Comparison with Wikipedia

This open source wiki takes much of its inspiration from Wikipedia and the work being conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation. In what has become one of the most popular web sites in the world, Wikipedia is a great example of the power of open source and a collaborative community.

The similarities and differences between this wiki and Wikipedia are summarized below.

Similarities

 * Both sites are focused on content-building in a collaborative fashion
 * Both sites use the same MediaWiki technology for building wiki pages
 * Because they use the same software, the core syntax used on this site and Wikipedia for creating Article pages is the same
 * The process of using Talk Pages to discuss Article pages is similar
 * Both sites allow for parallel improvement of articles, although there are differences in the approach

Differences

 * This zWiki site is much more narrow in its focus than Wikipedia. zWiki is focused on topics related to the open semantic framework; Wikipedia contains any content appropriate for an encyclopedia and has far more content than any other encyclopedia.  Other projects by the Wikimedia Foundation include definition of a shared images commons, a dictionary and thesaurus and News.


 * This wiki has a strong publications emphasis


 * The open source version of this wiki is immature compared with Wikipedia. Wikimedia is one of the most visited sites in the world, has been active since the year 2001 and has millions of registered Wikipedians.


 * Not all zWiki content would be deemed to be of general interest - some content may be considered specialist material that would be inappropriate for an encyclopedia


 * There are overlaps in this zWiki and Wikipedia around descriptions of key concepts and processes. In some cases, the Wikipedia description of these concepts are far more comprehensive; the zWiki description is always framed in specific terms related to the overall method.

License Dependencies

 * This zWiki has referenced some limited content from Wikipedia by directly linking to this content. This approach is allowed without permission by the WikiMedia Foundation as referenced in the following article.


 * Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, as is this zWiki.

Affiliation
Other than the use of some referenced content to make up this zWiki, there is no affiliation between this wiki and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Content Mashups from Wikipedia
As Wikipedia provides such an excellent online reference of objectively written material, it is an ideal source of content in many areas of this zWiki. Some content has therefore been mashed up for articles that are definitional in nature and for which the focus is to explain this zWiki's concepts.