4 ms·

It's pretty clear that Wikipedia's eventually death/massive reorganization will come about over four easily recognizable flaws: (1) rejecting articles for nota

by Steko 15y ago

It's pretty clear that Wikipedia's eventually death/massive reorganization will come about over four easily recognizable flaws: (1) rejecting articles for notability. (2) no advertising (3) reliance on a tiny population of unpaid editors. (4) allowing anonymous edits. Google tried with Knol but they focused on (2), (3) and (4) when in actuality the biggest weakness is (1) due to Kryder's Law. What Google (or Microsoft or some startup) should do is create a third party wikipedia extension, call it notapedia (or whatever) and have it spider wikipedia and keep a fork of any page deleted for notability reasons. Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. People will be able to make their own (notable or not notapedia) info pages. Notapedia will hit a critical mass and the killing blow will come all at once as wikipedia is forked and most of their editors enticed with revenue deals. Having swallowed it's father (patriphagicide?) notapedia grows even faster. Info pages are created for nearly every person on the planet, becoming the anti-facebook that Zuckerburg envisioned but replacing the real facebook and twitter and flickr and linked in and everything else as well. Businesses and government agencies will check your id against the datestamped photos of you on notapedia. An enormous network of private and government databases will be setup to work as extensions of notapedia.

someperson 15y ago
The final paragraph seems like a huge leap from your (very convincing) earlier paragraphs. Reducing/removing notability guidelines does not necessarily open the flood gates to some kind of social network with a wiki page for every individual on earth :P That said, I really hope a wikipedia fork gains popularity and is merged back later.
- Steko 15y ago
  Was engaging in a bit of artistic license there but I think it's certainly possible. Once the notability threshold is gone and people realize they could make a page for themselves, their family, friends, their dog, their band... Well some people will do that. This can easily be turned into a crowd sourced version of any social or blogging service. It grows faster because one user can make pages for 100, 1000 people. It grows faster because the total lack of privacy and editorial controls make it more interesting (right up Google's alley btw). Lack of anonymous commenting means people are ultimately subject to libel laws.

by Steko 15y ago

someperson 15y ago

The final paragraph seems like a huge leap from your (very convincing) earlier paragraphs. Reducing/removing notability guidelines does not necessarily open the flood gates to some kind of social network with a wiki page for every individual on earth :P That said, I really hope a wikipedia fork gains popularity and is merged back later.

Steko 15y ago
Was engaging in a bit of artistic license there but I think it's certainly possible. Once the notability threshold is gone and people realize they could make a page for themselves, their family, friends, their dog, their band... Well some people will do that. This can easily be turned into a crowd sourced version of any social or blogging service. It grows faster because one user can make pages for 100, 1000 people. It grows faster because the total lack of privacy and editorial controls make it more interesting (right up Google's alley btw). Lack of anonymous commenting means people are ultimately subject to libel laws.