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