[WikiEN-l] Webypedia - another doomed alternative to Wikipedia

[WereSpielChequers]

One key difference between Wikipedia and webypedia - you need to
register to search it. This novel approach will presumably be fixed,
but as they evidently haven't sussed that Wikipedia is in truth the
encyclopaedia largely written by anonymous IP editors, Webypedia will
not get out of the registration required mantrap that has helped kill
others before it.

If they fix that and go for open editing then they face the
disadvantages of a blog - people read Wikipedias article on Sarah
Palin because after/despite tens of thousands of edits there is a
coherent readable article. Without ruthless editing to condense 32
mentions of her high school basketball playing into one or two
sentences a blog based article would have degenerated into an
unreadable mess long before the thousandth entry.

Anyone forking wikipedia or considering a rival would do well to look
at the surveys of former users. Usability and technology are not as
big a problem as some might think, incivility and deletionism however
do drive people away.

I suspect there could be a viable fork for a rival that was stricter
on incivility, or was more relaxed about copyright or notability
(though the latter two would I suspect be at greater legal risk).
Faster connections in the third world could also be a killer ap. If
someone launched a fork that maintained a more civil atmosphere,
lowered the notability threshold to "anything that is reliably
sourced", and had faster response times in the parts of the world
where Wikipedia is slow, then I think we'd have a real challenge.

A challenge we'd only win because we were first and because we already
have the editing community in place.

WereSpielChequers


On 27 August 2010 06:18, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> G'day folks,
>
> Killer Startups reports:
>
> http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/webypedia-com-an-alternative-to-wikipedia
>
> Do we need yet another online
> encyclopedia<http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/webypedia-com-an-alternative-to-wikipedia#>that
> is powered by the people a la Wikipedia? It seems we do, as that is
> exactly what WEBYpedia is all about. It is an encyclopedia entirely fuelled
> by users. Anybody can contribute to it, in the way that he wishes: by
> creating a new post, by modifying an existing one, by leaving a comment with
> his own ruminations on anything that has been published… But if we were to
> compare it with Wikipedia
> <http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/webypedia-com-an-alternative-to-wikipedia#>,
> it would be necessary to mention that there is one difference at play.
> Granted, it is merely a technical one but it is a difference all the same:
> WEBYpedia is a blog encyclopedia. This means that contributing an article is
> considerably easier than submitting anything to Wikipedia. Any person who
> has ever blogged will know how to do it.
>
> Still, that is unlikely to make people desert Wikipedia and turn to this
> site massively. Wikipedia has got a prestige that is hard to take down. I
> guess that those who always think that it’s convenient to have alternatives
> to go around will check WEBYpedia out. I am not sure about the rest.
> This is their website. There seems to be a lot of how to material there.
>
> http://webypedia.com/
>
> --
> Keith Old
> 62050121 (w)
> 62825360 (h)
> 0429478376 (m)