crypto wiki -- good idea, bad idea?

[Matt R]

Travis H wrote:
> Would a wiki specifically for crypto distribute the burden enough to 
> be useful? Or should we just stick to wikipedia?  Is it doing a
> satisfactory job?

The English Wikipedia's crypto coverage is a mixed bag. Out of the 800+
articles, there's a handful of fairly-good entries (e.g. "Data Encryption
Standard"), yet more than a few abysmal entries. It's typically more current
than HAC or Applied Cryptography, yet not as comprehensive or consistent in
quality. My advice is to think of Wikipedia as collection of draft articles
that you can watch being constructed live.

I would propose that improving Wikipedia's cryptography articles would be a
better bet than starting a new crypto wiki from scratch (or even importing
articles from Wikipedia, as they're available under a free license). Wikipedia
has a lot of visibility and momentum behind it, and new specialist topic wikis
tend to fizzle out quite quickly, in my experience. One example is
http://www.infosecpedia.org

If anyone's interested in helping out on Wikipedia, people are *very* welcome.
There's a Cryptography WikiProject, dedicated to improving crypto articles:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cryptography
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Cryptography

Also, Wikipedia is a multilingual project. I believe the German, and more
recently the French Wikipedia editions have been quite active in this area. For
example, the French "Crypto Portal":

   http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Portail_Cryptologie

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com


		
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