Aussie Tech-Focused Wiki Launched

daria42 writes "Wikipedia's great for some things — like looking up the in-depth history of 4chan, for example — but not great for others, such as finding out the micro-history of the technology sector in certain countries. That's why Australian technology publication Delimiter has launched a public wiki site purely focused on the Australian technology sector — its personalities, issues, companies, and events. Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small wikis should be created for certain verticals."

Comments

Abstract says it all

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia's great for some things — like looking up the in-depth history of 4chan

That is what is wrong with Wikipedia.

Re:Abstract says it all

[eclectro]

That is what is wron^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H

There, I deleted it for ya.

Advantage?

[qazadex]

Why not use the effort in creating articles in an entirely new wiki to instead improve or add articles for Wikipedia? Wikipedia as we know it today would be much less useful if broken up into thousands of subdomains.

Re:Advantage?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It does seem curious. In wonder if they ran up against some faction of US-centric "notability nazis" on wikipedia(in which case starting their own wiki is probably the most logical response) or whether they made the(arguably stupid) move of looking at wikipedia, noting that it didn't have what they wanted, and then making their own.

Distinct wikis are quite sensible when dealing with matters that aren't within Wikipedia's area of interest(the dedicated Star Wars and Star Trek wikis, among others, would be a bit much shoehorned in to wikipedia proper, for instance). In this case, though, the Australian tech industry would seem to be as logical a candidate for entry into standard Wikipedia as any other country's, if perhaps understandably less heavily contributed.

Assuming that the license isn't something totally off the wall, somebody could probably do a more or less automatic mass import; but it still seems sort of pointless.

Re:Advantage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried to create or edit articles in Wikipedia?

I've had dentist visits which were less painful.
I've dealt with powerhungry asshole admins in fps games who were more understanding.
I've dealt with complex series of rules (i.e. United States Tax Code) which are easier to circumnavigate than Wikipedia's ego-driven drivel.

And my edits were on non-mainstream articles.

Re:Advantage?

[timmarhy]

because some articles will never improve on wikipedia under the current management, that's why.

Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me...

[Qubit]

Aussie Tech-Focused Wikipedia Launched

No, it wasn't. Some business in Australia unconnected with the Wikimedia crowd decided to put up their own wiki (running MediaWiki, like half of the other wikis out there). Good for them.

Why didn't Slashdot cover it when Penny Arcade got their own Wikipedia ? Oh wait, it was because that didn't happen, the same way Australia didn't get their own Wikipedia for technology.

Anyhow, if someone's going to give the Land Down Under their own honest-to-goodness Wikipedia wiki, I think it should be about ways to get rid of invasive species. Any Aussies here? You've got what: rabbits, poisonous toads, some kind of insect, and.... what else?

Re:Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me...

[FiloEleven]

I think it should be about ways to get rid of invasive species. Any Aussies here? You've got what: rabbits, poisonous toads, some kind of insect, and.... what else?

New Zealanders. ;)

Re:Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me...

[PigIronBob]

...spiders, and much worse...

we managed to get rid of one of the biggest parasitic specimens of them all and dump him on to the unsuspecting population of the US: Rupert Murdoch

you naturalised him, you keep him!

Re:Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me...

[Chuck Chunder]

True, which is the only reason any work gets done in Australia

I can only assume you're talking about the work required to staff the dole office for all the attending Kiwis? ;)

Of course!

[martas]

a dedicated wiki will always have better chances of attracting people with knowledge on a certain very specific subject, so yeah, it's a good idea. however, i'd like to see all such sites heavily integrated with and indexed by wikipedia itself, so that finding the information is easier.

Amazing!

[kamapuaa]

Wow, you mean there's a wiki *besides* wikipedia, out there on the web? One that deals with a specialized topic in more detail than would be appropriate for wikipedia? That's amazing, a definite first, thanks a lot timothy!

hmm

[danny_lehman]

I caught myself reading the articles in an Australian accent..

Re:hmm

[DavidRawling]

No you didn't. Or to be more precise, it's what you thought was an Australian accent, but which is in fact as far from a normal Aussie accent as true English is to a US citizen ;-). Let's face it, most imposters can't even pronounce "G'day" (No, it's not "Gooday") properly. Can you mate?

Re:hmm

[tsm_sf]

It's so true. Most actors that I hear trying to bung on an Australian accent, end up sounding really bizarre: like Clare's mum in Lost.

You haven't picked up that they're making fun of you yet?

WTF are you on about?

[the_raptor]

Wikipedia doesn't want full depth coverage of specific areas. Once they wanted to contain the "sum of human knowledge" (including catch rates for pokemon) but these days they want to be an online encyclopaedia based on reputable sources. They encourage you to go off and make your own wiki if you want to have deep coverage of a particular area.

For example the article on 4chan contains superficial background information. There is another entire wiki dedicated to the full history of 4chan and the memes it generates. The wikipedia article focuses on Project Chanology and /b/ because that is probably what got 4chan the most press coverage (which is what wikipedia admins like to base articles on, but hardly covers all knowledge of a subject).

Wikipedia wants you to write encyclopedia articles. They don't just want an infodump of "non-encyclopaedic" information. If you do the latter they will tell you to take you "non-notable fancruft" to another wiki.

No, and yes

[SuperBanana]

Probably would have been roughly as effective to publish an article in a major mag or popular blog saying "Hey, we need more coverage in wikipedia, please contribute."

Why is this worse? Because the small wikis don't have the infrastructure. Financial, technical, and human resources- the volunteers who have spent years figuring out the best available way to do stuff, Etc. etc.

On the plus side, something relatively obscure gets shuffled off into its own wiki. I only wish the same could be said of all the extensive articles on various fictional universes...

Not notable

[MindlessAutomata]

There's also the fact that wikipedia removes anything "not notable." What is "not notable" is usually whatever a bunch of wikipedia bureaucrats decide. Wikipedia, being run by your traditional fatnerd, is more likely to label this sort of stuff as "not notable" as opposed to something they would find notable (like the made-up histories of individual Final Fantasy characters or the stats of pokemon characters).

Re:Not notable

[Explodicle]

This is a very popular opinion on Slashdot, but it's simply not true. Notability is determined by sources. In fact, your Pokemon example is particularly dated; in 2007 most of the Pokemon articles were deemed not notable and merged into what's now very well sourced coverage.

General comments against Wikipedia notability get modded up because most people have had something deleted. Specific comments that specify what got deleted get modded down because most of the time it wasn't actually notable at all.

I'm not all talk, though. If anyone reading this ever actually is the victim of some beaurocrat's arbitrary preferences, leave me a message and I'll make sure any article that passes the inclusion requirements gets to stay. There's a whole Article Rescue Squadron full of people who are willing to do something about the problem instead of just whining about it on Slashdot. Yeah, I get it, "I don't have the time to join a Wikipedia group, Wikipedia can go fuck itself, it's a lost cause"... but you've got plenty of time to complain about it here.

Well, of course...

[Angst Badger]

Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small Wikis should be created for certain verticals.

Wikipedia aims to be a general encyclopedia, larger and more thorough than any print encyclopedia to be sure, but it's still a general reference. Of course more specific references should be created. It's not like this is a new idea: search Amazon for books titled Encyclopedia of... and you'll find thousands, many (though probably not most) of which are serious scholarly works.

Excepting mathematics and the sciences, which are arguably applicable to the whole of human experience in one way or another, practically every other area of human knowledge has a highly specialized audience to one degree or another. Every last possible detail about pre-1947 aircraft engines, for example, might be of great interest to aerospace historians and engineers, but it's probably not of much interest to anyone else. Or an encyclopedic reference to every last town in Ohio might be hugely interesting to Ohioans and genealogists, and at least occasionally significant to broader research, but again, of limited interest to the general public. Unless Wikipedia (and its donors) are prepared to maintain a comprehensive reference to the entire body of human knowledge, specialist references are unavoidable.

Finally, the quality of the articles in those specialist references might be higher than in Wikipedia. Every field has sloppy researchers and trolls, of course, but a relatively specialized field probably has a smaller proportion of both than would be attracted to a general reference, within certain limits, e.g., one could reasonably expect a wiki devoted to quaternions to have better writers and fewer trolls than AbortionPedia.

I want a sum-of-all-knowledge-opedia.

[mirix]

I want a wiki that contains a coredump of all human knowledge, notable or not. I'd get stuck in even worse wikiloops.

You know about some obscure film that was a knockoff of batman produced by 2 Chileans and a Russian in Azerbaijan in 1974?
BRING IT ON. I want to know the life story of the three producer/director/actors as well. What the name of their third cat was. What brand of cigarettes they smoked. Everything is notable.

Re:I want a sum-of-all-knowledge-opedia.

[maxwell demon]

I want a wiki that contains a coredump of all human knowledge, notable or not. I'd get stuck in even worse wikiloops.

Then just start it. I'll happily contribute the article "List of positive integer numbers which have exactly two digits when written in standard decimal notation without leading zeros." Yes, I know those numbers! :-)

Re:Notability

[Trepidity]

That's not really true. I've personally written articles on obscure German politicians, for example, and gotten no pushback at all. If you write a decent stub, and include a few citations to reputable sources, nobody will even blink at it. The citations don't even have to be in English--- a cite to some mainstream German newspapers, or to the Neue Deutsche Biographie, is plenty.

Already Exists in some ways

[dakameleon]

A "wiki for Australian technology" already exists in a way, though mostly focused on the internet: it's the Whirlpool.net Wiki. Brilliant resource.

Already done

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely Whirlpool's wiki is an 'Aussie tech-focused wikipedia', and it's already got thousands of mature articles, e.g.

A series of articles on working in IT industry in Australia:
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=it_telco

A comprehensive guide to PC parts, prices and specs:
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=rmp_sg_whirlpoolpcs

If I can find the time

[ynotds]

I'm much more inclined towards dumping my archives and knowledge of the Australian computer industry, especially from the 1980s when I was in the loop with many key players, into something like this than trying to make more than the most minor edits to Wikipedia itself.

For some time I've been saying it would be best if Wikipedia could connect relatively seamlessly with specialised wikis where each local or narrow community could manage their own authentication process.

If I could find some way of better covering living expenses short of selling my soul to assist somebody else's agenda, I could easily spend a hopefully longish retirement working mostly on similar projects. The only problem is that I'm sitting on at least half a dozen other areas where I have more again that should be made available and I doubt Aubrey de Grey is going to keep me alive long enough to get them all done.