Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Aussie Tech-Focused Wiki Launched

Posted by timothy on from the history-is-written-by-the-koala dept.

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."

18 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Abstract says it all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    That is what is wrong with Wikipedia.

    1. Re:Abstract says it all by eclectro · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      There, I deleted it for ya.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  2. Advantage? by qazadex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Advantage? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Advantage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me... by Qubit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    --

    coding is life /* the rest is */
    1. Re:Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me... by FiloEleven · · Score: 5, Funny

      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. ;)

      --
      Your brain is not a computer.
    2. Re:Put the word "Wikipedia" in quotes like me... by PigIronBob · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...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!

      --
      You never catch me alive
  4. Of course! by martas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    weinersmith
  5. Amazing! by kamapuaa · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  6. hmm by danny_lehman · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    1. Re:hmm by tsm_sf · · Score: 4, Funny

      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?

      --
      Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
  7. WTF are you on about? by the_raptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --

    ========
    CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
  8. Not notable by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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).

  9. Well, of course... by Angst+Badger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
  10. I want a sum-of-all-knowledge-opedia. by mirix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
  11. Re:Notability by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  12. Already done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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