[Foundation-l] Wikijunior as a new Sister Project

Wed Sep 7 11:39:38 UTC 2005

I'm reposting here a comment that was posted in [[b:Talk:Wikijunior]]:

    During the upcoming September 18 Wikimedia Foundation board meeting,
    the Board will discuss registering a seperate domain for Wikijunior,
    presumably wikijunior.org. Presumably Wikijunior will still be
    developed on Wikibooks, but it will go live on a seperate site.
    Alternatively, we could have en.wikijunior.org for viewing, and
    en2.wikijunior.org for editing, which would allow for a greater ease
    in developing pages, as they could be part of a freeform
    encyclopedia (on limited topics), rather than the isolated books
    they are now. If we were to develop off Wikibooks, I'd like us to
    retain most, if not all of the structure of Wikibooks, it's worked
    well so far. -- user:zanimum <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Zanimum>

What I'm asking is why such a proposal is not going through the normal 
vetting process required of any new project proposal or is Wikijunior 
already considered to be a Wikimedia sister project already?  I 
appreciate the efforts of Zanimum, but I certainly think that before a 
new project domain is started, the full extent of an idea like this 
should be fully vetted, and even a formal vote should take place, like 
happened to Wikinews and is going to happen soon with Wikiversity.  The 
purpose of the vote is to mainly get a show of support for the project 
(I have no doubt that there is some major support from several people on 
Wikibooks, for instance, regarding Wikijunior).  The vote also help 
critics to try and correct major problems with the proposal.  In 
particular, there doesn't even seem to be any movement at all on 
Wikibooks to get rid of Wikijunior, and it pretty much stays in its own 
little corner of Wikibooks quietly undergoing a metamorphisis, such as 
the current content clean-up campaign on the Wikijunior Solar System at 
the moment.

This amounts to, IMHO, another stealth new project proposal that is 
going through the back door.  I've complained enough about the new 
project proposal process here that I've had people telling me to 
essentially shut up and don't bug people on this list about it.  At the 
same time, I think projects like this need more work on how everything 
is going to be put together before it should be started on its own 
seperate wiki, and I've seen no reason why Wikijunior should get any 
special attention other than it seems like a pet project of some board 
members.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning