[Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/11/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> The main point of the VfD on Wikibooks is to establish for once and all
> that Wikibooks is not a project incubator Wiki for new Wikimedia Sister
> projects.  Or is it?  That was the whole point of the VfD to debate and
> discuss that whole issue, which is an issue that can and ought to be
> discussed on a larger basis with the whole of the Wikimedia users as
> well.  Most VfD discussions on Wikibooks at least are dealing with
> people pushing the boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not on
> Wikibooks, and to get a larger community opinion on killing a Wikibook
> project.  Some very substantive policy changes have resulted from the
> VfD discussions on Wikibooks, for good or ill.
>
> It has been discussed many times on this list as well, and the general
> concensus I got from contributors to this mailing list as well as on
> Meta was that Wikibooks is not intended to become that Wiki incubator
> like Wikicities.  If that is the case, projects like Wikiversity and
> eventually Wikijunior need to go.  This also allows Wikibooks to focus
> its mission to dealing with non-fiction books (a general community
> concensus was reached on that point as well) having a general NPOV
> format and developed through a collaborative Wiki process.  How does
> Wikiversity fit into that role?  Wikiversity can and ought to be much
> more than what Wikibooks is generally restricted to in terms of just
> writing books about learning.  There is also a fairly healthy user
> community working on Wikiversity that is for the most part independent
> of the rest of the Wikibooks community.  Yes, there are users involved
> with both, as there are participants from Wikipedia that help write
> Wikibooks.  That is a good thing as well.
>
> You have your opinion on the matter, and a general Wikimedia community
> poll was taken on the subject with the additional ability to offer
> comments on the topic and voice opinions.  The whole point of this
> thread is that the poll has happened and now it is time for the
> Wikimedia Foundation board to decide based on this very large body of
> opinion on the topic covering almost every permutation on the issue.  If
> anything, the problem is that many of these written opinions have been
> scattered across many places including the Wikiversity page on both Meta
> as well as Wikibooks, the voting pages, and the VfD discussion on
> Wikibooks, not to mention this mailing list as well.  If you printed all
> of this stuff out, you could end up with a book by itself with over 100
> pages of just opinions on Wikiversity.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

Maybe we need an incubator Wiki for potential new sister projects. 
Wikicities is certainly not the solution for that.  Wikicities is a
for-profit project complete with advertising being run by a for-profit
company whose only tie to Wikimedia is that its two founders are on
the board of directors of Wikimedia (one of whom is the founder of
Wikipedia).

Anthony