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

[Carcharoth]

You have to find the right approach to maintain a civil atmosphere.
Some approaches suggested for improving civility cause more problems
than they solve. Trying out different approaches and seeing which
approaches work best in different situations might help. Ultimately,
though, incivility is something that arises from a community of people
interacting. One thing that might be worth considering is whether
having those responsible for maintaining civility being outside of the
community would help (paid moderators, though it might not scale).

Thoughtful deletion when properly explained can bring new users in on
a steep learning curve who have then been started off with the right
perspective. It is when initial and misplaced enthusiasm for
Wikipedia, often based on a misunderstanding or only viewing a small
part of the site, meets aggressive "defend the wiki" attitudes, that
the driving away you describe occurs.

Carcharoth

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 9:56 AM, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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)
>
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