[Wikipedia-l] Phase IV, Wikibooks.org/.com and WikimediaFoundation.org/.com (was Wikis and uniformity)

[Daniel Mayer]

Erik wrote:
>Making a site like Wiktionary or textbook.wiki 
>international is a lot of work with the current 
>setup. A copy of the code and a new database 
>has to be created for each language, and the 
>relevant texts have to be adapted.  

Brion's idea for a multilanguage Phase IV where all the now separate Wikipedia  
wikis would be in a single database under a single software installation 
would help a great deal (skins would take care of localization). 

We could extend that idea by having separate databases/software installations 
only between different Wikimedia projects (which should all have their own 
domain names anyway). Subprojects/language versions within the same Wikimedia 
project would all be in the same database; each wiki page would need a 
language/subproject tag - or table thingy - and those wiki pages would be in 
their own directories (again the directories would be named after the 
appropriate language code).

Side note: IMO, "MediaWiki" would be a good name for our officially nameless 
software. "PediaWiki" never worked for me since the software is used in at 
least several non-encyclopedia contexts and will likely be used by many more 
in the next several years. 

But all that is less important than optimizing the current code. 

>It is better to wait a bit, but keep internationalization 
>in mind from the start. The "textbook"-wiki will likely 
>be relocated to wikibooks.org, where we can then 
>use the scheme that Mav proposes.

Hm. The last thing we need is a porn site at wikibooks.org so since everybody 
is referring to Wikibook as Wikibooks I went ahead and bought 
wikibooks.org/.com too. And while I was at it I went ahead and purchased 
WikimediaFoundation.org/.com as well. 

All these domain names will be donated to Wikimedia as soon as it is able to 
accept a legal transfer of ownership. It will be up to the Foundation to 
decide what to do with all these domain names and whether or not it makes 
sense to renew them (if so then I'll probably help to finance that too but 
I'm sure I won't be the only one).

But for now they are safe from cyber squatters for at least the next year (I'm 
still mad at myself for not purchasing wikimedia.com before a squatter got 
it). 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)