Firstly, when I stated that Wikipendium would be a fork of Wikipedia, I intended it to be more of a social fork than a content fork - i.e., I'm not intending to use any Wikipedia content in Wikipendium. Perhaps the purpose of Wikipendium, you might say, is to provide a valid social alternative to Wikipedia with higher social and content standards.
on 7/7/08 12:20 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
You'll struggle to get anywhere starting from scratch. Wikipedia is so far ahead that you won't get any readers and without readers you won't get more than a handful of writers. Citizendium started off with some Wikipedia content (although later removed most of it) and had the advantage of being founded by a known name, and it's nowhere near challenging Wikipedia and probably won't be any time soon. I've never heard anyone in the real world mention it, I hear people mention Wikipedia almost every day.
Nice words of encouragement. Thomas :-(. What are you afraid of?
- simplicity and clarity of rules - there will be only three policies,
a "fundamental policy" (basically a constitution), a "content policy" (essential content standards such as neutrality and verifiability), and a "community policy" (essential community standards such as respect and pleasantness);
A noble goal, but if you're going to get to the kind of size you need to be to compete with Wikipedia you're going to end up needing more than that. What about a deletion policy? A blocking policy? Some method for arbitrating disputes? Nobody likes having pages and pages of rules and procedures, but unfortunately they are necessary if a large group of people are going to work together effectively.
It isn't size that is going to prove the true competitor of Wikipedia. It is going to be quality, accuracy and consistency. And, a true non-cultist approach to the work.
It's time.
Marc Riddell