[Wikipedia-l] Irish session project and its implications

[lsanger at nupedia.com]

As part of my extracurricular activities, I play Irish fiddle.  I
suggested on Irtrad-L, a music mailing list, that somebody set up a wiki
devoted to listing Irish traditional music sessions.  (Nobody is
maintaining a complete, definitive list these days, and I thought a wiki
would be the perfect solution.)  I gave Wikipedia as an example of a wiki
so people could understand what wikis are all about.

Well, wouldn't you know it but somebody decides to start the list *on
Wikipedia*.  At first I said (on Irtrad-L) that this was a bad idea, for a
variety of reasons--that the wiki should be located somewhere else.  Then
I thought again: hey, we can always *copy* the information that gets
started on Wikipedia to wherever the information will eventually live.  So
why not let people get *started*, working on Wikipedia?

THEN the thought occurs to me that the net result of this will be a few
more cheerfully addicted Wikipedians--particularly if there is indeed a
successful Irish session wiki started up, they will learn the wiki system
and remember that Wikipedia is what got them into it originally.  Warm
fuzzies!

It occurs to me now that this is actually probably a very good way to get
people into Wikipedia who might otherwise not know or care at all about
it.  We all have hobbies and academic interests that, in various ways,
might be very well-served by the collaborative treatment that wikis allow.
So that's my thought--we could start encouraging the creation of wikis
about our interests, and offer to host an initial page about it, and then
encourage people to take the wiki info elsewhere.

(Unless it's actually encyclopedic info--in which case, encourage them to
keep it on Wikipedia.  :-) )

Someone's already done this, too, with AmbientCalculiOnline.  That
actually brings Wikipedia quite a few hits.

Larry