[Foundation-l] Re: Intent to launch pt., pl., ro. Wikinews; further procedure

[Aphaia]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 08:34:18 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Translating/creating policies seems to be a much better test of actual
> interest in doing work. Once you do that, that shows a commitment to the
> project.

Agreed. A project need to have some principal policies at its start -
or would be better:
after seeing the current situation of Japanese Wiktionary, I strongly
recommend everyone
to expect creating a new project. 

Without principal policy some prudent editors hesitate to submit
articles. Vandals don't
care such things ... and specially continuous labor by active sysops
sometimes a disastrous situation could arise - like Ja wiktionary.

Though I can't summarize the whole history of Ja wiktionary since its
creating, one major reason of its administrative weakness is its fail
to establish ground principals in its early days in my opinion: an
active user insisted to licence articles not under GFDL but other
conditions. I don't remember the details, but it was enough to
hesitate contributors to submit if I recall correctly,. I admit it was
a very extreme case, but I convince if we can provide a newly created
project  with basic policies, even if they are rough and need
improvement, it is much better than lack of them.
 
> Future projects don't necessarily match our current userbase. To tie the
> process for creating new language editions directly to that userbase
> seems needlessly restrictive. Building a small community on Meta and
> writing key pages before launching the project is also simply good
> planning

Preparing somewhere, on meta or existing Wikinews (at subpages of user page)
seems good to me. If preferable, Wikinews proposed can have platform
to prepare and
draft their policies on meta (like TR). It would make them to give a
look on other projects' policy and give a good occasion to consider
their own in comparison with others: a diversity of projects give us a
good chance to elaborate our policies.   For suspicion a project would
be created by newbies or trolls who understand not our policy, such
platform on meta could give the transparency of their policy to
interesting observers.

-- 
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com