[Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

[Robert Scott Horning]

Alex Schenck wrote:

>Okay, apparently, we have a few problems here.
>
>Despite praise from various sources, several other Meta people have
>complained that this project is doing more harm than good. While I of course
>completely disagree with that notion, I feel that I ought to let out some
>steam.
>
>Meta right now is horrible. Really, it is. People need to stop kidding
>themselves and understand that the way that it is in right now is akin to a
>trash heap. Sure, there are some good things on Meta, but the vast majority
>is unorganized rubbish that could probably be put away in an archive and
>forgotten about until cyber-archaeologists come along and sift through it
>and thing that they're artifacts. I mean, come on. Sure, this place has a
>lot of history of Wikimedia, but if things need to be kept, why can't they
>be kept in a more orderly fashion?
>  
>
While I would agree that the content of Meta is horribly disorganized, I 
fail to see why all of the stuff you are complaining about has to be 
deleted?  Why not simply reorganize everything and allow some method of 
trying to find the content and properly categorize the content?

Also, Meta is hardly a ghost Wiki by any stretch of the imagination.  If 
you look up the stats on Alexa:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=p&q=&url=meta.wikimedia.org

you will discover that it comprises over 26% of all internet traffic 
going to all websites under the top level wikimedia.org domain.  From 
that it shows that Meta would be in the top 50 wikimedia websites overall.

according to [[meta:Table_of_Wikimedia_Projects_by_Size]] meta comes in 
at site #72 for all wikimedia projects.

Neither of those numbers are something to sneer at, and shows why meta 
is certainly one of the major players among wikimedia websites from this 
criteria alone.

What meta needs is a good reorganization, not a wholesale mission change.

I will agree that there is a tendancy to dump some stuff on Meta that 
doesn't quite fit on any other Wikimedia project, such as the wikimania 
proceedings that are on Meta at the moment.  Admins on meta have been 
justifiably concerned when many other projects dump stuff on them in 
this manner, and I appreciate that sentiment.

On the other hand, there are many seemingly random pages that were 
started on Meta because they were in fact a meta-discussion about the 
role and future of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.  Isn't that 
precisely what meta is all about?  Those are the pages that especially 
need to be reorganized and linked, not discarded.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning