[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki, wishes to become a wiki project

[Tim Starling]

Angela wrote:
> On 3/25/06, Benjamin Webb <bjwebb67 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'd noticed that you'd menationed the specialised software on wikitree.org,
>>I'd just be intereseted to know what you think about the specialised
>>software of Rodovid <http://rodovid.org> and what you, as someone high up
>>the the foundation, think about it becoming a foundation project.
> 
> 
> That looks good too, and I've no opinion on whether Rodovid or
> Wikitree is using a better approach. Perhaps there are aspects of each
> that should be included. I'm also wondering whether Wikidata will fit
> into this somehow, or whether the structure you're using on Rodovid
> replaces that.
> 
> The last time a genealogy wiki was seriously proposed as a Wikimedia
> project, there was little interest, and few answers to the questions I
> asked at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipeople>.  What
> software to use and what to do with the Sep11 wiki still need to be
> addressed. However, it is one of the proposals that comes up most
> often, so perhaps there is interest there, certainly from editors, but
> is there enough interest from developers to give this project the
> software changes it would need?

The software Benjamin has written himself looks quite solid and reasonably feature complete to me. I
don't see why he would need to attract interest from developers when he's obviously quite a
proficient one himself. Wikimedia could certainly benefit from Benjamin's expertise, if we could win
him over, but I'm not sure what benefit Benjamin expects to derive from Wikimedia. Whether or not
this is a Wikimedia project, Benjamin will have to do most of the development and promotion himself.
Hosting costs should be small during startup, easily covered by donations. If he can avoid
Wikimedia's bureaucracy and run the project himself, why not do so?

-- Tim Starling