I only discovered PlanetMath when I heard it mentioned
on this mailing list. I've participated in Wikipedia
for a while now, though I've only had a quick look at
PlanetMath.
PlanetMath and Wikipedia have similar goals -- they
both seek to produce a free, GNU FDL encyclopedia.
PlanetMath aims to cover only Mathematics, while
Wikipedia aims to cover just about everything.
PlanetMath is like Nupedia in that articles are
clearly owned by authors, while in Wikipedia the
authorship is much more collective.
PlanetMath also appears to have much better support
for mathematics in its software. (Articles are written
in LaTeX).
Now, I was wondering about the potential relationship
between Wikipedia and Planetmath. Maybe we could
establish some way of encouraging content from
Planetmath to be added to Wikipedia, or vice versa?
I also thought for a moment about some form of merger
between the two projects, or removing all the maths
content from Wikipedia and sending it to PlanetMath,
or something similar. I don't think these are good
ideas, since the two projects seem to be quite
different in culture (author-centric vs. anyone can
edit).
On the other hand, maybe some form of integration
between PlanetMath and Nupedia might be a good idea?
Maybe PlanetMath could be rolled into Nupedia, or
PlanetMath could become the maths section of Nupedia?
(Just a thought -- I don't participate in Nupedia, and
discussion of that sort of stuff really belongs on
nupedia-l)
Simon J Kissane
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