This may be a good time to mention my wikiunderground project -- wikiunderground.net . It's totally unfinished at the moment, but the core functionality will work once I start running the scripts again: it automatically grabs and resurrects deleted wikipedia articles. The difference between it and deletionpedia is that it's editable (not a static database) and it skips those deletions that are likely to be problematic (biographies, etc.).
Secondarily, I want wikiunderground to be a sort of transit nexus between wikipedia and other places. A search in the wikiunderground box should take you straight to a wikipedia article if it exists, and otherwise to the wikiunderground article, the wikia article, the musicwiki article (i can never remember the name of that one), etc. There are also ways to encourage the smaller wikis to *avoid duplicating each other's content.
The third piece is that wikiunderground should automatically contact the authors of deleted articles -- because those authors at the moment are mostly one-off contributors who would never discover that their content had been rescued. This part might be problematic because of pushback from teh wikipedia community, but I'm convinced it's doable.
Er. So yeah -- I was going to make a formal announcement but I've kept putting it off. :P Also, at the moment wikiunderground has google ads, but if it's only possible to accomplish all this stuff as a collaboratively-run nonprofit, that's what it'll have to be. Touch and go.
On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 7:23 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 8/29/2008 4:11:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
Again, the larger problem here, to me, is that it's unclear Find A Grave is free content.>>
But of couse that goes back to your desire that we should be promoting free content in a way that "quality" content is not. Personally I think our readers would be more inclined to favor us, if we were to promote the highest standards of quality, not just the free-est ones.
Find-a-grave is free in the sense that a reader doesn't have to pay to use it, and an editor doesn't have to pay to edit it. As to whether its free in the sense that the contents can be copied and re-hosted elsewhere, or sold for a profit, I'm not sure.
I'm a bit ambivalent about templating find-a-grave. On the one hand, it's nice to promote sites which aim to be, or have the potential to be, comprehensive (even if they are not currently), and sites which allow readers free-access to all the content. I would, for example have been against a template for EB except their new policy allowing deep-linking direct-to-content for "bloggers" (which means any online mass linker in their view). I would be against any template for JSTOR for example or Lexis-Nexis or Ancestry which all require payment.
On the other hand, I can't help but wonder where the line would be drawn toward this sort of "preferential" (if you will) approach. Template for Rootsweb's World Connect? Template for Marvel Universe ? Template for Huffington Post Articles ?
I'm not sure how we'd justify some against others. Or do we need to? Just allow the free creation of any priveledged link that can stand scrutiny.
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