I have a hypothetical question, and wikipedia-l seems the best place to ask it, so I have temporarily subscribed.
Suppose a group of people wanted to build a specialized encyclopedia for their own purposes, and decided to create it on Wikipedia so they don't have to worry about hosting or software issues. Suppose they saw Wikipedia as a free collaboration tool, and although they didn't mind releasing their work under the GFDL, they weren't specifically interested in creating a _general purpose_ encyclopedia.
Would this group of people and their project be welcome?
Specifically, suppose that the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada
decided that their 2000-article On-line Canadian Mennonite Encyclopedia was significantly out of date, and that an efficient way to collaborate on getting it updated would be to pipe it into Wikipedia and work on it from there. As an added bonus to them, their articles would start getting high rankings from Google.
I must stress the hypothetical nature of this question. I have no reason to believe that MHSC is willing to release their work under the GFDL, or that they are interested in collaborating by using Wikipedia as a free platform. But supposing they were willing and interested, would we want them to?
* Would we want lengthy and expert contributions to current articles on Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, and Mennonite theology? * Would we want short biographies of notable modern Canadian Mennonites? * Would it be a nuisance and a waste of space to have a separate article for every Mennonite congregation in Canada? * Would we be embarrassed if there were more information in Wikipedia about the Mennonite faith than about any other religion?
Reatreating from the specific question into generalities, I can imagine several cases where groups have a set of information, objective and encyclopedic in nature, which they want to disseminate for reasons of their own. I can imagine those groups looking to Wikipedia as a free tool towards their ends, and seeing the GFDL as a reasonable license to sign off on in exchange for the privilege.
* Have there already been cases of piggybacking? * Has the community reached any sort of consensus opinion towards piggybackers? * If not, does anyone else anticipate that this will become an issue in the future?
Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity on this point.
Peace, -Karl
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Karl Juhnke wrote:
I have a hypothetical question, and wikipedia-l seems the best place to ask it, so I have temporarily subscribed.
Suppose a group of people wanted to build a specialized encyclopedia for their own purposes, and decided to create it on Wikipedia so they don't have to worry about hosting or software issues. Suppose they saw Wikipedia as a free collaboration tool, and although they didn't mind releasing their work under the GFDL, they weren't specifically interested in creating a _general purpose_ encyclopedia.
Would this group of people and their project be welcome?
Specifically, suppose that the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada
decided that their 2000-article On-line Canadian Mennonite Encyclopedia was significantly out of date, and that an efficient way to collaborate on getting it updated would be to pipe it into Wikipedia and work on it from there. As an added bonus to them, their articles would start getting high rankings from Google.
It mainly depends on the attitude of the group writing the articles. What they have to understand is that they are not writing a Mennonite encyclopedia within Wikipedia, they are writing Wikipedia articles about Mennonites. They shouldn't expect to have any control over the content or organisation of the articles. They should follow Wikipedia's style guidelines precisely. And they should not preferentially link to their own article series as opposed to other articles in Wikipedia.
In Wiki theory such a series of articles is called a "walled garden":
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WalledGarden
"If you feel you have a lot of content to contribute to a wiki all at once, you may be tempted to write a bunch of different pages, interlinking them all. Don't. This is a WalledGarden, and it stands out in stark contrast to the areas of the wiki that are living. The living areas are much trafficked, edited by many and read by even more. They exhibit the selflessness of a living space, belonging to nobody and everybody. If you learn to slowly integrate your own wisdom into this broader space, the process will be far messier and slower, but the feedback you receive from others will be more considered and rewarding."
If the MHSC wishes to have editorial control over the articles, they should create their own wiki. Any web hosting service offering MySQL and PHP will do.
-- Tim Starling
At 12:53 PM 4/24/2004 +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
It mainly depends on the attitude of the group writing the articles. What they have to understand is that they are not writing a Mennonite encyclopedia within Wikipedia, they are writing Wikipedia articles about Mennonites.
Perhaps they could accomplish both goals simultaneously by creating a separate Mennonite encyclopedia that consists of selected articles copied from Wikipedia? If Wikipedia's style diverges from what they require they can fork those particular articles in their own preferred direction, while still maintaining close ties with the rest of the content (the separate encyclopedia would not be part of the WikiMedia project, it would be something they'd run on their own). With everything licenced under the GFDL both the Mennonite encyclopedia and Wikipedia would be able to pick and choose the bits of each others' material that fits.
On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 06:26:38PM -0700, Karl Juhnke wrote:
- Would we want lengthy and expert contributions to current articles on
Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, and Mennonite theology?
- Would we want short biographies of notable modern Canadian
Mennonites?
Why not? I never heard of Mennonites until today.
- Would it be a nuisance and a waste of space to have a separate
article for every Mennonite congregation in Canada?
There is no waste of space in wikipedia. We have space so fill it.
- Would we be embarrassed if there were more information in Wikipedia
about the Mennonite faith than about any other religion?
Are you embarressed because we have more information on computer science and open source than any other encylopedia ever will have?
ciao, tom
Karl Juhnke wrote:
Suppose a group of people wanted to build a specialized encyclopedia for their own purposes, and decided to create it on Wikipedia so they don't have to worry about hosting or software issues. Suppose they saw Wikipedia as a free collaboration tool, and although they didn't mind releasing their work under the GFDL, they weren't specifically interested in creating a _general purpose_ encyclopedia.
Would this group of people and their project be welcome?
Yes
Specifically, suppose that the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada
decided that their 2000-article On-line Canadian Mennonite Encyclopedia was significantly out of date, and that an efficient way to collaborate on getting it updated would be to pipe it into Wikipedia and work on it from there. As an added bonus to them, their articles would start getting high rankings from Google.
These would certainly be benefits for them.
I must stress the hypothetical nature of this question. I have no reason to believe that MHSC is willing to release their work under the GFDL, or that they are interested in collaborating by using Wikipedia as a free platform. But supposing they were willing and interested, would we want them to?
I appreciate that your point is only testing the waters.
- Would we want lengthy and expert contributions to current articles on
Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, and Mennonite theology?
- Would we want short biographies of notable modern Canadian
Mennonites?
- Would it be a nuisance and a waste of space to have a separate
article for every Mennonite congregation in Canada?
- Would we be embarrassed if there were more information in Wikipedia
about the Mennonite faith than about any other religion?
I see no difficulty with any of this. It's all encyclopedic. If anything, this should serve as an incentive for other groups to get their act in gear. No group should be held back just because others fail to support their own beliefs. That would be reducing Wikipedia to the lowest common denominator.
Reatreating from the specific question into generalities, I can imagine several cases where groups have a set of information, objective and encyclopedic in nature, which they want to disseminate for reasons of their own. I can imagine those groups looking to Wikipedia as a free tool towards their ends, and seeing the GFDL as a reasonable license to sign off on in exchange for the privilege.
- Have there already been cases of piggybacking?
- Has the community reached any sort of consensus opinion towards
piggybackers?
- If not, does anyone else anticipate that this will become an issue in
the future?
Over a year ago there was a similar discussion with the Marxists, who have an extensive database of their own. Although these two groups are philosophically very different, the situations are quite similar. It's not a question of whether we can handle them, but of whether they can handle us. They, like the Marxists, could find the wide-open editing and NPOV very hard to take. Faced with some of our more opinionated memberz in an edit war they would probably just go away.
Ec
The Marxists don't go away, they just delete any information they don't like and argue endlessly. Although occasionally they will conceed that some major issue deserves a small mention in an article, down at the bottom, if you have extensive references for the point.
I think those Mennonites ought to try Wikinfo.
Fred
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 04:57:31 -0700 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Can "outsiders" build their encyclopedia on Wikipedia?
They, like the Marxists, could find the wide-open editing and NPOV very hard to take. Faced with some of our more opinionated memberz in an edit war they would probably just go away.
Ec
Fred Bauder wrote:
The Marxists don't go away, they just delete any information they don't like and argue endlessly. Although occasionally they will conceed that some major issue deserves a small mention in an article, down at the bottom, if you have extensive references for the point.
Is this why it's so hard to tell them apart from some of your right wing friends?
Ec
At 08:03 AM 4/24/2004 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
The Marxists don't go away, they just delete any information they don't like and argue endlessly. Although occasionally they will conceed that some major issue deserves a small mention in an article, down at the bottom, if you have extensive references for the point.
Fortunately, I expect that most Mennonite contributors would likely be a lot more laid-back than that; Mennonites are sort of "Amish lite" (speaking as one who has Mennonite heritage on his father's side :).
On Apr 23, 2004, at 9:26 PM, Karl Juhnke wrote:
- Would we be embarrassed if there were more information in Wikipedia
about the Mennonite faith than about any other religion?
Not at all. Since there's 'unlimited' space, you can't hog it. More info on the Mennonite faith just encourages more info on other faiths.
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
On Sunday, April 25, 2004, at 05:58 PM, Peter Jaros wrote:
On Apr 23, 2004, at 9:26 PM, Karl Juhnke wrote:
- Would we be embarrassed if there were more information in Wikipedia
about the Mennonite faith than about any other religion?
Not at all. Since there's 'unlimited' space, you can't hog it. More info on the Mennonite faith just encourages more info on other faiths.
Peter
That's exactly right. If a set of articles seem out of proportion, it would be far better to add more to the smaller articles, then to cut material from the larger ones for no other reason than that someone had worked hard to make them more complete or comprehensive. Wikipedia is not paper. Over time, this shouldn't be a significant problem.
It also helps if people realize that wikipedia is never 100% finished.
On Apr 26, 2004, at 7:13 AM, Wesley Sheldahl wrote:
That's exactly right. If a set of articles seem out of proportion, it would be far better to add more to the smaller articles, then to cut material from the larger ones for no other reason than that someone had worked hard to make them more complete or comprehensive. Wikipedia is not paper. Over time, this shouldn't be a significant problem.
It also helps if people realize that wikipedia is never 100% finished.
To the Wikipedian, the glass should always be bigger than its contents. It encourages others to fill the glass.
Peter
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
--- Karl Juhnke yangfuli@yahoo.com wrote:
I have a hypothetical question, and wikipedia-l seems the best place to ask it, so I have temporarily subscribed.
Thank you all for the many and varied answers. My curiosity has been amply satisfied. Peace, -Karl
(unsubscribing)
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