Dear all,
I am writing on behalf of the Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees [1] to invite you to give feedback on the
draft Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle from today until the end of
the day on June 23, 2024 (anywhere on Earth). This is a long read; thank
you in advance for your attention to its details.
== Terminology: what are “Sibling Projects”? ==
The term “Sister Project” has historically been used to describe all the
publicly available wikis (“Wikimedia Projects”) operated by the Wikimedia
Foundation, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and others
[2]. Some community members have also used the term “Sister Project” in the
context of language versions of the same wiki, such as English Wikipedia,
Bengali Wikipedia, etc., or Vietnamese Wikisource, Catalan Wikisource, etc.
Still, other community members have interpreted “Sister Projects” as
synonymous with “WikiProjects”, such as English:Wikipedia:WikiProject
Military history or Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings.
To address the confusion and to disambiguate the terms, a working term -
“Sibling Projects” - will be used to distinguish separate content projects
(wikis) from language variants of the same content project. Under this
naming scheme, Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikidata are “Sibling Projects”.
Thus, the French Wikisource and Polish Wikisource would be “language
versions (French and Polish) of the same Sibling Project (Wikisource)”.
This is a working terminology, and it might change.
== Context ==
Historically, when Wikimedia Siblings started to be added to Wikipedia,
there was a surge of new projects, sometimes with and sometimes without
strategic or clear goals. At that time, the Wikimedia Foundation Board was
approving new Sibling projects (for example, Wikivoyage [3], Abstract
Wikipedia [4]). There is a separate committee (Language Committee) that
makes decisions on whether a new language version (subdomain) of existing
Wikimedia projects can be opened [5]. Still, there was nothing for other
“kinds of Wikimedia projects”. Since 2021, the responsibility to “address
new (...) site applications, including creating a formalized procedure,
from application to approval/disapproval” is the mandate of the Community
Affairs Committee (CAC), a Wikimedia Foundation Board Committee [6].
In the last 10 years, the Wikimedia Foundation Board has become cautious
about opening new Sibling Projects because of a lack of clear strategy
around approval, maintenance, and closure, a lack of understanding of their
impact, and questions around their sustainability in light of the
Foundation's mostly flat budget [7]. In addition, the technical work
necessary to maintain different Sibling Projects has often stretched the
Wikimedia Foundation’s capacity.
A little over a year ago, CAC created a Task Force [8] to help the
Wikimedia Foundation develop a direction on if, how, what, and when to
invest in the opening of new Sibling Projects, in order “to make sure that
any newly approved project is set up for success, and has the resources it
needs to function well” [9]. The Foundation needs to understand better what
services it would need to commit to this process while taking into account
the organization's limited capacity and budget. This task has to be
addressed in cooperation with the Product & Technology Department of the
Wikimedia Foundation, led by the Chief Product & Technology Officer, Selena
Deckelmann.
=== Assessment ===
To make space for the inflow of innovative ideas while maintaining and
continuing support for the existing Sibling Projects, it is important to
establish a clear process for the Sibling Projects’ lifecycle.
The application evaluation process preceding “opening a new Sibling
Project” will require considerable time as well as financial and human
resources, which needs quantification. An assessment of the needed
investment in the technology could be significant depending on the scope of
the proposed project (for example, Wikifunctions [10] needs very different
resources than a new project that uses standard mediawiki installations),
especially in cases of possible maintenance of the project in perpetuity.
Evaluating a new application to validate the concept, its impact on the
existing Wikimedia technical ecosystem, the human and financial resourcing
implications, and future maintenance costs will be time-consuming and might
need considerably more staff.
At the same time, an evaluation of the existing Sibling Projects needs to
occur as not all are meeting their potential with promoting the Movement's
mission. We need to develop an evaluation process for a Sibling Project's
success and sustainability. We also need clearly defined approaches for
splitting, merging, sunsetting, and/or possibly adopting Sibling Projects
by different organisations.
== How to provide feedback ==
Your feedback is warmly welcome. The feedback can be given from today until
the end of the day on June 23, 2024 (anywhere on Earth). We hope that a
fairly long feedback period will allow for rich discussions without feeling
rushed. There are several ways that you can provide feedback:
-
Review the page here, on Meta [11] and leave comments on the talk page.
-
Join open calls (May 23 at 02:00 to 03:00 UTC and May 30 at 16:00 to
17:00 UTC) [12]
-
Request a conversation as a part of Talking:2024
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee/Talking:_2024>
by using the Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Talking:
2024#Let’s Talk|Let’s Talk
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee/Talking:_2024#Let's_talk>
feature to sign up for a time to speak with me and other trustees about
this topic.
Kind regards,
Victoria Doronina, Task Force Lead
On behalf of the Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_sister_projects
[3]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2013/01/15/wikimedia-foundation-launches-wikivoy…
[4]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Abstract_Wikipedia
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee
[6]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Affairs_Committee_Charter
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposals_for_new_projects#From_the_Bo…
[10]
https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:About
[11]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…
[12]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs…
--
Kind regards, Victoria
Victoria Doronina
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/dr-victoria-doronina/>
Trustee
Sister Projects Taskforce Lead
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Imagine a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all
knowledge. Please help us make it a reality.