On 8 April 2011 23:07, Bob the Wikipedian <bobthewikipedian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
A relatively successful wiki competitor is the
Encyclopedia of Life.
Here's how that site works:
*Experts write articles (similar to the original Nupedia, only they
dint' give up after nine articles)
*Articles that are lacking are temporarily imported from Wikipedia
*Wikipedia articles which are reviewed and approved by experts become
permanent content
*Taxonomic data is imported from various databases, including WORMS,
ITIS, and various other trusted names.
*The public (supposedly) may contribute information (though I've not
figured out how yet)
*The public may contribute tagged freely licensed photos to the wiki by
uploading them to the EOL's Flickr photostream where a bot adds them
regularly.
On the surface, EOL looks like it's doing quite well and has a lot of
useful information and photos, and I even use it sometimes for research
when Wikipedia doesn't satisfy my hunger :-[ . But if you ask me,
they've made it too difficult to learn to contribute, barring out
potential editors like myself.
God bless,
Bob
Thing is their business model appears to be to start with $50 million
of funding and proceed to hire whoever you need to write your
encyclopedia.
Admittedly given the foundation's spending plans of late it appears
the WMF is interested the same model.
--
geni