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

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/13/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyway, I can't edit on meta, and you seem to have a much different
> > idea of an incubator wiki anyway.  Besides, the idea has been floating
> > around for months already.  The cynic in me thinks that the red tape
> > to create a project is probably too great, especially a project which
> > threatens to "end up being a fork of" Angela's website.
>
> Are you suggesting Wikimedia *should* become a general wiki hosting
> site?

No, of course not.  Wikimedia should stick to creating and
distributing informational materials.  There are wikis on Wikicities
which qualify, though.  The poker one comes to mind (because that's
one of the few I've actually participated in).

> Wikicities already has a policy to not create encyclopedias in
> languages supported on Wikimedia, and not to create projects that
> duplicate existing Wikimedia ones, so I don't see any likely overlap,
> and any content currently at Wikicities can easily move to Wikimedia,
> if the community supports that, for as long as they share the same
> license.

If there's no likely overlap, then an incubator wiki isn't going to
become a fork of Wikicities.

> A wiki used as a Wikimedia version of the WikiLabs at
> scratchpad.wikicities.com should obviously only contain things that
> have some chance of becoming Wikimedia projects or languages. This is
> what the community approval that you call "red tape" would be for if
> this site is launched. Otherwise, you're just wasting people's time by
> telling them to contribute to a wiki that is never going to be moved
> to an official Wikimedia domain.
>
> Angela.

I don't understand any of this.  Is scratchpad.wikicities.com a
Wikimedia project?  Community approval can take different forms. 
Requiring a project-wide vote and then board approval to create a new
project is "red tape", as I see it.  If people want to spend time
creating a project in the spirit of Wikimedia, and it turns out that
project never gets its own domain name, 1) that isn't a waste of time,
it's productive, and it's productive specifically to the purposes for
which Wikimedia was created, and 2) to the extent that it's a waste of
time, people choose to "waste their time", I don't see the problem.

The process to create a new project is far too difficult.  An
incubator wiki would facilitate that process.  The fact that
Wikicities is already doing something which you feel has overlap (but
then later say wouldn't have any overlap), is really irrelevant.

Anthony