[Foundation-l] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?

[Samuel Klein]

On 9/8/09, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>  > 2009/9/8 Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net>:
>  > > What could be the cause of this recent dearth of new projects?
>  >
>  > Certainly the process for getting a new project underway is so complex
>  > and exhausting that it's not something that many people will be likely
>  > to engage in - especially considering that project ideas are often
>  > proposed by people who aren't currently very active Wikimedians.
>  > Perhaps we need to set up a formal system for long-time Wikimedians to
>  > adopt ideas they're excited about, to help push them to approval?

That would be a nice idea.   Three steps : propose a process and find
supporters (somewhat defined on meta, can be refined), find an
established Wikimedian to mentor/adopt it  (define a new process and
people willing to mentor), work towards approval (define a new process
involving the incubator).


>  > I do think that project adoption is something that we should explore
>  > in the right circumstances; it's not something we've ever done but IMO
>  > we should be open to it. I don't think OpenStreetMap or OpenLibrary
>  > want or need to be adopted. ;-) But there may be other smaller
>  > semi-successful projects that would like to join our project family,
>  > and that would make sense as part of it.

Yes.  Rodovid and Wikikids come to mind as projects that have asked at
one point, though they may no longer have such an interest.  Rodovid
is certainly the largest multilingual project to make such a
request... but afaict there simply wasn't a clear way for that to be
considered at the time.

>  > For example, as of a few weeks ago, there's now a fledgling community
>  > of people on Wikimedia Commons who add annotations to images, because
>  > a volunteer developed a cool image annotation tool. The entire
>  > community of people adding categories to Wikipedia articles could only
>  > form after the categorization functionality was developed.

Yes and yes.  I remember the people who wondered if articles would
ever be usefully categorized, or if it was just a cute side project
that would never impact wikipedia.  And the fascinating debates about
the meta-category structure... which might [have] serve[d] as material
for an entire thesis in librarianship.

>  > That is not to say that I think there should be no new blank-slate
>  > wikis, or wikis with custom software, for specific purposes. But I
>  > would also not see the fact that no new top-level Wikimedia project
>  > has been created in recent years as a sign of stagnation - wonderful

It is a sign of stagnation.  The ecosystem is nowhere near saturated
with free knowledge projects; WP is dazzlingly successful; we or
others should at least be considering similar projects to cover every
type and format of knowledge, and for every audience -- in our case,
to explicitly say 'out of scope [yet]' if nothing else.

But as you note, there are other signs of growth which counterbalance it.


Brian writes:
> I propose expanding the notion of the Wikimedia Incubator to include
>  entirely new projects that are very, very easy to create. They don't need to
>  be approved by the WMF - they just need to demonstrate their value by
>  attracting a community and creating great content. This would be more like
>  the Apache Incubator, but even more open. This gives people an easy way to
>  prototype their ideas for new projects, to advertise them, and over time
>  will give an overview of what kinds of projects and approaches to projects
>  are likely to succeed and likely to fail.

Great idea.  Where's the right place to suggest this on the Incubator?
  That's a project where I have regrettably not gotten to know any of
the local policies yet.

SJ