also want to think about allowing multiple groups be able to
> "publish"  "frozen" versions at the touch of a button (sort of
> combination of Larry and Ed's idea).  Any individual/group, once
> registered, would be able to touch a button and establish a flag on a
> wikipedia article.  Thus in Frozen version A, the academics might have
> a tight standard and only review/update once in a blue moon, but
> another group B could freeze a different version and update more
> frequently.  Since these are only article flags on particular versions
> (all of which are stored in a single database), there would not be
> forking as such.  However someone could search only for group A.  Group
> A would have their own web interface (own name, own address).  If
> someone else didn't like group A's cut (too small, too elite, too
> whatever), they could publish their own take on the encyclopedia.
>
> It would allow someone potentially to be using wikipedia to publish a
> non-NPOV encyclopedia, since versions in the middle of edit wars would
> be freezable by a particular group - but as long as that was somehow
> acknowledged, and the lines between liquid wikipedia and frozen
> wikipedia (versions A, B, ...) were established, I think it could be
> tolerated.

I think this is a *great* idea.  I can easily see how the encyclopedia
filter software could become more popular that PediaWiki itself.  It's
essentially a way to import articles from Wikipedia (or, theoretically,
any PediaWiki website).

Of course, the only drawback is that "reviewing" efforts might be spread
too thinly; but somehow I doubt that will be a problem.

> The issues of interlinking - linking to a "liquid" article would need
> to be addressed either by identifying it as external link, removing
> that link in the "frozen" version, or as some third kind of link.
> However, this raises questions of self-containment.

Exactly right.  That setting should probably be left open to the reader.
Then we could debate about what the default setting should be.

Larry