[WikiEN-l] Wikisource, wikiquote, meta, simple....

[Rowan Collins]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:26:47 +0000, R E Broadley
<20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> I notice there seem to be lots of different wikipedias. (Sorry I'm new).

To be precise, there are multiple language versions of Wikipedia, and
various other projects run by the same organisation (the Wikimedia
Foundation), some of which are also split into multiple language
variants. (Some, like 'meta' and 'Wikisource' combine multiple
languages within one site). See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_Wikimedia_projects for
a (rather overwhelming) list.

> I was surprised to see that I need to register a usercode on each one
> separately. Why is this please? 

Each project is currently housed in a seperate database, and has a
seperate copy of the software to run it. This makes some things easier
(e.g. keeping things like software settings and translations, and
indeed articles, seperate) but, obviously, has drawbacks.

There are currently plans underway to create a unified login system
for all these projects, but there are problems still to be sorted out
- not least, that the same name will currently be in use by different
people on different projects. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_signon_transition for some more
details; also, there is currently a discussion on the "foundation-l"
mailing list, which you can read at
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2004-November/thread.html

> Where do I go to access wikisource and
> wikiquote please?

http://en.wikisource.org (for the English version) and http://wikiquote.org

> And would I be helping by relocating all quotes from
> all articles over to wikiquote? ...Or would some people object to this
> being done?

I'm not sure what exact decisions have been reached (you might want to
look around and see what previous discussions you can find) but
removing "all quotes from all articles" sounds like going a bit too
far. I think the idea is that Wikiquote should form a Dictionary of
Quotations, and Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, should contain only
those quotes relevant to encyclopedic articles.

So quotes included in Wikipedia articles *just for the sake of
including them* should probably be relocated to Wikiquote, and
replaced with a link to the relevant page there; but quotes that are
included to illustrate a point in the article, or which are so
noteworthy that you would expect to find them in an encyclopedia
article, can be left where they are. Or, that would be my opinion,
anyway.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]