On 10/23/2010 05:13 AM, Samuel Klein wrote: Actualy, I would count the incubator project as a "pet project" that ignored community consensus building and discussion of the nature that was associated with the creation of projects like Wikiversity and Wikinews.  There were several attempts at getting an "incubator project" going and the current incarnation of that concept completely ignored previous ideas that were suggested about the idea.  It also didn't get created with the "proscribed" new project creation process.  This is water over the dam now and I'm not necessarily saying that we can't move forward, but a solid incubator building community could have been organized along much different lines. Wikispecies is an example of a project idea that didn't get the critical early effort to get it going, and is still sort of floundering. Previously, nearly all "project incubator" efforts were done strictly on Meta, Wikibooks, or as sub-pages in the "User:" space on Wikipedia.  I could also mention some of the other "minor wikis" that are associated with the WMF including the Wikimania wiki, some of the foundation communication wikis, and there are a few other that do serve a useful role.  I also hope that I don't have to bring up the creation of the German Wikiversity project, which predated English language Wikiversity by nearly two years. There is room for cynicism in how projects are created and it isn't always pretty. What has been the problem with these efforts then?  These are hardly the only new sister project proposal to be put forward and to me there have been some very good ideas, including some concepts that would serve as a strong support role to other Wikimedia projects even if not necessarily Wikipedia itself.  My complaint is more that the resistance to these new project ideas is so fierce that the best advise I ever give to folks who want to create a sister project is to simply don't try, or go somewhere else like Wikia.... but if you do don't ever consider that such a project would ever become a sister project if that happens.  Once the community is already established outside of the sister projects, it will NEVER be adopted as a sister project.  I dare a counter-example here at the very least.  The Wikifamily/Rodovid example is precisely the kind of project that I fail to ever see adopted and integrated into the Wikimedia family of projects because of its outside development.  Some of the Wikidata efforts are also something that while very interesting and useful for the projects are something more likely not to be formally integrated into the Wikimedia projects either. Heck, in the board election campaign process there has been several suggestions to simply jettison all of the rest of the sister projects as a bad idea and stick strictly with the core Wikipedia support role and throw the rest of the existing sister projects out to sink or swim on their own.  I'm not saying that this faction of the Wikimedia community is necessarily gaining ground, but to ignore that it doesn't exist is also putting your head into the ground.  Based upon some comments on this list I don't think the "movement" is necessarily dead either to go this route.  For myself, I think the non-Wikipedia sister projects serve a strong role that can help each other too, but there certainly are many folks who see these as distractions.  My point here is that this faction is also what stops up the creation of new sister projects and was responsible for many of the opposition votes for the creation of Wikiversity when the vote was held on Meta... if you want me to name names and point to specific statements along this line of thought. New project creation and organization has been a long time passion of mine, and I've participated in the meta discussions including even establishing some of the organization for project creation.... and project termination on Meta.  I haven't been so active lately mainly because of the apparent futility of even trying, and my life has turned in other directions lately.  This still doesn't mean that I don't care and in fact if a group is interested in getting a new sister project organized, I would certainly be willing to share my insight on my role with getting Wikiversity going.  While a great many other people were involved with the project too, I feel I had at least a small but significant role in getting that project from a seed idea to becoming a full fledged sister project.  It isn't all negative but it is a huge uphill climb and your idea for a new sister project simply must be crystal clear and very well developed if it is going to have a chance. It also helps to build a community of supporters, which is perhaps my main contribution as I was able to find enough supporters of Wikiversity across multiple language communities and knew enough about inter-project politics that those suporters were able to push the idea on their own momentum and sustain the project community well after it was established. For the most part, well intentioned but naive newcommers to Wikimedia projects thinking that simply making an announcement here on Foundation-l is all it will take to create a new sister project is missing a few steps along the way.  I wish it didn't have so much process, but that process can build a substantial enough community where even if the WMF were to pull the plug that the community would live on. Certainly if somebody wanting to create a new sister project would do well to see how Wikiversity and Wikinews were organized prior to their respective "launches" and what kind of efforts were put into those successful project proposals.  I put those out as examples of the best way to get something like this organized, if that is your goal. -- Robert Horning ____________________________________________________________ SHOCKING: 2010 Honda Civic for $1,732.09 SPECIAL REPORT: High ticket items are being auctioned for an incredible 90% off! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3241/4cc303d2907cd43424fst02vuc _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 1:54 AM, Pharos<pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote: I like the idea of one 'beta' per year. Before starting these betas, we should have a rough process for how we decide when to kill an unsuccessful beta. An RFC on meta?

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Michael Snow<wikipedia(a)frontier.com> wrote: I'm not following you. Are you referring to existing processes for starting/killing projects/subdomains? Could you expand/rephrase?