[Wikia-l] A WP discussion relevant to my drive to attract robotics community to Wikia

[Dan Kindsvater]

For anyone who's interested, please see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Robotics#An_interesting_problem_with_technology-related_articles

The bottom line is that i have tried to get various groups to move their 
content to WP, WV and Wikia (as appropriate) with no luck so far, and I 
think the reasons for the lack of success are worth discussing.  The reason 
I think WP people might be persuaded to care is the issue of notability or 
importance: if you want to know the colors of the tailfeathers of some 
extinct bird, and things that are far more obscure than that, WP is great, 
but if you want to know even the most obvious and notable things about how 
people actually interact with robots in their daily lives, you're out of 
luck if you search WP, Wikia or WV.  There are many wonderful communities of 
people who do have that knowledge, and they are just the kind of people that 
Wikians love to have around...they're focused on the task, they post a lot, 
they're not opinionated, they just like getting the job done.  I've talked 
with people at SocietyOfRobots.com, RoombaReview.com, users of home and yard 
robots, and hobbyists who participate in competitions, and they have 
concerns that the culture at WP and Wikia is not what they're used to, and 
they're happy where they are.  That's a shame, because I believe Wikia would 
benefit greatly from their presence, and they would benefit from being 
critiqued by a wider audience (namely, the whole world).

The reason I'm discussing this at WP is that WP has an established 
reputation as the place to put their stuff if they want everyone in the 
world to read it...and generally, they do.  They understand, generally, that 
not everything they want to discuss is "encyclopedic", and most of it would 
be more appropriate at Wikia or WV, and they understand, generally, that 
since the markup is the same, and the culture is the same, that would 
facilitate getting their stuff accepted at WP.

Dan, Dank55 pretty much everywhere: #wikia, #wikia-de, #wikiversity, #mysql, 
WikiProject Robotics