Wikidiagrams is a big project. It is a project with a 'bootstrap problem'. The goal is to make something that is good and useful, and that will be adopted by Wikipedia.
The bootstrap problem is that for Wikidiagrams to become useful, people have to have been using it for real uses. That's the only way to get the kinks out of Wikidiagrams and get it good enough. Yet people aren't going to use Wikidiagrams for real uses until it is good.
The solution, the bootstrap, is to get Wikidiagrams working one piece at a time. I'm finding very specific roles, such as biochemical pathways, and making Wikidiagrams good for those. Then over time more and more uses can be covered, until Wikidiagrams is generally useful for diagrams.
One route is the visual essays. These are narrative essays in the style of Andy Matuschak, with prompts within the essays and now with more diagrams. Each essay explains something. Each essay is chosen because diagrams can help.
The narrative essays lead on to further uses of the diagrams. The more narrative essays, the more topics the diagrams can help with.
Some of the pieces in bootstrapping Wikidiagrams:Explanatory essays that have diagrams embedded in them. The diagrams can be hard to make still, that's OK. They just have to be 'the right diagrams' for those essays.
As a spin off from the narrative essays, I'm creating tools to help with learning. The tools are based on the 'Anki' approach. The diagram tools create the diagrams for Anki cards. I'm also using the diagrams in educational games based around the same topics.
Wikiworld is a MediaWiki wiki with the early tools in use in it. This is to show that the tools actually work in wiki, and that they are particularly useful for topics such as Molecular Biology.
These all help with getting feedback on the diagrams, and so help towards improving them.
This site also has will have a Design Forge where you can create interactive diagrams. You can then export reduced versions of them. For example, an animated image (as a gif) or several still images (as png images). This isn't using the full interactivity. It's just using the part of the design for editing diagrams and for making similar diagrams from a single specification. That's still useful. The images may be useful on Wikipedia, or as pieces to use in making other images.
Wikipedia moves slowly. That's not something Wikipedia can change. Many people are involved. Adding new features at Wikipeida is a big and scary step when 'what exists in Wikipedia right now works'. I could infiltrate the secret cabal within Wikipedia where the big decisions are made, gain influence and power from within. But I think there are way too many different reasons that plan's not going to work.
So instead my strategy is to show Wikidiagrams, in use, for real, and show it can and does 'do nice stuff'. I'm doing this through creating a competing wiki. Yes, I know, it is ridiculous to consider genuinely 'competing with Wikipedia'. The scale and hours of work and care and attention that go into Wikipedia are mind boggling. However, I can show a new path.
In a wiki running on 'the same' software as Wikipedia, it's possible to take on a range of topics that showcase what diagrams can do. If everything is licensed in a way compatible with Wikipedia, it becomes very easy for Wikimedia foundation to adopt, adapt and include those parts which can work for Wikipedia.
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