On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 1:45 PM, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Of course, if somebody, those folks included, think they can build a better encyclopedia, I'd encourage them to try. And I don't mean that in a snotty way; it would be useful to Wikipedia to have some serious competition. Just this week at work I was reviewing a competitor's new product, and it was both scary and thrilling, prodding us toward better work. It would be great for Wikipedia, and especially great for humanity, if somebody were actually nipping at our heels.
It is true that we don't have serious competition that is doing a better job in terms of attracting thousands of top-rate experts in all fields, who can fill a dozen articles in their field with brilliant sources in an afternoon.
But we do have serious competition, and it is scary and thrilling - it also happens to be published entirely in Chinese (hudong, baike). But even if you don't know how to read Chinese, you can see how they display portals and amin pages; images, cartoons, and timelines; how they reference and discuss topics. And you can sign up and see some of the social and community-building features they use to encourage participation. (I'd love to see a detailed summary and translation of their policy tree -- especially policies on notability, fads, and trending topics -- to illuminate the discussions about how well our policies are doing in the larger Wikipedias.)
Sam