You know you're a wikiholic when you add references to e-mails! On Dec 19, 2007 11:16 AM, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Would the effect of that be to guarantee that Wikipedia is the first result for just about everything, and nothing else could ever get close? ;-P I can't see them doing it, 'tho, because Wikilinks are just internal and don't really contribute to the 'relevance' of a particular result on the wider 'net. On Dec 19, 2007 2:48 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Dec 19, 2007, at 12:54 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: I don't think he meant "auto-expand." He probably meant "link-ify": automatically create a link to wikipedia when something in double square-brackets is displayed on a Google search results page. (Looks like I need to create an [[autolinkification]] page.) --Noah--

On 19/12/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Oh yeah it does ;-) If you look at it in a particular way, you could argue that the wikipedia's policy of 'all links in, all no follow links out' policy basically amount to massive SEO of our own articles. Basically, the wikipedia is engineering its way to the top of the google rankings; or it could be argued that this is so. For example, if you search for 'rocket' in google, the top hit is the wikipedia (or at least it is when I do it). But there are no external links to it! (Or none I can find anyway, try this: link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket -site:*.wikipedia.*) So far as I can tell, a lot of articles are like this. So should it really be the top hit? Well, the wikipedia is fairly trustworthy and so gets lots of link juice as a whole and it sloshes around and raises everything up, including the rocket article. But if google decided that we really are SEOing ourself by 'no following' all our out links, they could fairly legitimately set an implicit 'no follow' on our internal wikilinks as *well*. At which point the wikipedia would largely (but not completely where *an* article really is well linked to by external references) disappear from the web 8-) So google could pretty much kill us. But that would be evil; I mean our no follow policy is probably in the best interests of the wikipedia, and probably the web as well. But our lack of out-link juice is evil too in some ways; many legitimate things the wiki references are probably linking a lot lower than they ought to be; and that presumably is costing them potential revenue from adverts and stuff. So I don't think google would do this at all, or at least I hope not(!)- it's just a thought experiment really; but I found it amusing ;-) -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.

And no one uses that format other than Wikipedians anyways. What make more sense is to have the archives for .en automatically link [[blah]] to the article on blah in the English Wikipedia and similarly for all the other lists that focus on a specific project. That would actually be useful for people using the archives to read old posts. Quoting Nathan Awrich <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>:

cc'ed to Foundation-L. On Dec 18, 2007 3:44 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote: Without getting absolutist, I think there's clearly a spectrum here. We've picked one point; it works for us, and our editors and our readership, and we're taken credibly by outside organizations and society as a whole. It may be that other points in the spectrum are both workable as volunteer projects (critical mass of contributors and content) and higher in the quality spectrum, and seen as more valuable by society as a whole. This is something that the Foundation may want to keep in mind; "English Wikipedia" as currently structured may not be the only english language encyclopedia project worth supporting. Why let Larry and Google have all the fun exploring the corners and diversity options in the space we're in? -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On Dec 18, 2007 4:18 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think we're clearly accomplishing more than a bunch of monkeys would. Excluding obvious vandalism and single-purpose editors, everyone involved in Wikipedia collaborates reasonably well on the whole. I agree that we're on a haphazard walk, but it's not a random walk. There's a common direction, the individual actors involved can see that and agree that it's generally somewhere over there, and the progress is overwhelmingly monotinically towards improved versions. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

I think that's a very important point. Citizendium's biggest problem isn't anything to do with their model, it's just that we have such an enormous head start. The only contributors they're likely to get (and they're not going to get any significant readers for a while yet, I imagine) are people that want to cheer for the underdog and be involved in a project from the start, who will likely leave if Citizendium gets any great success (and, more importantly, not be replaced), and those that are extremely enthusiastic about the key principles that differ from Wikipedia, who are likely very small in number. In short, they are too similar to Wikipedia to be able to catch us up. There is room in the market for more than one free encyclopaedia, but they need to find their own niche. A vague principle of welcoming experts is not enough. Perhaps Knol will be able to find one - we'll have to wait and see.

I wouldn't rely on the head start, since Wikipedia content is free for re-use. Anything we've got here thats good, they can copy and improve. However, that is based on a view of these enterprises as competitive. Really, they are complementary. The point, in this case, is the goal rather than the path. Wikipedia is useful _now_, but in the future it may be any one of similar projects. We could be Lycos or Infoseek foreshadowing Google. Works for me. On Dec 18, 2007 8:15 PM, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au> wrote:

Quoting Nathan Awrich <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>: Well Citizendium for reasons I don't fully understand decided to delete all of their from-Wikipedia content that hadn't been already highly modified. So they seem to be determined to succeed without the free re-use which seems to me at least to be needlessly shooting oneself in the foot. I want my content to be reused. I'd likely not contribute if it had to be under a more restrictive license. But yes, if the best we do is to make a roadmap for someone to do even better than we have done we should be happy.

update - Citizendium's license is nearly ready: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.citizendium.general/11…

On 21/12/2007, luke brandt <shojokid(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hurrah! CC-BY-SA-3.0 "The license allows the Citizendium to join the large informal club of free resources associated especially with Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation. Wikipedia uses the FSF's GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which is expected to be made fully compatible with CC-by-sa in coming months. Therefore, Wikipedia and the Citizendium will be able to exchange content easily. A minority of Citizendium articles started life on Wikipedia and so have been available under the GFDL." http://www.citizendium.org/czlicense.html is the explanatory essay. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Guettarda wrote: You seem to have the very essence of it :) To fill out the details see: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,431.0.html

Keith Old wrote: .... See, in spite of what is said by some, trolls[1][2] may be invaluable for building an encyclopedia [1] One of many unsung internet heroes who are almost entirely misunderstood. Contrary to popular belief, many trolls are actually quite intelligent. Their habitual attacks are usually a result of their awareness of the pretentiousness and excessive self-importance of many enthusiasts. As much as people may hate trolls, they are highly effective. [2] The meaning of the word troll is unknown. It might have had the original meaning of supernatural or magical with an overlay of malignant and perilous. Another likely suggestion is that it means "someone who behaves violently".