I'm trying to understand where the boundaries for Wikipedia are. Forgive me if this gets philosophical, and not very practical.
There has been a lot of talk about languages that fork away from the Wikipedia project. But what about forks within the language? Will the English Wikipedia always be the single source, or when will it be reasonable to set up another Wiki?
There are, of course, already other Wikis. http://c2.com/ (the original Wiki, founded in 1994) has the Portland Pattern Repository, devoted to object-oriented software development and eXtreme Programming. Some of the information there might overlap with Wikipedia, but most of it would be considered too non-encyclopedic if it was suddenly copied to Wikipedia.
Could a Wiki devoted to history have a place outside of Wikipedia? When describing London, it would focus on the city's historic features, not on the facets of today's London. Then again, Wikipedia's entries on many things are focused on history. It is almost as if Wikipedia is that history Wiki. History, after all, is so much more in line with the contents of an encyclopedia than is object-oriented software development.
Could a leftist-point-of-view Wiki exist side by side with Wikipedia? It would carefully point out any misuse of power, and list activist and political groups. Its logotype could be a hammer-and-sickle or simply a red star on white background. (There is already a leftist encyclopedia (non-Wiki) in Danish on http://www.leksikon.org/)
A youth culture Wiki might list all the hot dance clubs in London, but forget the British Museum. (Does Wikipedia list any clubs at all?) The entire Wiki could be white text on black background.
I think target groups, focus, design, logotypes would be different for each one of these Wikis. Just like websites are different today. Some titles (like "London") would exist in several of them, but with a different slant. Some titles (like "British Museum") might only exist in Wikipedia.
If all of these Wikis existed side by side, how would Wikipedia best take advantage of this expanded network? Should Wikipedia be its backbone, or try to be self-sufficient, ignoring the outside world?
Just to be clear: I'm not suggesting a fork of Wikipedia.