[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

Mon Nov 14 13:02:18 UTC 2005

--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Wikijunior is not just another Wikibook on Wikibooks.  If the Wikibooks 
> community decided to VfD Wikijunior, there would be a torrent of hate 
> e-mail on this list and elsewhere that would only be equal to what 
> happened to Wikiversity.  

What? I don’t recall such a reaction when Wikiversity was kicked out of
Wikibooks. Wikiversity has a much larger scope than a textbook-creating or for
that matter an encyclopedia or dictionary-creating projects have. It is a
super-project that will use parts of all the existing Wikimedia projects. So
hosting it one project would not make much sense. 

> And that would have nothing to do with the 
> quality of the material but because of the way that the project started. 
>  Again I add that Wikibooks should not be the incubator wiki, unless 
> that is precisely the role that the Wikimedia Foundation board wants it 
> to become.  

It is not. It is a place to develop textbooks, manuals and related reference
books. Wikibooks fits that bill. 

> Wikijunior was added to Wikibooks as if Wikibooks was the 
> incubator wiki, and it should have been a new project proposal on Meta 
> instead.  That such proposals seemingly never get approval is a reason 
> why nobody wants to throw an idea into that dustpile of ideas and 
> instead try to sneak the projects through a back door like Wikijunior 
> has done.

Oh please. Stop the theatrics. 

Wikijunior has specific rules for a set of pages. That is not unlike a
WikiProject on Wikipedia. Each book needs to have its own style guide to retain
coherence anyway. The other issues that pertain to ‘protecting’ minors are
misplaced since minors should only be viewing WikiJunior from a static snapshot
at wikijunior.org.  Some Wikibooks are getting to the point were they are
publishable on such a site. But they don’t seem to be ready yet. Publishing the
result at a kid safe domain will fulfill our part of the grant (normally a
WikiProject would not get such special treatment, but no other WikiProject has
a $10,000 grant). Approved static snapshots of other textbooks could be
published at wikiversitity.org. 

Wikijunior is a set of textbooks for kids. Textbooks are developed at
Wikibooks, so having a separate place to develop textbooks for kids would be
infringing on the Wikibooks mandate and forking that project. Also, the effort
to create such a narrow-focused set of items would not be viable all on its own
and starting down the road of forking off each new set of Wikibooks textbooks
would kill the project. If Wikibooks gets its own wiki then why not any other
set of textbooks on Wikibooks? 

-- mav

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