[WikiEN-l] Jimbo interview

[Oskar Sigvardsson]

On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 10:05 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we look at the more successful wikis however the only successful
> ones appear to be allowing original research, Some level of POV and
> totaly non wikipedia style. TVTropes is probably the best example.

I disagree with this. Some of the most successful non-wikipedia wikis
I know of are in fact extremely similar to wikipedia. I'm thinking
here mainly of pop-culture wikis, like the Battlestar Wiki,
Wookiepedia and the Lostpedia. They all borrow heavily from the
Wikipedia "style", so they all look just as dry and formal, and they
generally have similar policies when it comes to POV and original
research.

An interesting case study is Lostpedia. Since most of the fun that
comes from endlessly discussing Lost is speculating about what the
hell is going on and coming up with your own pet theories, you'd
expect the wiki to be infested with original research. In fact, it is
not. They only allow confirmed canonical information in the articles
themselves (i.e. no speculation), and then each article has a sub-page
called "Theories" (essentially a discussion page) where people can
speculate to their hearts content. But it can't make it into the
article. Just for funsies, check out the article on Lostpedia on the
DHARMA Initiative and tell me if this doesn't look like a wikipedia
article: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/DHARMA_initiative

I think it's very clear that wikipedia has developed a very successful
model, not least because many other wikis seem to almost automatically
adopt our style and policies. In short: Wikipedia Works.

--Oskar