Wikidot is better than Wikipedia because it it lead by far nicer and much more helpful people than Wikipedia. My experience on Wikipedia is the worst one, and I only wish to forget it.

Wikidot has completely different focusing and organization, I dare to say it has nothing to do with Wikipedia, except wiki way of editing pages.

Just one little question: Why the hell Wikidot would want an article on Wikipedia? This general rush to make an article on Wikipedia is just a passing fashion… Now it is "in" to have article at Wikipedia, but I think this is only rubbish. You would think the same as I if you spent half as time as I spent there… Do you know who decides what is important and what is not, which subject deserves to be in an encyclopedia and which doesn't? Millions of… Amateurs. Diletants. Peole with a little or null knowledge on many subjects and with a surplus of ego, thinking THEY are the ones who will decide if something is for encyclopedia or not, no matter if they know something on the subject or not. If they didn't hear of it, then it is not important, which is, you will agree, a plain nonsense. I was witnessing many times how articles on singers, writers, artists and many other important people were deleted just because a group of uneducated pricks haven't heard of them. So, does Wikidot want to be judged by such group of people? I wouldn't.

I suggest Wikidot forgets Wikipedia and continues on its path to future, because it does it excellently well… Who needs Wikipedia anyway?

on using Wikidot to simulate a Wikipedia wiki.

This is also something I will never understand. Wikia is a wikifarm very similar to Wikidot - people open their own wikis and make whatever they want of them, and the syntax is exacly the same as Wikpedia. Why would someone want to spend time in trying to simulate Wikipedia, if there is a possibility to have it ready-made?

Among other things, Wikidot attracted me precesely because it does not look as Wikipedia, and also the possibility to have different themes that would make my wiki to look like a real professional site.

Yes, it may be a fun challenge and quite interesting to see the outcome, but why bother? This seems like a pointless exercise to me.

IMO, it's far better to channel all this creative energy into other areas, as you have already been doing, very successfully!

I don't think "cloning" the Wikipedia theme is a futile exercise. It may actually be a good learning/teaching experience, and I look forward to its results (Monodot and Monobook are great, by the way). Many people DO like its looks, and demonstrating that it can be done here only shows how wonderfully versatile Wikidot is. Being able to make your site look exactly the way you want is what makes Wikidot so attractive to many.

To all the Wikidot fans who are so pissed off at the deletion of the Wikipedia article, that's just not enough reason to rule Wikipedia out. Wikipedia inspired (and continues to do so) many similar grassroots initiatives of information democratization. If it has "lost its touch" lately, that's a matter for discussion, but let's not lose perspective here.

Any project that grows beyond its humble beginings has its growing pains, something Wikidot is not immune to. Judging by the "die Wikipedia" rhetoric I've seen in the other thread, it's not hard to notice that the same arrogant, know-it-all, holier-than-thou attitude that we criticize in Wikipedia is making its way into the Wikidot community as well.

From the title, I though this blog post will be about Wikidot being superior to MediaWiki based wikis (Wikipedia and Wikia), but hey, we're to busy about our business and to serious about it to even consider fighting them. Also Wikipedia is so strong, so mature and so recognizable that no-one would declare war to them. I think even James wouldn't do that.

Ah, finally, some controversy.

Personally I find Wikipedia an essential resource and it's often the first place I go to (via Google) for research. At over 3M English articles, it's clearly here to stay and the editors are doing something right, because articles I read tend to be clear, useful, and as far as I can tell, accurate.

At the same time, I've been involved in year-long edit wars with astroturfers and seen them win. I've had contributions to articles deleted by people without pity, without respect for quality or accuracy but for criteria that seem esoteric.

But quite probably the astroturfers are exceptional, and the esoteric rules are necessary, if brutal. Wikidot seems to be a kinder, more constructive place, but we're also not subject to the same intense attack by vandals, trolls, astroturfers, spammers, and so on.

I think getting an article about Wikidot in Wikipedia is a must. Wikipedia is the first place millions of people go when they are looking for information, and I believe Wikidot is a valid subject, and should definitely be included.

I found about Wikidot via the Comparison of Wiki Farms article. Without Wikipedia I wouldn't know about Wikidot, and without WikiMedia I wouldn't know about wikis, so that's at least two reasons for me not to hate Wikipedia. Wikidot has the 5th highest Alexa rating of the wiki farms listed, and a number of the lower ranked Wiki Farms have articles in Wikipedia, so I believe it should be easy enough to argue that Wikidot passes the importance criteria. Lest do it.

My view on Wikipedia is that it is not a wiki in the true sense of the word. Contributors do not have equal status and to have articles deleted is contra to the wiki ideal and equivalent to censorship.

Who made the wikipedia editors the arbiters of what goes into Wikipedia and what qualifications do they have for that role?

It is for this reason that when I am talking to companies, community groups and others about how wikidot is the right platform for them I always state that wikipedia is a very poor example of what a wiki should be.

Rob

It may be a good idea to have a code block on that page for Wikipedia code, so that a Wikidot article doesn't need to be converted before being moved over there. There are differences in the syntax, after all.

Who made the wikipedia editors the arbiters of what goes into Wikipedia and what qualifications do they have for that role?

Exactly! 99% of them doesn't have any qualifications on subjects they write about, and 1% runs away very quickly when they see the manners of the other 99% and how they are treated there. My experience comes mainly from Serbian wiki, I don't know about the others (but honestly, from a little experience I had at Spanish and English wiki, I strongly suspect there isn't much difference). They keep on saying they don't want too much burocracy, but what they do is just the opposite: they introduce each time more and more burocracy, so that each time the things are solved not in a way they should be, but in a way some administrator or a group of them whish in that moment.

It is for this reason that when I am talking to companies, community groups and others about how wikidot is the right platform for them I always state that wikipedia is a very poor example of what a wiki should be.

Right. I didn't know how far a wiki can reach until I met Wikidot. And I really didn't like the aspect wikipedia has.

I'm sure everyone at WIkidot would agree there is at least one important article on Wikipedia - The Pieter_Hintjens one!!

I don't understand where is the problem then. If Pieter has an article on himself, why is the problem to have an article on Wikidot?

BTW, when was the last time you tried to put Wikidot article at Wikipedia and why it was deleted? And I would also like to see the text that was put there… If the text is correctly and seriously written and referenced, I really do not see the reason to delete it, except evil personality of other editors. And if this is true, then… You will never have an article on Wikidot at Wikipedia. Not because Wikidot is not important enogh, but because someone there decided not to let this happen. And against this is impossible to fight. Not even writing to the very same Jimmy Wales would help.

Personally I find Wikipedia an essential resource and it's often the first place I go to (via Google) for research. At over 3M English articles, it's clearly here to stay and the editors are doing something right, because articles I read tend to be clear, useful, and as far as I can tell, accurate.

Pieter, my sincere advice is: don't do that. You can use Wikipedia as a starting point (I use it also like that) in your research, but NEVER trust only to what is written there. There is one good thing about Wikipedia which is that it is also an immense "link storage" — you can find there so many very useful links which, in contrast to Wikipedia, can be fully trusted, because they are signed by experts in subject.