Talk versus Discussion
In doing research for the entry I just made on Books - How to Choose Your People, I ran into the Talk page for the Wikipedia article on the Tone scale. Found it most interesting, particularly with regard to Wikipedias attitude and handling of Scientology. It is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tone_scale . I mention it here because up to now I had identified Wikipedias "Talk" with Scientolipedia's "Discussion" (because it is at the same place - rather woolly thinking, perhaps).
In fact in preparing http://scientolipedia.org/info/Books_–_Scientology_–_excluding_LRH_books I have referred to the discussion page, invited people to use it to discuss the best presentation of short summaries of non LRH books, and put two items in, thinking that its purpose was the same as Wikipedia's "Talk" page. So now I need to know what is the purpose of the "Discussion" page if it is different from Wikipedia's "Talk", and if it is different, where can I get to discuss the make up of a page giving brief details of non LRH Scientology books?
I might add that I do not feel that discussion (on a part of Scientology) is relevant to Scientolipedia. There are blogs and lists and forums and facebook, and god knows what next will duck up, but anything claiming to be a pedia, which I take to mean it is an encyclopedia of a certain area, should concern itself with facts, not discussion, and the only discussion would be about how best to communicate those facts, which is what I thought the talk page was about. I have a relatively large amount of data on non LRH Scientology books, not to mention other things experienced in 60 years contact with this (for some) accursed subject, and want to make it available on Internet, rather than have the whole world storming my flat to see and hear for themselves :-)
"Talk" and "Discussion" are the same thing and part of the built-in functionality of Mediawiki. (the software this site and wikipedia both use)
I renamed the "Talk" pages to "Discussion" just to give it a more friendly or perhaps familiar naming, so people would know what it's for.
If we, or wikipedia, had a group of academics creating this 'pedia', then perhaps there would be no need for mere mortals to discuss the various topics. We would simply read their learned works and move along.
Wikipedia and this site are collaborative ventures and the data comes from many contributors - hence the need for discussion.
Ever heard of Encarta? Microsoft tried to sell an encyclopedia that was a packaged work and it died a deserved death.
Wikipedia is the number five most traffick'd site on the Internet with millions of views each day. Victory for the collaboration idea. :-)
Good. So I go on the way I am. Interesting on Encarta - just looked it up briefly. I have the DVD/computer Encyclopedia Britannica, which I update every few years for a few shillings (so to speak). Consider it slightly more reliable than Wikipedia, but Wikipedia probably more up to date with latest trends - all irrelevant here (this thread). Thanks for the data - so I hope to get some feedback under discussion.
PS: What does "bump this thread" with a tick in a box mean? (Under what I am writing now, before I save the page - we are in for a rocky ride? :-) )