[Wikipedia-l] Fork within a language

[Michel Clasquin]

On Monday 18 March 2002 23:57, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> I'm trying to understand where the boundaries for Wikipedia are.
> Forgive me if this gets philosophical, and not very practical.
>
> Could a Wiki devoted to history have a place outside of Wikipedia?
> When describing London, it would focus on the city's historic
> features, not on the facets of today's London.  Then again,
> Wikipedia's entries on many things are focused on history.  It is
> almost as if Wikipedia is that history Wiki.  History, after all, is
> so much more in line with the contents of an encyclopedia than is
> object-oriented software development.

Assuming FDL for all instances, perhaps cut'n'pasting from a history wiki 
into wikipedia might be easier than the other way round.

> Could a leftist-point-of-view Wiki exist side by side with Wikipedia?

Only on the sinister side ... <g>
<<OK, how many of you figured that one out?>>

> It would carefully point out any misuse of power

You mean as in [[Stalin]], [[Pol Pot]], [[Mao]] . . . ?

>, and list activist
> and political groups. 

Expect lots and lots of vandalism.

> A youth culture Wiki might list all the hot dance clubs in London, but

Feasible, but youth "culture" changes so quickly that you might as well 
start from scratch every two years or so. 

> If all of these Wikis existed side by side, how would Wikipedia best
> take advantage of this expanded network?  Should Wikipedia be its
> backbone, or try to be self-sufficient, ignoring the outside world?

If you want to start a page on [[London - dance clubs]] (as opposed to 
[[London - Snobby Oak-panelled Gentlemens' clubs]]) and expand from there, 
nobody is going to stop you. But they would still have to be NPOV:

    '''DruggedOutOfMySkull''' is a dance venue in Totally Wasted  Street, 
    [[London]]. It became notorious after the largest collection of 
    [[ecstacy]] tablets in history was found there during a police raid
     in 2001.

But as soon as people arrive and start writing stuff like "Hey, had a 
great time here last weekend, if you want the good stuff ask for Charlie", 
the wiki NPOV thought police are likely to descend on it, I'm afraid <g>

BUT once this particular period of youth culture passes into oblivion and 
is replaced by another, a record of it in a separate wiki  could serve as 
a useful primary source from which, with  a lot of editing and material 
from elsewhere, you could create a fascinating wikipedia article on 
[[London - Youth culture in 2002/3]].

-- 
Michel Clasquin, D Litt et Phil (Unisa)
clasqm at mweb.co.za/unisa.ac.za   http://www.geocities.com/clasqm
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Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers "users"