I only discovered PlanetMath when I heard it mentioned on this mailing list. I've participated in Wikipedia for a while now, though I've only had a quick look at PlanetMath.
PlanetMath and Wikipedia have similar goals -- they both seek to produce a free, GNU FDL encyclopedia. PlanetMath aims to cover only Mathematics, while Wikipedia aims to cover just about everything.
PlanetMath is like Nupedia in that articles are clearly owned by authors, while in Wikipedia the authorship is much more collective.
PlanetMath also appears to have much better support for mathematics in its software. (Articles are written in LaTeX).
Now, I was wondering about the potential relationship between Wikipedia and Planetmath. Maybe we could establish some way of encouraging content from Planetmath to be added to Wikipedia, or vice versa?
I also thought for a moment about some form of merger between the two projects, or removing all the maths content from Wikipedia and sending it to PlanetMath, or something similar. I don't think these are good ideas, since the two projects seem to be quite different in culture (author-centric vs. anyone can edit).
On the other hand, maybe some form of integration between PlanetMath and Nupedia might be a good idea? Maybe PlanetMath could be rolled into Nupedia, or PlanetMath could become the maths section of Nupedia? (Just a thought -- I don't participate in Nupedia, and discussion of that sort of stuff really belongs on nupedia-l)
Simon J Kissane
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