[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[Ray Saintonge]

On 09/12/11 3:45 PM, Samuel Klein wrote:
> The only other project in a similar situation is
> Wikispecies, where any data on species at least conceptually is
> welcome in a Wikipedia article on the topic.
>

This all makes Wikispecies the perfect fork.  Its contents largely 
overlap the relevant Wikipedia articles, and it is free to be as 
different in its treatment of those subjects as it wants.  It is rarely 
the subject of controversy, but just keeps truckin' along. The most 
frequent complaints are from those who would shut it down as redundant.

Wikipedias in other languages are not required to have content that is 
the same as English Wikipedia, though I have occasionally heard in the 
past that they should be better correlated. Ultimately it is this built 
in diversity that will keep NPOV alive. Perhaps other well defined 
subject areas should have forks too.  Wikis are about diversity.

There is a pervasive fear that forks tend to divide an already tiny 
community, but I doubt that that is an insurmountable problem. Those who 
are content with the status quo will remain, and those who see the 
status quo as stagnation will move. Hopefully they will both attract new 
people with views in line with their separate missions.  To paraphrase a 
popular daytime TV personality: "It is better to be from a broken wiki 
than in one."

Ray