[Foundation-l] Closure of projects

[Chad]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Andrew
Turvey<andrewrturvey at googlemail.com> wrote:
> First, if the conclusion is that no procedure exists, a notice should be put on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects stating this so that peoples' expectations are appropriately managed.
>
> Second, is that correct? Looking at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Herero_Wikipedia it seems that there certainly was a procedure in the past where articles were shifted back into the Incubator.
>
> Most importantly, should there be a procedure? Keeping projects open is a drain on resources, such as removing vandalism. There is a level of activity below which the positive benefits of the project are outweighed by the drain, although it's clearly not worth closing a project if the effort to do this is not a worthwhile investment.
>
> Do you need particular user rights to action such requests?
>
> ----- "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> From: "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
>> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, 20 August, 2009 19:01:39 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Closure of projects
>>
>> Hoi,
>> There is no procedure because what comes closest to a consensus amount to a
>> lot of work. Work that does not forward our mission one iota. The fact that
>> people vote and comment is not that special, people do ... if they vote that
>> I will wear a tutu at Wikimania and a consensus says that I should, I still
>> have to volunteer to wear that tutu. It is the same as voting for a bug in
>> bugzilla. The votes are not considered so why bother ?
>>
>> As to the language committee, it does only consider new requests for
>> projects ... if it were to expand its services it would be in indicating
>> what issues exist that deal with language support that would make a
>> difference to the usability of our software. It would not be drinking from
>> the poisoned chalice that is closing projects. The closest we came to
>> expressing an opinion is that we would prefer the content of a to be closed
>> project to be imported into the Incubator. This is a not good for Incubator
>> because they get dead wood loaded into their project ....
>>
>> So all in all in my opinion it is best to leave these things as is and
>> ignore requests for closure.
>> Thanks,
>> GerardM
>>
>> 2009/8/20 Huib! <Abigor at forgotten-beauty.com>
>>
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I noticed that there are still a lot of open request for closure on Meta
>> > so I decided to contact a LangCom member (Robin) asking him about how
>> > and when the projects will be closed or when the requests will be
>> > closed, but I recieved a answer I didn't expected.
>> >
>> > Robin told me there was no policy (
>> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closure_of_WMF_projects ) about the
>> > closure of projects so the request can stay open for always.
>> >
>> >
>> > I think its kind of strange that we people can make a request, that
>> > there are people who are voting and spending there time commenting on
>> > the request or even worse have stress because there project could be
>> > closed but the request will never be closed.
>> >
>> >
>> > Is there a way to change this with a new policy, or with a different com
>> > for the closure, because this seems to me a waste of time for a lot of
>> > people, people can stop editting projects just because the think the
>> > project will be closed.
>> >
>> > At this moment there are 27 request for projects to be closed, (
>> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects ) I think
>> > 50% is a easy closure for keep or close. The oldest project is from 2007
>> > that would mean its still open after 2 years :/
>> >
>> > --
>> > *Huib Laurens*
>> >
>> > Web: Forgotten-beauty.com <http://www.forgotten-beauty.com.com/>
>> > Email: Abigor at forgotten-beauty.com <mailto:abigor at forgotten-beauty.com>
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >
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The only user requirement for this is that a shell user has to
perform the actual decision. The community makes the decisions
about opening/closing new projects, and the sysadmins carry
out the actual task.

-Chad