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

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >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.
> >
> The process should be that difficult.  The impetus for new projects
> seems to be more often a reflection of people's inability or
> unwillingness to look for compromise solutions;  it has very little to
> do with an objective need for another project.
>
I think it's more than that.  There are a lot of people who want
Wikipedia to look more like a finished product than a perpetual work
in progress.  Daniel P. B. Smith is one of the most outspoken in this
regard, but there are many others who also feel this way.  If we're
going to reach a compromise, it has to take these points into
consideration.

There needs to be a place where we can experiment with new ideas more
freely.  You could argue that that should be in Wikipedia itself, but
if so then there'd need to be a more static version in place first. 
Creating a new test project *is* a compromise.  It's saying "this idea
isn't completely developed yet to where there is a consensus for
including it in the main project, but we're not going to throw it away
just because of that."

> Philosophically I think that an encyclopedia IS a knowledge base, but
> that could just lead us into a lot of unsolvable semantic arguments.

Well, yeah, I'm not going to touch that one right now.

> There are companies out there that can do phone books much better than
> we ever could.

I'd prefer *any* free phone book to the proprietary ones out there
now, so I don't think it'd be hard to do better than the commercial
companies.  Yes, the copyright on this information is legally shaky,
but EULAs and DRM usually fills those gaps.

> Until Wikipedia came along on-line genealogy was already
> perhaps the best self-organized amateur research area on the net.

Again this is largely proprietary and filled with barriers to the
information being free.  I can't think of any other major site which
allows for even the basics of what a wiki could offer.  There may be
some minor sites out there doing this, but Wikimedia could do a much
better job.

> We have had our own 9-11 Wiki, but that has not exactly been a memorial
> success.

I think this is largely because it's not a very expandable project. 
The number of dead people in the world is much greater than the number
of people who died in the September 11th tragedy, and the former is
growing every moment.

Anyway, some of these projects will fail, and others will succeed. 
There is only so much volunteer time to go around, after all.  But I
don't think it's really possible to figure out which ones are which
without going ahead and trying it.  Perhaps most importantly, the harm
is negligible.  A project which doesn't succeed isn't going to use up
very many resources, after all.

Anthony