[Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture, will "fork" off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia

[David Gerard]

On 16/09/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Sabine Cretella wrote:

> > Does it sound strange to you that at the beginning of this year I said
> > to a friend of mine that my feeling told me that someone will take over
> > the contents of Wikipedia and create a separate project.

> That's entirely normal in the course of events, and only one of many such
> projects; Wikipedia has an open-content license precisely to allow these sorts
> of projects.


Yes. Though we're notably lacking in forks that are actively edited;
Wikinfo is the only one I know of. Other than that it's pretty much
static mirror sites with Google ads.


> > I don't believe Citizendium will be able to take over Wikipedia, but you
> > never know - it would definitely be much better to have scientists work
> > on Wikipedia.

> It's not about "taking over", but about taking useful resources and doing
> additional things with them. We of course celebrate and applaud any serious
> undertaking to make use of Wikipedia content.


One thing which Stevevertigo pointed out on wikien-l in discussing
Citizendium was that no-one *really* knows how Wikipedia works.
There's got to be more ways to do this than the ways the various
Wikipedias do it.

And more open content is good for everyone.


- d.