[Foundation-l] On closing projects

[Johannes Rohr]

"Erik Moeller" <erik at wikimedia.org> writes:

> On 5/7/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Stewards cannot do what you suggest as stewards. One of the core
>> principles of stewardship is that they do not make decisions; see
>> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_policies#Don.27t_decide>.
>
> That policy makes sense on the project level (small wiki which promote
> their own admins). It makes no sense whatsoever on the Meta level.

[...]

I think both of you have valid points here. The larger issue behind it
is, that it is yet undefined, who is actually in charge of closure
decisions. It looks like nobody is keen to pick up this hot potato,
which is fully understandable. Nevertheless, it should be defined in
one way or another. Else I suggest to scrap
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects given
that it invokes the false impression as if there was a defined
procedure for handling closure requests where in fact there is none.

I very much welcome the initiative brought forth by GerardM to
develop a policy on closure requests and I would suggest to continue
this debate at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Closure_of_WMF_projects

What I found quite enlightening about GerardM's draft is that there
are more options than closure or continuation of a project, this is
especially important for projects, the closure of which is discussed
for reasons other than mere inactivity. Options that could be
considered would be the removal of particularly controversial or
non-encyclopaedic content or removal of admin privileges from
individual users (yes, I /am/ thinking of ru-sib, while I'm writing
this... ;-) )

In either case, do you agree that

a) at present, there is no defined procedure to handle closure
   proposals; and
b) there should be one

?

Thanks,

Johannes

-- 
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