On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 5:10 AM, Delirium<delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
Sage Ross wrote:
Hence the desirability of creating a free
alternative to Amazon's
reviews.
I buy this, but my main question would be: why Wikimedia? It doesn't
seem to have a lot to do with collaborative editing, wikis, knowledge
production, or any of our other core areas. My guess for what the
software would look like makes it not seem to overlap very much with any
of our existing software, either.
I agree, it's something of a departure in being not directly
collaborative and not well-suited for the standard wiki approach. I
think it does have to do with knowledge production--it collects
first-hand knowledge of how well goods function and what their
shortcomings are, for example.
The reason I think Wikimedia might ought to get involved in this area
is because--in terms of public recognition and infrastructural
stability--Wikimedia is becoming a cornerstone of the free culture
ecosystem. So it makes sense to me to start
supporting/mirroring/organizing/structuring useful free content that's
being created within smaller, possibly financially unsustainable
projects, and to make it possible for such projects to continue even
if their original venues shut down.
-Sage