[Foundation-l] Community Assembly

[Pharos]

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Jesse Plamondon-Willard
<pathoschild at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Isn't that a sign of stagnation?
>> [...]
>> I'm personally of the opinion that some of our existing projects
>> might benefit by being merged, and I feel this should be an
>> issue for a community structure to consider as well.
>
> Isn't that contradictory? You feel that creating few new projects (low
> growth) is a sign of stagnation, which the community assembly could
> correct by un-creating a few (negative growth)?

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am
large, I contain multitudes.)"

The growth that we need as a vibrant Wikimedia is the addition of new
types of reference works to our collections.  This is the growth that
is stagnating.

Now, whether a proposal is eventually implemented as a new wiki, or as
a defined "subproject" under an existing wiki (like Wikijunior on
Wikibooks or Wikisaurus on Wiktionary), is a different issue.  It
should, in my opinion, ultimately be a pragmatic decision based on
what can form a viable separate wiki.  And a few of our existing
projects perhaps do not have this type of independent viability.

Wikijunior and Wikisaurus, I believe, started as proposals on Meta
too.  And I believe Meta is the right place for these types of
proposals, whether they are eventually implemented as new wikis, or as
defined "subprojects" under existing wikis.  And for discussion of the
possible merging of existing wikis too.  Not necessarily in a
"community assembly", but certainly in some more developed community
structure than we have now.

Thanks,
Pharos