On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 10:05 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
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.
I disagree with this. Some of the most successful non-wikipedia wikis I know of are in fact extremely similar to wikipedia. I'm thinking here mainly of pop-culture wikis, like the Battlestar Wiki, Wookiepedia and the Lostpedia. They all borrow heavily from the Wikipedia "style", so they all look just as dry and formal, and they generally have similar policies when it comes to POV and original research.
An interesting case study is Lostpedia. Since most of the fun that comes from endlessly discussing Lost is speculating about what the hell is going on and coming up with your own pet theories, you'd expect the wiki to be infested with original research. In fact, it is not. They only allow confirmed canonical information in the articles themselves (i.e. no speculation), and then each article has a sub-page called "Theories" (essentially a discussion page) where people can speculate to their hearts content. But it can't make it into the article. Just for funsies, check out the article on Lostpedia on the DHARMA Initiative and tell me if this doesn't look like a wikipedia article: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/DHARMA_initiative
I think it's very clear that wikipedia has developed a very successful model, not least because many other wikis seem to almost automatically adopt our style and policies. In short: Wikipedia Works.
--Oskar