[Foundation-l] Simple English Encyclopedia

[Brian Salter-Duke]

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:16:32 +0000, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/2/22 Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke at bigpond.com.au>:
>> I am rather disturbed at the discussion on meta here:-
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_(2)_Wikipedia
>>
>> about closing this project and I am surpried that the issue has not come
>> up here. While the consensus is clearly against closure, so it likely
>> will not happen, there are issues. Is this kind of discussion on Meta
>> really the best way to handle this kind of issue? I am particularly
>> concerned about the suggestion that only meta regulars (with more than
>> 100 edits there) can contribute. This prevents or at least discourages
>> the users of Simple from going to Meta to comment. I also wonder whether
>> Simple editors really know about this issue, although I see it is
>> mentioned on their main page.
>
> If it's mentioned on their main page, one would hope they know about
> it. Do you have a better way of informing them? The discussion has to
> take place somewhere, meta seems the best option (the only obvious
> alternative is to have closure discussions on the project in question,
> but that would most likely result in few people from other projects
> being involved, which is a bad thing). As others have pointed out,
> there is no requirement to be active on meta, just active on some
> Wikimedia project.
>
> Projects are not closed without significant discussion and a clear
> consensus and the procedure we have seems to be the best way to
> achieve that. If you have a better procedure, please do speak up.

OK, I think I have no problem with discussion on meta. Perhaps there
should be discussion on simple as well, and in this case since there is
a proposal to move it all under en:wp, there as well. I think my concern
is on how such a discussion might be closed. I am completely unclear how
the meta discussion would be closed. Does a crat there just come along
and decide? I would like to think that there would be wide discussion in
several places and then a decision by the WMF before a project such as
Simple would be closed.

Fortunately this time there is no majority to close it. The second Poll
on the suggested conversion of SE articles to EN namespace however shows
that the people who do not like simple are being persistent and this must
be very disturbing to editors on that project. This is not the way to
treat a project that gets so many reader hits,

Brian.
 

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-- 
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au  
[[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account.
       Also on Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, fr:Wikipedia and others.
Treasurer, Wikimedia Australia Inc,    Go Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go!