2009/4/22 WJhonson@aol.com:
As far as a wiki distinguishing itself from Wikipedia, there is probably a niche in "child-safe", there is probably a niche in "specialized" as well. An expert on botany may feel more comfortable writing for Botanedia, and hob nobbing with her fellow experts there and probably getting credit for their writing as well. Parents may not feel comfortable with their 9 year old daughter researching "The Little Mermaid" on Wikipedia where we state that Hans Christian Anderson had a number of probable sexual issues.
I suspect there's little market demand for a "child safe" fork of Wikipedia, or we'd have seen one. So far those pushing for such filtering try to enact it on Wikipedia itself, presumably because it's unsustainable elsewhere.
(That said, the Schools Wikipedia has endeavoured to keep itself nice and filtered for classroom use, and teachers *love* it. Really love it. As in, write in for lots of DVD copies and are encouraged to run off DVD copies themselves. It's about the most successful repackaging of Wikipedia so far.)
- d.