[Foundation-l] Re: a crazy idea...

Tue Aug 30 08:45:32 UTC 2005

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> The Wikimedia Foundation website was created a few months ago because we 
> wanted something clean and clear to present to outside visitors. People 
> shouldn't have to dive in the mess on meta-wiki for getting information 
> about Wikimedia.

If they want to have information about Wikimedia they should look up in 
an encylopaedia. I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia ;-)

Additionally at the Wikimedia main page there is:

* A header with actual information (for instance fundraising drive)
* Latest news

Most information seems to be doubled at meta (for instance "Chapters" 
and "Our projects" but *some* pages may be special).

> Before some of you call now "impossible", I'd like you to think about 
> it. We've managed to build an encyclopedia which is visited by thousands 
> of people daily in a wiki. Of course, sometimes you find goatze on the 
> main page - that's wikipedia. If an open wiki is acceptable for the most 
> famous encyclopedia on the internet, it isn't for the little 
> organization behind? Do we really need a classical website, with all its 
> failures? Can't we just be proud of what we do and say: Yes, we build an 
> encyclopedia in a wiki - and our organisation website is a wiki, too.

Well, we should at least make it clear that the page is a wiki. It's 
familiar to *us* but not to everybody. Beside that building an 
encyclopaedia is not the same. Meta is a mess so Wikimedia website will 
be a mess too. It's not wiki or not-wiki bute volunteering-as-you-like 
or having-a-job-you-are-responsible for. If "we" are all responsible for 
the Foundation homepage then nobody will be.

> and as wikipedia proves, you can organize a wiki in a way that visitors 
> are able to find the stuff they want to know - professional looking 
> mainpage etc. It just has to be done, and I think the community of 
> wikimedians which is populating meta-wiki is now big enough to do this. 
> Important and official pages can be protected, inofficial opinion pages 
> can be marked with templates...

*lol* I always find a lot of things a meta. Especially new pages that 
people created about topics that already had existing pages they did not 
find. Not to think about all Wiki* project namespaces. When I search for 
pages about Wiki research the last time I found more than 6 different 
places where people started something on their own instead of collaborating.

> Test wikipedias would be moved from meta to somewhere else, as well as 
> the mediawiki documentation (there is now a dedicated mediawiki wiki) to 
> not clutter up recentchanges anymore.

What is "test wikipedias?" I doubt you will be able to force people not 
to use meta for any idea related to Wikimeda. If you do so then they use 
their local Wikipedia what's even worse.

> Unifying meta and wmf would also help to bridge the slowly growing gap 
> between the community and the organisation Wikimedia. Since Wikimedia 
> depends on the work of volunteers, I see this as a rather dangerous 
> thing. It more and more becomes "they and us" while it should be "we".

ack.

> Last but not least I have to admin, that I feel that there are simply 
> too many wikis and websites to keep track. On my list (incomplete):
> * german wikipedia, english wikipedia, commons, mediawiki wiki, 
> developer wiki, meta-wiki, german board wiki, german wikimedia website, 
> wikimedia foundation website, chapter wiki, grants wiki (as good as 
> closed), otrs

How about finally implementing single login and merged watchlists but 
not creating new wikis ;-) ?

I've never heard of mediawiki wiki before! May we move pages from meta 
to it (but version history will get lost)?

> So, I propose this for consideration and for discussing the idea to 
> death, as usual ;-)

A merge will probably be better but don't expect too.

Greetings,
Jakob