User:Alexis Jazz/How to compete with Wikipedia

This idea has been on my mind for a while now. Strictly it's two ideas that could work well together in theory: alternate projects that work with Wikipedia instead of just forking it and an alternative hierarchy. It'll take a considerable amount of time to accomplish either as well as some money (mostly for hosting). Money I could afford, time I could not. If it succeeds, one could possibly draw a salary from it through donations or ads, though I'd recommend against the ad-route. It would be a full-time job. If it succeeds, you'd probably need to hire more people as it grows.

To pursue this isn't my personal dream. So I'll do as Musk does: dump it online and say "Godspeed!" Now if only I had as many followers as Musk.. At least I can forget about this now.

Scope
Most existing competition does the following: fork Wikipedia, add something (more fair use media, machine translations, etc) and calls it a day. If you were thinking of doing this, you have already failed. Do not compete with Wikipedia's content, especially not this way: your fork will get outdated and you'll be screwed. Compete with the community and the WMF, not content.

How
It would work like this:
 * Keep the wiki constantly synchronized with Wikipedia. Edits and new pages on Wikipedia (actually just the content namespaces) need to be imported automatically. Edits and new pages on PlaceholderWiki need to be exported automatically by a bot.
 * The latter will require some consensus here on Wikipedia. Provided the edits on PlaceholderWiki are of high quality this shouldn't be a problem. In the early stages export could be reviewed manually, requiring no consensus.
 * PlaceholderWiki would follow Wikipedia policies and guidelines regarding content. Any guideline or policy on PlaceholderWiki will have to be compatible with Wikipedia. For example: PlaceholderWiki could implement a policy that requires any added birth date to be sourced.
 * If any deviation in content is desired, this should be accomplished with tags that could be named something like  and  . The parser should automatically skip exportonly content while the export bot should automatically strip noexport content and strip these tags.
 * For example, article text on PlaceholderWiki could read: " Notable Person has one sibling, Not Very Notable Person Not Very Notable Person who works as a florist . This would allow the creation and linking of Not Very Notable Person (florist) if PlaceholderWiki would prefer to alter the scope of WP:NOTABLE, without losing the synchronization with Wikipedia.
 * Whenever the import bot fails to reinstate the content of such tags after import from Wikipedia, it should automatically post a message on a noticeboard.

Traditional
Just copy Wikipedia. Proven but flawed, relatively high in drama and maintenance.

Professionals only
Only allow verified scholars/field professionals or increase the weight of their opinion. Wait, that kinda sounds like Wikisage. Never mind!

Official education/non-profit
An organization could create a PlaceholderWiki. For example, it could include only a subset of pages that they will improve/verify while adding tests/experiments for students in a non-exported namespace.

Commercial
A commercial organization could (probably on a subset of pages) verify all content, add sources where needed and have professionals review edits before they are imported from Wikipedia. One could charge a fee for access. Unlike Wikipedia, such a project could be a reliable source that could be acceptable to cite as a source in papers, so there's some potential added value.

Adminpedia
This idea is insane. It's Elon Musk-insane.
 * Make the new project invite-only, with existing users having to vouch for new members.
 * At least in the early stages, automatic account creation should be allowed on the basis of having a Wikipedia account in good standing. (e.g. an extended confirmed account) This could be verified by asking the user to put a code on (for example) their user page.
 * Make every user an administrator.
 * Ratelimit admin actions like delete and undelete.
 * Heavily ratelimit blocking/unblocking users. (should be on the order of 2 actions per 5 minutes)
 * Yes, anyone could block anyone for any reason. But if you DO, anyone could block YOU. With great power comes great responsibility.
 * Keep track of who has vouched for who.
 * Blocking/unblocking requires you being vouched for.
 * If a user is blocked or has nobody vouching for them, their vouches no longer count. This makes it more difficult to overthrow the system with an army of sockpuppets.
 * New (including reinstated after unblock) vouches only count after 24 hours have passed.
 * Unfortunately, staff will be required to permanently delete content that can't legally be hosted. (this will be uncommon, but sooner or later an incident will happen) This isn't too different from Office actions, but it'll be less common on Adminpedia.
 * For changes that otherwise require an interface administrator, there should be a delay before pages/edits take effect (particularly JS), possibly needing multiple users to approve edits. Deletion of .js pages doesn't need to be delayed, so if a malicious page does slip through it could be deleted quickly, though so such deletions should be ratelimited more than delete actions elsewhere.
 * As everyone is an admin, it removes most of the hierarchy. Everyone has rollback, everyone can delete, everyone can block/unblock and everyone can view and restore deleted content. More than that: even without an invite one should be able to view deleted content. Not really as a feature, but for legal reasons. If it's still viewable (potentially after jumping through some hoops, captcha maybe), it's legally still public. Just ask WMF legal: this is why the WMF doesn't allow communities to hand out the  right without due diligence.
 * There will be no checkusers as the system mostly relies on the vouch system. This removes privacy issues and the increasing difficulty of identifying/blocking socks by technical means. It also removes power from checkusers. While English Wikipedia has a few dozen, on many wikis there are fewer than 10, introducing the risk of checkusers blocking people randomly without explanation while hiding behind "but privacy!" arguments to avoid sanctions. While (to my knowledge) not on English Wikipedia, this is unfortunately reality.
 * Due to the above there will be no reason to block VPNs, school IPs, proxies, tor, public wifi, etc.

Advantages

 * The PlaceholderWiki community could regulate itself differently from Wikipedia. Talk page policies from Wikipedia could be changed or ditched entirely. Rules for bot approval could be changed. For both examples, rules could be made more restrictive or more lax.
 * Users who are productive in content namespaces but find themselves getting into trouble in discussions might find a home on PlaceholderWiki, either because the person they'd otherwise argue with isn't registered on PlaceholderWiki or because PlaceholderWiki talk page policies allow their behavior.
 * With some caveats, PlaceholderWiki could include content that doesn't pass the notability guideline on Wikipedia.
 * PlaceholderWiki could have different fair use guidelines. The export bot should strip filenames that don't exist on Wikipedia, and fair use files on Wikipedia could be overwritten locally, for example with a higher or lower resolution version.
 * There could be many PlaceholderWikis. Not just for different language versions: multiple communities could contribute to the same encyclopedia. One PlaceholderWiki could be based in Germany for example if they believe the legal system there would protect them better. Another PlaceholderWiki could implement super strict talk page guidelines, another could create a minimalist site optimized for speed, etc etc.
 * It would provide an alternative to the WMF. As an example: Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022. The original Vector 2022 rollout wouldn't have happened on PlaceholderWiki without local consensus.
 * If for any reason at any time the WMF could no longer be trusted with Wikipedia or becomes incapacitated, an actual alternative (that will need to scale up their server capacity..) could already exist. Even if Wikipedia goes away, the encyclopedia would Keep Calm and Carry On.

Disadvantages

 * lotsa work
 * It won't be universally possible to perform interwiki pings. Workarounds on some level could be created, for example by pinging a bot on Wikipedia with some syntax that includes the username on PlaceholderWiki, e.g.: PlaceholderWikiUsername . Upon receiving the mention, PlaceholderWikiPingBot would have to parse this and alert PlaceholderWikiUsername on PlaceholderWiki. In both directions, some opt-in/opt-out system would need to be devised.
 * Conflicts over content could be more complicated to resolve.
 * Being independent from the WMF also brings the burden of being the WMF. Fixing technical issues, dealing with hosting, dealing with legal problems and so forth.