Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>> I do however in the larger scheme of things think that
>> having a credible fork of the English wikipedia at this
>> stage of its life-cycle wouldn't be counter-productive,
>> ghod knows somebody needs to keep it honest. But I
>> have very little hope of that happening in a form that is
>> genuine, and not just a mocker.
>>
>
> Agreed. At least in theory it counter-balance the rule-oriented and
> corporatist tendencies that have developed. The difficulty is that it
> would take a lot of resources and tenacity to pull this off.
>
> Ec
>
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At this stage, I'd say that the odds of a successful fork are roughly
nil. The problem for a fork is that it is immediately competes with
wikipedia, and is offering a product that the average reader or
contributor will probably not differentiate much from wikipedia. If it
takes the whole database, it won't have enough initial users to maintain
it. If it doesn't, then why would anyone use it when they have wikipedia?
The only real hope for a competitor would be one that offered something
substantially different to both reader and writer. Only then can it
overcome the "motivation problem" of getting people interested in an
initially small project, when there's the giant wikipedia available.
The ingredients of a "different product" are there:
Contributors could be offered motivation in things like 1) promises of
ad-revenue share. 2) meaningful attribution, where you can personally
take the kudos of writing a superb article into the real world (CV
etc.). 3) Ability to publish original research. 4) Ability to reflect a POV.
Readers could be offered things like: 1) useful commercial links
("people interested in this topic might like to buy the following
books") 2) a more reliable - stable product 3) a more "child friendly"
product. 4) ability to know the qualifications - or even online
reputation - of the author. 5) ability to read articles written from a
POV you share.
Now, some of those attributes were offered by veropedia, some by
Citenzium, or Conservapedia, and some by others. Some are obviously
incompatible, or possibly infeasible, and so far no one has found a
recipe to combine any of them successfully. (I'd class all current
offerings as failed or failing). However given that the rewards for
success here could be remarkably high, I'd suggest that there will be
more attempts in coming years, and possibly by very well-resourced
players (Wikipedia is vulnerable in that the WMF is underfunded - what
happens if a competitor goes for advertising with a massive publicity
budget could be interesting). It is not beyond possibility that someday
someone will stumble on a formula that works, and will either complement
or overshadow wikipedia.
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