[Wikipedia-l] Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)

Mon Jul 19 03:36:26 UTC 2004

(copied to foundation-l - please reply there)

On 19 Jul 2004 04:46:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Tim-
> > Wikiquote now has specific-language subdomains. Instead of creating
> > wikis for all 150 languages, I made a system where wikis are only
> > created when they're wanted. To save time during maintenance operations,
> > it should now be possible to delete unused Wiktionaries and even
> > Wikipedias until they are required.
> 
> This may be a good time to rethink our approach to Meta. Currently there
> is just one big, messy Meta-Wiki, with neither particularly clear policies
> (although my CPOV draft attempts to remedy this to some extent) nor
> interlanguage links. Help texts are spread across the "MediaWiki User's
> Guide" and the Help: namespace, with non-English texts in the English
> language Help: space. On the other hand, as Mav keeps pointing out, we
> have no real community editable Wikimedia presence.

What sort of "Wikimedia presence" did you want there? Do the pages in
the Wikimedia Foundation category not meet this?
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Foundation)

> How about a setup like this:
> de.wikimedia.org
> en.wikimedia.org
> fr.wikimedia.org
> ...

One point I raised yesterday on wikitech-l (yes, I was on the wrong
list as well) is whether certain Foundation pages (such as the budget
or the bylaws) will need to be marked as official in some way, and
whether or not translations of those ought to be clearly marked as
non-official.

If we split into sub-domains, it makes this easier to do, but if the
translations are to be official, having 50+ recent changes for the
board to check and approve makes this impractical.

> This is more logical (Meta is not just about Wikipedia but about all
> Wikimedia projects), it allows us to use interlanguage links, to see RC
> only for the languages you are interested in, and to maintain the
> documentation separately for each language in the respective localized
> Help: namespace. It would encourage internationalization for things like
> project-wide votes.

Allowing the use of interlanguage isn't necessarily better than the
current system on meta. By using templates, the links only need be
updated in one place when a new language is added. Normal
interlanguage links would need to be updated on every sub-domain.

> The major downside: In the present system, you would have to create an
> account for each edition of Meta. So it might make sense to postpone this
> until Single Sign-On is implemented.
> 
> In any case, I think there should be no separate Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia
> Foundation wiki - they should be the same thing.
>
> Thoughts?

If the Foundation wiki and Meta are not separated, we have less
control over it, as any sysop will be able to edit it, rather than
only those people who can be trusted with pages that allow HTML, such
as the fundraising page. Moving it to a separate wiki would allow for
different permissions to be set up, and for the use of full HTML;
something which mav is particularly keen to have.

Angela.

> Regards,
> 
> Erik