The issue:
http://wikisource.org is supposed to be a portal, a portal with links to the different versions of the project. just like all the other projects, the main domain a portal..the sub-domains contains the different versions..except for the multilingual projects (commons + meta) which don't have any sub-domains and have their main pages in English as default and main pages in many other languages. so commons.wikimedia.org or meta.wikimedia.org are considered to be the 'portals' or better..they don't have portals (all content on one wiki) or there are no metawiki.org or commonswiki.org so they don't have a portal and that is of course made intentionally (they don't need that ball surrounded by languages)..
When we look at Wikisource, we find it somehow disorganized..first..the new languages are created inside wikisource.org wiki (which as I know was once an oldwikisource) until they accumulate some unknown number of pages then they move to their own sub-domain.. isn't that the exact purpose of the incubator? develop the language to some extent to test its potential?
Other ideas say that Wikisource project is special somehow that some of the languages will never be big enough (text collections, contributors etc...) to deserve its own domain or there will never be enough community for it..and because of that they are better placed in one place (I don't really see the objection of making new sub-domains or wikis, does it cost?) ..so, following the conventions, as Wikisource does contain sub-domains, the address http://wikisource.org should be made only a portal..not a Wiki! and the Multilingual collections (that didn't get a sub-domain and probably will never in the near future) be placed on a sub-domain of wikisource.org, perhaps multi.wikisource.org..not the current mix..having both the portal and the multilingual wiki on the same place.. that is a solution..other solution would be to move all the content on the wiki that shouldn't exist on wikisource.org to the incubator and remove that wiki and just add the portal like the other projects..but I seriously doubt if the languages will get out of the incubator...in any solution, these languages and cultures should be featured, the ignorance of myself to certain language doesn't make it less or bad..
Now I feel that I wrote much to describe ;)
Mohamed Magdy wrote:
The issue:
http://wikisource.org is supposed to be a portal, a portal with links to the different versions of the project. just like all the other projects, the main domain a portal..the sub-domains contains the different versions..except for the multilingual projects (commons + meta) which don't have any sub-domains and have their main pages in English as default and main pages in many other languages. so commons.wikimedia.org or meta.wikimedia.org are considered to be the 'portals' or better..they don't have portals (all content on one wiki) or there are no metawiki.org or commonswiki.org so they don't have a portal and that is of course made intentionally (they don't need that ball surrounded by languages)..
We've generally considered this to be a matter for the Wikisource community to decide. The reason Wikisource was not split into subdomains at the same time as the other projects, and the reason there remains a "central" Wikisource, is because that's how they voted.
-- Tim Starling
Mohamed Magdy wrote (in part):
Other ideas say that Wikisource project is special somehow that some of the languages will never be big enough (text collections, contributors etc...) to deserve its own domain or there will never be enough community for it..and because of that they are better placed in one place (I don't really see the objection of making new sub-domains or wikis, does it cost?)
I am not at all active on Wikisource, and I have no opinion on the topic in general. However, I'll say just one thing:
The advantage of having smaller communities on one wiki is that there is then one central watch list and recent changes list. This lets people monitor vandalism, in many cases even for languages they don't speak. With a very small community, vandalism can run rampant without anyone noticing it for long periods of time.
-Rich
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