Page:Crowdsourcing and Open Access.djvu/23



2. Crowdsourcing the Wiki Way
Of the nine wiki projects operated by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation (“WMF”), one—Wikipedia—has garnered most of the scholarly praise and criticism. WMF’s other projects (Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wiktionary, and the Wikimedia Commons) have their own communities of dedicated users, who use a common set of wiki-based tools to contribute content within the scope of their respective missions. They have so far failed, however, to capture the academic imagination in quite the same way as Wikipedia—which, like an open flame, seems to have the power to draw all the oxygen out of academic discourse on law and wiki technologies. This is unfortunate, because WMF’s projects include another candidate that shares many of Wikipedia’s strengths, omits its most prominent weaknesses, and offers a natural fit with the interests and concerns of academics and others who study and value the public domain. That project is Wikisource.