Why does no one compete against Wikimedia?, Decentralization of wiki hosting Options

[Moulton]

It's not the song. It's the singer.

[emesee]

More powerz to them.

Emesee, I suggest that you stop account-spamming at Wikisage. In contrast to Wikipedia, there is no advantage to having more than one.

i suggest you stop labeling my behavior as "spamming". the path to getting to editing at your wiki appears to be so mangled, perhaps there is no hope for you.

no one will contribute simply because they can't. JEEZZ_Holy KITttens. "Number of articles: 1 " lulz.




but as obi-wan or princess leya said something liek something: """"""""""""""there is always hope"""""""""". so there.


and encyc is a waaaay better domain than "wikisage" ... but wikisage is maybe ok. that is all just my super silly opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. or a whole bucket of salt. yum.\

your splash page is crazy nice though.

Don't give up though, just make the sign-up process a bit easier.... the signing up is easy...


But THEN it says you need to have an email address entered to Edit - But I have one entered! So maybe you'll never get more than 1 article.

yikes.

This post has been edited by emesee: Sun 9th August 2009, 11:20am

[Moulton]

Anyone up for a beer summit?

[SB_Johnny]

To compete you'd need a big funding source (like a group of universities, a government, or somebody like Bill Gates or Google), and probably do something along the lines of Amazon Mechanical Turk to attract and retain good writers, editors, and admins.

Anyone up for a beer summit?

Ah yes, the audacity of hops.

[GlassBeadGame]

Somey, please ban him from resurrecting threads. This is getting ridiculous.

If there's something interesting to be said on the subject, why care about when the thread started?

But there has been no interesting posts on the topic since the necromancy, including this one. Just some meta comments on thread necromancy and one or two people replying with whatever is on the top of there head without even realizing they are talking with ghosts. Emesee acts as minor disorganizing force suppressing active threads and ticking up less relevant ones. It is not the worse thing in the world I suppose but I understand at least mild annoyance.

[Kato]

The Wikipedia landscape now is not the same as the Wikipedia landscape of March 2006. March 2006 was pre-Citizendium, pre-Google Knol and pre any number of attempts to compete with Wikipedia. Those early posts lack the knowledge and hindsight needed to answer the question in a way that is relevant now.

[Moulton]

Today, if you want to write an article of encyclopedic merit, there is Google Knol.

Today, if you want to push a point of view, there is Google Blogger.

Why would anyone go back to Wikipedia, except to exploit it as a real-time drama engine?

[thekohser]

Today, if you want to write an article of encyclopedic merit, there is Google Knol.

Google Knol lacks so many features that are an aid to any online encyclopedia. Perhaps simplest and foremost, how do I link from my Google Knol page about Napoleon to the Google Knol page about Talleyrand? Furthermore, how do I select "the" page about Talleyrand, when one hasn't been written?

For that matter, how do I select "the" page about France?

Do I sort by page views? (Can't do that.)

Do I sort by rating? (Can't do that.)

Do I sort by relevance? (Do I trust Google's ranking of these pages about France?)

Google Knol is a mess, and it's not visibly managed by anyone with any talent whatsoever in encyclopedia design. It's really just a blog forum or bazaar.

I can unabashedly state that if you want to write an article of encyclopedic merit, then Wikipedia Review is actually better than Google Knol.

This post has been edited by thekohser: Sun 9th August 2009, 5:02pm

[Moulton]

Google Knol automatically lists (in the sidebar) other related articles, as well as the categories your articles belongs to.

[GlassBeadGame]

The Wikipedia landscape now is not the same as the Wikipedia landscape of March 2006. March 2006 was pre-Citizendium, pre-Google Knol and pre any number of attempts to compete with Wikipedia. Those early posts lack the knowledge and hindsight needed to answer the question in a way that is relevant now.

Not just that but today there is a growing sense that there is no great virtue to be had in a mass collaborate project to produce an online encyclopedia. What Wikipedia has made clear is that the motivations for participation are so terribly tainted that no good can possibly come from such projects. The only appropriate use of wikis are small scale, time limited projects in which people who have IRL connections that pre-imposes a social system can collaborate. For this purpose wikis might successfully compete with other content management systems. In mass scale projects every feature (limitless scale, anonymity, avatar account creation, instant change, atomized edits, ease of revision/restoration, permanent edit record keeping, layers of users privileges, non-content related namespaces, etc) of a wiki becomes a social vulnerability.

[dtobias]

Not just that but today there is a growing sense that there is no great virtue to be had in a mass collaborate project to produce an online encyclopedia. What Wikipedia has made clear is that the motivations for participation are so terribly tainted that no good can possibly come from such projects. The only appropriate use of wikis are small scale, time limited projects in which people who have IRL connections that pre-imposes a social system can collaborate. For this purpose wikis might successfully compete with other content management systems. In mass scale projects every feature (limitless scale, anonymity, avatar account creation, instant change, atomized edits, ease of revision/restoration, permanent edit record keeping, layers of users privileges, non-content related namespaces, etc) of a wiki becomes a social vulnerability.

You're reading your own ideology into it, and I think you're way off base regarding what the public has "realized". It's true enough that the "techno-utopian" excitement of the earliest days of Wikipedia has long faded, and some of the problems with Wikipedia are well-known enough that the likes of Colbert joke about them, but it's far from true that the public thinks "no good can possibly come" from it; in fact, people use it as much as ever, though participation in editing it does seem to be slacking off. There may be a long, slow decline ahead, and at some point somebody with a better model might supplant them (though none has surfaced yet), but that's a long way from it being universally recognized as a total failure.

----------------
Now playing: Holly Conlan - You Are Goodbye
via FoxyTunes

[GlassBeadGame]

Not just that but today there is a growing sense that there is no great virtue to be had in a mass collaborate project to produce an online encyclopedia. What Wikipedia has made clear is that the motivations for participation are so terribly tainted that no good can possibly come from such projects. The only appropriate use of wikis are small scale, time limited projects in which people who have IRL connections that pre-imposes a social system can collaborate. For this purpose wikis might successfully compete with other content management systems. In mass scale projects every feature (limitless scale, anonymity, avatar account creation, instant change, atomized edits, ease of revision/restoration, permanent edit record keeping, layers of users privileges, non-content related namespaces, etc) of a wiki becomes a social vulnerability.

You're reading your own ideology into it, and I think you're way off base regarding what the public has "realized". It's true enough that the "techno-utopian" excitement of the earliest days of Wikipedia has long faded, and some of the problems with Wikipedia are well-known enough that the likes of Colbert joke about them, but it's far from true that the public thinks "no good can possibly come" from it; in fact, people use it as much as ever, though participation in editing it does seem to be slacking off. There may be a long, slow decline ahead, and at some point somebody with a better model might supplant them (though none has surfaced yet), but that's a long way from it being universally recognized as a total failure.

----------------
Now playing: Holly Conlan - You Are Goodbye
via FoxyTunes

Stupid people use it. Smart people make fun of stupid people for using it. True, there is no shortage of stupid people.

[Moulton]

Wikipedia is useful as an accidental experiment in online dramaturgy.

I happened to be doing some research on Drama Theory and found WikiCulture to be a rich source of raw material on the subject, albeit far more than I could possibly analyze.

It occurs to me (and apparently to others) that Wikipedia has morphed into a magnet for people who find the drama far more alluring than the original attraction of sincerely helping to craft an authentic encyclopedia.

[John Limey]

The Wikipedia landscape now is not the same as the Wikipedia landscape of March 2006. March 2006 was pre-Citizendium, pre-Google Knol and pre any number of attempts to compete with Wikipedia. Those early posts lack the knowledge and hindsight needed to answer the question in a way that is relevant now.

It's not so different as all of that. Neither Knol nor Citizendium is a viable competitor to Wikipedia; they both have (at least so far) failed to reach critical mass, and I doubt that either ever will.

Not just that but today there is a growing sense that there is no great virtue to be had in a mass collaborate project to produce an online encyclopedia. What Wikipedia has made clear is that the motivations for participation are so terribly tainted that no good can possibly come from such projects. The only appropriate use of wikis are small scale, time limited projects in which people who have IRL connections that pre-imposes a social system can collaborate. For this purpose wikis might successfully compete with other content management systems. In mass scale projects every feature (limitless scale, anonymity, avatar account creation, instant change, atomized edits, ease of revision/restoration, permanent edit record keeping, layers of users privileges, non-content related namespaces, etc) of a wiki becomes a social vulnerability.

You're reading your own ideology into it, and I think you're way off base regarding what the public has "realized". It's true enough that the "techno-utopian" excitement of the earliest days of Wikipedia has long faded, and some of the problems with Wikipedia are well-known enough that the likes of Colbert joke about them, but it's far from true that the public thinks "no good can possibly come" from it; in fact, people use it as much as ever, though participation in editing it does seem to be slacking off. There may be a long, slow decline ahead, and at some point somebody with a better model might supplant them (though none has surfaced yet), but that's a long way from it being universally recognized as a total failure.

----------------
Now playing: Holly Conlan - You Are Goodbye
via FoxyTunes

Stupid people use it. Smart people make fun of stupid people for using it. True, there is no shortage of stupid people.

I don't really know how you define stupid, but I think you need to reexamine your assumptions. I know a number of tenured professors at major universities, some of them giants in their respective fields, who use Wikipedia for introductory research on topics with which they are not familiar (I don't know anyone who would actually cite it, though). None of these are stupid people, they just don't really know much about Wikipedia and they find it "good enough for government work" most of the time.

[emesee]

The Wikipedia landscape now is not the same as the Wikipedia landscape of March 2006. March 2006 was pre-Citizendium, pre-Google Knol and pre any number of attempts to compete with Wikipedia. Those early posts lack the knowledge and hindsight needed to answer the question in a way that is relevant now.

It's not so different as all of that. Neither Knol nor Citizendium is a viable competitor to Wikipedia; they both have (at least so far) failed to reach critical mass, and I doubt that either ever will.

Not just that but today there is a growing sense that there is no great virtue to be had in a mass collaborate project to produce an online encyclopedia. What Wikipedia has made clear is that the motivations for participation are so terribly tainted that no good can possibly come from such projects. The only appropriate use of wikis are small scale, time limited projects in which people who have IRL connections that pre-imposes a social system can collaborate. For this purpose wikis might successfully compete with other content management systems. In mass scale projects every feature (limitless scale, anonymity, avatar account creation, instant change, atomized edits, ease of revision/restoration, permanent edit record keeping, layers of users privileges, non-content related namespaces, etc) of a wiki becomes a social vulnerability.

You're reading your own ideology into it, and I think you're way off base regarding what the public has "realized". It's true enough that the "techno-utopian" excitement of the earliest days of Wikipedia has long faded, and some of the problems with Wikipedia are well-known enough that the likes of Colbert joke about them, but it's far from true that the public thinks "no good can possibly come" from it; in fact, people use it as much as ever, though participation in editing it does seem to be slacking off. There may be a long, slow decline ahead, and at some point somebody with a better model might supplant them (though none has surfaced yet), but that's a long way from it being universally recognized as a total failure.

----------------
Now playing: Holly Conlan - You Are Goodbye
via FoxyTunes

Stupid people use it. Smart people make fun of stupid people for using it. True, there is no shortage of stupid people.

I don't really know how you define stupid, but I think you need to reexamine your assumptions. I know a number of tenured professors at major universities, some of them giants in their respective fields, who use Wikipedia for introductory research on topics with which they are not familiar (I don't know anyone who would actually cite it, though). None of these are stupid people, they just don't really know much about Wikipedia and they find it "good enough for government work" most of the time.

this is getting too off topic. is it? (like I'm one to speak? ! ) let's try to bring it back.............

so are you saying that a fork of the wikicommunist projects should use flagged revisions and have verified experts be able to approve articles if they are willing? I could be totally off base in my interpretation of what you are saying.......

This post has been edited by emesee: Sun 9th August 2009, 7:53pm

[dtobias]

I don't really know how you define stupid, but I think you need to reexamine your assumptions.

This is probably yet another "No True Scotsman" fallacy, where "stupid" is being defined in a way to make it a circular argument.

[JohnA]

Not just that but today there is a growing sense that there is no great virtue to be had in a mass collaborate project to produce an online encyclopedia. What Wikipedia has made clear is that the motivations for participation are so terribly tainted that no good can possibly come from such projects. The only appropriate use of wikis are small scale, time limited projects in which people who have IRL connections that pre-imposes a social system can collaborate. For this purpose wikis might successfully compete with other content management systems. In mass scale projects every feature (limitless scale, anonymity, avatar account creation, instant change, atomized edits, ease of revision/restoration, permanent edit record keeping, layers of users privileges, non-content related namespaces, etc) of a wiki becomes a social vulnerability.

You're reading your own ideology into it, and I think you're way off base regarding what the public has "realized". It's true enough that the "techno-utopian" excitement of the earliest days of Wikipedia has long faded, and some of the problems with Wikipedia are well-known enough that the likes of Colbert joke about them, but it's far from true that the public thinks "no good can possibly come" from it; in fact, people use it as much as ever, though participation in editing it does seem to be slacking off. There may be a long, slow decline ahead, and at some point somebody with a better model might supplant them (though none has surfaced yet), but that's a long way from it being universally recognized as a total failure.

That's true. In the absence of a plausible alternative, Wikipedia wins by default. Not because its particularly good, but because its got lots of Google juice and lots of Japanese railway stations and Pokemon.

This post has been edited by JohnA: Mon 10th August 2009, 1:20am

[Emperor]

We're getting there. Just give us a little more time.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

In the absence of a plausible alternative, Wikipedia wins by default. Not because its particularly good, but because its got lots of Google juice and lots of Japanese railway stations and Pokemon.

Yes, but all those Japanese railway stations are really inaccurate and biased ... (irony alert).

This is a worth topic to resurrect from time to time.

• The first question arises ... "is it not more economical, and fun, to make them fix it than having to start up a new one?"

• The second question arises ... "ethically speaking, is it not their responsibility to fix it as in the universally accepted 'MAKE THE POLLUTER PAY' approach".

Here you have the equivalent of a mass, multi-national conglomerate spewing shit out into the environment without care or responsibility that, as we have seen, IS MOST CERTAINLY COSTING real life and innocent third parties real costs.

Its a simple matter of making them apply full cost accounting to Jimbo Wale's robber baron capitalism theft of other people's efforts, ideas and information and limiting its negative effects on the intellectual environment of the world ... Making others, and the Mediawiki Foundation, aware of its responsibility to internalize its currently unaccounted external costs (externalities).

Attempting to establish an alternative "ethical" Wikipedia is a bit like attempting to transform Hong Kong into a 100% sustainable eco-heaven, parked as it is under the belly of the soot chugging Guangzhou industrial zone.

(BTW, the opinion above is OBVIOUSLY the rantings of a racist)

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Racist ... merely because I said something "nasty" about China's terrible record of environmental despoliation and likened the Wikipedia's effect on the intellectual realms of future generations to it.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy: Mon 10th August 2009, 3:38am