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