User blog:Infologist/Fragmentation in computer topics

To write on a topic in Wikia, one needs to decide in which Wikia to write. Now, I plan on writing on this: How to reduce the use of online products, in particular Google products, in an Android phone.

The trouble is that it's hard to decide where to put this, and how. The topic spans multiple subtopics. In a wiki, a natural way of organizing the information is to split the content into detailed articles, each focused on a narrow area, and to refer to the detailed articles from a more succinct overview article.

So, where to write the overview article, and where about the focused topics?

These are some candidates, in decreasing order of number of pages:
 * Computing Knowledgebase (881 pages)
 * c:Computer (671 pages)
 * c:Google (341 pages)
 * c:OpenSource (196 pages)
 * c:Android (171 pages)
 * c:ComputerSecurity (167 pages)

The "Computing Knowledgebase" is apparently the oldest one, which may be the reason why it is also the biggest one. However, given that its URL starts with "PC", computer topics that have nothing to do with PCs should, in theory at least, be maintained elsewhere.

The PC wiki was rebranded as "Computing Knowledgebase" with the express purpose of being a wikia for more than the PC. But it looks like this did not really catch on. In contrast to that, "computer.wikia.com", with its more generic name and corresponding purpose, is going strong.

Wouldn't we all be better off if there was only one Wikia about computer topics? All rolled into one?


 * The community would be a joint one
 * Cross-topic articles would be easier to write.

Since I also plan to write in both German and English, the German counterparts are also relevant, not all of which may exist:
 * c:de.Computer (3 pages)
 * c:de.Google (5 pages)
 * c:de.OpenSource (5 pages)
 * c:de.Android (just reopened, less than 10 content pages)
 * c:de.ComputerSecurity (apparently never existed)
 * w:c:de.PC (apparently never existed)