We seem to be conflating three different things here,
1 Rebranding Wikipedia and possibly other projects, this is a
perennial idea that I can't see ever convincing me or most
wikimedians. I don't see this as being particularly relevant to the
idea of merging wikis, so may I suggest that if people want to bring
up the idea they differentiate it from the merge wikis thread by
giving it a relevant subject such as Rebrand Wikipedia? They might
also want to consider the arguments against this at
as there is not much point reviving an idea unless you have a response
to the known fatal flaws in it.
2 Merging wikis where we have overlapping groups of editors working on
different projects within the same language. So the Klingon
Wikisource, WikiQuote, Wikinews and so forth would become different
spaces within one wiki giving editors the benefit of single userpages
and in many cases a larger crowd of editors. Some editors have
objected to this on the not unreasonable grounds that some small
projects would feel swamped if they were put in the same wiki as one
of the large projects, and John vandenburg raised the issue that
policy in such a wiki would necessarily be more complex than if we
continued to have at least one wiki per project. I still think that we
have much to gain here and especially that the wisdom of crowds
requires crowds, but I'd like to suggest that we trial this by having
some consenting languages work this way and see how well it could be
made to work.
3 Merging wikis where we have the confusing situation of multiple
wikis for the same project. So ten, strategy and outreach are all
within the scope of Meta and as several people have said there is no
benefit and considerable disbenefit in running them as separate wikis.
Merging them into meta should be an easy and uncontentious win.
Startegy and Outreach perhaps need their own spaces within Meta in the
same way that Research has, and perhaps for ten we need a "meetup"
space .
WereSpielChequers
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Merge wikis (Thomas Morton)
2. Re: Merge wikis (Pharos)
3. Re: Merge wikis (John Vandenberg)
4. Re: Merge wikis (Pharos)
5. Re: Merge wikis (John Vandenberg)
6. The Signpost ? Volume 7, Issue 27 ? 4 July 2011
(Wikipedia Signpost)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 00:11:50 +0100
From: Thomas Morton <morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <-6316025283354768456@unknownmsgid>
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On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn <juergen.fenn(a)gmx.de> wrote:
Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
if you
talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
"Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way
is
to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".
There's an even bigger opportunity here--
Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
and our foundation-- whether the foundation ever changes its name
formally or not, there should be a brand name for "Wikimedia
projects, their users, and their allies". And unlike our other brand
names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
already know what it means.
I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
of Wikipedia. Even if you tried, it would be to no avail. It was a huge
mistake to introduce the sister projects under a different brand and to
keep them apart from Wikipedia proper. After all, it did not foster
creativity and diversity, but it rather split the movement into parts
I disagree, speaking from a position of some experience.
Wikipedia was not marketed well, per se. It was an innovative ANC
exciting idea, launched at the right time to the right audience.
Even to this date; very little serious marketing had been done.
Now. With that said I agree - there is not a lot of point trying to
establish a new brand. But WikiMedia is worth pursuing as an umbrella.
This is a new decade, the internet has moved on (in a way it could be
said to have left us behind, and we survive by being well known) and
this is the perfect opportunity to work on the brand.
Im very hopeful the board has something to input here; this is
squarely in their ballpark and we need quick and pivotal action on it.
This is not at all a re-branding issue but one of brand-extension -
something any marketer would be on top of!
I do agree that more interaction should be fostered (although
independence is a good thing for projects with radically different
aims) and that smaller projects should be offered the opportunity to
hijack wikipedias brand to Market themselves.
But remember they are still a little behind WP in age, in a few years
they will hopefully pervade our consciousness in the same way.
Tom
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 20:38:56 -0400
From: Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 07/01/2011 11:52 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
One thing I find irritating and complex about our
structure is the
proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English ?it seems
sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
This would make it much easier when people create an article on
wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
between editors across what are currently different projects if you
had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
work across what are currently quite separate ?news, quote and pedia
projects.
Thanks for raising this issue. Previously discussed system of redirects
and Incubator Extension [1] would help not just to the Incubator, but to
the languages with smaller amount of speakers, as well as to Meta forks.
So, instead of having numerous meta wikis, we could have just one
(Meta), with separate namespaces, which would get redirects. Thus,
namespace "Strategy:" could be
strategy.wikimedia.org; namespace
"Research" could be
research.wikimedia.org etc.
[1]
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/235020?page=last
I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
forward to me.
Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 15:02:17 +1000
From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
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On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote:
..
I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
forward to me.
Or we could just leave the sister projects alone. That is also a viable option.
For the English projects, clear separation between the projects is
necessary so that they can grow different cultures. The sister
projects are progressing nicely enough.
It is much easier to tell a potential transcriber about the Wikisource
project, as opposed to trying to warn them about all the policies of
Wikipedia, most of which have no bearing on transcribing.
--
John Vandenberg
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 01:12:18 -0400
From: Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<CAJcrdm7qK7M9vMiRgC_sW5FehYAdddm_jXvt1h=gxOXo6b2Ejw(a)mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos
<pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote:
..
I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
forward to me.
Or we could just leave the sister projects alone. ?That is also a viable option.
[snip]
Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:",
etc).
Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 16:11:11 +1000
From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<CAO9U_Z5Pw32msoTeOQDLNvpE1OGTkEsYp7TmMHq3TnvSf9VX9g(a)mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg
<jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos
<pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote:
..
I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
forward to me.
Or we could just leave the sister projects alone. ?That is also a viable option.
[snip]
Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:",
etc).
Thanks,
Richard
Thanks for clarifying Richard. I agree with merging those meta
projects together.
--
John Vandenberg
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 12:05:31 +0200
From: Wikipedia Signpost <wikipediasignpost(a)gmail.com>
Subject: [Foundation-l] The Signpost ? Volume 7, Issue 27 ? 4 July
2011
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Cc: wikimediaannounce-l <WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<CAEqKY4+NSfp6MAUUWZZ_zeJQbsMPN97RpDVgApPYvBzkkN2ySw(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
News and notes: Picture of the Year 2010; data challenge; brief news
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/News_a…
In the news: WikiLove roll-out; ?25,000 in damages for being removed
from Wikipedia; brief news
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/In_the…
WikiProject report: The Star-Spangled WikiProject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/WikiPr…
Featured content: Two newly promoted portals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/Featur…
Arbitration report: Arb resigns while mailing list leaks continue;
Motion re: admin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/Arbitr…
Technology report: June report: Virginia datacenter, parser, user
profiles; WikiLove 1.0; brief news
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/Techno…
Single page view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single
PDF version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04
http://identi.ca/wikisignpost /
https://twitter.com/wikisignpost
--
Wikipedia Signpost Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
------------------------------
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