Robert Scott Horning wrote:
At the very least, if there is to be a moritorium on
new sister
projects, please make that official policy on the part of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board and get that stated on the New Project page, and
perhaps even on the front page of Meta as well. On the other hand, if
the board does intend to allow some new projects to be started if they
are well thought out and have a support community behind them, there
should be an official policy to silence the critics who seem to speak in
a semi-official capacity on behalf of the board (even though I know they
are not board members).
You want the Board to make a decision? Keep dreaming. If you want
something done, do it yourself. Form your own organisation, secure your
own funding, develop your own software.
If there are genuine technical issues that need to be
addressed so that
starting
en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than
to.wikibooks.org, I
would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
screaming about. Get technical and don't sugar coat it either, and if
possible give hard examples. If the concern is purely social and
getting the new project community organized, that may be a legitimate
concern. I don't think it is in as many cases as the critics seems to
believe it may be, and most new projects tend to recruit more people
than would normally be participating with Wikipedia alone, so I don't
think it necessarily bleeds other projects dry from volunteers. This is
also an issue I would be more than willing to debate as well.
Some software requirements are listed at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity#Possible_software_needs
Making a comprehensive list is a job for a developer, and you don't seem
to have any interested developers at the moment. It's much easier to put
your name on a list of supporters than it is to write 1000 lines of
code. Or indeed, to determine the requirements that that 1000 lines of
code should fulfill.
-- Tim Starling