Erik wrote:

I am a bit concerned about the pace at which new Wikipedia spinoff projects are created.

Isn't spin-offs the whole point of the Wikimedia idea?

Wiktionary was a good idea, because it filled a gap that was there -- we received lots of dictionary entries, so it seemed like the logical conclusion to start a wiki-dictionary.

We also get a lot of very long articles that are more suited for a textbook. Oh wait...

But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which was started without much discussion -

Not much discussion? There was so much discussion that we very quickly got our own mailing list.

possibly a good idea, but also possibly too specific -

Too specific? Have you browsed any online book seller for textbooks? There are thousands of different types - if anything it is a far more ambitious project that creating just one encyclopedia. We plan on writing hundreds of different textbooks. Specific indeed.

and shortly afterwards, a "Wiki-Quote" project was created.

That one blindsided me too - where was the discussion for that?

Now people are talking about creating a "Wiki-Piki" for pictures.

Terrible names - sounds like a fast nose picking. But having a centralized database for images that all Wikimedia projects can share is a very good thing. But that is a longer term goal and (as you say below) there are more important immediate needs to take care of.

This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned anything from the Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary was set up without much thought as to how the wiki process could be applied to a dictionary; it took months to formulate some kind of standard template,

Huh? The template and the processes you speak of were worked out the WikiWay on live data. Wikipedia was similarly chaotic during its first few months. To work this stuff out you have to work with real data - mock-ups on meta are little help here (and having them "clog" meta's RC would probably be frowed upon).

So we have learned something from the Wiktionary experience; we started with a project with the vague goal of having it be a dictionary. We experimented on different ways to make that happen with a great variety of different data. So different ways to organize those data were explored. Ambiguity problems arose between different meanings of words so we reorganized articles. Somebody had the idea of having translations in entries - similar ambiguity problems arose and were taken care of. Now instead of just a dictionary we have a dictionary to end all dictionaries whose entries will be all words of all languages.

It is difficult to imagine all that being worked out on meta.

and we still don't have Wiktionaries in other languages.

In time. Wikitionary has the goal to define every word in every language so in a sense it is already somewhat internationalized (of course the descriptions are in English). This, IMO, brings down the demand for other language versions (they are still needed though).

Wiktionary could have benefitted a lot from better planning before it was set up.

Perhaps. But do read the above.

I'm not sure I like the Wiki-Quote idea at all, as it intersects a lot with Project Sourceberg,

That has been my reaction too and I unsuccessfully tried to expand the focus of the project to include really big quatations (such as books).

is not very wiki-like (a quote is a quote) and not very compatible with the open content idea.

Giving the source of the quotations and giving commentary about them is wiki-like.

Wiki-Quote was only very briefly discussed.

I don't remember the discussion at all...

Furthermore, it's not exactly like we have lots of free resources. Our database server, pliny, is down on its knees, the full text search on the English wiki is now permanently disabled, we have only a couple of active server administrators, and hardly enough developers to address problems in the software.

These are all very valid points.

I propose that

1. we do not start any new Wiki spin-off

projects until our current resources have been substantially expanded;

I agree - that may have to wait until well after Wikimedia has a bank account set-up and is able to accept donations/grants. But that should encourage much discussion on how Wikimedia will function and on how to organize additional projects.

2. we formalize a process for starting such

projects, e.g. a planning period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact specifications as to what is to be placed there.

I wouldn't put such a time period on it since many ideas never are discussed much. I would set milestones (such as figuring out a name, the parameters of what just should and should not be in such a project etc.).

After this period, users on the Meta wiki should vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or not. 3 months may seem long, but if interest can't be kept up that long, the idea may not be so great after all.

Hm. I wonder if there would have been a Wikipedia at all if a similar process was vetted at Nupedia... Sometimes the best thing to do is jump in head first. But dead wikis are bad so something is needed to keep the still born rate low.

Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with lots of nice ideas that all go nowhere, like the sep11. wikipedia.org (which IMHO should never have been set up in the first place).

Call me Cassandra but I predicted that. I suggested several times that we should have a general tribute wiki and that we shouldn't limit such a project to a single event. I still think that that would be a viable project.

So yeah - until our load/server/software problems are fixed the non-developers should concentrate their efforts on the already existing Wikimedia projects and subprojects and on devising processes on how to best form new ones. In short; no new Wikimedia projects.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)