[Foundation-l] Seeking clarification

[Andrew Gray]

On 23/01/2008, Jason Safoutin <jason.safoutin at wikinewsie.org> wrote:

> It is realistic. Plain and simple: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If you
> want news on an encyclopedis, change it to "Wikipedia and news". Until
> thin, this creates a competition between Wikinews and Wikipedia, *not*
> collaboration.

We've had this discussion a hundred times before and still haven't
reached a satisfactory conclusion :-)

Decreeing "Wikipedia doesn't do news" hasn't, on the whole, *worked*,
because it still gets news, at least "big-ticket" news. It still gets
used, actively and enthusiastically, and very, very effectively. It's
still where people run to for big unexpected stories, for air crashes
and hurricanes and revolutions.

We have three options - gently encourage people to move this over;
take drastic measures to encourage people to move this over; or accept
the status quo. And, somehow, we need to do this without lessening the
overall utility.

> Right. The ones *not* in competition are the ones that are not the same
> projects or similar to projects of WMF Wikieducator = Wikiverity and
> Encyclopedia of Life = Wikispecies.  Those IMHO are *direct* competition
> and both of which receive an endorsement by WMF. Again, WMF needs to
> endorse and think about their projects first and foremost. Period.

Perfectly serious question: *Why*?

Let's imagine that EoL gets up and running properly, and makes
Wikispecies look like a school project - it's got $50m, high-level
backing, some Actual Professional Management, and all sorts of useful
back-end stuff that we simply can't offer, not to mention a very good
way of tapping into a highly skilled author pool and getting focused
press attention if it so wants.

I'm not saying this *is* going to be the case - EoL barely exists just
now - but it's certainly got the potential to happen... why shouldn't
we endorse it, in that case? Why shouldn't we encourage people to use
it and contribute to it, why shouldn't we offer them assistance where
we can?

The WMF's goals are not "set up some websites and protect their
interests aggressively". They are to get the content out there, to get
more of it created, and the sites and the hosting are a means to that
end.

Assuming that because we have started a project we must see it through
to the bitter end, we must keep clinging to it and pushing it even if
something better comes along, is really not a very productive
standpoint. It skirts close to a rather uncomfortable arrogance that
we are the best possible people to handle any "central" collaborative
project, and everyone else needs to find their own little niches
around the territory we have staked out...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk