Mailing List Archive

On 9/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/09/06, Brion Vibber <brion@pobox.com> wrote:
> > Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
> > > Does it sound strange to you that at the beginning of this year I said
> > > to a friend of mine that my feeling told me that someone will take over
> > > the contents of Wikipedia and create a separate project.
>
> > That's entirely normal in the course of events, and only one of many such
> > projects; Wikipedia has an open-content license precisely to allow these sorts
> > of projects.
>
>
> Yes. Though we're notably lacking in forks that are actively edited;
> Wikinfo is the only one I know of. Other than that it's pretty much
> static mirror sites with Google ads.
>
>

Trying to fight off our smarter vandels without haveing our antivandel
people tends to result in people haveing to make registration hard
which kills the project.


--
geni
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 18/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:

> > That's entirely normal in the course of events, and only one of many such
> > projects; Wikipedia has an open-content license precisely to allow these sorts
> > of projects.
>
> Yes. Though we're notably lacking in forks that are actively edited;
> Wikinfo is the only one I know of. Other than that it's pretty much
> static mirror sites with Google ads.

There's that fork of es.wp...

> And more open content is good for everyone.

Always true.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Am Montag, 18. September 2006 13:12 schrieb David Gerard:
> Yes. Though we're notably lacking in forks that are actively edited;
> Wikinfo is the only one I know of. Other than that it's pretty much
> static mirror sites with Google ads.

There were/are at least two more serious efforts that knew how and what to
fork: One spanish and one german fork. Both did came up out if different
reasons. The spanish one because of fears that Wikipedia could commercialize
(you probably all know it) the german one because of fundamental disagreement
on quality and project scope (the fork founder regarded de.wikipedia as too
open towards everything).

Interestingly Sanger didn't have a such a huge impact like one could expect
given his Wikipedia history in the german language community although he
anounced it at Wizards of OS 4 in Berlin, Germany that quite some active
de.wikipedians and German Wikimedians attended.

One reason is: The ideas of Sanger are similar to the spirit of the fork of
the german language Wikipedia and thus people have had some experience on
such more "elitist" forks there. That de.wikipedia fork couldn't keep
momentum although these people are highly skilled and knew exactly what they
want to achieve and were really passionate about it. But despite the
usual "we dislike us each other rantings" that fork did help de.wikipedians
concentrating at least a little bit more on quality and content and not
meta-discussions as the critics in themselves weren't completely fetched out
of thin air but de.wikipedia started walking a completely different solution
path than they did.

As I can read it from the postings of some others seem to "wonder" (to express
it soft-gloved) on de.wikipedias content/quality policies: this is at least
partly due to that very fork and our lesson out of it.

So we should consider that Citizendium fork as helpful competition and not
regard this as enemy or something we should ignore or even denying the
Citizendium fork competence (this would be the most dangerous for us).

Citizendium will help us focusing ourselves on *content* (!) and on quality
improvements, although we have a different approach than they have.

Let us start now happy competiting and keeping the momentum in Wikipedia,
Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wiktionary...!

Arnomane
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 9/19/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane@gmx.de> wrote:

> One reason is: The ideas of Sanger are similar to the spirit of the fork of
> the german language Wikipedia and thus people have had some experience on
> such more "elitist" forks there. That de.wikipedia fork couldn't keep
> momentum although these people are highly skilled and knew exactly what they
> want to achieve and were really passionate about it. But despite the
> usual "we dislike us each other rantings" that fork did help de.wikipedians
> concentrating at least a little bit more on quality and content and not
> meta-discussions as the critics in themselves weren't completely fetched out
> of thin air but de.wikipedia started walking a completely different solution
> path than they did.

I think I knew the German folk you mentioned ... if so, interestingly
some editors who left dewiki and joined the folk have been still
staying on Wikimedia project as a whole, not nominal parts, but very
active members on some particular projects, either German other
projects or rather international ones including Wikimedia Commons.

Diversity and stimulation from it are always our source of energy
either inside or outside.

> So we should consider that Citizendium fork as helpful competition and not
> regard this as enemy or something we should ignore or even denying the
> Citizendium fork competence (this would be the most dangerous for us).
>
> Citizendium will help us focusing ourselves on *content* (!) and on quality
> improvements, although we have a different approach than they have.
>
> Let us start now happy competiting and keeping the momentum in Wikipedia,
> Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wiktionary...!

Agreed.
--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

For a fork to really *take over* it would have to be multilingual and
I doubt we'll see any fork in the nearest future that will start with
even all of the major Wikipedia languages.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l