Re: Experimental Wiki at midrange.com

Eric Lehti with CPU wrote:
>  - Why set up a wiki that will essentially duplicate the work and efforts of
> the existing wiki at en.wikipedia.org?

Because, as an iSeries resource, wikipedia is incredibly diluted by
inconsequential information.

As a general resource, wikipedia is quite good.  But as an iSeries
resource, it's rather weak.

>  - Wikipedia already has an incredible amount of iSeries-specific content
> that a group of volunteers has been working on.

I do not find it particularly useful.  It has never appeared on a google
search for iSeries topics (for me) yet.

>  - Any content that we might add to wiki.midrange.com will merely duplicate
> what wikipedia already has (or should soon have).

Will it have the content though?  Considering how big wikipedia is and
(at least IMHO) how diluted the information tends to be, who is going to
add the content?

Content that is added to the midrange wiki will be focused on iSeries
users.  Why use Encylopedia Britianica when you need to lookup
information about how an activation group responds to setting on LR.
Using the ILE programmers reference makes more sense.

>  - Wikipedia.org already has an overwhelming market share and mind share.
> Why encourage midrange people to work on an alternative encyclopedia?

Not in the iSeries community.  To be honest, the iSeries community would
probably sooner use the midrange.com list archives than wikipedia.  A
midrange.com sponsored & hosted wiki would probably have more mind share
in the iSeries community than wikipedia ever will.

>  - We iSeries professionals do not live an insular life, isolated on an
> island.  We should take advantage of the tools and resources that dedicated
> people in other disciplines (e.g. wikipedia volunteers) have already done.

'Should be' doing something and actually doing it are very different.

>  - Who wants to take on the responsibility of keeping both sites
> (wikipedia.org and wiki.midrange.com) synchronized with the same content?  I
> dread keying the same data into two separate encyclopedias.

I wouldn't expect anyone to do that ... if wikipedia wishes, they can
link to wiki.midrange.com.  My personal opinion is that wikipedia would
be a fine summary, but wiki.midrange.com would have a very focused topic.

To be honest, the arguments you make could be made about all the other
online forums.  Why should the comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc newsgroup be
created when MIDRANGE-L covers the same topics and has some of the top
minds in the iSeries community in it.  Similarly for the MCPress and
iSeriesNetwork forums.


david