[Wikipedia-l] Replies

[Larry Sanger]

Replying to Krzysztof's posts, which raise some interesting points.

From: "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpjas at promail.pl>
> A form with fields that must be completed and and textarea field with the
> rest of the article.

This is how Nupedia works, by the way.

As long as we chose the fields very, very carefully, I think they might be
useful.  Right now, they don't seem absolutely necessary for the system to
work, but there might be advantages to at least some "hard-wired" forms.

Don't forget making the "talk" page automatic (and uncounted!) for all
pages.  I think that's a very groovy idea.

> When will we see spell-checking script that would highlight or list
> suspected words ?

Please see [[feature requests]], where this issue was raised.

> I'd like to hear your opinion about some kind of navigation system of
> wikipedia.
> It is also linked with the architecture of Wikipedia.
> Are we making the future 100,000 pages totally flat ?
> One level of subpages is surely not enough but this is a usemod technology
> stumbling block, not so easily overcome.
> What hypertext is all about is linking to other parts of information pool
> but without a navigation system (and search system) we are going round in
> circles.

This (and Jimbo's reply) inspired a column on Wikipedia, which I hope you
will read:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Larry_Sanger/Columns

> WWW is full of brilliant pages and sites entangled in a sea of rubbish.
> I doubt that we can outdo most sites, commercial or personal. Wouldn't it
> be better to do a critical review of the whole web with some additions of
> our own ?

Well, that's not what we're doing...you are simply describing a different
project, not the one we all signed up for.

> At some point when Wikipedia reaches a critical mass there should be some
> democratic Editorial Board. It could even freeze some pages for some time.
> If you say no to the Editorial Board some democratic rules should be set
in
> stone.

I don't know what a Wikipedia editorial board would *do*, exactly, and I
agree with Jimbo that it's important not to upset the wiki "magic."

I'm suspecting that you might be happier devoting your energies to Nupedia,
since Nupedia has implemented some of your suggestions (like this one)--and
it *might* add a wiki article editing system too!

> Can someone please tell me what's the end point/goal of Wikipedia ?
> Don't tell there no end-point and this is eternal task ;-)

To organize, summarize, and eventually fully exposit the sum total of human
knowledge about everything, following roughly the same standards that are
followed in any high-quality encyclopedia.  That's the *goal* (as I see it),
but most contributors don't care about the goal, or whatever the goal might
be, I imagine.

Wikipedia is a wiki as well as an encyclopedia.  It is precisely what its
contributors make of it.  You can't control it--you can try to influence it
(and I unashamedly do), you can argue strenuously, but you can't say, "This
is how it will be," because as soon as you do that, the nature of the
project changes entirely.  It seems that a lot of your objections are along
the lines of, "Wikipedia is disorganized.  This is alarming!  We should
organize it and direct it!"  But consider this--perhaps one main reason why
Wikipedia works so well is *that* it is disorganized.  People *know* that
they can come in and contribute, and they're welcomed to do so with open
arms.  That's a main reason why they do come in and contribute.  As soon as
you change that, you propose to change the essence of Wikipedia--and from
the sounds of it, you are trying to push it in the direction of Nupedia.  If
that's correct, then, I recommend that you spend more time on Nupedia (I'll
see you there, too!).

> RDF
> Wikipedia - patchy with some articles for students, some for laymen and
> some for university professors ?
> Or branch out into Kid's Wikipedia, Regular Wikipedia, Highbrow Wikipedia.

This isn't a bad idea, actually.  The easiest way to make a Children's
Wikipedia would be to adapt fully-mature Wikipedia articles.

Jimbo, one thing we could do is to create http://kids.wikipedia.com , and
display an "Edit the children's version of this page!" link somewhere, which
would simply point from http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Foo to
http://kids.wikipedia.com/Foo .

We could do this right now, and I'll bet it would take all of a half-hour.

Something like this might, or might not, be a good idea for the
international Wikipedias, by the way.  I'll explain on a separate page.

> I am really enthusiastic about Wikipedia - I contribute regularly and am
> determined to to so in future. These are just my thoughts.

That's good enough for me!

Larry