(cross-posting to Wikimania-l and Wikimedia-l)
Hi,
As earlier discussions on this topic received relatively little response from the community, I'm sending this email to let you know about the new topic posted at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Wikimania_wikis, with regards to having a single unified Wikimania wiki.
I have copied the original post below for ease of reading. Please post your comments on the meta page.
**********
Hi. I was looking at Special:SiteMatrixhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix and couldn't help noticing the whopping 14 separate wikis (and growing) for all the different Wikimanias, including a separate wiki for a "Wikimania team". Is there any current plans of a more sustainable or streamlined approach to running these wikis?
I am aware that this has been discussed a few times before, but no significant effort was put into it. Wikimania project domainhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_project_domain is the most significant discussion which I could find, but participation was quite low on that, with no(?) WMF staff comments.
From what I understand from the above linked discussion, some key points against a unified Wikimania wiki was that:
1. We will not be able to preserve old Wikimania wikis as a "time capsule" 2. Older Wikimania organizers may face new organizers "steamrolling" over their pages 3. Organizers will not have complete control over the site as old admins might interrupt for whatever reasons. (or vice versa)
My though for these points was:
1. Why not have each Wikimania project branch their pages as wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016/Main page, or alternatively, have separate namespaces for each project (i.e. 2016:, 2017:, etc). We could then protect all pages under a project (i.e. 2016/ or 2016:) once a project is over. 2. This could be avoided by protection, as stated above. 3. Make it much less complicated. Once the project is over, all previous admin rights will be revoked, and the new organizers will get the rights. New admins can be advise to not modify previous project namespaces, or if better, if we can block previous projects' namespaces from editing? Furthermore, there could be a bot logging all changes made to old project namespaces, for transparency.
Is there any other views on this? Did I miss something obvious? Looking forward to your comments. Cheers, Rehman.
**********
Thanks and regards,
User:Rehmanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman
The discussion has now been moved to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Wikimania_wikis apparently, where it will probably also get archived not too distant in the future. I hope someone will post a link here to that archive page.
Lodewijk
2016-10-22 11:07 GMT+02:00 Rehman Abubakr rehman.wikimedia@live.com:
(cross-posting to Wikimania-l and Wikimedia-l)
Hi,
As earlier discussions on this topic received relatively little response from the community, I'm sending this email to let you know about the new topic posted at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Wikimania_wikis, with regards to having a single unified Wikimania wiki.
I have copied the original post below for ease of reading. Please post your comments on the meta page.
Hi. I was looking at Special:SiteMatrix https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix and couldn't help noticing the whopping 14 separate wikis (and growing) for all the different Wikimanias, including a separate wiki for a "Wikimania team". Is there any current plans of a more sustainable or streamlined approach to running these wikis?
I am aware that this has been discussed a few times before, but no significant effort was put into it. Wikimania project domain https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_project_domain is the most significant discussion which I could find, but participation was quite low on that, with no(?) WMF staff comments.
From what I understand from the above linked discussion, some key points against a unified Wikimania wiki was that:
- We will not be able to preserve old Wikimania wikis as a "time capsule"
- Older Wikimania organizers may face new organizers "steamrolling" over
their pages 3. Organizers will not have complete control over the site as old admins might interrupt for whatever reasons. (or vice versa)
My though for these points was:
- Why not have each Wikimania project branch their pages as
wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016/Main page, or alternatively, have separate namespaces for each project (i.e. 2016:, 2017:, etc). We could then protect all pages under a project (i.e. 2016/ or 2016:) once a project is over. 2. This could be avoided by protection, as stated above. 3. Make it much less complicated. Once the project is over, all previous admin rights will be revoked, and the new organizers will get the rights. New admins can be advise to not modify previous project namespaces, or if better, if we can block previous projects' namespaces from editing? Furthermore, there could be a bot logging all changes made to old project namespaces, for transparency.
Is there any other views on this? Did I miss something obvious? Looking forward to your comments. Cheers, Rehman.
Thanks and regards,
User:Rehman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
the points lodewijk mentioned with styles, and independent user groups working on it are quite valid points imo. additionally the purpose of a wiki is to collaborate on a purpose. if the purpose is gone, no wiki software is necessary. following that logic, one could argue to dump a past wikimania wiki into a static html page is best. search could be done via standard web search. if the wikis are not disturbing one could let them just sit where they are.
rupert
On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
The discussion has now been moved to https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Wikimania_wikis apparently, where it will probably also get archived not too distant in the future. I hope someone will post a link here to that archive page.
Lodewijk
2016-10-22 11:07 GMT+02:00 Rehman Abubakr rehman.wikimedia@live.com:
(cross-posting to Wikimania-l and Wikimedia-l)
Hi,
As earlier discussions on this topic received relatively little response from the community, I'm sending this email to let you know about the new topic posted at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Wikimania_wiki s, with regards to having a single unified Wikimania wiki.
I have copied the original post below for ease of reading. Please post your comments on the meta page.
Hi. I was looking at Special:SiteMatrix https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix and couldn't help noticing the whopping 14 separate wikis (and growing) for all the different Wikimanias, including a separate wiki for a "Wikimania team". Is there any current plans of a more sustainable or streamlined approach to running these wikis?
I am aware that this has been discussed a few times before, but no significant effort was put into it. Wikimania project domain https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_project_domain is the most significant discussion which I could find, but participation was quite low on that, with no(?) WMF staff comments.
From what I understand from the above linked discussion, some key points against a unified Wikimania wiki was that:
- We will not be able to preserve old Wikimania wikis as a "time capsule"
- Older Wikimania organizers may face new organizers "steamrolling" over
their pages 3. Organizers will not have complete control over the site as old admins might interrupt for whatever reasons. (or vice versa)
My though for these points was:
- Why not have each Wikimania project branch their pages as
wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016/Main page, or alternatively, have separate namespaces for each project (i.e. 2016:, 2017:, etc). We could then protect all pages under a project (i.e. 2016/ or 2016:) once a project is over. 2. This could be avoided by protection, as stated above. 3. Make it much less complicated. Once the project is over, all previous admin rights will be revoked, and the new organizers will get the rights. New admins can be advise to not modify previous project namespaces, or if better, if we can block previous projects' namespaces from editing? Furthermore, there could be a bot logging all changes made to old project namespaces, for transparency.
Is there any other views on this? Did I miss something obvious? Looking forward to your comments. Cheers, Rehman.
Thanks and regards,
User:Rehman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
It would be nice to see past events wrapped up into one journal covering all aspects from original discussion until the final reporting of the event including financials, attendee reports and media reports at the moment everything is spread across chapter, foundation, event pages which means lessons, pitfalls, successes, the work involved over time arent where people can find easily
On 22 October 2016 at 17:56, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
the points lodewijk mentioned with styles, and independent user groups working on it are quite valid points imo. additionally the purpose of a wiki is to collaborate on a purpose. if the purpose is gone, no wiki software is necessary. following that logic, one could argue to dump a past wikimania wiki into a static html page is best. search could be done via standard web search. if the wikis are not disturbing one could let them just sit where they are.
rupert
On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
The discussion has now been moved to https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Wikimania_wikis apparently, where it will probably also get archived not too distant in the future. I hope someone will post a link here to that archive page.
Lodewijk
2016-10-22 11:07 GMT+02:00 Rehman Abubakr rehman.wikimedia@live.com:
(cross-posting to Wikimania-l and Wikimedia-l)
Hi,
As earlier discussions on this topic received relatively little response from the community, I'm sending this email to let you know about the new topic posted at https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Meta:Babel#Wikimania_wikis, with regards to having a single unified Wikimania wiki.
I have copied the original post below for ease of reading. Please post your comments on the meta page.
Hi. I was looking at Special:SiteMatrix https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix and couldn't help noticing the whopping 14 separate wikis (and growing) for all the different Wikimanias, including a separate wiki for a "Wikimania team". Is there any current plans of a more sustainable or streamlined approach to running these wikis?
I am aware that this has been discussed a few times before, but no significant effort was put into it. Wikimania project domain https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_project_domain is the most significant discussion which I could find, but participation was quite low on that, with no(?) WMF staff comments.
From what I understand from the above linked discussion, some key points against a unified Wikimania wiki was that:
- We will not be able to preserve old Wikimania wikis as a "time
capsule" 2. Older Wikimania organizers may face new organizers "steamrolling" over their pages 3. Organizers will not have complete control over the site as old admins might interrupt for whatever reasons. (or vice versa)
My though for these points was:
- Why not have each Wikimania project branch their pages as
wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016/Main page, or alternatively, have separate namespaces for each project (i.e. 2016:, 2017:, etc). We could then protect all pages under a project (i.e. 2016/ or 2016:) once a project is over. 2. This could be avoided by protection, as stated above. 3. Make it much less complicated. Once the project is over, all previous admin rights will be revoked, and the new organizers will get the rights. New admins can be advise to not modify previous project namespaces, or if better, if we can block previous projects' namespaces from editing? Furthermore, there could be a bot logging all changes made to old project namespaces, for transparency.
Is there any other views on this? Did I miss something obvious? Looking forward to your comments. Cheers, Rehman.
Thanks and regards,
User:Rehman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rehman
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 5:07 AM, Rehman Abubakr rehman.wikimedia@live.com wrote:
As earlier discussions on this topic received relatively little response from the community, I'm sending this email to let you know about the new topic posted at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Wikimania_wikis, with regards to having a single unified Wikimania wiki.
Comments inline:
From what I understand from the above linked discussion, some key points against a unified Wikimania wiki was that:
- We will not be able to preserve old Wikimania wikis as a "time capsule"
- Older Wikimania organizers may face new organizers "steamrolling" over
their pages 3. Organizers will not have complete control over the site as old admins might interrupt for whatever reasons. (or vice versa)
My though for these points was:
- Why not have each Wikimania project branch their pages as
wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016/Main page, or alternatively, have separate namespaces for each project (i.e. 2016:, 2017:, etc). We could then protect all pages under a project (i.e. 2016/ or 2016:) once a project is over.
However, this doesn’t solve the problem of the “time capsule” goal above. The MediaWiki software of 2006 is very different from that of 2016, so the design and implementation of an old Wikimania site might be broken as MediaWiki gets upgraded for subsequent years.
2. This could be avoided by protection, as stated above.
Protection doesn’t do it. If it was all on one wiki, a Wikimania organizing team is somewhat handcuffed by the decisions of accrued, previous years in terms of organization, naming and templating. Since each Wikimania has its own flavor and goals, a separate wiki seems to be the most in keeping with this. Also, with unified login, the case for forcing everyone onto one wiki for Wikimania is less compelling. I suppose the question also is - what problem are we trying to solve by making everyone use the same wiki each year?
- Make it much less complicated. Once the project is over, all previous
admin rights will be revoked, and the new organizers will get the rights. New admins can be advise to not modify previous project namespaces, or if better, if we can block previous projects' namespaces from editing? Furthermore, there could be a bot logging all changes made to old project namespaces, for transparency.
Actually, doing all that technical work of revoking, making a bot, and what you describe sounds like more work than making a new wiki! :)
Now this is not to say what you suggested is not a good idea. But it has to fit the right community and goals. For example, at Wikiconference North America/USA, we have pretty much what you have suggested:
https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2014/Main_Page https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2015/Main_Page https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2016/Main_Page
But the reason why it’s the logical choice in our case of US/North America – we are interested in continuity in the organizing team and principals. If we can build on the efficiencies of each year for the next, so much the better.
This is not something that is necessarily the case with Wikimania, because of the change in the team, the goal of each Wikimania, and even the languages of each Wikimania. They are very different each year, and each team should have the freedom and flexibility to make it their own.
I don’t want to discourage new ways of thinking about Wikimania, it’s just that this particular dimension seems like one of the more functional parts of the conference.
-Andrew
wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org