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 http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Change_the_name_of_the_Wiki... 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
On 5 July 2011 13:00, foundation-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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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@googlemail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: -6316025283354768456@unknownmsgid Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn juergen.fenn@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@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: CAJcrdm4uRzmmKCZVkJ1EDVxY+9a_9qWUYPTqyhaRmLoHDpzvBA@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@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@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: CAO9U_Z4oPd=AakPPe4VgjxyrYhBvvdy55V6i30g7cDd79Sabxg@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: CAJcrdm7qK7M9vMiRgC_sW5FehYAdddm_jXvt1h=gxOXo6b2Ejw@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: CAO9U_Z5Pw32msoTeOQDLNvpE1OGTkEsYp7TmMHq3TnvSf9VX9g@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@gmail.com Subject: [Foundation-l] The Signpost ? Volume 7, Issue 27 ? 4 July 2011 To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wikimediaannounce-l WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: CAEqKY4+NSfp6MAUUWZZ_zeJQbsMPN97RpDVgApPYvBzkkN2ySw@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_an...
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/WikiPro...
Featured content: Two newly promoted portals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/Feature...
Arbitration report: Arb resigns while mailing list leaks continue; Motion re: admin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-04/Arbitra...
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/Technol...
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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