[Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.

[Mark Williamson]

As an addendum: the Ewe Wikipedia appears to have only become active
around July of last year. I haven't done an exhaustive check, but I am
sure there are at least a handful that have become active even more
recently.

Mark

On 11/04/2008, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a
>  >  project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not 1000
>  >  articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It starts on
>  >  average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of the
>  >  most used messages.
>
>
> That is how they start... now. You are proposing, from what I can
>  tell, criteria to be imposed on existing projects. If these two are to
>  be used together, then I wonder which projects will be closed? I'm
>  most curious about Wikipedia; although I know it has annoyed you in
>  the past, that is the project I care most about and I will admit it
>  freely, I have a tie to it and a bias towards it. I don't feel bad
>  when Wiktionaries and Wikibookses are proposed for closure on Meta,
>  but I lose sleep when Wikipedias are. I am human, I have feelings, and
>  that is how I feel.
>
>  From the very start, I have been a strong believer in eventualism and
>  gentle prodding. I discussed this with Francis Tyers, and from what I
>  recall, he didn't buy it when we were doing preliminary work on adding
>  a couple of skeletal articles to the Tajik Wikipedia... and then all
>  of a sudden, new users came along. This, after 3 or 4 years of
>  existance and total lack of meaningful articles.
>
>  Most existing Wikis have their growth start either like the Big Bang,
>  or in fits and spurts. I am disappointed that we are now closing empty
>  Wikis, although I always knew it was only a matter of time before this
>  would happen. That the Chamorro Wikipedia is now saved, I consider a
>  great thing, and I hope it will remain open enough longer to attract
>  real users.
>
>  Many people have said "If nobody has come by now, they never will
>  come", but the rash of Wikis that were all created around the same
>  time have become active at different times across the years, right up
>  until the present. If we wait long enough, almost all of them can be
>  expected to become active. Wikis like Cheyenne, with 1700 mostly
>  elderly speakers, could possibly fail, but the vast majority of
>  currently empty Wikis are likely to flourish at some point.
>
>  We have had this discussion in the past, and that is why I started
>  SWMT. To my disappointment, the people who joined SWMT and made it
>  their own after I became less active in monitoring small Wikis have
>  all become strong proponents of the deletion of inactive Wikis. That
>  goes directly against my original reason for starting it - if these
>  Wikis are vandalized, having someone to monitor them removes that as a
>  possible problem. It appears that the people who have taken it upon
>  themselves to monitor these Wikis have decided that it is too much
>  work and that they'd rather just close 'em all up instead... I guess
>  for them, it is not a labor of love as it was for me, but rather a
>  dull maintenance task. I was always excited to see that someone had
>  added real content to a previously empty Wiki... I wonder about them?
>  Since I stopped watching, the Tigrigna Wikipedia has sprung alive...
>  did they smile? Did they add any helpful messages to guide the new
>  Tigrigna Wikipedians along? I wonder.
>
>  Deletionism is not the answer here. It has never been, and it never
>  will be. Now that we have tightened restrictions on new Wikis, I don't
>  see why we need to excommunicate any of the existing members of our
>  family, except the problem children (like ru-sib).
>
>
>  Mark
>