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

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/16/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > The answer to deletionist controversies should not always be to
> > establish a new project; it should lie in an attempt to find common
> > ground.  That's something which a certain cadre of people on Wikipedia
> > refuses to seriously consider.  I don't know what rules the Wikijunior
> > people have been violating in Wikibooks, but that is an omnous claim.
> > It seems to reflect the usual dynamic conflict between those who want
> > clarity and certainty, and those who treasure innovation as a primary
> > value.  A project has a serious problem when either of those two gains
> > dominance.
> >
> The issue I have with Wikijunior is not that it is necessarily violating
> Wikibooks policies, but that it exists in its own seperate domain in
> many ways with its own set of policies, governed by groups of people
> that otherwise have nothing to do with Wikibooks, or at least are not
> actively participating in the larger Wikibooks community.  Policy
> decisions being made on Meta are being applied to Wikibooks, which IMHO
> is especially difficult to deal with, especially when users and even
> admins on Wikibooks are not even aware that these decisions are even
> being made.  I'm not talking general policies that apply to all
> projects, but decisions about just the Wikijunior pages on Wikibooks.
>  This is especially difficult when long-term policy discussions are
> taking place that a new contributor to Wikijunior has almost no way to
> learn about unless they are already very well versed with Wikimedia
> politics.  There already is a small but growing community that is
> working on just Wikijunior pages and very little else on any other
> Wikimedia project.  I don't know of any other comparable situation like
> this for any other Wikimedia project.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

There are Wikiprojects within Wikipedia, complete with their own style
guides and rules for the pages within the the project.  Now those
rules don't override the general Wikipedia rules, in fact they're only
really suggestions - Wikipedia, like Wikibooks, is a wiki.  The only
people on Wikipedia who have any real authority over top of being able
to argue their case and get people to follow them is the arb com.  On
Wikibooks there isn't even that, afaik.  As for the guidelines being
decided on meta rather than Wikibooks, I don't see why that really
matters, but at the same time it probably wouldn't be hard to convince
people to move the discussions.

>From my understanding Wikibooks doesn't have all that big of an active
community in the first place, sans Wikijunior.  If that's true maybe
that's part of the problem.

Anthony