User talk:Brian

Hi Brian,

It would be okay to start from the Wikipedia stuff, I imagine, but ultimately, you should read the license agreement. It might require that any derived works also use the same open source license. If you want to use a different license, it could be a problem.

Why not to emulate Wikipedia

I would highly (highly highly) recommend not copying Wikipedia in terms of style and culture. They are restricted to being an encyclopedia, we should not restrict ourselves that way. Wikis are far more flexible than the rigid structure of Wikipedia. It works for them, because they want to be an encyclopedia. But we don't (or shouldn't). We should be a more collaborative and open form of Wiki.

One possibility would be to make a sub-wiki which keeps copies of wikipedia articles of interest (e.g. the Rational Responders page from wikipedia), and then we can have pages here (our own info about 'Rational Responders') which link to them for reference, but which we can also use as we see fit, without feeling like we have to be constrained to the Wikipedia format.

For example. On wikipedia, you have to keep a neutral POV, and you have to link to external links for any claims. But on our wiki, we should be able to make the RRS page represent whatever we want. It's like a community editable homepage for RRS. We could put up promotions, ask for feedback, link to articles, etc., without being stuck in an 'encyclopedia' format which says 'no no' to that kind of stuff.

I was a member of the original wiki (yes, the original first one ever) back in 1999-2001, and it was very much unlike Wikipedia. It was almost totally freeform, but the topics were focused on things related to software development, and the members were almost all professional software developers. And since it was the first wiki ever, we didn't quite yet know what it was, so we experimented with all sorts of ideas. Wikipedia took a few of those good ideas, but it left behind a whole bunch of other good ideas, and it imposed its own rules and restrictions on top of that, so that it could remain an encyclopedia.

I think most people today think that all wikis must be encyclopedia, but we shouldn't let ourselves fall into that trap. -- Wonderist 21:31, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

You're brilliant. XC added a lot of the wiki capabilities so let's still be sure to use them. I'd love to see what you could make an RRS page look like. I think I'd actually do a poor job of making a page like that. Are you suggesting no sourcing? --Brian 22:09, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, actually, I think I'm good at starting things, planting seeds, and leaving them to see what they sprout into (from contributions from others). And then later, I'm good at re-organizing and streamlining the pages so that they are easier for newcomers to navigate and get info out of. I'm also pretty good at responding to things, like questions and threaded discussions. But as for coming up with the main content, that's much harder for me, because I have difficulty deciding what is important to put there and what should be omitted.

I'll give a go at it. But honestly, I have no idea what should belong on that page. I'll spend a few minutes on it, and then maybe that will give you some idea of what you want, and then you can either take over or delegate to me or someone else to fill in the missing bits. ?! Wonderist 00:52, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Oops, forgot your last question. Do you mean, don't include stuff from Wikipedia? You could or you might not want to, depending on their licensing. It might be good to have a kind of 'local backup' of Wikipedia pages, possibly. I don't know. I thought that's what you were going for.

What I'm suggesting is simply that we shouldn't restrict ourselves to Wikipedia's style. If we import everything whole hog and 'tweak' that, we will end up basically being a Wikipedia-lite for atheist-related stuff. My suggestion was along these lines:

• Import Wikipedia pages for the organizations/groups, but instead of making those our primary pages about the organizations, just use them as a kind of 'reference' or backup. Similar to how Facebook includes 'Interest' pages with content imported from Wikipedia (like the 'Atheism' Interest page), but you can start your own 'Atheism' group or page and put your own content on there.
• Have an Atheism United Wiki page for each organization.
• The AU wiki pages can link to the 'local-Wikipedia' reference pages, but they would not use that content as the primary AU wiki page content.
• Instead, members of each organization should maintain their own organization-pages, very similar to how we will all maintain our own User: pages here.
• In fact, just like there's a User:Brian page, I wonder if MediaWiki allows the creation of other special kinds of pages, like maybe a Group:Rational Responders page, or a Group:American Atheists page.
  • If this is not strictly possible, we could 'fake it' by creating user accounts for each atheist group/organization. If an official member steps up, they can be given access to actually log in as that organization. Possibly. Just an idea.
  • If we went this way, then it would perhaps make more intuitive sense to newcomers how these organization/group pages are supposed to be 'official', and not simply encyclopedia entries.

?! Wonderist 01:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Stub pages for organizations

There are lots of possibilities. Here are a couple I can think of right now:

• A tag such as Org stub or Urgent stub or Top 20 stub
• A similar Category, such as Category:Urgent or Category:Top 20 Stub
  • Categories are not used in-line, like tags are. They show up at the bottom of the page.
  • Either a tag or a category would work just fine.
  • But honestly, categories are easier to use when you are trying to 'mark' the entire page, rather than a specific part within the page, which is when tags work well.
  • In fact, I'm going to make a Category:Stub page right now.
• Instead of adding a tag or category, you can simply collect a list of pages on a separate page and ask people to focus on them. Honestly, this is what we used to do before we used categories and tags. We called them index pages. E.g. Index of urgent pages.

?! Wonderist 01:52, 30 October 2011 (UTC)