Re: [Linux-aus] HOWTO organise a linux.conf.au

[Mary Gardiner <mary-la@puzzling.org>]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2005, Leon Brooks wrote:
> Would Wikipedia sit still for us adding pages there? It seems to me that 
> putting it on Wikipedia is very much within the spirit of the thing, 
> plus zero setup and maintenance for us. The caveat would be having to 
> name pages to fit in with Wikipedia's naming conventions.

[I'm only a very occasional contributor but...] Wikipedia isn't designed
to be the repository of all human knowledge, it's designed to be a
repository of all encyclopedic knowledge.

Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not , in
particular "Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base." I'd suggest that
the constraint requiring that you be encyclopedic is not right for a
project like this, which could contain howtos, rants, thoughts, useful
businesses to contact etc etc. If nothing else, you'll get edited to
pieces by Neutral Point of View people. I don't see this project as
being something that would benefit from the NPOV. A firmly one-sided
point of view would be better in some cases ("Lunchtimes should be at
1pm because..." shouldn't have to have a "other commentators support 3pm
lunchtimes because..." section.)

That said, I really like the MediaWiki software: it's the most mature
wikie software I've used and I really like the "Article"/"Talk page"
distinction the software creates for you.

-Mary