[Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family

[Jon Davis]

I don't think that the WMF "acquiring" FanHistory would make them a
competitor with Wikia, after all, Meta already has a propsosal for a
"Wikitainment" ( http://wmf4.me/EFf2D ) which goes to show that the WMF
community wants something like this.  Why not merge that proposal and FH
into one.  It would give those wanting their entertainment fix (that isn't
"allowed" on Wikipedia) a headstart of 800k articles, and a vibrant
community.

-Jon

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 12:00, Sage Ross
<ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com<ragesoss%2Bwikipedia at gmail.com>
> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Laura Hale <laura at fanhistory.com> wrote:
>
> > Fan History would be a good fit for helping the Wikimedia Foundation in
> > terms of helping the Foundation meet some of its goals towards providing
> > information, helping establish credibility and gaining a more female
> > contributor base.
>
> I for one think Fan History is a great project, and an example of the
> kinds of areas Wikimedia should be branching out towards.
>
> A related issue worth thinking about...
>
> Laura has blogged earlier about why Fan History wouldn't join Wikia:
> http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=963
>
> Obviously one of the core reasons ("Fan History is a business") must
> have changed between when Laura wrote that (September 20) and now.
> And (without knowing anything about how discussions with Wikia went
> beyond that blog post) I presume the possibility of joining Wikia is
> still open.
>
> So the question is, what difference does it make for a wiki and its
> community to be part of a non-profit set of projects versus an
> ad-supported for-profit one?  Quite a bit, I would say, in the
> long-term strategic sense of spreading a free culture movement based
> on sharing and collaboration.  If Fan History became part of
> Wikimedia, it would be time to admit that, in some ways, Wikia and WMF
> are now competitors.
>
> -Sage
>
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Jon
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