Daniel-
Brion's idea for a multilanguage Phase IV where all the now separate Wikipedia wikis would be in a single database under a single software installation would help a great deal (skins would take care of localization).
Well, having a single codebase (as in, set of PHP files) for all Wikipedias is not that difficult even with the current code. Brion (or was it Lee?) just chose to set it up as completely separate installations. Having a single *database* is much more difficult because all the tables and queries need to be adjusted accordingly. Merging the tables is certainly undesirable as this would substantially slow things down (the OLD table of the English wiki is currently 8801714176 bytes and dog slow). However, the software could be rewritten to be always multilingual in all available translations, and to create the necessary tables on demand.
Side note: IMO, "MediaWiki" would be a good name for our officially nameless software.
Yup. Many potential wiki users have been scared away by the "Wikipedia" name. "Isn't this just for encyclopedias?" is a question I have heard several times. Then people end up with something useless and scary like TWiki. How are we ever supposed to get decent competition like that? :)
Hm. The last thing we need is a porn site at wikibooks.org
You're quite right. The erotic furry Star Trek slasher fan fiction should be at porn.wikibooks.org ;-)
Regards,
Erik