Sj wrote:
Hello Robert,
Responding to your last commetn first
3) Review by "proposal committee". This is a new step, but I am
suggesting that a group of "veteran" Wikimedia (from all projects) users
This is basically a great idea; though it need not be veterans, just
users who care about new project development; and it need not be a
formal committee with elections and terms, just an interest group of
people who actively care for incoming proposals.
That is one of the reasons I put veteran in quotes, although I do think that the
people helping out and sending suggestions to project proposals should have at least a
little experience with Wikimedia projects in general of some sort. Probably more
important is the ability to have a little patience and be able to explain the interal
politics of the Wikimedia community... or even what each separate project is like. I have
noticed a slightly different flavor between each project (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews,
etc.) where the editing styles are slightly different, even though there are some who move
across all of these project. This even goes to what is acceptable content vs.
unacceptable... and is beyond just the "charter" of each project as well.
I certainly think that people who post a project proposal idea should be contacted early
by such helpers, and if possible redirected to other projects that could help them out.
Sabine Cretella wrote:
One thought on that - or maybe more:
I am quite sure that what already is online from wikipedia to
wikisource
can include everything.
Of course over time there will be changes in conceiving how information
should be subdivided and then linked. When I read the message about the
"believe-wiki" I thought: but this is already there ... in the
different
projects
There are some projects, like WikiMusic, just as an example, that offer a very different
vision for what could be done, and may even require some slight to substantial programming
changes in order for the information to be edited. Of course, such efforts can be folded
back onto existing projects, but on an experimental basis my be justified as totally
different site.
Another is WikiData, where database type information can be added to existing articles.
This is a totally new concept, and does deserve its own "team" to get it going,
but this is more a software developer project rather than something more along the lines
of a typical Wikimedia project.
I mention these two projects as hard examples of new project proposals that simply
can't be accomodated by current projects. They really are very new ideas, and things
that would help the community as a whole. And while both of these proposals will
introduce some new legal issues, it is not substantially different than what is currently
done. This is mainly new technical abilities and being able to do things in a slightly
different fashion.
Finally I want to point out
wikitree.org
This is an example of a new project proposal that has simply been developed
indepenedently, and is also another very clear example of something that simply can't
be accomodated by existing projects run by Wikimedia. Indeed it is strongly discouraged
on Wikipedia, with even pages deleted because of people not having noteriety. For those
not familiar with this site, it is geneological information that is being linked together
using the MediaWiki software, but some substantial modifications. I mention this because
it has been previously proposed as a new project to be run by the Wikimedia foundation,
but instead has moved out on its own, partly because there was no way to push the proposal
through. It was on the new project proposal page well before the website turned
"live". It has even been left as a "dead" proposal, not even on the
main project proposal page. There is merit to a project like this, and there are funding
sources as well to help pay for a service like this... long term funding at that.
Projects of this kind are also going to bring in some very different people into the
community that normally wouldn't be working on things like Wikipedia. BTW, I have
also seen several people from Wikimedia projects over there at wikitree, so I know for
them at least this isn't a revelation. I do wish the people at Wikitree success and
at the moment it is being done completely out of the pocket of the original organizers.
Keep in mind that my proposal is only to more formalize the process of becoming a new
Wikimedia project, not to accelerate the process and flooding the Wikimedia Foundation
with a whole bunch of unsupported projects. Again, I ask that detractors to this proposal
come up with an alterative, and if they simply don't want new projects (with general
consensus from the community) state that boldly that simply no new projects will ever be
accepted, or will come from channels other than the new project proposal page. Let them
know it is an exercise in futility, and that people like Sean Turvey are wasting their
breath to even try (or myself for that matter).
--
Robert Scott Horning