Wikipedia talk:Alternative outlets

NSK

Resolved

 – No one has responded to this question in almost 4 years.

Anyone else have concerns with the amount of advertising of wikinerds by NSK on wikipedia? The bellman 09:17, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

What is NSK? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

JnanaBase

Resolved

 – Moot noise; no issue (other than tact) raised in over 3 years.

Hello, I would like some Wikipedian to add JnanaBase to Wikipedia:Alternative outlets. JnanaBase is a wiki which allows you to do anything you want as long as you stay within the minimum possible legal and decency limitations. We accept Wikipedia:Votes for deletion articles and articles deleted from Wikipedia as long they are legal and not copyright violations. Thanks for considering my wiki for inclusion to your Alternative outlets page. Wikinerd 06:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• So do Geocities, Angelfire and any other free website. Given the lack of size, traffic and importance of your site (see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/JnanaBase) I'd suggest you do not promote it here. Wikipedia is not a webguide. Radiant_>|< 08:59, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
• Nikolaos S. Karastathis (NSK), if that's who you are: as I'm sure you know very well, this page used to contain a description of JnanaBase. Your request is disingenuous. I originally created this page, and I am the one who originally included JnanaBase on it. I am not the one who deleted it, but your recent shenanigans in attempting to use Wikipedia for promotion of your website, have angered me to the point where I no longer assume good faith. Do not expect me to help you. I strongly advise any Wikipedians tempted to respond to this request not to do so until they have familiarized themselves with Wikinerd's recent activities, which have brought him into conflict with the community. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:58, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Whatever the merits of either side of this old squabble, I would advise significantly less heavy-handed abuse of boldfacing. If you can't make your point without screaming, you do not actually have a valid point to make. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:06, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Google Base

Resolved

 – Moot, and off-target to begin with.

Would Google Base [1]be a good alternative outlet? 168.209.98.35 19:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Databases aren't wikis. Google has it's own ostensible WP competitor now (actually more of a competitor to AllExperts.com and similar sites). Flagging this topic as resolved. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:10, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

MOSR RICH MOSR RICH (talk) 07:37, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Template

Perhaps this is not in the spirit of Wikipedia but I was wondering if there was a template that could direct some vandals to try these alternatives.--Dylan Lake 22:06, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge in from Not Wikipedia

Resolved

 – Non-controversial move unchallenged for over a year.

I am merging in content from the "Wikipedia:Not Wikipedia" page, which is now just a redirect to this page. See discussion at Wikipedia talk:Not Wikipedia. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 22:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

XeNTaXWiki?

I understand that this probably sounds (very, very, very) presumptuous of me, but I was wondering about the possibility of adding XeNTaXWiki to this list as a general file format encyclopedia. I understand that there are other websites probably more worthy of inclusion (such as Wotsit.org), but this, as far as I know, is the only wiki of its type and scale. If it's not listworthy, I'd be interested in hearing why and what I could do to help it towards that end. And yes, this could very well be a conflict of interest on my part. ;) —Dinoguy1000 00:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

On one hand, having a bigger list of alternative outlets would potentially allow the page to serve more users who are looking at their articles getting deleted. On the other hand, if the list gets huge enough to be comprehensive, we'd end up with something like our own WikiIndex, and people might object to it on the basis of size alone (even though size might be necesssary to end up with a list that works for most users who need the page). Speaking for myself only, I'm not sure how Wikipedia can assert any inclusion criteria for content that Wikipedia rejects. That seems like a subtle attempt to attach restrictions to what people can do with our garbage after we throw it away, and seems contrary to the GFDL in any case. We let anybody copy Wikipedia's non-deleted content, without trying to restrict copying to site we prefer. Why would we try to restrict (or fail to facilitate, by being less then fully informative) anyone's freedom to copy Wikipedia's deleted articles to any site they like? --Teratornis (talk) 01:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

From a practical standpoint, one handy way to organize a very long list is to arrange it in an index. The best example I know of on Wikipedia is the Editor's index to Wikipedia. One possibility might be to make a separate extended index of alternative outlets, and for each one list its inclusion criteria in some abbreviated way. Another place to mention alternative outlets is on the pages of specific WikiProjects. The members of a WikiProject may be involved in deletion debates about articles in their topic area, and they can work more efficiently if they are aware of alternative outlets for the articles they care about. Another way to raise awareness about a particular wiki is by mentioning it in specific deletion debates. That can be better than listing it on a reference page, because the people who need to know about the wiki might not happen to look at the reference page at their time of need. --Teratornis (talk) 01:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

You can also search Deletionpedia periodically for articles you might want to add to XeNTaXWiki. Deletionpedia collects Wikipedia's deleted articles, and publishes those which do not have copyright problems and so on. --Teratornis (talk) 01:19, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Too many shortcuts

Resolved

 – MoS says list two, no more (barring extenuating circumstances, which are not in evidence here).

I updated the syntax for {{shortcut}} as per CAT:SHORTFIX on your project page. In the process I notice that there are six shortcuts. The syntax currently allows only five. Only the five appear on the page as of now. You will have view the source to see the sixth. Of course the sixth will still work even though it does not appear in the box. If I remember correctly there is a solution to this problem in the template documentation. I think I should let those in the project deal with this issue. Sorry I could not be of more help.

--DRoll (talk) 05:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:MOS is clear on this: only advertise two at most. Any page could, in theory, have 247 shortcuts, but there is no point at all in advocating more than two of them, since no one would actually retain such "information". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposed

 Done

Wikipedia:Try another wiki is completely redundant with this page, but may have some salvageable language in it (i.e. better for merge than for WP:MFD.). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

As primary author of the page, I think you might be on to something. Where I see the (potential) difference is "Try Another Wiki" is specific about articles, where "Alternative Outlets" is more general and can be written to apply to not only other wikis but free-hosting and pay-for hosting sites--as well as the emphasis on images, media, news, etc.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I support merging the pages. They seem redundant and share the same objective, so it would be a waste to split people's efforts maintaining (and reading) two separate pages. Waldir ^talk 19:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and did this. I couldn't see any reason not to. Hope nobody minds.  :) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 21:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks great, thank you so much!--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Biographicon

Is Biographicon an acceptable site to export/transwiki to? It appears to be missing licensing information and is listed as non-compliant at WP:Mirrors and forks/Abc#Biographicon.com (April 2008). User:Herdrick (affiliated with Biographicon) responded to a comment at Talk:Biographicon#Looked at website. Flatscan (talk) 04:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

While searching for external links, I came across User talk:ReyBrujo#Biographicon. As far as I can tell, none of ReyBrujo's suggestions for improving compliance were implemented. Flatscan (talk) 05:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Outlets other than Wikis

I don't know if there might be another essay that addresses that... sometimes e.g. articles on a film or actor here have sourced info but they don't rise to the level of RS or N, but that info might be a good addition to a user-edited site like the IMDb (not a wiki, though they recently added some wiki abilities for user created FAQs) where their standards are different. Occasionally some work might be appropriate for publication in a zine or even a magazine, though obviously there the number of outlets is so high one could only mention this option rather than list them all! Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 05:11, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

The need is there. Sometimes these kinds of non-notable articles have rabid devoted fans who see a deletion review as a personal attack on their beloved star and go on the warpath. Pointing them to a good alternative outlet might reduce the sting. Guy Macon (talk) 23:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

On a related note, what is the rationale behind the present inclusion criteria? The license restriction is an obvious no-brainer - no point listing an "alternative outlet" that you aren't allowed to copy Wikipedia material to. Some of the other inclusion criteria may be somewhat questionable. For example. "Allow content to be moved over verbatim." IMO, alternative outlets that don't allow this should be included if no alternative that does allow verbatim copying exist. Perhaps a separate "alternative outlets that require re-editing/reformatting" or "that do not allow content to be moved over verbatim" section? Guy Macon (talk) 00:28, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedias in other languages, and Simple

It may be too obvious to bother including, but perhaps a section to this article could briefly mention that people determined to write on this Wikipedia in languages other than English could usefully take their efforts to the Wikipedia in the relevant language, and include a link to the page where one can easily access the relevant wikipedias.

The Simple wikipedia could perhaps be mentioned in the same section. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

 Added. Feel free to reword. -- œ^™ 22:24, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

computer.wikia.com?

I have been working on Clevo x7200, an article about a laptop computer. It is being considered for deletion based upon questionable notability, but it also has a number of devoted fans who have been using Wikipedia as a sort of documentation repository and list of user-generated tips.

I would like to point them to an alternative outlet - just because something doesn't belong on Wikipedia is no reason why it has to disappear from the Internet.

I was thinking that http://computer.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page might fit the bill for them, and possibly for inclusion on this page. Comments? Guy Macon (talk) 22:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

TV Tropes legality

With WP:LINKVIO in mind, can we in good conscience keep recommending TV Tropes? From inception through June 2012, TV Tropes used CC BY-SA, much like Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia. But in July 2012, TV Tropes unilaterally switched to the incompatible, non-free CC BY-NC-SA license. I'm no lawyer, but it looks like TV Tropes has been distributing the work of its pre-2012 contributors in violation of copyright for the past two years. I move to remove TV Tropes and keep All The Tropes, which was created from a dump of the last CC BY-SA version. I bring it up on talk first because I acknowledge bad blood between the administrators of the two trope wikis. --Damian Yerrick (talk) 18:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

More info: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Replace most citations linking to TV Tropes --Damian Yerrick (talk) 20:32, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikibios not working?

According to https://web.archive.org/web/20150315000000*/http://wikibios.com , the site was functional as recently as April 2015, but I'm getting all kinds of errors when I try to access different pages. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Suggested merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Merge and Spinout Pinging @Koavf and Soumya-8974: in case you want to perform the merger (non-admin closure) --Trialpears (talk) 17:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

---

Wikipedia:Other projects similar to Wikipedia This page includes the September 11 Memorial wiki and many of the other alternatives which are on this page. We should have one section for things which are not general interest encyclopedias but which could support them, one for topic-specific encyclopedias, and one for alternative encyclopedia wikis (all I can think of is citizendium:, ELibre:, encyc, and wikinfo:--any others?) —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:16, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

• Support merge proposed by User:Koavf: WP:Other projects similar to Wikipedia can easily be merged into this page, and it is an unnecessary duplication of effort to keep them separate. Also, is there a reason why, in WP:Alternative outlets § Directory of alternatives, some links are links to the Wikipedia article about the site, but other links are external links even though a Wikipedia article about the site exists? For consistency, shouldn't all of the links be links to Wikipedia articles when a Wikipedia article about the site exists, or else all of the links should be external links? Why the inconsistency? Biogeographist (talk) 20:23, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Or both: link to an article and an external link. Thanks, Bio. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:43, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support. For alt encycs, there's WikiAlpha, Wikisage, Encyclopedia Wikia, Scholarpedia, The Multilingual Encyclopedia. stranger195 (talk • contribs • guestbook) 09:18, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
• OpposeMerge and spinout. This essay has a beautiful, succinct, on point, message, and Wikipedia:Alternative_outlets#Directory_of_alternatives is already out-of-proportion in size. Instead, I support spinning out Wikipedia:Alternative_outlets#Directory_of_alternatives to Wikipedia:Directory of alternative outlets and merging Wikipedia:Other projects similar to Wikipedia into that. Justin? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:31, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
  • @SmokeyJoe: Your point about one being better-written than the other is well taken but I still don't see what the distinction would be. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
    • The essay is succinct and direct, meaningful for good-faith contributors of unsuitable content, and Wikipedia is being nice in suggesting other outlets, and this essay does it from the strong position that if unsuitable material is added again it will be deleted. The Directory of alternatives is a boundless list, mere suggestions, Wikipedia is not in a privileged position to tell others which outlets are more suitable than others, the backing behind these suggestion is very weak. In the separate page, loose commentary could be made about the suitability of other outlets, probably in groups. This essay is diminished by inclusion of loose commentary. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
      • @SmokeyJoe: "Wikipedia is not in a privileged position to tell others which outlets are more suitable than others" I couldn't disagree more: we have every right to say that we approve of one source over another; there is no reason for us to act like all potential alternatives are equal and in fact they are not. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:24, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
        • We are not talking about sources here. We are talking about "... so try this instead" where the newcomer might be pointed elsewhere for publishing his high school band memoirs, or networking resources for the kids football team. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:34, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
          I thought I remembered facebook being an alternative. So much speedy deleted was appropriate for facebook. But I looked through the history, and apparently not. Still, some suggestions are much more prestigious than others. OK, how about I change to "support", but I would like more explanation of the purpose of the suggested sites, and sorting, and I anticipate a desire to spinout the list of suggestions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:47, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
• Merge and Spinout per SmokeyJoe. I don't want this essay ruined with a long, largely useless list. I guess I'll go along with the support votes for the merge so long as we understand the next step after that is spinout. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:55, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
• Merge and spinout I agree that Wikipedia:Other projects similar to Wikipedia should be merged into here, and I would support a Directory of Alternatives. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 10:18, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Merge and spinout per Koavf. —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata (contributions • subpages) 10:33, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• I'm late to the party here, so be it. But I have a question: what does "spinout" mean?--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:23, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

  That the large table in Wikipedia:Alternative outlets is moved onto a seperate page. --Trialpears (talk) 20:26, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

If you wonder which page ended up to be the spinout separate page, like I did, it seems that this is it: Wikipedia:Directory of alternative outlets. Betty (talk) 07:16, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Suggesting Miraheze as an alternative wiki

I am deeply involved with Wikiversity, and am beginning to use Miraheze.org. Efforts to get Miraheze on sites like Comparison of wiki hosting services have proven proven problematic. Most of these efforts were done not by myself, but by others affiliated with Miraheze. But now my own efforts on Miraheze.org have raised my COI status to the point where I should not touch a WP article on this subject, beyond putting it on a talk page like this. I have a private node of wikis where my students can write anything they want: Only Miraheze administrators, myself, and a student on the wiki can see anything beyond the first page. Please consider mentioning this option at:

https://wright.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page --- Yours truly--Guy vandegrift (talk) 13:34, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Legoktm: However, the OP might refer to a specific Miraheze wiki and not the whole site. My proposal is to add Miraheze as a whole to this page (which might be the same as OP/yours), which currently is not popular (but it doesn't mean it is not recommended) and this proposal to add interwiki links to MH wikis is currently being discussed at the talk page about interwiki links on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. 36.72.46.16 (talk) 07:47, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Removing Anarchopedia link

There is a wikilink for "Anarchopedia," which there should not be, since the article is protected deleted. I am unsure whether it is sufficient to simply unlink the name or whether the mention of Anarchopedia needs to be removed entirely. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 02:24, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Just remove the reference to it. Legacypac (talk) 19:14, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

For new users

I think that we should show this page to new users, in order to prevent people who are only here for WP:NOT-type purposes from creating content that will get deleted, which is A. bad for our reputation regarding newcomers, B. a waste of our time and C. wastes their efforts and D. helps the other projects. Opinions? Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 02:15, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jjjjjjdddddd: Good idea but this page should be pretty high-quality first. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:07, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

True, but at this point I would say it serves it's purpose. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 03:10, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiBios down.

Someone might want to edit the relevant section of the table to reflect this.--Ilikerainandstorms (talk) 12:52, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion: gerontology.wikia.com

Due to the cleanup of super-centenarians on WP, I suggest that this be added:

Wikipedia is not a(n)...	... so try this instead
Super-centenarian site	gerontology.wikia.com

Since Wikia and Wikipedia have compatible licences, there should be no problem having the "contents related to longevity that have been removed from WP due to policies" copied to Wikia. FoxyGrampa75 (talk) 03:29, 7 December 2018 (UTC)