QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 24th June 2009, 11:18am)
I happen to agree with Peter. Just not with the methodology.
There is no need to "destroy" it. The deranged ADHD sufferers who
run the thing are slowly destroying it for you. Will take years, though.
Why do people pay so much attention to that madhouse?
Because Google gives their articles high page rank.
No other major reason that I can see.
So: Talk to Google, convince them that Wikipedia is not a trustworthy
source for information. That'll kill the Magic Wiki a lot more quickly.
(Good luck dealing with the bastards who run Google. If you think Jimbo and the WMF
are paranoid freaks, the Google top management make them look like pikers.
I suppose you could try kidnapping Eric Schmidt and cutting his fingers off, one at a
time, until he agrees to remove WP pages from the ranking algorithm....)
I have some contacts at the CofE education division
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/educationwhich I haven't used so far, but could try. These people are in charge of all church of england schools which educate probably about 15% of the UK child population. More importantly, they would be in charge of the filter policy that selects the sites are available to computers used in church schools. If they were to block Wikipedia it would have no direct effect but the indirect effect (if well publicised) would be enormous.
QUOTE(JohnA @ Wed 24th June 2009, 11:37am)
The only way to beat Wikipedia is to supercede Wikipedia, to produce a web-hosted encyclopedia of real scholarly, historical value.
I don't see that happening yet. I have my own ideas but no money to carry it out.
I suggested above a strategic alliance with natural competitors such as Britannica. Or perhaps just make a good business case to a group of investors via the usual channels. Get a group of contributors together, mock up a set of articles, a charter, a policy and so on. Allow advertising in a carefully controlled way, allow content contributors an income, make suitable revenue projections and you are off.