[Foundation-l] Wikiquote: to be, or not to be

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Wikipedia is our encyclopaedia. Wikipedia is also 250+ different projects.
There are many more projects beside Wikipedia, some in the WMF and some not.
When you think that our community is fractured, you do not have to look at
anything but Wikipedia and you may notice all these different projects some
doing well, some doing abysmally bad all with more or less of their *own *
community.

When you consider Wikiquote to be one of our least successful projects, you
will find that many Wikipedias are doing much worse. The notion that we are
one community is in my opinion based on wishful thinking. We are not one
community, we are many communities sharing a dream. If we were a community
the reputation of a user of one community would be known in other
communities, it is not.

We do share a dream and this dream is in providing information to people.
The information that is provided is not the same for the different brands of
projects the WMF hosts.

My question would be, do you really think the people at Wikiquote would be
happy to be part of Wikipedia? My question would be, do you really think the
people at Wikinews would be happy to be part of Wikipedia? I doubt it as
they have their own community, their own sense of purpose, their own sense
on how to bring the best information given their projects aim. Their aim is
not Wikipedias aim, their rules are not shared in Wikipedia. It would be
like translating a penguin to the Amazon.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 8:49 AM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 12:59 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> There is a discussion on Meta to disband Wikiquote, or at least
> >> consider the problems it faces and how to move forward.
> >>
> >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub/On_disbanding_Wikiquote
> >>
> >> So far it is mostly people who have doubts about its utility, so
> >> broader participation is desirable.  I appreciate that this is not
> >> going to be a pleasant discussion for regular contributors to
> >> Wikiquote, but I see it as a worthwhile discussion, even if it only to
> >> re-affirm the community support for having a quote project now that
> >> the encyclopedia and library project are rapidly encroaching on its
> >> territory.
> >
> > I know this proposal is probably offensive to some people. Nobody
> > wants to see "their project" closed, no matter what problems it may
> > have. I've seen this with projects that are much worse off then
> > en.wikiquote, and I would expect nothing less from the quoters (what
> > do their members call themselves?).
>
> <snip>
>
> > I'm not in favor of closing wikiquote, but then again it could turn
> > out to be the correct decision if questions like those above don't
> > have clear and suitable answers. I hope people take this issue
> > seriously because Wikiquote could seriously benefit from some
> > thoughtful introspection.
> >
> > --Andrew Whitworth
>
> I guess this might be another potentially offensive proposal, but I
> think Wikiquote, given that it is in some ways the least successful of
> the projects, might be a good test case for a remerge,
> "wikicompendium"-style, back to Wikipedia.
>
> I feel that the separation of the projects (and the consequent
> fracturing of the community) may have been a historic mistake, and
> that we should consider whether or not something like Wikiquote might
> work better as a "Quote:" namespace on Wikipedia (while retaining the
> conventions particular to Wikiquote).  I feel this is an experiment
> that might be worth pursuing.
>
> Thanks,
> Pharos
>
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