Wikiphilosophers

This is a **proposal for a new** Wikimedia sister project.
Wikiphilosophers
Status of the proposal
Status	under discussion
Details of the proposal
Project description	Wikiphilosophers would become a platform for exploring, developing and exchanging countless philosophical ideas. For every topic that one could philosophize about, such as "knowledge," "love," "freedom" or "art", a lemma could be created. The intention is for users to then articulate their ideas by creating a subpage, like [[Knowledge/User S. Perquin]], and referencing this page within the lemma itself (including a very concise summary of what their idea is about). This way, readers and writers can arrive at new insights. This would be the ultimate knowledge project, because philosophy is the ultimate source of knowledge. Through philosophy, we learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
Is it a multilingual wiki?	There could be many language versions, but English would be the basic language.
Potential number of languages	See above.
Technical requirements
New features to require	Not applicable to my knowledge.
	v; t; e;

See also Wikiphilosophers on Wikiversity.

Proposed by

S. Perquin

About

According to Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy, clicking on the first link in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually leads to the Philosophy article. In my view, this is because the essence of every subject lies in philosophy. An encyclopedia like Wikipedia could never have existed if people in the past were never curious and asked questions about life. Therefore, I see philosophizing as a crucial way to gain knowledge and wisdom.

I actually find it quite strange that there isn't yet a wiki where philosophers and other thinkers can openly post their ideas and exchange thoughts with each other on a variety of different philosophical topics. That's why I came up with Wikiphilosophers. It should become a source of inspiration for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of the world, stimulating intellectual discussions and fostering a global dialogue on essential life questions.

If you wanted to learn about other people's ideas about what music is, you would search for "music" in the search bar and find a structured overview where philosophers and other thinkers explain their ideas about music. They can support their ideas with sources or the inspiration from which they derived them. These ideas can be discussed with each other through the "dialogue page", which is the discussion page of Wikiphilosophers' lemmas.

Goals

Here are some goals that can be pursued with Wikiphilosophers, but these can still be expanded or further defined.

Collecting numerous new insights of users regarding knowledge and wisdom.
Enabling interactive dialogues among users on various philosophical themes.
Reaching new insights by collectively reflecting on your ideas and writing about them yourself.

Four pillars

The following pillars are not yet finalized but should provide an idea of what Wikiphilosophers would revolve around.

Wikiphilosophers is an online philosopedia. It forms a combination between a philosophical platform and an encyclopedia, essentially a collection of lemmas with information on various philosophical topics and themes.
Every philosophy on Wikiphilosophers counts. As long as you have a serious vision that you've invested time and energy in, Wikiphilosophers provides a space for your philosophy.
There is no censorship. We have a high degree of freedom of speech. This ends when people engage in discrimination or incite hatred or violence.
We assume good intentions. We are optimistic about people and assume that they have good intentions when writing and discussing.

On Wikiversity

Currently, the project has taken shape on Wikiversity. Click here for the project on Wikiversity.

Realizing this project

Feel free to brainstorm with me about this idea. There are countless things that still need to be thought about together. I can't do this alone. But remember: Rome wasn't built in a day. We still have a long way to go to build a great platform!

Domain names

https://wikiphilosophers.org/

People interested

Support As a philosopher, I find the idea of being able to read, write, and discuss interactively on a variety of philosophical themes incredibly interesting. It would be great to be able to read the philosophical ideas of others on each subject I'm interested in, through a clear and organized overview. S. Perquin (talk) 00:20, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Netgo123 (talk) 15:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral I think such things should be integrated and tied to specific subjects / questions and it should be structured. Both of these are implemented in Kialo which is still quite unknown and in need of proper search engine indexing & contributors. I think it would be better to integrate Kialo with Wikimedia and vice versa (as already done to a small degree on Wikidata) and to work toward it becoming open content and open source. An issue with that where this proposal may be relevant is that claims there are supposed to be brief (and at best not original) but one often can elaborate on them via attaching notes and maybe links to Wikibooks. Wikibooks may already be suitable to incorporate what is proposed here so there could be a Wikibooks project for this. --Prototyperspective (talk) 12:26, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your suggestion! I just created an account on Kialo and am going to ask there if there is a need for integration with Wikimedia! Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 02:15, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I contacted Kialo via email and they informed me that switching to MediaWki software is not in line with their plans for Kialo. I also took a look around the platform, but it's not exactly what I imagine Wikiphilosophers to be. Wikiphilosophers should instead provide an overview of different viewpoints without too much discussion about them. Kialo is a nice platform, notwithstanding, but it does get cluttered when hundreds of people respond to each other's comments. You would get a big family tree, as it were, whereas Wikiphilosophers should be a bit simpler and just a collection of individual views and ideas on a variety of topics. S. Perquin (talk) 10:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That wasn't what I meant and is not a reasonable thing to ask. Their design is superior for structured debate compared to MediaWiki that's why I recommended it in the first place – did you not first try it out before asking them? Whether they would add MediaWiki or similar tech to their existing may be more reasonable but that's also not what I referred to. Kialo is the opposite of cluttered, you probably just don't know how to browse/navigate/use it yet and these are not comments but arguments that made it past preliminary review and get continuously refined. Good to see they responded to your questions though.

Sadly, there are not hundreds of people in debates but it would be better if that was the case. The whole point of it (well one of several) is to provide a structured integrated overviews of different viewpoints in particular without too much discussion about them while your proposal and MediaWiki would be more for long-form individual nonintegrated viewpoints for which again Wikibooks could probably also be used which is the second thing I mentioned. (Btw this can also be useful on structured Kialo where a claim could link there for longer elaborations similar to how tweets can link to longer texts.) So I'm just not sure how with these two platforms already existing a third would be needed or viable rather than changes / more participation in both of these. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I thought that if Kialo wanted to integrate with Wikimedia, it would have to run on MediaWiki, just like other projects. I did try Kialo, but I personally find that it becomes quite unseeable when hundreds of people respond. Take Does God excist? as an example. With 45.6k contributors, it gets pretty cluttered, in my opinion. There are arguments for and against, and also again for and against all those arguments, and again for that, and so on. In the end, there are thus hundreds of pro and con arguments. If you look at Is scientism a religion? however, with 136 contributions, it is still overseeable. Do you get what I mean?

Furthermore, I don't understand what exactly you mean by that Wikibooks could be used for Wikiphilosophers. I get that you can reference books, but do you mean that within Wikibooks you could create such a platform as Wikiphilosophers?

I look forward to hearing from you! Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 12:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't know why you read that as if Kialo wanted to integrate with Wikimedia – why would anybody think so after reading what I wrote? I didn't write that anywhere and hope you didn't tell them I was saying that since I wasn't. It's not cluttered because it is structured, you can go to the top level and follow a branch and the n go to the top-level again and check another top-level argument in detail.

Please also make sure to read the metadata there properly, this debate had 3.1 k contributors, the vast majority making only very few claims and it's an exception since most debates get only a handful of contributors, way below 100 and that one is afaik the most popular one. The more arguments the better since you don't need to dive deep into the branches, you can choose the level of detail you're interested in. The second debate is very low quality and was biased last time I looked it up.

Yes, again, I proposed there could be a WikiProject for that on Wikibooks for example. I didn't say anything about referencing books on Wikibooks. Maybe there could be a Portal "Wikiphilosophers" on Wikibooks, there already are many Wikimedia projects and chances for another one being both accepted and well-participated-in are quite low so for that reason as well it would be a much better idea to first see if things are possible within the confines of the existing infrastructure/frameworks. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:25, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought so because you said, "I think it would be better to integrate Kialo with Wikimedia and vice versa [...]".

I am a person who wants to read all the arguments, but with Does God exist? I got a little lost after reading a few arguments. There are so many tree branches, that you lose track of what you have already read and what not yet. But nevertheless, I really like the platform! Only I think Wikiphilosophers would be more suitable for me. I find it more interesting to go deep into one specific point of view and delve into it.

I don't know if Wikibooks would really be suitable for Wikiphilosophers. I would rather have a separate wiki for it. But indeed, should Wikiphilosophers not be accepted as a separate platform, I might look within Wikibooks to see if there are opportunities there. S. Perquin (talk) 17:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would find it interesting if this project was started; I just find it unlikely that there will be a new project like this and there's these two big problems: who is going to actually read stuff on there? How is disagreement handled? People would merely rate things they do or don't immediately like and even if they put objections on the talk page, those are buried (&unseeable) and like the main post barely scrutinizable (that's in contrast to structured pages).

The example page shows a facilitation of separate 'camps' with different views; I think this is a prevalent problematic conceptualization/… that this would facilitate by how it structures things: rather there are different aspects to a usually common topic or question (like the example). At least wiki projects shouldn't always segregate people into 'camps' who believe this or that or 'follow' internals of this or that 'philosophy' – rather it should be about truth and reason more broadly / the points themselves; e.g. points of each of the 'camps' there would make sense and be true at once. I think it's better to integrate points into topics/questions and subtopics (here in long length). Your FAQ ideas about labels-feedback on pages could be done via templates. Maybe implement this as a WikiBooks project and if it actually gets both contributed to and used/read, then (re)consider making it a separate project. Could cont. on talk page. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:46, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, just seeing your comment now! Those 'camps' were just an example of what it might look like in practice. Could you explain what you meant by your idea of how it could be made better? Maybe it would indeed be smart to start with it in a Wikibooks project. Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 20:23, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral it’s a unique idea but it’s… odd. I’m not sure how this would integrate into the rest of Wikimedia, which is dominated by simple reference content and media repositories. I’m not a philosopher so I’m not the best person to assess this. Dronebogus (talk) 02:02, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you have any questions you would like answers to, you can ask them on the Forum, if you want! Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 02:17, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support I wouldn't contribute myself, but there could be room within the wikimedia framework. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 16:03, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question: Isn't Wikiversity a good place for such discussions? Or non-wiki forums like Reddit or Stack Exchange? Jonashtand (talk) 18:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be cool if everyone could also post their views on a wiki project for everyone to read. Maybe something for the future! Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 20:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose I know it's not global policy, but I still feel like it's original research, and I feel like Wikimedia's purpose is to spread already existing information. Feel free to try and change my mind. QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 06:47, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, you could see it as original research, but I think it can also be interesting if people can spread their own ideas through a Wikimedia platform. By engaging in dialogue with each other on different topics, one can also gain knowledge, I think. Reading other people's ideas is also a source of knowledge, and that is still missing from a Wikimedia project. But that's my opinion! Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 15:30, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Allowing original research is already accepted policy at Wikiversity, Wikinews, and Wikivoyage. I really don't see any reason to push Wikipedia policies onto the movement as a whole. Feed Me Your Skin (talk) 09:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]