Aussie Tech-Focused Wiki Launched 155
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."
Re:Advantage? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Of course! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, I've maintain a 20,000 article wiki about a specific topic and every time I've made even minor changes to the topic's article on wikipedia they get reverted/changed to inaccurate statements and so then I end up spending half a day looking up arcane wikipedia rules to justify my edits (which eventually stand up) but only after all the hassle of fighting with the reverters/deletionists.
After a while I just said screw it and don't bother anymore.
Re:Advantage? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I concur, we need a wikipedia like tool dumb down to a myspace/geocites level
Another god damn PR bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite all the whining about slashdot "editors", I'd rather have them pick stories, rather than these PR marketing bullshit submitted.
I really hate to use such language, but "slashdot" has a brand value. Don't destory it.
If I can find the time (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Australia? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't really conclude that. That'd be more to do with the fact that the site is less than 12 hours 'old', so not many users have written entries for it yet (and for that matter, there aren't many users yet).
The tech sector in Australia is no smaller or bigger than in any other similar sized country AFAIK. Most of it is dominated by the usual multinational suspects (MS, IBM, Oracle, HP, Novell etc.) but there are a few Australian companies that are fairly substantial in size (although these are primarily consulting firms rather than hardware/software development companies ... most of those get to a certain size then get bought out by one of aforementioned large multinationals).
The telco/ISP area is interesting though. Companies like Internode, iiNet/Westnet, TPG etc. are Australian-grown and have become rather successful and large. Actually come to think of it, there aren't many foreign companies that have come here and done that well in that sector - Optus (Singtel) and foreign mobile operators like Vodafone and Virgin are about it.
Re:Two sources of information is better? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that Wikipedia accepts only stuff printed on paper as source (its not quite, but close enough), this makes it close to impossible in some regions to write content. Look at homebrew on consoles, you can find tons of information about it out there or just try it yourself, but you hardly find anything about it in the mainstream press or ever the gaming press. The best you can find is some rather useless generic talk that doesn't tell you more then "it exists". The reason for that is simply that the whole mainstream gaming press is simply in the pockets of the game industry, they simply don't want to spoil their connection to the game industry by doing in depth reporting on devices which can be used for piracy.
Another problem is simply that some things are outside the scope of a Wikipedia or non-notable. You can't get an detailed article about a minor character in a game into Wikipedia and neither can you get a complete game walkthrough into Wikipedia.
I find it quite annoying that Wikipedia just blocks this additional content instead of creating infrastructure for more niche kind of knowledge (say when you have "Monkey Island" also allow "Monkey Island/Walkthrough" and other detail information which doesn't need to follow the strict criteria of the main Wikipedia). But well, that's the way it is and thus you get tons of specialized Wikis out there and thus a fragmentation of the infrastructure.