[Foundation-l] Wikistandards (was Requests for new Wiki projects)

[Robert Scott Horning]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- willtop31 at epsfh.com wrote:
>  
>
>>===Working title===
>>*Link to proposal on mailing list: [http://mail.wikipedia.org/]
>>*Naming suggestions: ElectroWiki Wikitronics Wikital
>>*Domain name: Electrowiki.org
>>*Scope: A place to gather international standards for electricity,
>>electronics,
>>and robotics. Instead of paying large sums of money to the IEEE and ISO for
>>access to their standards.
>>*Details: Electronics and electrical Wikipedia. This project will grow as
>>student contribute and use it as a resource for studying electronics,
>>alternative energy, and robotics.
>>*Proposer: Craig Topham
>>*People interested joining:
>>Students of Lane Community College Electronic Technology Programs. Eugene,
>>Oregon U.S.A
>>    
>>
>
>Sounds like it would make for a great set of books on Wikibooks. 
>
>-- mav
>  
>
I had set up a previous proposal for something somewhat similar, with a 
strong emphasis on computer science and electronics, but more broadly 
done to support standards in other areas as well.  Look at this link for 
more details of the proposal:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikistandards

I've been lurking on the mailing list for awhile now mainly to avoid 
upsetting the existing power structure.  Since this subject is being 
brought up, I might as well go "public" and ask on this mailing list as 
well.  There are a number of aspects of this proposal that are important 
to keep in mind:

*    Avoid duplicating work on already free standards.  That would 
include most of what happens with the W3C group, as well as ITEF with 
the RFC internet standards.  Work on new standards should merely 
reference these existing standards where necessary.  It isn't even worth 
the bother of trying to mirror these standards, unless there is a very 
serious concern that these public domain standards are going to be 
withdrawn from public consumption.

*    Some new standards documents need to be created.  Some of this is 
advertising (Hey!  We are here and can offer you a forum to put your 
standard together!), and a need to find people who want to come together 
and develop standards.  The creation of a standards document is usually 
to scratch an itch, where there has been some confusion in the past, and 
to help with interoperability issues, i.e. trying to get two pieces of 
equipment to work together or two pieces of software to understand 
shared data.  I've developed several in-house standards documents for my 
employers in the past, and often it is these minor standards that can be 
useful if you can find a place to have them available.  Basically, we 
need to find what kinds of standards need to be developed, and start 
putting them together.

*    Indexing existing standards:  There are a number of standards that 
are already available, and when you are starting a new project it is 
always better to follow an existing standard than try to make something 
new up on your own.  A good "beginning" to get a project like this 
started would be to simply do a survey of existing standards documents 
that are freely available on the internet.  Classifying and creating 
various indexes to link to these standards would be very valuable in its 
own right.  Hopefully, if it is a resource being used some of the people 
interested in creating standards would look at the index, and if the 
existing documents don't seem to fit the task or need a new document 
could be created.  A wiki is a very natural way to accomplish this task.

There is more that I put into the proposal wiki page, but I think this 
is a real quick overview of what I am proposing.  BTW, wholesale copying 
of IEEE or ISO standards would be essentially forbidden, unless the 
express written consent of the original standards author(s) is willing 
to independently provide a copyright license that is compatable with the 
GFDL.  The typical ISO copyright does not allow for this, and often can 
be more draconian than even a typical Microsoft EULA.  Be extra careful 
if you even have more than a printed library of ISO documents.  There 
are also some very complicated software and electronic patent issues 
that you need to be aware of if you try to deal with IEEE or ISO 
standards as well.  This is also true of RFCs to a lesser extent, but 
the W3C group has been pretty good (up until now) about making sure that 
to the best of their knowledge there are no patent issues on any of 
their documents.

As far as getting students involved, it would be a very educational (as 
in learning from the School of Very Hard Knocks) for college students to 
get involved even with the simplest of standards documentation.  You 
know you are in trouble when you argue for over three hours wheither you 
should have a semi-colon in one place or another.  I would imagine that 
discussion pages on some of these standards documents could get quite 
lengthy and heated if done as a wikipedia project.  The awsome thing 
about doing it in this manner is that you can join in the development of 
these standards even though you don't have a PhD at the end of your 
name, or that you aren't working for an exclusive group of companies 
that deliberately try to exclude other individuals, even if those other 
people really do know the technology.

Originally I proposed this in its own seperate domain, but to start with 
I'd love to simply make this a sub-project on wikibooks, with the 
near-term interest of making it a seperate sub-domain of wikibooks. 
 That wasn't my idea, but now that I've seen what and how things are put 
together here I think this is a more logical approach.  It really isn't 
a bunch of textbooks, as is the original focus of wikibooks, but it is a 
bunch of book-like things that are organized in a very similar approach.

If there are people interested in getting an independent wiki-based 
standards group going, please let me know.  I think there is a real need 
for this in general, and I've seen the issues regarding the development 
and use of standards documents really affect quite a few people.  When 
you need a public and free standard, it is worth its weight in gold. 
 Litterally, if you print it out on gold foil, people would gladly pay 
more than that just to have the document.  I'm not kidding.  This is 
also one area that corporate sponsors might help with the subsidizing of 
Wikimedia projects, even if they don't have direct banner ads or other 
forms of blatent advertising.  Simply having these documents available 
might just be enough, and I could even make a reasonable presentation to 
show it would be in a company's interest to provide this sponsorship, 
done as an engineering expense, not adverstising expense.  I digress 
here though with the financial aspects...

-- 
Robert Scott Horning