NEW IDEAS

Thanks for this,

Wikipedia eventually will have to undergo a schism where one encyclopedia will be dedicated to verified facts and become more and more reliable and the other will be more experimental and avant-garde.

This seems to lead us towards treating WP and WU as two separate-yet-related entities. The first is already quite avant-garde. It has served it's role in establishing a new global institution. I'm a little surprised though, if the aim was to be more inclusive, why WMF wouldn't see social networks (and others) as natural complementary tools which would more encourage people to get involved. This goes to the heart of the need to b inclusive. I don't see tools like e.g. ideascale being used which might offer new viewers a more attactve and intuitive overview of this kind of conversation. That's one issue; so experimenting with other communities & their tools is something I'd encourage. E.g. A google/WMF tie up of some description may be useful.

Re: the other considertion; WU as a more separate entity with different policies (e.g. original research, peer review). I've made a suggestion over at [discussion] which will require an alliance with a group of NRENetwork managers. They are presently talking about confederating their National services. e.g. WP is one service, WU is another. It may be useful to work through aligning the attributes allocated to institutional wikiuni contributors. Eventually, if WU is to be a referenced resource in research and academia, the institutions (via their networks) must provide the credentials. If you want an intro use my username@cols.com.au Simonfj 06:51, 9 August 2011 (UTC)