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

[Samuel Klein]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
>> John Vandenberg wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Brian<Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>> Brilliant idea.
>> This sounds like a good idea to me.
> This is a brilliant and much-needed idea, on many many levels.
>
> I suggest that we start to work developing such a new system for the
> Incubator at the strategy wiki.

<AOL>


Michael Snow writes:
>> One difference is immediately
>> obvious from the way the incubator works presently, though. Rather than
>> having these projects move out of the incubator based on the decision >> of the language committee, that issue would have to be considered by
>> the board directly in consultation with the broader community.

We have for years had a 'Board approval' bottleneck for creating new
Projects.  On the other hand, we've only created four since the Board
got started.  We managed somehow before, and I don't see why this
couldn't one day be delegated to something very like the language
committee, dedicated to assessing new project proposals for sufficient
interest and alignment with Wikimedia goals (here goals for free
knowledge coverage, not goals for real language coverage).  Until and
unless such a thing is worked out, review by the board and broader
community is a fine alternative... but it uncomfortably close to
describing the system we have now.

SJ