On Tue, Dec
28, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Ray Saintonge<saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
On 12/21/10 1:12 PM, David Gerard wrote:
I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I
think, and I've seen many
others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good
and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not intrinsically a good thing.
I can't
agree more. To this end, Wikipedia should be encouraging
forks,
encouraging other sites to copy articles into other wikis which in turn
could edit them into something consistent with the new site's
philosophies. Being the sole arbiter of NPOV can lead to very
un-neutral results. Where other sites have been copying and developing
articles in their own way, WP could even have interwiki links to these
other sites.
<snip>
The initiative must still come from those who
would run those sites.
Indeed. Just out of interest, how many people here would
consider
devoting the time and energy and resources into setting up a Wikipedia
fork? I know some active Wikipedians have done so, but sustaining such
forks can be very difficult. What practical steps can be taken to
encourage a diversity of useful and sustainable forks that demonstrate
what is and is not possible? Or is th etime better spent improving WMF
projects?
Carcharoth
I'm not available for serious sustained work on any fork but
Wikinfo, but
I can help people get set up. There has to be a vision though, of
something better. Maybe something that is an actual wiki, quick and easy,
rather than the template coding hell Wikipedia's turned into.