Thunkpedia (formerly ‘Infinithree Project’) aims to build an avowedly inclusionist complement to Wikipedia, using the same open licensing and a similar editing model – with new forms of organization and exploration. Instigated by Gordon Mohr. All writing for this blog is free to republish under the Creative Commons-Attribution license. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([’_setAccount’, 'UA-20598037-2’]); _gaq.push([’_setDomainName’, 'thunkpedia.org’]); _gaq.push([’_trackPageview’]); (function() {…
The term thunk is a portmanteau neologism, combining TH ing and UNK nown.. As a word, it’s nounable – “this oughtta be a thunk” – and verbable – “you should thunk that”. The homonymic collision with either the jokey future-perfect tense of think (as in, “who’d have thunk it?”), or the computing term , don’t hurt, and possibly help. (Had a…
Other than the words-only context and text , previously described , what makes up a thunk? Here’s an expanded view of the last post’s example thunk, as it would appear after toggling the ‘links’ footer control. These extra details displayed only when requested are called the thunk’s annex : Elinor Ostrom, American political economist A Elinor “Lin” Ostrom…
In Thunkpedia, what is a ‘thunk’? A thunk is the smallest useful chunk of knowledge, offered as an increment from what you already know… to what you’re trying to find out. In the system, it’s a capped-size bit of reference text, no more than a few sentences, with some contextual metadata that helps readers, authors, and indexing systems. The default minimal display of a…
It's alive! There's been slower progress than I'd hoped, but I've recently been improving the search and contribution interfaces. I'll open the prototype for wider use as soon as there's some support for user-to-user review and interaction, and a fresh import of Wikipedia abstracts as starter data. Let me know how to reach you if you'd like to get more involved.
Here’s the presentation I did last Friday at the Books-in-Browsers conference. Video: Infinithree: Beyond the Wiki Encyclopedia I’ve added a few screenshots to the slides below to simulate the brief demo given. As you’ll see on slide 25, the name of the site at launch will be ‘Thunkpedia’, as the central organizing principle will be small 'thunks’ of standalone…
I’ll be speaking about Infinithree at the 2011 Books in Browsers meeting (#BiB11) in late October, put on by the Internet Archive and O'Reilly Media. The title of my talk is, ‘Beyond the Encyclopedia: non-linear reference works’. Astute readers will find fresh details about project plans in the talk abstract : Should an online reference work aspire to the ‘encyclopedic’ standards…
(Welcome to all the new followers arriving after this HN thread !) Emilio Velis ( @dubsnipe ) asks via the Tumblr question function: As far as I understand, Infinithree aims to be a non-rigorous source of information, instead of a source full of data that has to be validated by a crowd. How about if the project aims to be some sort of an add-on or sister page based on Wikipedia URLs? For example,…
Via the Tumblr suggest-a-post system, Inclusionniste writes: Start with a multilingual version I’m very interested about a “inclusionist” “encyclopedia”, but I would like to contribute in French, my native language. I would love to follow the Wikipedia model, with focused sites for every language where there can be an editing community. Making the core software accept…
At Quora , I asked for suggestions about how an avowedly-inclusionist sibling of Wikipedia should work . Marius Kempe has offered a bunch of thoughtful ideas , including the recommendation that rather than any license, Infinithree consider putting all material into the public domain: Put the content in the public domain using CC0, or at least use CC-BY, rather than licensing it under the…
Much needs to be worked out before the Infinithree site is open for contributions. Until then, this blog is to discuss possibilities and find collaborators – and you're already helping with your question and well-wishes. Thanks! My current inclination is that it should be possible to bring over Wikipedia content – but such content would only rarely be imported automatically or in bulk. The point…
Those are certainly kindred projects. Infinithree is still being defined, but here are some of my thoughts on how ∞³ should or must be different. Deletionpedia was only ever a 'morgue' for deleted articles – with no option to start new material or improve old. That gave it an interesting 'information rescue' mission, but never the goal or potential for being a lively, independent site on its own.…
Wikipedia deletionism is like the weather: people complain, but nobody is doing anything about it. I’d like to change that, working with others to create an avowedly inclusionist complement to Wikipedia, launching in 2011. My code name for this project is ‘Infinithree’ ('∞³’), and this blog exists to collaborate on its creation. Why, you may ask? I’ll explain more in…
The Infinithree Project is on the air.