[Foundation-l] Transwiki wars, precedence, and the fate of user-compiled lists

Mon Aug 1 09:17:20 UTC 2005

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Brian wrote:
>
>> Short version: There is a huge battle going on in which VFDers on WP, 
>> WS, and Commons are pushing user-compiled lists from one project to 
>> another. In each case, they are saying the lists belong on one of the 
>> other 3 projects. Almost nobody is saying that these lists don't 
>> belong anywhere, but nobody can decide on where they belong. It also 
>> doesn't help that nobody on one project accepts the outcome of 
>> another project's VFD (an outcome which may have said to transwiki to 
>> this project) as a reason to keep it on this project.
>
> *snip*
>
>> Meanwhile, on Wikipedia, an Undelete request was instituted (by 
>> myself, I think) for the General Slocum list, but the majority are 
>> saying that it doesn't belong on Wikipedia, but on Commons or 
>> Wikisource.
>>
>> Summary: As Stevertigo said:  "Theres no sense in people batting this 
>> thing about. Clearly it belongs at source or [WP]... There needs to 
>> be some policy against batting things around."
>
> As a regular at Wikibooks, we've battled with this issue a little bit 
> ourselves in regards to lists, but it has been mainly to push them 
> back to Wikipedia.  There has been some problems with Wikipedia 
> articles coming to Wikibooks as a fork (I've already thrown my $0.02 
> on that issue) and in some cases throwing the articles back to 
> Wikipedia. Sometimes a book module gets started that really should be 
> a Wikipedia article, and that does get transwikied.
>
> In general the distinctions between each of the projects is not as 
> clearly defined as it should be, particularly in the case of new ideas 
> for content and where it should be placed.  Wikibooks in particular 
> seems to be a dumping ground from Meta when nobody can think of a 
> place to put a project idea (and the idea originator doesn't want to 
> go to Wikicities).  Projects like Wikijunior only add to this mess 
> (not that I'm opposed to Wikijunior being a part of Wikibooks at the 
> moment). Wikipedia is getting so large now (and this is a good thing) 
> that it is attracting a number of people with some very original ideas 
> (like the lists) which don't seem to fit current structures.
>
> The question I have is how do you resolve these kind of issues between 
> Wikimedia projects?  Embassies might be an option, but those were 
> mainly designed around the idea of acting between languages where 
> content disputes are much more easily dealt with.  Should the scope of 
> them be broadened?  How do you keep Wikipedia from overwhelming the 
> much smaller sister projects in these conflict resolutions?  I don't 
> think every issue like this should be put on Foundation-l for 
> resolution. (but thanks for bringing up the discussion, Brian) 

To me this is something that clearly should stay on Wikipedia in the 
absence of a functioning WikiMemorial project.

The functioning of the Transwiki process has never been premised on the 
idea that an article would be accepted in its proposed new home.  This 
is why these are put into a "Transwiki:" pseudo-namespace.  It appears 
that in February, when WP transferred this to Wikisource the use of  
"Transwiki" was ignored completely, and the appearance was given that it 
was newly given to WS by an anonymous IP number who has otherwise made 
no contributions to Wikisource.  The timing on this debate has been 
strange.  The rather cursory original vote of the dedicated VFDers on WP 
and the transfer took place in February.  I finally tracked down the 
even more detailed undeletion as having happened in April, but it is 
only appearing here for advice. 

I think that the whole thing should be put back on WP and the deletion 
process started up again from scratch if people still want it deleted.  
When that happens Wikisource, Wikicommons and this list should all be 
advised so that all interested persons can vote. 

In more general terms we might consider adapting a practice from the US 
political system when the House and Senate to not agree.  Some kind of 
conference committee could be set up to make a binding decision.  This 
could be used in situations where the fundamental question is "Where 
does this article belong?",

Ec