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

[Erik Moeller]

Daniel-
> 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).

Well, having a single codebase (as in, set of PHP files) for all  
Wikipedias is not that difficult even with the current code. Brion (or was  
it Lee?) just chose to set it up as completely separate installations.  
Having a single *database* is much more difficult because all the tables  
and queries need to be adjusted accordingly. Merging the tables is  
certainly undesirable as this would substantially slow things down (the  
OLD table of the English wiki is currently 8801714176 bytes and dog slow).  
However, the software could be rewritten to be always multilingual in all  
available translations, and to create the necessary tables on demand.

> Side note: IMO, "MediaWiki" would be a good name for our officially nameless
> software.

Yup. Many potential wiki users have been scared away by the "Wikipedia"  
name. "Isn't this just for encyclopedias?" is a question I have heard  
several times. Then people end up with something useless and scary like  
TWiki. How are we ever supposed to get decent competition like that? :)

> Hm. The last thing we need is a porn site at wikibooks.org

You're quite right. The erotic furry Star Trek slasher fan fiction should  
be at porn.wikibooks.org ;-)

Regards,

Erik