From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> You mean, you don't get the scientists but you do get the cranks? A lot of that will be that Wikipedia has an incredibly powerful brand name. (c.f. the New York Times comparing mathematics to Wikipedia, not the other way around.) So even a friendly fork designed to take much of the same material but operate on it with notably different policies will have trouble getting contributors, because everyone will come here first. OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people. It could use Mediawiki and GFDL and have similar content guidelines to Wikipedia, just use signed articles, allow article ownership and allow original research. The academic barrier would guard against non-accredited cranks if not the accredited ones ;-) Such a thing even be usable as referenceable source material for Wikipedia articles. I'm not saying this is a good idea, for Wikipedia, for readers or for civilisation in general, but I do wonder if and how it would work. - d.