[Foundation-l] Re: Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a new project: Wikisomething)

[Tim Starling]

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> At the very least, if there is to be a moritorium on new sister
> projects, please make that official policy on the part of the Wikimedia
> Foundation Board and get that stated on the New Project page, and
> perhaps even on the front page of Meta as well.  On the other hand, if
> the board does intend to allow some new projects to be started if they
> are well thought out and have a support community behind them, there
> should be an official policy to silence the critics who seem to speak in
> a semi-official capacity on behalf of the board (even though I know they
> are not board members). 

You want the Board to make a decision? Keep dreaming. If you want
something done, do it yourself. Form your own organisation, secure your
own funding, develop your own software.

> If there are genuine technical issues that need to be addressed so that
> starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than to.wikibooks.org, I
> would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
> screaming about.  Get technical and don't sugar coat it either, and if
> possible give hard examples.  If the concern is purely social and
> getting the new project community organized, that may be a legitimate
> concern.  I don't think it is in as many cases as the critics seems to
> believe it may be, and most new projects tend to recruit more people
> than would normally be participating with Wikipedia alone, so I don't
> think it necessarily bleeds other projects dry from volunteers.  This is
> also an issue I would be more than willing to debate as well.

Some software requirements are listed at

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity#Possible_software_needs

Making a comprehensive list is a job for a developer, and you don't seem
to have any interested developers at the moment. It's much easier to put
your name on a list of supporters than it is to write 1000 lines of
code. Or indeed, to determine the requirements that that 1000 lines of
code should fulfill.

-- Tim Starling