On 04/07/2008, Thomas Larsen thomashlarsen.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
I am formally proposing that Wikipedia be forked and that a new compendium of human knowledge, Wikipendium, be created as an independent alternative with a more pleasant, respectful, productive, constructive community with simple, clear rules and an unbureaucratic and responsible governance structure.
Keep the content and reboot the community? Could be interesting.
I suggest one problem you'll see is how to maintain such a huge amount of content. Citizendium started off forking en:wp and discovered that it was not only a daunting amount of content to maintain, but it seemed to discourage people from working on the wiki - so they wiped all en:wp forked content that they hadn't yet edited, and started afresh. And they're progressing slowly but reasonably with mostly-fresh stuff.
Consider also in community governance: there are hundreds of Wikipedias, each operating independently - the communities are *very* different. You'll want to look at how each works (or doesn't), what patterns keep popping up, etc.
- d.