Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 11/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
The process to create a new project is far too
difficult. An
incubator wiki would facilitate that process. The fact that
Wikicities is already doing something which you feel has overlap (but
then later say wouldn't have any overlap), is really irrelevant.
The process should be that difficult. The impetus for new projects
seems to be more often a reflection of people's inability or
unwillingness to look for compromise solutions; it has very little to
do with an objective need for another project.
I think it's more than that. There are a lot of people who want
Wikipedia to look more like a finished product than a perpetual work
in progress. Daniel P. B. Smith is one of the most outspoken in this
regard, but there are many others who also feel this way. If we're
going to reach a compromise, it has to take these points into
consideration.
I don't like to characterize specific people in this general context.
In broad terms I think that Wikipedia owes its success to being a work
in progress. Wikipedia used to have a rule: "Always leave something for
someone else to do." I don't know if it's still there. It would be
wrong to interpret that as meaning that you should leave something that
you know out of an article. It is enough to say that you don't have to
go overboard to get every last fact about your subject; let someone else
have the fun and go on to what you are good at. Wikipedia will never be
perfect, or at least I hope it never will be. And if you do want your
work to be perfect then don't expect it of anybody else.
There needs to be a place where we can experiment with
new ideas more
freely. You could argue that that should be in Wikipedia itself, but
if so then there'd need to be a more static version in place first.
Creating a new test project *is* a compromise. It's saying "this idea
isn't completely developed yet to where there is a consensus for
including it in the main project, but we're not going to throw it away
just because of that."
It's going to be a combination. If the matter is encyclopedic by nature
the experimentation should be in Wikipedia, but the experiment should
not be shot down before it even has a chance. Ditto for the sister
projects. If a proposal has characteristics significantly different
from those of any sister project, only then should an entirely new
project be considered.
Until Wikipedia
came along on-line genealogy was already
perhaps the best self-organized amateur research area on the net.
Again this is largely proprietary and filled with barriers to the
information being free. I can't think of any other major site which
allows for even the basics of what a wiki could offer. There may be
some minor sites out there doing this, but Wikimedia could do a much
better job.
To get a grasp of what's being done in genealogy go to
http://www.cyndislist.com/ . Most of these sites are run by amateurs,
but there are certainly some big ones that are in the business to make
money ... but then Wikipedia has mirror sites trying to make a buck
without contributing anything to the world's knowledge. I don't know of
any genealogical sites built on a wiki principle, but that's not
essential. The on-line genealogy community includes a disproportionate
number of seniors who learned their limited computer skills from their
grandchildren. It's like no other major on-line community.
We have had our
own 9-11 Wiki, but that has not exactly been a memorial
success.
I think this is largely because it's not a very expandable project.
The number of dead people in the world is much greater than the number
of people who died in the September 11th tragedy, and the former is
growing every moment.
Sure it's expandable. We don't easily run out of tragedies. It would
need to be renamed and repackaged with a broader mandate. It doesn't
grow because its mandate is too narrow.
Anyway, some of these projects will fail, and others
will succeed.
There is only so much volunteer time to go around, after all. But I
don't think it's really possible to figure out which ones are which
without going ahead and trying it. Perhaps most importantly, the harm
is negligible. A project which doesn't succeed isn't going to use up
very many resources, after all.
There will be a point with some projects when you will see that it's
going nowhere, and so it is time to delete it. What criteria do you use
to determine that point?
Ec