[WikiEN-l] Jimbo interview

[Fred Bauder]

> 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

Wikipedia works like Wall Street works, because it has an effective
monopoly. Lostpedia fails to resolve a fundamental problem Wikipedia has
not been able to successfully resolve, how to deal with creative thought,
even trivial thought about how future plots on a television series might
be structured.

Fred