Alternatives to Wikipedia, Competitors to the beast Options Rating

[DawnofMan]

I've been wandering the internet wasteland in search of alternatives to Wikipedia. Here's what I've found so far:

Brittanica: follows the traditional model of an encyclopedia written by experts, although it does allow some input allowed from readers. Seems to be failing slowly and falling behind more open models.

[Encyc]: is a tiny effort that is even more dysfunctional and anti-social than Wikipedia.

Neturalpedia: a start-up narrowly focused focused on criticisms of mainstream climate coverage including Wikipedia's cabal driven effort.

Wikinfo: a more open community allowing original research, attribution, articles critical of subjects, and creative writing and research. The most successful alternative I've come across so far although most of its content seems to consist of copies of Wikipedia articles. I don't really understand how that part of its content is useful. Created and governed in large part by Fred Bauder who is an admin in good standing on Wikipedia? More information on this forking of the Wikipedia effort and its founder would be interesting.

Encyclopedia Dramatica, a sarcasm and humor site.

Uncyclopedia, an "unencyclopedia" site that provides an opposite day type alternate universe to Wikipedia where deleted articles, irrelevancies, and the inappropriate are the focus.

Wikademia: a Wikiversity alternative? Not really an encyclopedia.

What have others found?

This post has been edited by DawnofMan: Mon 15th March 2010, 9:28pm

[John Limey]

People willing to spend countless amounts of time "building an encyclopedia" are in some sense aberrant and deformed.

I'm sure the people behind Britannica, World Book, and Encarta might disagree. Then again they got paid.

Emphasis added above

There you go.

Then again, many projects have not paid their contributors. None of the contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a resource of unsurpassed quality, were paid. Generally speaking, contributors to various specialized Encyclopedia of X variants are not paid either. They are experts who work as part of the general enterprise of academia or to spread knowledge or to advance their careers.

This post has been edited by John Limey: Thu 18th March 2010, 4:51pm

[Straightforward]

People willing to spend countless amounts of time "building an encyclopedia" are in some sense aberrant and deformed.

I'm sure the people behind Britannica, World Book, and Encarta might disagree. Then again they got paid.

Emphasis added above

There you go.

Then again, many projects have not paid their contributors. None of the contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a resource of unsurpassed quality, were paid. Generally speaking, contributors to various specialized Encyclopedia of X variants are not paid either. They are experts who work as part of the general enterprise of academia or to spread knowledge or to advance their careers.

It is interesting to compare the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and its predecessor the Dictionary of National Biography, with Wikipedia. In both of them the articles on recently deceased people were frequently written by their relatives or friends. Even if not, there are often references to unpublished information obtained from relatives. This would of course not be allowed on Wikipedia under WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:V. I have heard the author of an article on ODNB, a professional historian, criticise the article on DNB that he replaced (written by a friend of the subject) as "a complete white-wash".

I recently wrote to the ODNB pointing out differences between one of their articles and what was said in obituaries. They have referred it to the article author. I have no way of knowing what "the truth" is in this case or if it even exists, but the ODNB is not infallible.

While I have no doubt that the great majority of articles on the ODNB are of high standard, it is at least possible that in a few cases WP will be better.

[GlassBeadGame]

People willing to spend countless amounts of time "building an encyclopedia" are in some sense aberrant and deformed.

I'm sure the people behind Britannica, World Book, and Encarta might disagree. Then again they got paid.

Emphasis added above

There you go.

Then again, many projects have not paid their contributors. None of the contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a resource of unsurpassed quality, were paid. Generally speaking, contributors to various specialized Encyclopedia of X variants are not paid either. They are experts who work as part of the general enterprise of academia or to spread knowledge or to advance their careers.

It is interesting to compare the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and its predecessor the Dictionary of National Biography, with Wikipedia. In both of them the articles on recently deceased people were frequently written by their relatives or friends. Even if not, there are often references to unpublished information obtained from relatives. This would of course not be allowed on Wikipedia under WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:V. I have heard the author of an article on ODNB, a professional historian, criticise the article on DNB that he replaced (written by a friend of the subject) as "a complete white-wash".

I recently wrote to the ODNB pointing out differences between one of their articles and what was said in obituaries. They have referred it to the article author. I have no way of knowing what "the truth" is in this case or if it even exists, but the ODNB is not infallible.

While I have no doubt that the great majority of articles on the ODNB are of high standard, it is at least possible that in a few cases WP will be better.

If by better you mean they include drive by vandalism, baseless statements concerning the person's sexuality, images including genitalia "for comparison" and a detailed listing of any reference on Family Guy, The Simpsons and Futurmara I susppose.

[Straightforward]

People willing to spend countless amounts of time "building an encyclopedia" are in some sense aberrant and deformed.

I'm sure the people behind Britannica, World Book, and Encarta might disagree. Then again they got paid.

Emphasis added above

There you go.

Then again, many projects have not paid their contributors. None of the contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a resource of unsurpassed quality, were paid. Generally speaking, contributors to various specialized Encyclopedia of X variants are not paid either. They are experts who work as part of the general enterprise of academia or to spread knowledge or to advance their careers.

It is interesting to compare the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and its predecessor the Dictionary of National Biography, with Wikipedia. In both of them the articles on recently deceased people were frequently written by their relatives or friends. Even if not, there are often references to unpublished information obtained from relatives. This would of course not be allowed on Wikipedia under WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:V. I have heard the author of an article on ODNB, a professional historian, criticise the article on DNB that he replaced (written by a friend of the subject) as "a complete white-wash".

I recently wrote to the ODNB pointing out differences between one of their articles and what was said in obituaries. They have referred it to the article author. I have no way of knowing what "the truth" is in this case or if it even exists, but the ODNB is not infallible.

While I have no doubt that the great majority of articles on the ODNB are of high standard, it is at least possible that in a few cases WP will be better.

If by better you mean they include drive by vandalism, baseless statements concerning the person's sexuality, images including genitalia "for comparison" and a detailed listing of any reference on Family Guy, The Simpsons and Futurmara I susppose.

Come off it! I'm not an idiot and I'm well aware of the problems there are on WP and how even a good article can be damaged by vandals or silly editors. However, nor am I of the mindset that everything on WP is bad, even the good bits, and that anything else must be better. There are plenty of good biographies on WP, with no baseless statements concerning the person's sexuality, genitalia or Family Guy. Further, although ODNB is undoubtedly an excellent source it is far from perfect, especially for recently deceased people where often the article displays a distinct POV. Failure to recognise these points makes it difficult to criticise WP when it is bad, which is certainly fairly often.

Also, WP has plenty of articles on people who are notable and interesting yet have no ODNB articles. Conversely, I am surprised how many people have ODNB articles but no WP ones. Not that I'd say that on WP or people will just shout {{sofixit}}. The old DNB was even worse; it didn't even have an article on Stan Laurel. The ODNB plugged a lot of the more obvious holes. It also added articles on many women. Some would say that's because the DNB editors were male chauvinists who overlooked these women; others would suggest the ODNB is bending over backwards to be politically correct and have as many women as possible. My belief is that both these statements are true.

This would of course not be allowed on Wikipedia under WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:V.

RFLMAO!

Surely if you are going to try to criticize Wikipedia you have to use these terms. They're pretty fundamental to the way the place works or at least is supposed to work. I should have added WP:COI of course.

[thekohser]

Come off it! I'm not an idiot and I'm well aware of the problems there are on WP and how even a good article can be damaged by vandals or silly editors.

Straightforward, hear hear!

Now, could you please guide us on whether this person is a vandal or a silly editor?

Or, are you of the opinion that he wasn't "damaging" the article?

This post has been edited by thekohser: Tue 23rd March 2010, 3:10pm

[thekohser]

Come off it! I'm not an idiot and I'm well aware of the problems there are on WP and how even a good article can be damaged by vandals or silly editors.

Straightforward, hear hear!

Now, could you please guide us on whether this person is a vandal or a silly editor?

Or, are you of the opinion that he wasn't "damaging" the article?

You didn't answer my simple question, Straightforward. Once you can demonstrate your ability to engage on the simple questions, I will proceed on to the more complex questions.

[thekohser]

Come off it! I'm not an idiot and I'm well aware of the problems there are on WP and how even a good article can be damaged by vandals or silly editors.

Straightforward, hear hear!

Now, could you please guide us on whether this person is a vandal or a silly editor?

Or, are you of the opinion that he wasn't "damaging" the article?

You didn't answer my simple question, Straightforward. Once you can demonstrate your ability to engage on the simple questions, I will proceed on to the more complex questions.

Bumping this. I may have missed it, but Straightforward still hasn't answered this. Is because he's Poetlister? By the way, I got a couple of e-mails from Poetlister this weekend. It seems he's sad that I haven't supported him more.

[Somey]

Bumping this. I may have missed it, but Straightforward still hasn't answered this. Is because he's Poetlister?

He is, indeed, Poetlister. However, it's conceivable that he could have other reasons for not answering, like adenoids or painful genital warts.

Anyway, just because you were right this time doesn't mean we wouldn't prefer it if you'd bring these suspicions of yours to us more privately in future...

By the way, I got a couple of e-mails from Poetlister this weekend. It seems he's sad that I haven't supported him more.

Well, it's not his fault, is it? (Whatever it is.)

[thekohser]

Bumping this. I may have missed it, but Straightforward still hasn't answered this. Is because he's Poetlister?

He is, indeed, Poetlister. However, it's conceivable that he could have other reasons for not answering, like adenoids or painful genital warts.

Anyway, just because you were right this time doesn't mean we wouldn't prefer it if you'd bring these suspicions of yours to us more privately in future...

By the way, I got a couple of e-mails from Poetlister this weekend. It seems he's sad that I haven't supported him more.

Well, it's not his fault, is it? (Whatever it is.)

Somey, could you remind me again why we don't want to publicly embarrass MB as he continues to manipulate this board and waste our time? Is it that you want to be able to monitor his activity, so that you might get more skilled at understanding his IP techniques? If that's the case, I can probably comply with that. However, I have to say it did feel good to finally nail one on the head.

Dark chocolate bunnies are on me today!