How to cooperate with a community

Wikipedia is an outrageously successful project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Its most prestigious project is the Wikipedia in English, it has over 818.000 articles, it has an amazing number of active contributors and the achievements of this community are not only in this high number of articles, it is also in the rating given by Alexa (today nr 38), the attention we get in the press, the overall quality of the articles.

The community that makes all this possible is essential to what is done. The community does not exist as one big always agreeing whole. If anything the difference in what people want out of Wikipedia is huge. There is this tension between people who want to concentrate on the "main" Wikipedias and people who want to create new Wikipedias. A tension between having only illustrations that is Free and illustrations that is free to be used. Given the size of our community (a middle sized town) we have people willing to utter any POV.

In what I am doing, I am truly outside the Wikipedia community; I am firmly into dictionaries and I want to take the Wiktionaries to the next level. Ultimate Wiktionary is intended to be inclusive for all the lexicological data and applications we can think off. We came up with spell checkers, computer aided translation tools and it being a translation and a descriptive dictionary is what we started with.

As Ultimate Wiktionary is there to be an inclusive lexicological resource, we invite everyone to join us in making it exactly that. It is easy for people to join they just do. For organisations it is different. They often have a lot to offer but they also have their requirements. To address these requirements you have to be approachable. Sure the Wikipedia community is approachable but it lacks the ability to come up with a single response as the community is divided. It is unable to come up with a quick response, and when a response is given it is often does not answer the question that was asked in the first place.

The Wikimedia Foundation has as its goal to bring all information to all people of the world. Wiktionary has as its goal to bring all lexicological information of to all people of the world. It is therefore that it makes sense to have a consortium where organisations can find a focal point where their need for cooperation can be discussed. Given that we are open to cooperation on a non-discriminatory way and, that adding information makes us richer and more relevant. When organisations have a need for quality, we should find our way in providing this quality assurance. We should when it is legitimate request.

Ultimate Wiktionary will find its legitimacy not in being yet another on-line dictionary but in giving this data an application. When it does not go beyond what every dictionary does, it will be a failure. When organisations like the University of Bamberg have a use for the Ultimate Wiktionary, Ultimate Wiktionary will become a credible and important resource.

Thanks,
GerardM