[WikiEN-l] Announcing "Epistemia", a new wiki encyclopedia

[Thomas Larsen]

Hi Thomas,

> 1) What are you plans regarding incorporating content from other
> projects? There is a good chance that Wikipedia will soon switch to a
> license compatible with yours, so you could copy content across. Do
> you plan to do so, and to what extent?

My knowledge of the licence situation at the moment is that, since
Wikipedia contributors agree to licence their contributions under
"GFDL 1.2 _or later_", we can use them under GFDL 1.3 and thus import
them to Epistemia under the CC-BY-SA. If, actually, we can't do this,
then we'll just have to wait until Wikipedia changes to CC-BY-SA. I'm
not willing, though, to make Wikipedia's mistake again (well,
actually, calling it a "mistake" is not entirely fair, since it was
the only real option back in 2001).

> 2) Your "About" page says:
>
> "Other projects have attempted, and continue to attempt, to develop
> free Internet encyclopedias—Wikipedia, Citizendium, Conservapedia,
> Open-Site, Scholarpedia, Veropedia, and Wikinfo, to name a few—yet
> have failed to produce reliable content, to attract a broad, diverse,
> responsible, and democratic community, or to achieve widespread public
> support."
>
> I dispute that. Studies have shown that Wikipedia is as reliable as
> conventional encyclopaedias, the wide range of subjects covered in
> great depths shows we have a broad and diverse community, I haven't
> seen anything to suggest the Wikipedia community is irresponsible, and
> we don't try to be democratic so you're making a massive assumption
> there that democracy is the best way to run such a project. As for
> widespread public support, millions of dollars of donations over the
> past couple of months suggests we don't have a problem there. So which
> of those aspects are you suggesting Wikipedia has failed in?

Wikipedia's main issues, in my eyes, are (a) lack of _consistent_
reliability (compare articles in the hard sciences, which tend to be
written by specialists, to articles in the soft sciences such as the
humanities) and (b) a participatory culture that is commonly incivil
and/or impolite. I'm sure you've experienced discussions where a
perfectly good argument has been dissolved (or quelled) by hordes of
angry, shouting people who are so passionate about a particular point
of view, or too lazy to research it, that they refuse to accept logic.

I think writing a kind of FAQ, or "differences between Epistemia and
other projects", page would be helpful, and I'll start writing one.

Cheers,

—Thomas Larsen