At 22:51 +0100 30/3/06, David Gerard wrote:
Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.
Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.
Anthere has also said, when asked directly, that there is an active meta community but they don't actually do their work on meta, rather on mailing lists and IRC. Which doesn't sound to me like a work wiki, but evidently does to her and others. So I proposed a "meta2", which can actually be used as a work wiki. The current meta incumbents have decided this is in fact a proposal for an en: wikipedia Meta, when it wasn't actually anything of the sort, but anyway.
Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was *invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.
- d.
Can I just add my name to the list who have complained in the past that Meta is not useful for some aspects of our work? I was concerned that information about the inception of "Wikimedia UK" was hard to find, duplicated etc. This meant that many volunteers who might have taken part got lost on the way or may never have known about the existence of the team (who worked very hard and drank some good "real ale" on Sunday afternoons:-)
The main difference between, say, IRC (and email) and a wiki is that a the former are linear (by timestamp) and the latter (a set of Wiki pages) is not.
A recent example of "Wikimeia UK" existing on a island was that (previously discussed) total lack of any involvement from Welsh speakers, who may or may not live in Wales. If "Wikimedia UK" wants to be inclusive, and democratic, it has to open the doors a little wider, and not live in "Meta Space", but In Real Life.
Hence, I would submit to you that Mediawiki 1.5.x and 1.6.x may not be the "magic bullet". A wiki is poor tool for many jobs.