[Foundation-l] Closure of projects

[Robin P.]

2009/8/24 Andrew Turvey <andrewrturvey op googlemail.com>

> First, if the conclusion is that no procedure exists, a notice should be
> put on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projectsstating this so that peoples' expectations are appropriately managed.


Good idea, I added a note on the top of the page "Apart from the common
practices below, there is no official policy on closing projects".

Second, is that correct? Looking at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Herero_Wikipediait seems that there certainly was a procedure in the past where articles
> were shifted back into the Incubator.
>

There is no procedure in the sense of how to reach a consensus to close the
wiki.
Moving pages to Incubator is what comes *after* the wiki is closed, to give
a future community the chance to build a new wiki at the Incubator. Imagine
if you work on a small project knowing that if the project is closed, all
your work is gone (until the wiki is opened again - which has never happened
before afaik).

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.
>

When looking at the recent changes and logs of several wikis proposed to be
closed, the amount of vandalism in the past year was very low.
I guess vandalism on big projects requires much more work than all those
small wikis together.


Overall, I agree with Gerard.

What I don't like is that proposals stay open for years without even being
closed as "inactive proposal for closure" (ironically).
Or, the opposite, a lot of discussion to close a relatively low-active
project in a major language. In this case, Dutch Wikinews.

----- "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen op gmail.com> wrote:
> > From: "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen op gmail.com>
> > To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <
> foundation-l op 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 op 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 op forgotten-beauty.com <mailto:abigor op forgotten-beauty.com
> >
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