[WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/22 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> 2009/4/22 doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com>:
>> > I'd say that "the reader question" is less pertinent for any start up
>> > than the "writer question".
>>
>> I don't think the two questions can be separated. Without the feedback
>> between the two (readers becoming writers) you'll never get
>> exponential growth and without that you'll never reach a size where
>> you are useful.
>
> What is the minimum size a project must be in order to be "useful"?

I don't know. It depends on the intended breadth of the project, for a
start. A general encyclopaedia needs to be bigger than a specialist
one. A Wikipedia-like project becomes useful when you can be
reasonably confident that it will have the information you seek (if
that information is within its intended bounds). If you can't be
reasonably confident of that then you would probably go somewhere else
for the information. People may find useful information on a smaller
project via search engines, but few people will go directly to the
project as their first port of call, as people often do with Wikipedia
(although a very large proportion of our readers still come from
search engines).

Perhaps "useful" is too strong a term, "useful enough to rival
Wikipedia" would be better. Doc said, 'Success is where someone
looking for a source they can quote in their school essay says "better
try Otherpedia.com".' That will never happen until that someone can be
reasonable confident that they will find what they need on
Otherpedia.com.