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

Brian McNeil brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org
Fri Apr 11 15:33:46 UTC 2008


Thank you for clarifying this. What you state was not immediately apparent
and, as should be obvious, my comment was partly meant for shock value. It
is regrettable to have to say this, but Gerard does not seem to be cognizant
of why his proposal is meeting opposition. It takes common sense out of the
equation altogether. It may be mightily convenient to say, "we have rules,
we don't need debate", but this is the very reason why [[w:Wikipedia:Ignore
All Rules]] was instituted. There is a very real need for so many aspects of
WMF work to rely on the commonsense of contributors and committee members.

What disgusted me the most was Gerard had resorted to shouting to state he
did not want to see *any* project closed, but when an example is thrown up
his response is "close per proposed rules". This is being about as
consistent as quicksand and not conducive to what should be the objective.
I.e. providing better guidance to those put in the unenviable position of
making a decision, yes, *guidance*, not a set of rules to be blindly
applied. People are put in positions on committees to exercise good
judgement, not blindly apply a set of rules. If we have an unambiguous set
of rules we don't need a committee, a computer can do the job.


Brian McNeil 

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew
Whitworth
Sent: 11 April 2008 17:15
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criteria for the closure of projects.

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org> wrote:
> You don't burn a book because you don't like the number of pages it has.

Right here is the fundamental misconception: "closing" a project is a
bit of a misnomer because the content itself isn't "closed": the
content is moved to the incubator and work can continue on it as
normal. We're not talking about deleting or "burning" projects, we're
talking about moving them to a structured development area where they
will have a better chance at success, and better support from the WMF
community at large. If, at the incubator, a critical mass of
supporters emerges, the project can be reopened. Upon reopening, the
project will have much better success then it would have had
otherwise.

--Andrew Whitworth

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l




More information about the foundation-l mailing list