User:Tisane/Proposal

Wikiplex

The new site will be not just a wiki but a wikiplex, a group of wikis sharing a single database. It will be possible for users to add new wikis to the wikiplex via a web-based interface. The creator of a wiki will be its "owner" and have the power to appoint stewards, bureaucrats, admins, etc. Users will be allowed to do whatever they want with their wikis.

All-inclusive encyclopedia

Policy

The flagship wiki will be an all-inclusive encyclopedia. Policies such as WP:NOTMYSPACE and notability will not exist on this wiki. No pages will ever be deleted from this wiki, except for those that we are legally required to remove (such as copyvios). However, if content is utterly worthless (e.g. a page with just a bunch of random characters), it may be blanked in accordance with pure wiki deletion. Users will have total freedom to do whatever they want with their userspace.

Relation to Wikipedia

The all-inclusive encyclopedia will have two classes of articles. The first class will consist of articles that currently exist on Wikipedia. These articles, with their complete page histories, will simply be mirrored on the local wiki. Remote edits to these pages will appear as "s" (syncing) edits on watchlists and recent changes screens. Users will not be able to edit these articles directly from the local wiki; if they click "edit," they will be redirected to the editing screen on Wikipedia.

The second class of articles will consist of those articles that do not currently exist on Wikipedia. Users will be able to create and edit these articles on the local wiki. But, if an article by the same name should be created on Wikipedia, then the page on the local wiki will once again become a "mirrored" Wikipedia article that cannot be edited from the local wiki. The goal is to avoid becoming a fork of Wikipedia, but rather to mirror Wikipedia in some cases and supplement Wikipedia in others.

Every edit that has ever occurred on Wikipedia (with the exception of unlawful edits) will become part of the permanent record on the local wiki. When a page is deleted from Wikipedia, its edit history will remain intact on the local wiki. When a page is created on Wikipedia that already exists on the local wiki, the Wikipedia content will override the content on the local wiki, but the edit history from the local wiki will be preserved. Some articles may go through multiple cycles of being created on Wikipedia, deleted from Wikipedia, edited on the local wiki, etc. The edit histories from both wikis will be spliced together into one and shown in a consolidated form when the user clicks the history tab.

Front matter and back matter and forced wikilinks

Although it will not be possible to locally edit articles that exist on Wikipedia, it will be possible to add and modify front matter and back matter, which will appear at the beginning and end of the article, respectively. Back matter could be used, for instance, to provide a list of links to articles on the all-inclusive encyclopedia that Wikipedia does not see fit to include in their article. It will also be possible to add and modify a list of forced wikilinks, which will cause certain words in an article to be wikified even if Wikipedia did not see fit to wikify them.

User names

When you try to create a user name on the local wiki, it checks existence of that user of Wikipedia.

• If it doesn't exist on Wikipedia, you are good to go. However, your user name can later be co-opted by a new user on Wikipedia, in which case you lose access until you prove that you are one and the same as that user.
• If it does exist on Wikipedia already, you cannot create that account until you prove you are the same user.