Fred Bauder wrote: And in what way is that an excuse to ignore the rules, or if you don't like them, seek to change them? Agenda-pushers will fall foul of OR, and other policies; those of us who merely wish Wikipedia to reflect the balance of current academic opinion, and are able to be objective about disputed points of view, should be empowered (and that is perhaps correct), to reject fringe theories, although it has to be said that such theories have traditionally been rejected out of hand on Wikpedia. I need sleep; if it matters, I'll come back. If it doesn't, I won't. Chuh!

You can always make Wikinfo a sister project. Fred

I would love to see the new project process on Meta come back online. (much of this email is posted to [[m:talk:new project proposals]]) I could use some help in making this happen - we need to start an incubator process for ideas with support, and a separate process for proposing existing projects that have been incubated elsewhere for support or hosting. The meta page for each proposed project should track its progress, whether offsite or on the incubator... a project infobox should be designed... an interested group (if less formal than langcom) should go through and review the backlog of proposals and suggest the necessary next step for each. On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote: A space to hold POV debates would be an interesting intermediate ground between no-restraint edit wars and topic bans, for those in heated argument. Is Wikinfo designed for this? I was thinking of something more like 'Wikireason'. There have been various proposals for an 'argument wiki' over the years, but I've never seen a working implementation. Yes. Link: http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/SNPedia Genealogy: WeRelate and Rodovid. Both remarkable and lovely projects. Combinable, if all parties could be brought together. Both could use support; I've touched on the possibility of becoming WMF projects with each, and they are willing to discuss it. The result would be by far the largest free collection of genealogy information, with support from one of the major libraries studyig and archiving related data in the US Children's encyclopedia: WikiKids, Vikidia, Grundschulwiki, Wikimini. These projects could be coordinated better to share ideas and lessons, and could use more visibility. Some people active in these projects are already Wikimedians. Dictionaries: OmegaWiki. This multilingual dictionary could help revamp our toolchain for Wiktionary, which remains a bit broken. Interface translation: TranslateWiki. iirc it does not want to be a WMF project per se, but could use more explicit support than we have given so far. Citations and bibliography: AcaWiki (and the budding WikiScholar). Wikified maps: Wikimapia. currently profitable and popular; probably fine on their own. However they use a non-free map stack and use an NC license; finding a way to help that project migrate to a free stack and license [now that there is a free orthorectified aerial map available http://blog.stevecoast.com/im-working-at-microsoft-and-were-donating-ima] would be of benefit to the whole world. Other projects for which there is a supply of raw materials available from content donors (which we cannot currently accept): * Annotated source materials and their translations: Part of Wikisource++ ? * Translation memory: Part of Translatewiki++ ? * Public datasets: Wikidata * Music scores: Wikimusic It is certainly one of the factors. Sam.

The thing is (and I am somewhat of an enthusiast on the early attempts at flight :) so you picked a good metaphor) that tose early attempts were dangerous, mostly impractical and basically barking up the wrong trees. What did it take ot make successful flight? It took a couple of quiet brothers who realised that mad and dedicated vision had to be metered with scientific observation, personal sacrifice and critical thinking to succeed. So, yeh, I agree largely with your theory of "lets throw resources at all those mad but clever people out there". But I think we need to learn the lesson of Chanute [1] and keep a careful watch for the many hacks, egotistical and mad individuals that such an enterprise would encourage. (of course, another school of thought might suggest we need to encourage all the mad schemes, and let someone smart and clever take the failures and turn them into reality). Tom *1. *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Chanute

On 11 July 2011 04:26, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: See also http://opinion.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page. Not sure if there are other projects in a similar vein. Pete / the wub