Talk:Proposals for new projects
This is a list of project ideas collected from a jungle of different single pages (which now redirect to this page here). If you like one of the proposals here and are willing to realize it and work on it, put a formal proposal on Proposals for new projects and move the relevant content from here back to its original page (or a new name, if you choose a different working title for it) and refactor it to a detailed plan on how to build this special wiki.
WikiLawmaker
As Wikipedia is to the Encyclopædia Britannica, so WikiLawmaker is to the constitution of the United States (or similar). Visitors will be invited to participate in the writing of articles of law that declare rights and attempt to foster a stable society. However they will have to do so with logical argument and a pragmatic state of mind - laws have to be realistic and be able to work, to the desired effect, in the real world (this is WikiLawmaker's version of the neutral point of view). You can find a more detailed proposal on the WikiLawmaker Proposal page.
- GJLawmaker 18:43, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I think the concept in itself is very interesting, but what exactly would be the purpose of WikiLaw? A by the people, for the people sort of thing? Foeke 15:40, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I see the purpose of WikiLawmaker as fourfold:
- to create a resource that details the arguments for and against particular real life laws and the history behind them
- to give people experience at the process of writing laws and having them exposed to others and the imperfect world - an experience of the concept of law as something you own rather than something that is placed upon you
- to give people an arena to experiment with their own political ideas
- to inspire people to get more involved in real life politics, by exposure to ideas they may not have encountered before and by the support that comes from logical argument
- I have updated the proposal page with these points.
- GJLawmaker 08:03, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- It sounds interesting, and I think it would be interesting to have a WikiLawmaker, especially the first of the fourfold purpose. Foeke 10:59, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I see the purpose of WikiLawmaker as fourfold:
Wikipedia in Ebonics!!!!!!!!!!
The time has come! Wikipedia in Ebonics, it would be much more entertaining and fun to post and read articles in Ebonics. The url should be ebon.wikipedia.org
- The purpose of Wikipedia is not to be "entertaining". It might be useful, though, as a genuine education tool for... inner-city schools or what-have-you. Didn't some school district in Oakland or something recognize and teach ebonics as a language? LockeShocke 20:31, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A platform for people who need their text translated into different languages. They can post their text, which then will be translated by other people - in whole or in part.
Wikicomposers
a proposed wiki to create a great collection of original works in classical music, jazz, popular music, country, carnatic, rock, improvisation, african rhythmic music, experimental music, mediterranean music and so on. Anyone who composes original music and is willing to distribute it in (GFDL) may submit ones music composition.
Millions of collectors worldwide use catalogs for their collections of coins, stamps, sports memorabilia, or whatever. And usually, they also maintain a collection list, which lists and describes the items of their collection. If there was a standard catalog format, it would be easy to combine all the collection lists into a huge catalog.
Of course, some types of collectibles are hard or impossible to catalogize, but e.g. for modern coins it's quite simple, because there is a known and manageable number of issues.
A free, standardized electronic catalog could not only be used for reference; it would also be easy to write collection management software which uses this data. With the click of a mouse, the user could produce a list of his/her missing items or doublets. And this software needn't be restricted to one collector on one computer. Send your list of doublets to your fellow collector who can immediately match this list whith his/her missing items list. Or combine the lists of all collectors to a global electronic trading platform... --Zumbo 22:27, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- As a coin collector, I think this is a fabulous idea. --Mero 03:07, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- I like the idea too \Mikez 17:36, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC) (stamps)
- Interesting but I am not sure a wiki is the best means to store this kind of information. Anyway I have a already whole set of info about French stamps under a free licence (GPL), if needed. http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/stamps-sql/ Yann 21:44, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I'd be behind this. There are a lot of collectables out there, and it would be nice to have wikipedia-style collaboration on cataloging them all. - DrakeCaiman 14:38, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I'm a casual coin collector, and I think this is a cool idea. Maybe not the best name for it though - how about Wikicollection or something similar? Andrevan 14:20, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Is it going to embrace the concept of Wikistamp?
- sounds useful :) --217.228.149.40 03:55, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yearbook
See also: Dealing with September 11 pages, Please help build 911 Attack memorial, What to do with entries related to September 11 casualties
Some comments on the Talk page for w:September 11 2001, Terrorist Attack got me thinking. A number of people rightly say that much of the Sept. 11 material, especially the individual 'memorials', though they are laudable in themselves, really have no place in a true encyclopedia. I basically agree. Then it occurred to me that both Britannica and World Book have for many years issued 'Yearbook' editions with the distributions of their new encyc. sets. These Yearbooks are devoted to the major events, scientific achievements, etc. for each individual year, allowing the editors to expand somewhat on issues that will only end up with a passing reference in the main encyc. I think Wikipedia stands much in need of something like this. No amount of cajoling will keep people from posting detailed stuff that seems important today but will only merit a few blanket sentences in the ongoing encyc. Much of this stuff would be just right for a Yearbook, as would material like the Sept. 11 memorials. What say you to a WikiYearbook side project? JDG Oct. 9, 2002
If you want to, go for it! Jimmy has said in the past that he'll host just about any wiki, so I'm sure he'd be glad to host a project somewhat related to Wikipedia.
Personally, however, I can't say I'm very enthusiastic about the idea. Encyclopedia yearbooks are a relic of the past. They were designed to keep a printed encyclopedia set from becoming hopelessly outdated, and they didn't even do a good job at that. World Book would send me a $50 yearbook every year, complete with stickers to put in my encyclopedia volumes saying , "This article has been updated", with a yearbook cross-reference.
If something no longer fits in an encyclopedia article, it can either be moved into its own article, or even moved to the meta. --Stephen Gilbert 11:01 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)
But we're not limited by paper. Granted, that means that recent years will get way more material compared to past events. If we one day come to produce a paper version of Wikipedia, we'll have to do some trimming then. The point about the September 11 2001 stufff is that much of it isn't encyclopedic.
Wikipedia's Current Events page already has archives. This might make the project easier, at least for indexing a few years. – Mxn 23:51, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Never mind, I guess I should've read the page better before commenting. :) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) 01:07, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
With the wiki software it should be possible to introduce pairs of words in any language to any other and create the first GNU translation project with the maximum possible number of languages.
- The web should generate a page with the often non translated words... Interesting. Any language could be translated in any other. And if a pair of words doesn't exist ("Buenos días" -> "Good morning" Spanish/English), the program could translate trought a third language ("Buenos días" -> "Bonjour" -> "Good morning" Spanish/French/English)
Comments
- The idea is interesting and revolutionary, but needs lots of changes in the software, I suppose. A word-by-word translation project seems easy, but how could the grammar be programmed? The grammar would be very conflictive.
- This could be used to translate pages that already exist into another language where a page on that topic doesn't exist.
If it was done word by word, the page would not make very good reading sense in the other language, but it then becomes a lot less work patching up the grammar, than completely translating it from scratch, or re-writing it from scratch.Naturally it would be better to have it written in another language from scratch, so you can get what that topic means to those people, but this could help just to start people off. --Cimulation
- This is a good idea. But the problem with this approach is that the software required to do the translation is usually proprietary, and very expensive. Systran server would probably be the one to use. The translation it produces is decent, but often runs into problems with generating schisms which are impossible to translate, unless one is sufficiently bilingual. However, at least machine translation can assist in the bulk of the work, and the task of dealing with hundreds of thousands of documents can become feasible.
- The other problem is that the real point of translation isnt just to spread English around. In fact, from Wikipedia's point of view, this represents more of a Foreign->English language issue. I.e. people are more interested in reading something they cant yet read, and there are way more English speakers —so the texts of other language wikis can find themselves rapidly integrated into English. While this is really a Good Thing, its also only a one-way process, which without feedback will tend to simply be pruned of the balance that non-Western views represent. The benefits far outweigh the defecits, however.-KuniShiro 23:22, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
How about an encyclopedia of names? The idea would be to give the meanings and origins of common and uncommon names, much like baby-naming books do. We could also include in the article a short list of some famous people who also have those names (mostly the best known ones).
So for instance, here is a rough draft of an article on Linus:
==Origin==
Greek
==Meaning==
The name comes from Linos, the son of the Greek god Apollo.
==Famous people named Linus==
- Pope Linus
- Linus Pauling, chemist
- Linus Roache, actor
- Linus Torvalds, programmer
- Linus van Pelt, Peanuts character
-- LGagnon
- This is already done in Wiktionary. See en:wikt:Wiktionary Appendix:First names for example. Also, some of the other Wikipedias have this sort of information (pl:Angela for example). I think there might already be too much overlap with Wikipedia and Wiktionary to start a separate project for this. Angela 02:10, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
- I've looked at the Wiktionary section, but it doesn't seem to do a very good job at accomplishing the task as I described it. The articles that I've seen that have come of it treat them as dictionary entries rather than articles on names. This is only further complicated by the fact that some names happen to be the same as regular words (Mark is a noun & verb, bob is a verb, etc). Wikipedia may be the best of the currently existing places to make these articles, but many such articles are already used as disambiguation pages for people, places, and things with such names. -- LGagnon
- Names could be treated under Wiktionary, but there is a lot of content about names that differs, so unless the dictionary entries can have addition or different content format for names, they mightn't be covered well. Besides how many people that might add names don't because it doesn't occur to them to add them under Wiktionary entries? - July 6 2004
There is a huge need in the modern world for a news source which is unbiased. Here in the UK, the media is largely anti-Zionist, with the BBC broadcasting news reports in a biased way. I'm no expert in this, but I expect there are plenty of articles around on the internet about this, they themselves biased. Also, there is a tendency to magnify Israel, Iraq, Ireland and domestic affairs. I am vaguely aware that there must be other conflicts somewhere, but the only other place I can think of is the anti-Semitic attacks in France and the conflict in Zimbabwe. I think I am an example of a biased reader with a distorted view of the world.
What I am proposing is a wiki to list and describe all conflicts around the world in NPOV, putting the reader's view of the world in proportion, and not associating conflicts and attacks with recent political events. For example, in the Daily Mail (my biased JS teacher says), an article about some more politics brewing over Israel was placed next to one about three soldiers in Iraq who were attacked by local residents. This seems, to me, to be an implicit connection between the usual attacks on the American military in Iraq and the developments in Israel. Therefore, the wiki would not use phrases like "The suicide attack came after the Road to Peace map was denounced..." explicitly giving the suicide attack a political motive, which many Zionists would disagree with.
I hope I have made my point clear. R3m0t (14) 12:27, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I have just found a perfect example - 3 million killed in en:cuba in a civil war since 1998. I had no idea!
I would really like to recieve feedback on this, on two main points: 1) Is it needed? and 2) Is it viable (will it be used, not trolled, etc)? R3m0t 21:50, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is no such thing as unbiased text. The best you can do is acknowledge your biases. -yish 18 Apr 2004, 00:27 UTC
- You're just biased against NPOV!
I'm an American who reads UK newspapers, because they actually acknowledge their bias. Seriously, any news source that claims to be objective is a sham and only leads to a misguided ideology in which people don't question the source. The NPOV thing that was mentioned is also pretty bad. I mean, one of the first ways it deals with main objections is by quoting Nagel. The idea that a person can be objective is a relic leftover from the Enlightenment project that also claimed that rationality is universal. The problem was that the idea of rationality changed from person to person. Now, it's (almost) an academic truism that universalisms are categorically false (and I understand the irony in this statement). Objectivity falls prey to the same criticisms that rationality would. Besides, bias is subtle. It peeps its head around the corner in issues like space, focus, grammar, and anything else. Devoting more space to the US Presidential elections rather than, say, a Railroad commisioner election could count as bias. Using the word essentially to introduce a concept would count as bias (along with grounds, basically, fundamentally, etc...). Even putting a stress point in a place in a sentence, any stress point, in any sentence, is bias. To me, the better thing is to just embrace your bias and flaunt it so that people can see where you're coming from. It's a lot more honest than lying to them (and yourself) that you can be objective. -s.rice 16 Nov 2004.
Charter: Intended to serve as a comprehensive categorized catalog of software.
Organization: Any developers/users will be allowed to add an entry for a software, detailing homepage, license status, download links...etc
Merger: See Wikilogue.
It might make a good free alternative to websites like download.com. A user rating system would be nice to put in. One potential problem is it could be abused by companies wanting to promote their software over that of their competators.
Related projects: there is already a german soft.ware.catalog called "Tuxfutter" ("futter" is the german word for animal.food)
it is also based on media.wiki and it also uses gnu.fdl
at this moment it has 432 articles, and it is growing very fastly
an english Tuxfutter is also planned
i am actually preparing for the new desing
the url is http://www.tuxfutter.de/wiki/Hauptseite
--marti7D3
Well, folks, the english version of Tuxfutter (it is then called "Tuxfood") is installed but not yet accesible for the public. I will drop a note here if the website is ready for the world :) -- HaukeZuehl
ok, the english tuxfutter is ready now! actually it's very small, but it mustn't keep so ;) --marti7D3
Charter: To provide fora and resources for software developers to discuss issues related to software development. The proposed wiki is NOT meant to host pages for specific software projects, sites like Sourceforge et. al. are available for that. It is, however, intended to host resources and fora for specific software applications, e.g. community-blogs, calender applications, media players..etc. Discussion is intended to revolve around users discussing possible features in such a generic application. Also, discussion of general algorithms and issues. The resources counterpart for an application would center on informing the reader of the typical complexity, tools, experience, methods that are involved in such a type of application. So, for writing blogging software, resource section would focus on how PHP/perl/MySQL are used, what the typical user interaction issues are, link to some well-implemented blogs..etc. The associated wiki forum would allow contributors to suggest related ideas, improvements, algorithms..etc
Merger: On closer thought, instead of establishing a separate Wiki, maybe this project could be merged with Wikiware. You could have a catalog section and the above.
Wikectory is my proposal for an open source directory using MediaWiki. It could be started by sourcing from DMOZ, the Open Directory Project initially.
- Take a look at http://3apes.com/directory/ - Jimbo started it a long, long time ago ... --Kurt Jansson 02:54, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- The project can be found under http://www.wikia.com/ now. --Kurt Jansson 08:05, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Cool idea, terrible name. I'll try to think of something. --Maveric149 04:08, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Why not WikiDir? Optim 23:27, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Because all Wikipedia spin off projects have to start as horrible name proposals. It's an unwritten law.-Erik
Wikirectory. - Calmypal 00:14, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Nah, that sounds too much like a building adjacent to a church. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) 22:38, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
http://www.howstuffworks.com is a web site that explains the inner workings of daily objects and is a great resource of information. However, some articles expose tough explanations that makes you wonder and look up more information on the subject to get it. The web site is edited. A wikified version (written from scratch, we don't need to rip how stuff works, but can fill up gaps left open by them) may present an information resource in similarity to wikipedia, but with a more engineering look upon the real world.
Wiki How do I? / Wikianswers
A wiki where people can ask any "How do I?" question and get answers or alternatively.. more generally any question and get answers. --Hemanshu
I'd love to see a free wiki Google Answers-alike, is that the kind of thing you're thinking of?
- Yes
Anyone can come and ask a new question, which would create a new wiki page with the question (should the question be editable?) and allow anyone to contribute to answering it.
- Question should not be edited except for correcting spelling or the like.
I'm not sure what would happen if there was more than one answer though, would the idea be to discuss solutions to come up with one answer? Or provide differing solutions?
- More than 1 answer is fine, isn't it? It doesn't have to be 1 answer --Hemanshu 23:12, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
More possible names whilst bored: Wikiask, WikiQA/WikQA, Wikiquery/Wikquery/Wikuery, Wikiquestions. --Tom- 19:49, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- How about Wikiuestions? Kinda wierd looking, it's true... :) --Spikey 05:38, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. Especially since I really need to know how to iron those shirts...
Check out the Know-How Wiki. Looks like they have a good start in developing this idea, although they probably should update their wiki software and do a good deal more work with regards to organization. -- Stevietheman 14:26, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've been growing a site called FAQ Farm http://www.FAQfarm.com/ for a couple years. It's a "question and answer co-op" that does basically what we're talking about here. Here's the mission statement. Unfortunately, the software is really limited right now. It doesn't enable users to improve upon existing answers. It should have been a wiki from the start; I just didn't know that. Now I'm working with a programmer to convert the MediaWiki code for FAQ Farm and make it Wiki FAQs. We'll be Beta testing this soon. -- Cwhitten 15:57, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've been wondering about this from a different angle. How about WikiAdvice. It's sort of a proactive advice center, i.e. give advice on stopping a crying baby, how to set up metrics for managing people, how to get control of all your files, how to uncolg a drain, what to do when you've got a migraine, etc etc. So there's a lot of how to type elements, but it's easier to organize and grow if it's presented as Advice. User:frogcat 10 Nov 2004
Well, someone put a link here to this, and I think it's a kinda of a good idea even though we already have band and musician information on Wikipedia. I myself have a diffrent idea, which would be like a Wikisource or Wikimagery for music and could hold public domain music such as Beethoven or Bach. Of course, we could move on to Creative Commons lisenced music...if the terms and conditions are right though.
Pros:
- Free, acessible copylefted music.
- Could all be in .ogg.
Cons:
- Could turn into a Wiki-verison of Napster.
- Possible uploads of copyrighted music.
Also, the project could be combined with Wikimagery, to create a Media Libary as suggested by User:IMSoP on the Wikimagery page. --Patrick Mannion 21:13, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Maybe this could be combined with the Wikimedia Commons? Angela 21:34, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Then commons should include a way to write music seets with wiki --Suisui
I think the real power of a project like this would be to recreate allmusic.com in Wiki/GFDL. all music guide is immensely popular and I think we could almost top them with a wiki. Just music reviews and discography. Some kind of a more strict and searchable format than basic wikipedia; for instance you could search recordings by year, by genre, etc. Possible could be movie and book reviews too? --Lussmu 20:34, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
With the disastrous relaunch of allmusic.com, whereby users are only allowed to use the site with Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows, and with their setup not allowing direct linking, I think this project is a lot more important. --Ilya 03:21, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think the proposal for a WikiMusic should combine public domain and copyleft music sources with the band and artist information of the Wikipedia entries.
Integration with [http:/www.musicbrainz.org MusicBrainz] and AudioScrobbler seems entirely possible. The MusicBrainz information is open source, as is the data for artist similarity, song popularity, etc. from AudioScrobbler. Integration with these services, combined with the additional information provided by users of concert dates, band biographies, etc. similar to AllMusic would make this a very powerful and popular wiki. 141.149.209.153 22:06, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Inventions for a better world. Donated by the inventors to the public.
- I really like this idea, it also could be used as a collaborative invention platform, where we could start with ordinary everyday inventions and people could post small and large improvements to them. --Andrew Hudson 09:49, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What would make an invention? Some more or less complete singular idea or a vision of something that could exist? Mere atomic thoughts hardly qualify and neither do code snippets. --Blades 22:30, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
See:
I propose to set up a database of theories. Anyon who has a theory, in any field, will be able to publish it on Theoriki. Other users will then be asked to disprove the theory. A theory that has been disproved will be marked so. If a user disproves an article that disproved a theory, the article is marked disproved, the thoery is marke undisproved, and so on. A user can attempt to disprove any article related to a theory, or the theory itself, regardless of the number of disproving articles already added.
Theories like "Aliens kidnapped Elvis" will not be published.
Theoriki will be a reservoir of ideas.
- It's a nice idea that could encapsulate the information age nicely, but the nature of wiki would make it important to allow "Aliens kidnapped Elvis" articles (and counter-articles). Binary prove/disprove will likely fall over though. And has wiki concepts and community familiarity matured to a point to allow wiki on creative concepts them selves? - Jul7 6 2004
Wikiclip
So, a discussion started on the Sodipodi mailing list about creating an SVG clipart collection project on SourceForge. Sodipodi users have already created a huge clipart collection including flags of all countries.
Right now, Sodipodi has built up this clipart collection using email submissions to their mailing list. The proposal on Sodipodi list would use SourceForge's CVS system as a collaboration technique. However, the high overhead of collaboration needed for CVS may make that a bit tedious.
Another possibility is creating a Wiki-based clip-art collection, for SVG and other clip-art file formats. This would lower the bar for contributions considerably.
This would be related, if not part of, to Wikimagery.
Wikiclip if not images, may become the site, or a new name like Wikideo or Wikivideos, cilp can also mean videoclips.
A wiki where people describe how the world is actually governed. Presumably many different viewpoints would be accumulated in such a wiki. It would be a great resource for learning about the world propoganda machines work, how governments really function, as opposed to how the say they function and the like. It would be good place for describing the activities of multi-nationals, and their global influence. Presumably it would also be heavily linked into the main Wikipedia, and may be more suited to being a part of the Wikipedia, but I don't know.
Possible things to include would be:
- A basic atlas to reference things
- Descriptions of the not-so-obvious chains of ownership of corporations (eg, what does Time Warner actually own etc.)
- Descriptions of the spheres of influence of corporations/nations etc.
- Case studies of how ways of governance in the world have actually worked (eg, experiments with negative-interest money systems that have gone on already).
- Anything else to do with how the world actually governs itself.
this is hugely work in progress. i just wanted to get the idea out in open so people could look at it, destroy it, love it, whatever.
Comments
Such a project would probably found better home at Disinfopedia. Nikola Smolenski 11:51, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The problem is to ensure accuracy, so that such a tool does not itself become an instrument of political propoganda.
I like the idea but Disinfopedia already exists. Also, I do not think it it a good idea for WikiMedia Foundation to host/manage WikiWorld. If you plan to host such a wiki by yourself, please inform me. Optim 23:18, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)
This is an idea whose time has come.
The basic elements of this sort of Wiki could be government documents. Governments can be recruited to submit their own documents, when the project gains sufficient momentum. The starting point would be public presure on govermnent agencies to release documents. Laws requiring document release are already in force in many places. Open records laws need to be exercised. The project needs an organizing tool that would provide active citizens guidelines for obtaining and presenting government documents in an encyclopedic format. Operations of government are usually simple organizational charts, with powers of each level enumerated in ordinances, constitutions, charters and rules. Many laws and ordinances are already available on-line, but some are moving toward pay-per-view sites. This is just the time to start with an aggressive campaign for government transparency that removes the veil of media filtration between citizens and government information.
I have proposed a related direction, but which focuses on developing more visual resources more so that generating content related to public processes. The latter is absolutely an element of the whole-earth Wiki I am suggesting. I think I will change the name of that article and post it to the front page of Wikimedia. Thanks for this one. Lets make this thing move forward! - WholeEarthWiki --Bird 18:56, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Wikijoke is a proposed project to record all humor from earliest Egyptian and Mayan double entendres to the choicest sniggles doing the rounds at this very moment.
Comments
- Brilliant. Andrevan 14:23, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- How would it be categorized? By Time heard, or alphabetically, categorically? How? --Cimulation
Alternative names: WikiPeople, WikiSocial
WikiSingles would be a place where people can post just a bit about themselves and their interests, and create a network on new connections based on shared interests, location, etc. A wiki would be a great place to meet people in a safe yet dynamic way. Userpages are sort of a way to do this right now but the intent is focused on the work of developing the content, not socializing with each other.
There are enough internet dating services out there. The main purpose of Wiki is not social interaction, though this is necessary to keep everything from rapidly breaking down. Wiki exists so that people may freely and openly share knowledge. - Calmypal 01:53, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Comments
It's an interesting idea. However I think that WikiMedia Foundation has no interest in such a project since its mission is different. But yes, a socialising wiki would be great! Optim 10:13, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
+1 on this. Nifty idea. One question: does it have to be "Singles"? Couldn't it just be "Wikipeople"? I'd participate, but I'm neither single nor lookin' for love. --Evan 06:40, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think this is a fabulous idea, but it doesn't belong in the form of a wiki. One of the great strengths/purposes of wiki projects is a large community of volunteer editors and writers. But who should be editing a person's bio except that one person? Also, information about individuals can rapidly become outdated. One last point: if a significant component of the project is socialization, then the all-essential histroy pages become superfluous/wasteful. Is it really necessary to include the history of online chit-chat since the foundation of the project? I know of no parallel to this idea (free all-inclusive online biographies and socializing) but does it need to be it be wikified?
Numberpedia is an idea I have about all the supposedly evil number pages on the wikipedia, especially en. All the Numberpedia articles would be figures, e.g. http://en.numberpedia.org/wiki/555. Another name could be Wikinumbers. --Mero 12:15, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Comments
It would really solve a problem for us. - Calmypal 00:19, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I've been thinking of how this could be done with a modified version of the software. My essential idea is that you could use something half-way between bots and transclusions (as in MediaWiki: messages) to generate articles from templates, which would define which numbers they applied to, and how to generate appropriate text (such as x is the yth prime number).
Of course, this would necessitate some kind of "WikiScript", but it would mean that any number could have an article, generated on request. For templates that matched only a small set of numbers, the text could be pre-generated and cached somewhere, while those with wider scope would be calculated when a matching number was requested (and then cached until the next change). A change that effected a very large number of articles would carry a warning - I was originally thinking of requiring verification of such edits, but the existing protection mechanism could be used for that.
All very much Blue Sky stuff at the moment, but I have the beginnings of an idea how it could work. - IMSoP 18:19, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)
What do you guys think of the idea of creating a sister project with a more relaxed NPOV policy (but still with antivandalism "weeding" and the correction of blantant errors as well as fact which can be "objectively" shown to be false) where users can "collaborate" or debate their way into writing opinionated essays (we could have different essays for different opinions) and debate articles? It's more than just putting up a web site, or a usenet forum or a message board because it would still be a Wiki where anyone can edit anything. For essays, we could have a more "rhetorical"/personal/expository style than an encyclopedia.
What is your opinion on the matter?
Comments
- I agree that some place to put original research needs to be created. Jrincayc 18:38, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- How about Wikisource? (For research, that is, not for POV essays). -- Jimregan 02:02, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
- I don't understand how this could be of any use. How can we have people writing subjective material and yet let anyone edit it. The reason wiki works for an encylopaedia is because there is one definite version of events. If I write an article about how Israel have done bad things (just a topical wikipedia example), then how can the comunity as a whole edit this piece considering it was written with one particular slant.
- Blogger already offers the ability for people to put their opinions online for free, and you can, if you wish, have a team of people editing your site. The proposed idea just cannot be both "personal" and "anyone can edit anything" without it just being a slow versionof a chat room. User:Tompagenet Tompagenet 08:33, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Have you ever read a book and gone, thats not right. Ever wanted to edit the book (If you have you are probably well on your way to being a wikiaholic.)? Blogger is not the same because things never stabalize. The right tools are not there. You can't edit the original unless you are one of the team of people (and possibly not even then). Plus, blogs have short time before effectively editing stops (how many blogs continue to improve the articles years after the article is posted?). Some questions take decades to answer and require hundreds of people's input. For example, will humanity cause earths systems to degrade? Limits to growth written in the late 1960s gave this initial question. It has not been answered satisfactorily to my knowledge. I have read books on both sides of this question and they all make me wish that I could edit the books, because each of them misses points that the others make. Wikipedia bounces up against the current limits of knowledge already. In a decade or so, it will probably have documented many areas of knowledge up to the limit that is known. Wikipedia does not allow original research, so there needs to be some place that the original research can be done, and I firmly believe that a wiki can be a better collaberation environment than traditional research has been. (Edit this comment at will, just add your name to it) Jrincayc 18:33, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- "The reason wiki works for an encylopaedia is because there is one definite version of events."
- Hmm... are you that sure? Only one definite version that we all know for sure? I'm definitely not a relativist, but do we really have one definite uncontrovertial version of everything that is definitely right? And of course, you're free to right another article with your own slant (evidence and convincing arguments would be very much welcome in all articles, by the way). Or you could start a debate by writing down your criticisms and rebuttals and then someone else would counter with a counterrebuttal, etc...
- Otherwise, the NPOV policy would only encourage orthodoxy and an avoidence of controversial topics...
- Isn't this what Fred Bauder's project is for? (It was Internet Encyclopedia, but I think there was a name change). AFAIR, the guiding principle there is to have a Sympathetic POV, and to have multiple articles representing opposing POVs. -- Jimregan 02:02, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
Sometimes though, you have to wonder if we are like a kid discovering lego or playdoh because we do try to apply the wiki concept to just about everything. The problem is where does wiki end and the rest of the internet begin (possibly there is no line :) )? POV articles are what many sites on the internet store - so in a sense the problem has already been solved. Of course what we want is for POV articles, like NPOVs, to be able to evolve in thought as our (assumed) understanding of issues improve. You can't do that in a POV internet scenario. If you want to have a refined or different POV article you need to create your own web page with it. The POV articles (what most articles honestly are) don't get to grow. Are we in a sense trying to find a WikiDebate? The interesting thing about POV is that a person's Point of View can change; people are not static. If POVs can change then what distigushes one POV from another POV? You can (to a degree) nail down NPOV articles, but if you nail down POVs then the value of applying wiki and growth to POV articles is lost. The ability of Wiki to handle subjective thoughts with out strangling or sidelining them is part of the solution to the objectives of wiki's about ideas or theories or wiki-fiction. The problems and solutions of Subjective Collaborativism lie at the heart of democratic governance, diplomancy, multi-culturalism and Wiki. Who knows? Perhaps solving POV Wiki's could help far more than we know. - July 6 2004
The idea for LetterPedia is inspired by reading about Leibniz. From 1663 to 1716 Leibniz had exchange of about 20.000 letters to over 1100 people in 16 different countries.
LetterPedia could be a Wikimedia project with a database of letters, exchanged between people from Wikipedia.
The LetterPedia may consist of a records with the following format:
- from: (Link to Wikipedia)
- to: (Link to Wikipedia)
- date: (Link to Wikipedia Date)
- content: (Free wiki text).
--Rainer Wasserfuhr, 2004-07-11
- Letters are already covered at Wikisource with the same basic format, though not many. (An example). I don't see why there couldn't eventually be a few tens of thousands in there. TPK 14:04, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
cockney rhyming slang version for wikipedia
Just a proposal; but would it be possible to create a cockney rhyimg m slang version fo wikipedia. the url could be: crs.wikipedia.org. - fonzy
This might be more appropriate in the Wiktionary. Unless you mean to have an entire encyclopedia translated into CRS? Surely not... Neolux 14:33 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think that's resonable, to have wikipedia translated into another dialect, but if we do that with cockney rhyming slang, we also need an ebonics wikipedia at ebn.wikipedia.org. LittleDan 15:26, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
1337 speak a viable dialect
Is elite talk a viable enough language/dialect enough to have its own wikipedia? I guess it falls in the same vein as having a ebonics language version, and it depends on if anyone would actually want to work on it. As far as practicality goes though, I know I'v come across this 'language' a number of times with no way to 'translate' it. Retekp 13:45, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- For the most part, l33t is just a cipher, a handful of new words like n00b or meanings like camp, and a few purposeful misspellings. It's not a completely different language with different grammar and mechanics. Replace "the" with "teh" and tack on a couple "z0r"s to verbs and I think you'll have the gist of it. LockeShocke 04:21, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Associative Wiktionary
The goal of the Associative Wiktionary proposal is to convert Wictionary to associative one. It means that we shall add multilingual links to every word entry of Wiktionary.
Multilingual link - beautiful sensible sparkling phrase or sentence which combines words of several languages.
Examples of multilingual links
listen (English) lesa son(dream of forest, Russian)
know how say (English) ni2 hao3 (hello, Chinese)
dog polite (English) ne laet (does not bark, Russian)
zusammen (together, German) на экзамен (to exam, Russian)
xue2 sheng(student, Chinese) - sure handshake (English)
Ohayoo Gozaimasu (good morning, Japanese), go (English) йогой (yoga) заниматься (to make, Russian)
каждому (to everybody) скажите (say, Russian) - Hajimemashite (nice to meet you, Japanese)
malheureuse (unhappy, French) - мало роз (has not enough roses, Russian)
было мало (was not enough, Russian), но (but) molto bello (very good, Italian)
rebe(rabbi) zar(alien, Hebrew) - miserable (English)
tout a coup (suddenly, French) cop (English) тут как тут (here, Russian)
zloi(unkind, Russian) lawyer, ready for (English) redifa(chase, Hebrew)
Reasons to do Wictionary an associative
- At present the languages coexist almost independently. Amount of links between words of different languages is much less than amount of connections inside a language. Each language as though exists in its own plane presenting its own reflection of the world.
Creation of numerous links between languages will convert the structure of many parallel language planes to 3-dimensional structure which will be much richer than any individual language.
- Associative dictionary helps to learn languages fast.
- Common language helps different people to understand each other.
- Gives new opportunities for creative work. This is like poetry using not one but many languages. It also can be considered as a multilingual game.
- Will help to save weak languages connecting them to stronger ones.
Development of associative Wictionary requires participation of many people speaking in different languages. To take part just add multilingual links to Wiktionary entries.
more examples of multilingual links http://www.geocities.com/balbylon
User: shlomo lyblab@yahoo.com
- Sounds like very nice exercise to begin, to get into translation, the essential thing of every conversation, even of speaking at all. It's all permanent translation, multilingual communication.
MattisManzel 18:32, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Open questions
- The best place for multilingual links ?
possible variants:
- every entry in Wictionary, at the end
- The best format for multilingual links ?
variants:
- Use its language letters for every word, translation to the entry language, transcription
- The best name for multilingual links ?
variants:
- multilingual link
- translink
- mlingk or tlingk
please take part in the discussion
WikiAudio
I saw that there are two similar ideas for a music database. I think that it should be a WikiAudio data base. This could hold a collection of audio recordings. I would like to see both classic music and music that is donated, but I would also like to see audio books. There is a great deal of liturature with outdated (or never implemented) copyrights. Just Poe, Twain and Shakespear would be many hours of auido. With the increasing popularity of MP3 players, I think that this would be very popular.
- That could be incorporated into Wikisource. Files can easily be uploaded to Wikisource, and linked to from the actual notation of the music, or a copy of the book. -- user:zanimum
WikiMusic - Different (No Actual Music hosted ... just info)
Many people know they like a certain type of music, but don't always know what other musicians and/or songs are similar to songs that they like.
I believe a database of music which can be organized a number of ways (none of them exclusive), such as by genre, mood or tempo, could be used by users to find new music.
This database can also be used by programmers to make programs which would allow a user to pick a group of songs they feel like listening to and then have the program pick other songs the user has that fit in with that grouping (user can decide what grouping that is - again: genre, mood, tempo) or it can suggest songs from a central database.
In this way, users can have a computer pick songs that fit their mood based on community input.
Wiki fits in beautifully with this concept as it is difficult to characterize whether a song is happy, sad, upbeat, rebellious, et cetera. Everyone will have their seperate opinions, yet the more people you have contributing, the more likely the song will fit in the right category.
I think this project would explore a completely different outlet that WikiMedia has not yet tackled.
I would love to help start this project, but I honestly don't know how (honestly, I'm new to the whole WikiWorld). Thus I put this forward to the community at large. Since music is so important and powerful, a service like this would be wonderful since it is not capable of infringing on copyrights, yet provides a great deal of information when backed by community, such as the Wiki Community.
I would love to hear feedback. I will check this page again. If you have suggestions on how even to receive feedback besides this page (email address on the web = not such a good idea), I'd love to hear those as well.
Thanks!
Ryan 08.26.04
- One comment here, things like genre and mood are somewhat relative, depends on each editor's opinions of the music, would it not? -- user:zanimum
- You're definitely correct ... it's very subjective in many cases. But the more opinions you sum together, the more likely you are to have a classification of mood/genre that makes most people fairly happy. Having something close is better than having nothing at all. I believe most people would agree.
- So ... anyone want to pick this up?
- Ryan
- 11.17.04
This would have limited similarity to the style guide used for Wikipedia.
It would not attempt to develop a single consensus or give absolute rulings, but give explanations of the rationale for various styles and how much or what type of support each has. By "what type of support," I mean maybe one way is preferred for a different type of media, or a different audience, etc.
The advantage over paper stylebooks and usage manuals is not only that anyone can contribute, but that it is "living."
Many good books are too old to address contemporary conundrums, such as whether to use an exclamation point with "Yahoo," whether to uppercase "K.D. Lang," how to deal with names such as "GlaxoSmithKline," and whether certain new words or expressions (mainly in technology) are proper nouns.
- Maurreen, 12 Sep 2004
It belongs to Wikibooks. Ausir 10:44, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thematic catalogue
I wish there is a thematic catalog, in which you can find a musical piece by the melody of its theme, in wiki. It can be associated with Wikicomposer, etc. --PuzzletChung 04:47, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Wikiportal
I would love to see a wiki which could take up a project, akin to what metafilter has done. People could come and share urls to the most useful, unique, and interesting websites on the net. The internet, as it is today, is unnavigable for many people. And that's because one, businesses with vested interests have taken up the job of providing the switchboards - the directories and search engines. Secondly, most commercial sites design webpages which weigh in heavily, at the 250-350kilobyte size range - which size is impossible to surf fluently on a 56kilobit dial up connection. There's a vacuum for a well designed non commercial portal, and I believe the wiki format would invite the talent and the knowledge to do this. Rainbird 00:04, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Wikiguide
While travelling a little and using my not-so-great local traveller's guide and seeing something called "Lonely Planet" guide - I thought it could be a nice idea to create a community-developed traveller's guide a'la "Lonely Planet"...
Most of the descriptive content (i mean - the descriptions of places, monuments, notable attractions) could be shared with the Wikipedia project, so that would be great for start...
But what I would see as an addition and which doesn't really fit into Wikipedia would be lists of tourist facilities in the regions and (hopefully objective) reviews of them... Possibly, we could also put example prices here - of course, with the dates these prices were registered on...
These facilities might include:
- hotels, motels, and the like...
- restaurants and other food and drink serving facilites,
- internet cafes,
- car rental facilities,
- airports, stations...
- whatever else...
We could put there the lists of available means of transport in the described countries or cities... And add to it prices (with dates) and also reviews - eg. trains running along Nile River are usually much nicer (i know that's a little non-NPOV) than buses in Egypt...
There could be something like proposed "ways" of travelling through a country - like "minimum of what you just have to see" or maybe such lists concerning cities, towns and so on... And general list of possible local or not-so-local trips you can make from a certain place...
The good thing would be the fact that also people local to these regions could put some info concerning places worth visiting in their own country...
so, eventually: what do you think? :)
- See www.wikitravel.org
WikiDebate
This is my proposal to hopefully help vent some of the POV that shouldn't be in encylopedia articles. Resolutions are created and each side makes an argument in essay form which goes back and forth as points are made and refuted. en:User:Vacuum
- I was also thinking about this. There wouldn't be a resolution. Let's take the issue of Iraq. The debate question is, was the invasion of Iraq jusitied/the right thing to do? You have the pro short essay, then a rebuttal. and then the con essay, with a pro rebuttal. There's no resolution. People read each side and come up with their own decision.
- This exists! Read the talk page archives on most Wikipedia articles :) (seriously!) --Alterego 05:43, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
WikiReference
There should be a centralized list of references to good/up-to-date textbooks/monographs in various topics, just what an expert would recommend for starters. Something like wikipedia:List of publications in science, but aimed at learning instead of listing remarkable publications (imho these lists do a bad job mixing learning resources and important historical publications). This could be used for better division of labour: some expert (without time/will to contribute) could write his recommendation here and then some fanatical wikipedian could read the books and write articles/wikibook about the subject. Samohyl Jan 14:07, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikifilm
Wikijobs
A wiki version of Hotjobs.com or dice.com. People can post their resumes, and others can post job requirements. It can be a service free for everyone!
- Do you mean that everybody could edit other people's resumes? Wikimedia Foundation is for education, not for employment exchange. I think we should delete this proposal. -Hapsiainen 14:39, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- This already exists at http://www.resumewiki.com/
wikichat
a chat program
- You can already find GPL'd chat programs. I thinks we should delete this proposal. -Hapsiainen 14:39, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikisoftware
A directory where anyone can put software that they have made and others can edit it, fix bugs, improve it, etc. Eventually, software programs could reach a state of near-perfection, and they will be available for free, for everyone!
- This already exists many times over, and is the heart of open source. -- user:Zanimum
Question/Answer Wiki
How about a question/answer Wiki? --Alien4 (de.wikipedia) 20:23, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Wiki Translations of Greek/Roman/XYZ classics
I once wrote about this to the foundation-l mailing list. Now I made a more detailed plan here. It would be great to find someone who could pick up this idea... - ViktorHorvath@gmx.net, 20 Dec 2004
WikiPorn
Given how the pornography market is dominated by sleazy, sketchy, unorganized people of low morals, perhaps Wikipedians, the elite cybercitizens, may be convinced to support an intellectually-driven, high-standards, open-source porn site. This one area of WikiMedia may generate traffic, and perhaps revenue, far in excess of existing WikiProjects. Subcategories would include WikiPorn:HardCore, WikiPorn:Amateurs, WikiPorn:Teens, etc. - user:Naif
- Here Here! --Alterego 05:41, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Strongly opposed. --Aphaia 07:52, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- It has nothing to do with education and would collapse the credibility of Wikimedia Foundation. Oppose. -Hapsiainen 13:09, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
- I dunno, I got much of my education from porn magazines :-). But the credibility thing could definitely be a problem. Steverapaport 14:14, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Oppose. What sort of "intellectually-driven, high-standards" porn is there? People would never look at WikiMedia the same way. And I mean that badly. LockeShocke 04:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Transform discussion pages to a "real" forum
My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real forum, as known from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.
So each article would have one subforum, in which everyone can create a new thread. Other users can answer these threads or create new ones. It should only be possible to edit your own posts but not the ones from others.
The forum structure could be like this:
- Wikipedia Forum
- Wikipedia intern
- Bugreports
- Proposals and criticism
- Articles
- (Subforum for each article)
- Users
- (Subforum for each users)
- Portals
- (Subforum for each portal)
- and so on...
- Wikipedia intern
I think this way the discussions would be much more effective and purposeful.
At the the top of each discussion page there could be a notice where you are at the moment:
You are here: [Wikipedia Forum] -> [Articles] -> [Foobar] -> [Delete this article?]
The most important thing is that the discussion is really organized in forums, subforums, threads and posts, EXACTLY the way it is in the known Burning Boards.
Some example for Burning Boards:
--SwEEper 12:00, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
WikiLit
I propose WikiLit, WikiLiterature, or maybe WikiNotes. It would be a wiki based around literature in many languages, offering analysis, interpretation, summaries, etc, and deriving inspiration from Sparknotes. People could edit a book's page to talk about the motifs, the symbolism, the purpose, cite their favorite quotes, and so on, of famous works of literature (or any work for that matter). Links to the book's page on Amazon or a link to the online text through Gutenberg would be available. What do you guys think? LockeShocke 23:36, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)