[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects (was Vote to create Wikiversity Vote)

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/11/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >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
> >
> >
> I would agree that there is a need for an incubator project.  Clearly
> the jump from minor discussion on this list and a minor writeup on the
> Meta Wiki to turning on a seperate Wiki domain is much larger than
> comparable projects on Wikicities, just for instance.  As far as
> Wikicities not being the correct solution, I would have to in general
> agree but from everything I've seen that is the current recommended
> solution with just about everybody strongly pushed onto Wikicities if
> their content doesn't fit a current Wikimedia project.  Even the new
> projects proposal page strongly recommends Wikicities.
>
I can see recommending Wikicities for projects which aren't applicable
to Wikimedia at all - a wiki for fictional works for instance.  But
for proposed Wikimedia projects which just haven't been fleshed out
enough to stand on their own, I don't think it's appropriate to host
them on Jimmy and Angela's private server.  You seem to agree with me,
and that's good.

> I do want to emphasis, however, that Wikibooks is not the place to do
> this either.  This is a need for a whole new project altogether.

Wikibooks isn't the place for incubation of new projects, I agree. 
And I can see the argument that Wikiversity goes beyond the original
scope of Wikibooks.  Essentially I feel that Wikiversity is a superset
of Wikibooks.  For that reason I don't really feel comfortable saying
that Wikiversity should be a separate project, I'd rather see
Wikibooks expanded to include other materials.  But I'd be willing to
concede that point, in fact I essentially have.

As for Wikijunior, well, I find it hard to see how that's not a book,
but that's a completely different discussion.

> Are you interested in helping me with organizing that project? The
> Foundation board has talked about this issue from time to time, but
> there is a need to really sit down and try to come up with the
> guidelines for when a project can be started on the incubator/test wiki.
>  This is a policy issue rather than a technical issue.  This is also
> something that rather than an abstract idea, there needs to be something
> written as a formal proposal with debate over the principle ideas for
> how the whole process would work.  Eventually it would also require a
> change in the New Projects policy as well, with the ability to both
> create and cull projects from the incubator Wiki.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

I'd be willing to help.  But in my opinion the guidelines should be
very minimal, maybe two or three interested sponsors and a one page
project proposal (which could be modified as the idea gets fleshed
out).  It's kind of the whole point of the wiki to make the threshold
very low - unless there's a strong majority sentiment that the project
could never become a Wikimedia project would I suggest removing
something (barring a project which took up enormous resources,
anyway).

And yes, it'd be useful to change the whole policy for new projects to
basically state that you have to make a test run on the incubator wiki
first, but that's really a separate issue which could be hashed out
later.  Along those same lines I'd like to see the more borderline
AFDs copied over.  If Wikipedia decides to get rid of info about
Pokemon maybe it could be made into a proposed project there
(elementary schools which are considered non-notable might be a more
reasonable candidate).

Anyway, send me a link to a page on meta and I'll transfer my thoughts
on this there.  Or if I don't hear from you about it in a few hours
I'll do it myself.

Anthony