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:: Yes it's a wiki, definitely. Not only [[MarkDilley|Mark]] is active there (the one who kept [[Welcome|this wiki]] alive for years), but also [[Ward Cunningham|Ward]], the father of the wiki idea. :) Sure, the most pages there are created and forgotten after that. But: ''to be a wiki'' means <u>not</u> to force anyone to edit.Best regards, [[Wolf Peuker|Wolf]] | <small>[[User talk:Peu|talk]]</small> 11:45, 29 June 2011 (PDT) | :: Yes it's a wiki, definitely. Not only [[MarkDilley|Mark]] is active there (the one who kept [[Welcome|this wiki]] alive for years), but also [[Ward Cunningham|Ward]], the father of the wiki idea. :) Sure, the most pages there are created and forgotten after that. But: ''to be a wiki'' means <u>not</u> to force anyone to edit.Best regards, [[Wolf Peuker|Wolf]] | <small>[[User talk:Peu|talk]]</small> 11:45, 29 June 2011 (PDT) | ||
:::You both missed my point! I'm certainly NOT doubting that pages ''can'' be edited — but IMVHO, the crucial factor is that the content <u>on</u> AboutUs was NOT created BY AboutUs. The fundamental ethos of a wiki is that you can look through the entire edit history of every article — right back to the start of the article to the 'original' page creator, and attribute those said edits to those individual authors. This is NOT the case with AboutUs - just because ''some'' pages on AboutUs are editable, that does NOT make the entire AboutUs site be classed as a wiki. Maybe we need to strike a compromise — maybe a new category for sites like this which 'harvest' other sites works? Regarding [http://AboutUs.org/TheWikiWay TheWikiWay] - yes, I freely agree that it is editable (and has history with attribution, etc); but what about the 19 million pages which are NOT editable or have no edit history - which have been 'scraped' from other sites - where is the attribition to its editors for those 19 million pages? There is obviously some 'conflict of interest', in that AboutUs is a highly commercial site (and no doubt makes handsome revenues for its owners) — whereas [[WikiIndex]] has a different take — but Mark is involved in both sites. I need to chew over the fat again . . . Rgds, [[User:Hoof Hearted|Hoof Hearted]] 13:20, 29 June 2011 (PDT) | :::You both missed my point! I'm certainly NOT doubting that pages ''can'' be edited — but IMVHO, the crucial factor is that the content <u>on</u> AboutUs was NOT created BY AboutUs. The fundamental ethos of a wiki is that you can look through the entire edit history of every article — right back to the start of the article to the 'original' page creator, and attribute those said edits to those individual authors. This is NOT the case with AboutUs - just because ''some'' pages on AboutUs are editable, that does NOT make the entire AboutUs site be classed as a wiki. Maybe we need to strike a compromise — maybe a new category for sites like this which 'harvest' other sites works? Regarding [http://AboutUs.org/TheWikiWay TheWikiWay] - yes, I freely agree that it is editable (and has history with attribution, etc); but what about the 19 million pages which are NOT editable or have no edit history - which have been 'scraped' from other sites - where is the attribition to its editors for those 19 million pages? There is obviously some 'conflict of interest', in that AboutUs is a highly commercial site (and no doubt makes handsome revenues for its owners) — whereas [[WikiIndex]] has a different take — but Mark is involved in both sites. I need to chew over the fat again . . . Rgds, [[User:Hoof Hearted|Hoof Hearted]] 13:20, 29 June 2011 (PDT) | ||
: ''Hi - I think I understand your point fully. I struggled for several months before committing to the idea of AboutUs. I think you are possibly conflating some Wikipedia values with general Wiki values. For example, the original wiki, and many of the wiki I started on were heavy into [[WikiNow]] - and as such, history was only kept for x versions or x time. MediaWiki, which came out of those wiki, was for a product - an encyclopedia - and needed to keep all that history. Another thought I have along this line, is that Wikipedia started off with several thousand pages from a 1911 encyclopedia. This is not correct: "what about the 19 million pages which are NOT editable" because they are editable. Empty canvas pages are started to help people start somewhere. Thanks for talking about this, I appreciate that. Best, [[MarkDilley]]'' | |||