[Foundation-l] Proposal for new projects

[Samuel Klein]

Hello,

WikiHow is a good place for how-tos, and has an amazing community.
They unfortunately use a license (NC-SA) that isn't compatible with
Wikimedia projects.  If you want to do something like WikiHow under a
CC-SA license, you might pursue a new Project for them -- while
incubating the project on Wikibooks.  As Robert Horning notes, there
are some examples there already.

There are other models like HowStuffWorks that you could look at for
how to organize this sort of information, if you really want to
organize a new Project.

On 10/21/10, Robert S. Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> I've never been a real fan with the "new project" process as it relates
> to Wikimedia, and I find it unfortunate that nothing new has been
> created for quite some time.  The last major "community-sponsored" (aka
> the idea originated with ordinary users as opposed to something of a pet
> project by a WMF board member) project to become a major Wikimedia
> project was Wikiversity.

I'm not sure what 'pet projects' you are thinking about.  Wikiversity
is the last major Wikimedia project, period.  [unless you are counting
the Incubator itself?]


> As I've mentioned on the talk pages at Meta, I wish somebody would
> officially state on Meta and elsewhere that new Wikimedia sister
> projects will never be started,

Whereas I see support of good sister projects -- including avoiding
duplication of effort and directing them to partners when Wikimedia
isn't the right incubator/host -- as essential to realizing our
mission.  So I think we should just fix the process.

There are at least two good candidates for new sister projects:
* Wikibibliography / WikiScholar, which has been developed on Meta and
in a couple of threads on this list
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiScholar
* Wikifamily / Rodovid, which has been working well as an independent
project but may be looking for more stable long-term support.


> This mailing list is the correct place to put ideas like this forward,

Yes.

> I have yet to see any idea get
> proposed here on this list to ever become a sister project unless there
> has been a HUGE effort involving at least hundreds if not many more
> Wikimedians

Well, launching a new Project is a big deal, so this is not entirely
unexpected.  Shouldn't we have as many people weighing in on new
Project launching as weigh in on cross-project policy changes?

> and often an effort to delete a major category of content
> from one of the existing projects as well.

This is more about providing models for the creation and sharing of a
new type of information than about the 'deletion' of something from
one project to move it to another.  We don't usually think of
"migrating images to Commons" as "deletion from an existing project"
-- even though moving images to commons means that they disappear from
RC and watchlists -- because we have cross-project transclusion for
images.

General cross-project transclusion is a feature we don't have yet, but
with a more vibrant ecosystem of Projects, this might soon change.

Sam.