[Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family

[Nathan]

I agree with what Phoebe and William have written, and I'll just add a
few minor points and then a thought about the process of new project
creation.

* When dealing with the WMF and Wikimedia community, you might want to
avoid the language of business acquisitions; it's extraordinarily
unlikely that the WMF will get into purchasing content for subsequent
free distribution, if only for the (for us) perverse incentives it
will create.

* The Strategy wiki is not, in my opinion, a great place to propose
new projects. It's aimed at long-term and big picture strategy, so it
would be a good place to discuss the process of creating new projects,
but it is not necessarily well adapted to considering specific
proposals.

* The Foundation and the community are not at a place where they can
pursue people for project adoption. This is true for a variety of
reasons, but the upshot is that you won't find a motivated adopter
(someone who will actively court your project or facilitate an
adoption) in either group.

It might actually be easier to approach this as a "new project"
proposal for the WMF, as opposed to the adoption of an already
existing project. While the layout and formal written processes for
creating a new project are (a) confusing (b) nonexistent (c) defunct
(or some combination of all three), the general concept is fairly
straightforward:

(1) Demonstrate compatibility (i.e. resolve legal and philosophical
issues, if any)
(2) Demonstrate an active community
(3) Resolve serious complaints / criticism in a community forum, most
likely on Meta (may take some agitating for comments over a period of
time)
(4) Present the successful completion of 1-3 to an available employee
of the WMF, like Erik Moeller, or a board member, who can see that
hosting arrangements are made.

If you can do 1-3, you can probably do 4. The Foundation should really
facilitate the entire process, in my opinion, but the absence of their
assistance doesn't *necessarily* doom the prospect of a new project.
It just means that it won't be easy, and success will require the
persistent effort of project advocates.

The 4th step is the "official" approval, but history demonstrates that
the actual work involved in step 4 is doable. While Wikiversity is the
newest content projects, there are other hosted and distinct projects
of other sorts (strategy, chapter projects, etc.) - proving that
setting up a new MediaWiki instance with attendant arrangements isn't
a major hurdle. Once you've accomplished all the steps, you can import
your old wiki into your new wiki and get back to work.

Nathan