[Bug-gnupedia] Some ideas for GNU/Alexandria

[Jimmy Wales]

There seems to be general consensus (including Hector and RMS)
that the 'gnupedia' name is too close to Nupedia's name, such
that it would cause unnecessary confusion going forward.

One very interesting idea that I see emerging from this discussion
has been posed in several ways:

1.  By analogy, 'gnupedia' is like GNU/FSF software, and 'nupedia'
is like a cleaned up distribution.

OR

2.  Nupedia is peer reviewed and edited, and people are generally
thinking of 'gnupedia' as broader and mostly unedited (perhaps with
some clever filtering mechanisms to allow end users to edit for
themselves).

OR

3.  Nupedia is like an encyclopedia, 'gnupedia' is like an open
library.

I think there are many good reasons for things to go down in this
way.

-----

I propose a name for what was the 'gnupedia' group: "Gnu/Alexandria".
As you probably know, "Alexandria" was a very famous library that
was considered at the time to be the center of all knowledge.  It was,
I believe, the largest and most inclusive library on the planet.
But, it was destroyed.

This is a romantic name for the project, and it adequately captures
the grand vision that many of you have for a wide-open repository
of knowledge.

And this doesn't compete directly with Nupedia's mission, and it
doesn't 'fork' our work unnecessarily.  This is more general work,
with a bigger and broader mission.  Rather than creating a *single*
work in the library of knowledge, GNU/Alexandria can create a set
of *tools* and a *repository* for _all_ works in the library of knowledge.

This is complementary to what we are doing.

--Jimbo


-- 
*************************************************
*            http://www.nupedia.com/            *
*  The Ever Expanding Open Source Encyclopedia  *
*************************************************