Philippe Beaudette wrote:
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 8:47 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Is there a single staffer who's even thinking about any of them as part of their work? I don't know of any. And, back to the original thought: are there any Wikimedia initiatives to specifically (or "primarily") improve any of these sister projects? I also don't know of any.
Yes, there are three staff members in my team alone (me, Christine, Maggie) who are thinking about them as a part of their work. I responded to a question on Wikiversity last night. I read the major discussion pages on each of the English language projects (regrettably the only language I speak) weekly. I try to hit the others with Google translate regularly, but not quite that.
My goodness. Boy was I wrong.
To be clear, I don't think it's really anything to be ashamed of. The English Wikipedia is by far the most successful project and it makes sense to invest heavily in what works. My issue is that I don't see Wikimedia being very upfront about their actual objectives. The actual objectives are to encourage Wikipedia's growth and to capitalize on its success as much as possible. If other projects can be helped along the way, great. Which then leads to the question of whether it's fair to the contributors on these projects (and to everyone else, I suppose) to continue supporting these sister projects in name only.
(Tangentially: John is a Wikisorcerer. People are really going to try to argue with him about whether sister projects are being ignored? Don't be silly.)
MZMcBride