User:MethodicEvolution~metawiki

In the Wikipedia Village Pump Proposals section, I have made some very serious suggestions that have not gotten any attention, so I have brought the topic here.

I noticed that Wikipedia has a considerable number of Biographies (and Geographies). This is not a serious problem, and I realize that it is normal for encyclopedias to contain lots of such information, but as Wikipedia is not exactly normal and biographies have become a considerably dominant subject there, it seems reasonable to begin considering dramatic solutions. What I have proposed is just a crazy idea, which lead me to more crazy ideas. . . but then an open source encyclopedia is a crazy idea too. . . any other crazy ideas or refutations of mine are welcome and encouraged.

My apologies for beating around the bush. What I am suggesting is a new Wikimedia project aimed at a complete and comprehensive system of biographies. This would most likely instigate an accelerated growth of the wealth of biographical information available through Wikipedia already, while at the same time clearing up a lot of space in Wikipedia so that (among other things) the random link page would have a non-negligible propensity to return non-biographical (and Geographical) data.

My other, even more crazy ideas that followed were (in order of conception) a geographical or atlas type wiki project, and an art one. now, the art idea (while it would likely have the most impact on the world as a whole as well as Wikians) is probably less practical and more problematic, not to mention unlikely to be accepted.

If a Geographical project were begun, it would likely instigate accelerated growth of place data while (again) freeing up space in Wikipedia for other material. There could even be a choice of navigating via name searches or via a map/globe graphic or geographical paradigm. It would likely become the most comprehensive compendium of geographically related data in the world, housing such info as population, weather patterns, seismic history and state, demographic information, economic info, ext.

This latter idea is possibly the more profound, but I am still most strongly an advocate of the Biographical compendium. I mean, if we can have a whole thing on quotes, and another on species, then why not a whole thing (a whole project) on influential and important individuals throughout history.

MethodicEvolution 00:47, 2 May 2005 (UTC)