[Foundation-l] New project proposal - Wikibuilder

Fri Jan 21 05:24:50 UTC 2005

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:38:31 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why not have a standalone "wikilabs" project for new potential
> > wikimedia projects?
> 
> Because Wikimedia is not a free hosting service for just any wiki idea and
> Wikicities already exists to fill that role. Concentrating development energy
> into our existing projects and staying on mission are more important than
> budding-off new projects to the degree suggested,

Why not have a standalone "wikilabs" project for new potential
Wikimedia projects with recognised potential and good plans, which fit
well into our mission of providing a free reference source?

I see this as a way to reduce budding-off, not to increase it.  This
would provide a place for the initial growth of new projects before
deciding certain difficult issues such as 1) how they are licensed, 2)
what standards they will use for naming, namespaces, and
classification, 3) how they will be internationalised.  It would allow
for more structured discussion of the goals and viability of new
projects before they were stamped with a domain-level seal of
approval.

0) Disclaimers about the alpha/beta nature of the projects could be
explained once for the entire site.
1a) Wikilabs could be PD, containing only links to other CC/GFDL
content that would be in the project proper, making transition to a
different license easy.
1b) Discussions about how to license contributions, and how to comply
explicitly with licenses or related content, would be important for
each project.  Reaching consensus on these matters could be expected
before a project forged off on its own (cf. Wikicommons, Wikispecies,
Wikinews).  Legal scholars could visit this single site to weigh in on
these related discussions; discussions about copyright would not die
simply because those interested in a particular new project did not
have the right expertise.
2) Discussion of standardization, how to comply with / interact with /
reference existing standards, and citation, would also be important
for each project.  Comparisons to existing reference works on related
subjects, existing projects with similar goals, and existing
classification methods, could likewise be expected before a project
took on its own domain (cf. Wikispecies, Wikipeople*, Wikibuilder*).
3) Wikilabs could be like meta, multilingual on a single wiki, with
unified discussion of which projects should be how multilingual when. 
Initial interest in a new project is often focused in one or two
languages, and the first hundred people interested in the project are
not necessarily interested in such decisions (cf. Wikisource,
Wikispecies, 911-wiki)

> > Wikilabs could also be a good initial test site for new software patches
> > and upgrades, since everything on it will explicitly be in beta.
> 
> That is what test.wikipedia.org and any number of other MediaWiki-based sites
> that the developers already use.

...but would soon be larger than any of these sites, and would
certainly have a larger active body of regular users whose use might
trigger sneaky new bugs.

> could this be done within an existing Wikimedia project?

I think it makes conceptual sense to have a separate wikilab for
promising new projects, inasmuch as it makes conceptual sense to
separate any of the Wikimedia projects from one another.  However, in
the absence of a wikilab, Meta seems the best place to expand project
drafts and start creating initial policy and content.

-- 
+sj+