Update: I'm in the process of evaluating where and how to host the wiki. This overview shows some things to consider:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Starting_and_Running_a_Wiki_WebsiteI've ruled out hosting the wiki at someplace like wikispaces.com, which are called "wiki farms" because they exist just to host lots of wikis. At these sites, to get some of the full-fledged permissions, custom domain name, etc. seems like it costs extra money while still not providing perfect flexibility, and I want us to have full control over the software and features we use. Besides, wiki farms from my quick review often don't offer very good export capabilities, which seems like it might become a problem if the wiki must be moved later. For example Wikispaces, which seems like the biggest and in some ways the best wiki farming option, allows export of hosted wiki content in only HTML and PDF formats, which I'm guessing would require re-entry of every page if the wiki were moved to another host later.
For these reasons I've tentatively settled on using MediaWiki (the software which powers Wikipedia), and buying generic web hosting from a provider like GoDaddy which includes PHP hosting and MySQL database support, which are needed to run MediaWiki. The whole bit could be picked up and plopped on a different web server capable of running the same software, and MediaWiki offers lots of robust and familiar features. But if Mark's contact turns out to want some other software, I'll be open to using that too. There are apparently over a hundred different types of wiki software to use.
La Texican, that tvtropes.org intro does have some good parts to it. I particularly like the emphasis on the lack of the "notability" aspect of Wikipedia, to stress to new people that it is much less restrictive. Our wiki will not be an encyclopedia, but more of a repository for people to share useful information, even if it's not easily verifiable in the way encyclopedic content must be.
Another important way in which I imagine it may differ is by containing useful content that people develop themselves, like home-schooling curricula. I also imagine different types of learning resources which people find useful will have their own pages, where I would
want people to put in their own personal impressions; this would be more useful the lesser-known the resource. There are different sources of review and rating information on the web, with Amazon being a big example, but they are not focused on the needs of gifted people and it's hard to get an idea from them of how appropriate a particular resource would be for a gifted child. It's user-created information where I think the new wiki may tend to be most different (in type of content) from places like Hoagies and this site.
