[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[Phil Nash]

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:04 AM, Phil Nash <phnash at blueyonder.co.uk>
> wrote:
>> Sue Gardner wrote:
>>> On 12 September 2011 18:15, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 12 September 2011 23:45, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Now: what do we need to do to make Wikinews better and more
>>>>> useful? What are the costs and technical or other work involved?
>>>>
>>>> Very little. Mostly wikinews is misstargeted. Yet another website
>>>> rewriting AP reports is never going to draw crowds. Wikinews needed
>>>> original research and never really had very much of it. It is also
>>>> operating in an extremely crowded market where as wikipedia had the
>>>> field pretty much to itself when it started.
>>>
>>> Jimmy said once that part of the reason Wikipedia works so well is
>>> because everybody knows what an encyclopedia article is supposed to
>>> look like.
>>
>> Practical experience on a day-to-day basis would suggest that this
>> is unduly optimistic. We are failing to attract new editors who can
>> be, or wish to be, educated into "what an encyclopedia article is
>> supposed to look like", and are discarding those experienced editors
>> who do. Even those who remain but are becoming increasingly
>> disillusioned with all the nonsense that goes on will eventually
>> leave, or create a fork of Wikipedia, and to be honest, if I had the
>> money right now, I'd do it myself, and cast ArbCom in its present
>> form into the bottomless pit.
>>
>> I used to care about Wikipedia, as did others, but it's becoming
>> increasingly difficult to do so.
>>
>>
>
> If money is the problem, I can solve that. I recently came into an
> inheritance.

Thanks for your interest; it isn't the only expression of support to have 
reached me. A *fresh* version of Wikipedia is obviously a major step to 
take, and I have to consider and reconcile the various inputs I've received, 
and am still receiving, and formulate a proposal document that is going to 
address the issues, and of course, it will be open for discussion to those 
who are interested.

My current preference is for a partnership-based model, yet one able to 
generate revenue and still largely remain within the original objectives of 
Wikipedia. Squaring the circle may not be possible in this case, and good 
editors will be lost. Meanwhile, only time will tell whether it works, and 
that depends on achieving the proper mechanism for moving forward, and 
sticking to it.

I'm hopefully moving premises shortly, so will be unlikely to be able to 
fully commit my efforts for about a month; but at least that gives time for 
interested parties to comment, since this is not something that should be 
rushed into. However, my spare time, such as it is, will be devoted to this 
project.

Regards.