[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia Empire Based on Open Source Worst Practices?"

[Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]])]

There are a few good points in the blog (let's not call it an essay!).
I particularly like the description of Wikipedia as a 'semi-anarchic
feudal state'. Perhaps we should put that on a banner somewhere — your
fiefdom or mine? The comparison of Wikipedia with Linux distributions
is a bit misplaced. The main objection to this approach is that,
simply put, they are very different beasties. One has to do with facts
and information, the other has to do with software programmes. How
would we modularise the article on [[cactus]]? Extracting anything
more useful from this is dasht difficult.

— Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]])

On 12/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can anyone extract useful ideas from this blog entry:
>
> http://thomas-lord.blogspot.com/2006/08/wikipedia-empire-based-on-open-source.html
>
> There is the usual suggestion that if Wikipedia adopts article forks
> then all will be well because then the obnoxious editors who don't
> want to work with others will be appeased and something about power
> structures. Etc etc.
>
> But there are some vague notions of *lots* of alternate Wikipedia
> distributions (rather than "forks"), analogous to Linux distributions.
> This bit seems like an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure how
> one would approach it. Categories as packages? (like an .rpm or a .deb
> .) Is there something here that's the seed of a useful idea?
>
>
> - d.
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