Monday 2 October 2006 — This is 18 years old. Be careful.
Encouraged by the success of Wikipedia, I’ve noticed specialty groups starting their own niche encyclopedia. The first I saw was the cleverly-named Wookieepedia, related to all things Star Wars. The latest is Camerapedia, about photographic topics.
Wookieepedia is needed because the Star Wars community exceeded Wikipedia’s tolerance for articles about fictional minutiae, and it will flourish because of its community’s bottomless desire for such minutiae. It has its own wiki culture: the notices on pages requiring maintenance are all voiced by Star Wars characters. For example, the accuracy of Fifth Battle of Coruscant is called into question by Luke Skywalker screaming, “No! That’s not true! That’s impossible!”.
But I wonder about the longevity of Camerapedia. Wouldn’t all of it do well within Wikipedia itself? Can they attract an audience away from the ever-expanding Wikipedia? Should they? Is it better to have a separate dedicated photography encyclopedia?
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Finally, extreme fringe groups like Holocaust deniers could have their own place to live, hopefully mitigating their impact on the main wiki tree.
Interesting idea, I thought.
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