How to utterly destroy Wikipedia, Idea needed Options Rating

[Peter Damian]

After comments and emails from a number of 'true' Wikipedians I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the more extreme of us are right: Wikipedia cannot be redeemed. It's not Arbcom, it's not 'Jimbo' it's not the system. It's that the majority of the 'community' are barking mad and are simply not normal people. They need to be hospitalised and cared for, and the place should be blown up and destroyed.

I have some ideas of my own about how this could be achieved in a humane and decent way, but interested in the views of others.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Peter Damian]

I don't see that happening yet. I have my own ideas but no money to carry it out.

Do you or does anyone else know of the sums of money needed to develop a working project on these lines? The best projects actually start on a very small scale without ambitious investment. In addition, if a sizeable number of the leading contributors to Wikipedia could be persuaded to leave in return for equity in the new project, that would significantly damage Wikipedia's competitiveness.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Guido den Broeder]

I don't see that happening yet. I have my own ideas but no money to carry it out.

Do you or does anyone else know of the sums of money needed to develop a working project on these lines? The best projects actually start on a very small scale without ambitious investment. In addition, if a sizeable number of the leading contributors to Wikipedia could be persuaded to leave in return for equity in the new project, that would significantly damage Wikipedia's competitiveness.

As long as fairly up-to-date software remains already available, the needed sums of money to start are minimal. Wikisage runs on a few hundred EURO a year, to grow perhaps to a few thousand when we get closer to nl:wikipedia's size. That is currently mainly just a Dutch language version, but you get the picture.

In time, however, when features get added that Wikipedia cannot even dream of, one might envisage a professional organization that is several orders of magnitude larger than the Wikimedia foundation, and it wouldn't need any donations.

[JohnA]

I don't see that happening yet. I have my own ideas but no money to carry it out.

Do you or does anyone else know of the sums of money needed to develop a working project on these lines? The best projects actually start on a very small scale without ambitious investment. In addition, if a sizeable number of the leading contributors to Wikipedia could be persuaded to leave in return for equity in the new project, that would significantly damage Wikipedia's competitiveness.

As long as fairly up-to-date software remains already available, the needed sums of money to start are minimal. Wikisage runs on a few hundred EURO a year, to grow perhaps to a few thousand when we get closer to nl:wikipedia's size. That is currently mainly just a Dutch language version, but you get the picture.

In time, however, when features get added that Wikipedia cannot even dream of, one might envisage a professional organization that is several orders of magnitude larger than the Wikimedia foundation, and it wouldn't need any donations.

That's the point. Its not as simple as setting up a wiki and inviting people to write for it. In fact, I wouldn't use the wiki approach at all as the result is usually 75% drama, 23.2% administrative overhead and only 1.8% actual writing articles.

I think the wiki model is the wrong model. It either produces crap at extremely high volumes or it dies painfully after a feeble and miserable existence.

The greatest problem is that the cost of hosting and bandwidth would quickly overwhelm any similar scheme to Wikipedia unless a new approach were taken to the whole question of the dissemination of articles from trusted sources on the Internet. That's my approach.

But because its innovative and there is no-one doing anything similar, its hard to capture that to make anyone open their checkbook unless they are first convinced that Wikipedia is a steaming pile of crud in the first place, and that a competing product using innovative delivery can outmuscle Wikipedia AND deliver a reasonable return on the money.

That's why the Wikipedia donation drive depresses me - for the money I could make something worth having rather than the rats nest that is Wikipedia.

[Guido den Broeder]

I don't see that happening yet. I have my own ideas but no money to carry it out.

Do you or does anyone else know of the sums of money needed to develop a working project on these lines? The best projects actually start on a very small scale without ambitious investment. In addition, if a sizeable number of the leading contributors to Wikipedia could be persuaded to leave in return for equity in the new project, that would significantly damage Wikipedia's competitiveness.

As long as fairly up-to-date software remains already available, the needed sums of money to start are minimal. Wikisage runs on a few hundred EURO a year, to grow perhaps to a few thousand when we get closer to nl:wikipedia's size. That is currently mainly just a Dutch language version, but you get the picture.

In time, however, when features get added that Wikipedia cannot even dream of, one might envisage a professional organization that is several orders of magnitude larger than the Wikimedia foundation, and it wouldn't need any donations.

That's the point. Its not as simple as setting up a wiki and inviting people to write for it. In fact, I wouldn't use the wiki approach at all as the result is usually 75% drama, 23.2% administrative overhead and only 1.8% actual writing articles.

I think the wiki model is the wrong model. It either produces crap at extremely high volumes or it dies painfully after a feeble and miserable existence.

The greatest problem is that the cost of hosting and bandwidth would quickly overwhelm any similar scheme to Wikipedia unless a new approach were taken to the whole question of the dissemination of articles from trusted sources on the Internet. That's my approach.

But because its innovative and there is no-one doing anything similar, its hard to capture that to make anyone open their checkbook unless they are first convinced that Wikipedia is a steaming pile of crud in the first place, and that a competing product using innovative delivery can outmuscle Wikipedia AND deliver a reasonable return on the money.

That's why the Wikipedia donation drive depresses me - for the money I could make something worth having rather than the rats nest that is Wikipedia.

The only drama that we have is from Wikipedia users complaining that we don't have enough drama, and administrative overhead so far is minimal. Hosting and bandwidth get cheaper at a fast rate, and are not likely to become an issue. The wiki approach is fine for now (better ways are in development though and will definitely arrive). It's the social structure, where Wikipedia is failing, that makes all the difference.