[Wikipedia-l] The future of Wikipedia

Thu Aug 16 12:09:51 UTC 2001

Hello all,

The same article was put on a Wikipedia page.

I think that we have grown a Wikipedia community. Wikipedia is a
volunteer project that was made possible by Bomis. However, we have
invested in our favourite project a lot of enthusiasm, time and (in
some cases) money. It is quite natural that we want Wikipedia to
prosper.
In my opinion it is a time to stop and discuss. Discuss the future of
Wikipedia.
How does Bomis see it ?
How does Nupedia see it ?
How do we ?
The future might be or might not as bright as our imagination whispers
into our ears.
Wikipedia is a great idea combined with a new, revolutionary software
and it has a lot of brilliant committed authors. Her growth is
explosive. But there are also weaknesses (Wikinesses ?) brought into
light be some of us.

Reliability

The other side of the free writing style in Wikipedia is quite
possible lack of reliability.
This lack of reliability would in the end undermine Wikipedia's
credibility and ultimately her success.
This issue must be tackled, and as soon as possible. I don't agree
here with [[Larry Sanger]] and his view "self-healing". It is an
example of elated wishful thinking that is misleading us.
I'd rather agree with [[Piotr Wozniak]]. His ideal of reliability is
EB and he is anxious about the potential lack of it in Wikipedia.
I am very interested in other people views. To start the creative
process of discussion I'll give you my ([[Kpjas]]) idea : 
Why not create two parallel Wikipedias one public Wikipedia that is almost
frozen (apart from Talk pages, Feature requests pages and the like).  And the
working Wikipedia for contributors. Forseeing your criticisms of the proposal
that it would hamper netizen involvement - Edit this page could lead into the
working Wikipedia.

Scalability

There are two ways of Wikipedia growth - global or niche.
If we decide in favour of global growth - being slashdotted only first
symptom of a serious problem.
I'll give you my ([[Kpjas]]) idea : :Nowadays distributed software
solutions are the height of fashion. Why not devise a distributed
Wikipedia ? Programmers ?

Multimedia

A picture can say more than, say, several Wikipedia articles.
It is rather trivial.
I think that Wikipedia without pictures, video, and audio is not a
real encyclopedia.
I wonder if you think my propositions worthwhile :
AudioWikipedia, PhotoWikipedia, VideoWikipedia - pages that can be
linked from the real Wikipedias but having only a title and Talk
pages.

Internal data format

This point is connected with Software issue below.  Current data format is
otherwise an example of excellent software solution. But understandably the
creator of it did not envision the scale of Wikipedia. It poses numerous
problems like searching through Wikipedia and others. My ([[Kpjas]]) thoughts
wander around [[XML]] data format in connection with a free [[database]] like
[[MySQL]]. And your thoughts ?

Editorial process

Much has been said about it but not much done.
We have an excellent and hard-working editor-in-chief - [[Larry
Sanger]] but I think Wikipedia in current form needs several such
editors and when it reaches 100,000 pages 1000 Larrys.
My idea ([[Kpjas]] is :
Create editor teams online that would cross national Wikipedias
borders. The teams would need tools to work effectively. One, the
simplest, in terms of setting it up are separate mailing-list devoted
to editorial groups like [[Architecture]], [[Philosophy]] and so on. 

Software

Like any other open software project the software behind it should be
free and open to all.
The same applies to Wikipedia software. As I said above wikipedia
software (usemod wiki) is a revolutionary and of very good quality but
needs of Wikipedia as a global encyclopedia of unrestrained growth go
beyond that kind of software. See also above Internal data format.
On the Wikipedia mailing list [[BryceHarrington]] proposed making the
Wikipedia software publicly available on [[CVS]] for further
collaboration on its development.

Commercial and organizational issues

I'm no good at it. But to me it seems to be one of the most important
issues, second to wide netizen involvement.
Please, share your feelings and opinions here.

Best wishes to everyone,
kpj. 
-- 
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz, M.D | Nic w przyrodzie nie ginie, jedynie spełnione
Czestochowa, Poland ...       | nadzieje. Stanisław Jerzy Lec  
Więcej cytatów : http://www.cytaty.prv.pl