Matt wrote:
The problem with a fork is that you'd leave most of the community behind, and the community is A) large, B) full of experts in obscure topics, and C) knowledgable about the state of existing WP articles.
Having "stable-development" branches for articles seemed an excellent idea, and would effectively be an "in- project" fork...is this still under consideration?
I prefer the idea of "branching": we're writing encyclopedia articles, not computer software. I don't want to leave the community behind at all.
The foundation plans to hire professional editors and writers. They'll create, say, an additional 4,000 articles (on lofty topics, no doubt ;-) and also choose a subset of the half million Wikipedia articles to whip into shape.
But I'm recommending to the foundation that any articles it revises be posted back to Wikipedia immediately - as opposed to waiting until their publication day. (I don't know the legal niceties; is prompt re-publication a requirement, or can they hang on to their version in-house till the last minute?) BOTH projects would surely benefit from this cross- pollination.
I'd like to do whatever I can to reduce the 'forkiness' of the foundation's project and increase the 'give-and-take-iness' of it. Collaboration has been the key of Wikipedia's success; let's not change horses in midstream.
Ed Poor