[Foundation-l] Merge wikis

[WereSpielChequers]

We seem to be conflating three different things here,

1 Rebranding Wikipedia and possibly other projects, this is a
perennial idea that I can't see ever convincing me or most
wikimedians. I don't see this as being particularly relevant to the
idea of merging wikis, so may I suggest that if people want to bring
up the idea they differentiate it from the merge wikis thread by
giving it a relevant subject such as Rebrand Wikipedia? They might
also want to consider the arguments against this at
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Change_the_name_of_the_Wikipedia_website_to_OmniScience
as there is not much point reviving an idea unless you have a response
to the known fatal flaws in it.

2 Merging wikis where we have overlapping groups of editors working on
different projects within the same language. So the Klingon
Wikisource, WikiQuote, Wikinews and so forth would become different
spaces within one wiki giving editors the benefit of single userpages
and in many cases a larger crowd of editors. Some editors have
objected to this on the not unreasonable grounds that some small
projects would feel swamped if they were put in the same wiki as one
of the large projects, and John vandenburg raised the issue that
policy in such a wiki would necessarily be more complex than if we
continued to have at least one wiki per project. I still think that we
have much to gain here and especially that the wisdom of crowds
requires crowds, but I'd like to suggest that we trial this by having
some consenting languages work this way and see how well it could be
made to work.

3 Merging wikis where we have the confusing situation of multiple
wikis for the same project. So ten, strategy and outreach are all
within the scope of Meta and as several people have said there is no
benefit and considerable disbenefit in running them as separate wikis.
 Merging them into meta should be an easy and uncontentious win.
Startegy and Outreach perhaps need their own spaces within Meta in the
same way that Research has, and perhaps for ten we need a "meetup"
space .

WereSpielChequers

On 5 July 2011 13:00,  <foundation-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Re: Merge wikis (Thomas Morton)
>   2. Re: Merge wikis (Pharos)
>   3. Re: Merge wikis (John Vandenberg)
>   4. Re: Merge wikis (Pharos)
>   5. Re: Merge wikis (John Vandenberg)
>   6. The Signpost ? Volume 7, Issue 27 ? 4 July 2011
>      (Wikipedia Signpost)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 00:11:50 +0100
> From: Thomas Morton <morton.thomas at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <-6316025283354768456 at unknownmsgid>
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> On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn <juergen.fenn at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>>>> if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
>>>> "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
>>>> to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".
>>>
>>>
>>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
>>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
>>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
>>> Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
>>> ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
>>> Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
>>> and our foundation--   whether the foundation ever changes its name
>>> formally or not, there should be a  brand name for "Wikimedia
>>> projects, their users, and their allies".  And unlike our other brand
>>> names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
>>> already know what it means.
>>
>> I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
>> here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
>> of Wikipedia. Even if you tried, it would be to no avail. It was a huge
>> mistake to introduce the sister projects under a different brand and to
>> keep them apart from Wikipedia proper. After all, it did not foster
>> creativity and diversity, but it rather split the movement into parts
>
> I disagree, speaking from a position of some experience.
>
> Wikipedia was not marketed well, per se. It was an innovative ANC
> exciting idea, launched at the right time to the right audience.
>
> Even to this date; very little serious marketing had been done.
>
> Now. With that said I agree - there is not a lot of point trying to
> establish a new brand. But WikiMedia is worth pursuing as an umbrella.
> This is a new decade, the internet has moved on (in a way it could be
> said to have left us behind, and we survive by being well known) and
> this is the perfect opportunity to work on the brand.
>
> Im very hopeful the board has something to input here; this is
> squarely in their ballpark and we need quick and pivotal action on it.
>
> This is not at all a re-branding issue but one of brand-extension -
> something any marketer would be on top of!
>
> I do agree that more interaction should be fostered (although
> independence is a good thing for projects with radically different
> aims) and that smaller projects should be offered the opportunity to
> hijack wikipedias brand to Market themselves.
>
> But remember they are still a little behind WP in age, in a few years
> they will hopefully pervade our consciousness in the same way.
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 20:38:56 -0400
> From: Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
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> On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 07/01/2011 11:52 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
>>> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
>>> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
>>> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
>>> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English ?it seems
>>> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
>>> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
>>>
>>> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
>>> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
>>>
>>> On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
>>> wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
>>> of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
>>>
>>> This would make it much easier when people create an article on
>>> wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
>>> just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
>>> watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
>>> language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
>>> between editors across what are currently different projects if you
>>> had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
>>> work across what are currently quite separate ?news, quote and pedia
>>> projects.
>>
>> Thanks for raising this issue. Previously discussed system of redirects
>> and Incubator Extension [1] would help not just to the Incubator, but to
>> the languages with smaller amount of speakers, as well as to Meta forks.
>> So, instead of having numerous meta wikis, we could have just one
>> (Meta), with separate namespaces, which would get redirects. Thus,
>> namespace "Strategy:" could be strategy.wikimedia.org; namespace
>> "Research" could be research.wikimedia.org etc.
>>
>> [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/235020?page=last
>
>
> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
> forward to me.
>
> Thanks,
> Richard
> (User:Pharos)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 15:02:17 +1000
> From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAO9U_Z4oPd=AakPPe4VgjxyrYhBvvdy55V6i30g7cDd79Sabxg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ..
>>
>>
>> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
>> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
>> forward to me.
>
> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone.  That is also a viable option.
>
> For the English projects, clear separation between the projects is
> necessary so that they can grow different cultures.  The sister
> projects are progressing nicely enough.
>
> It is much easier to tell a potential transcriber about the Wikisource
> project, as opposed to trying to warn them about all the policies of
> Wikipedia, most of which have no bearing on transcribing.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 01:12:18 -0400
> From: Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
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>
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> ..
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
>>> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
>>> forward to me.
>>
>> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone. ?That is also a viable option.
>
> [snip]
>
> Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
> Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:", etc).
>
> Thanks,
> Richard
> (User:Pharos)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 16:11:11 +1000
> From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAO9U_Z5Pw32msoTeOQDLNvpE1OGTkEsYp7TmMHq3TnvSf9VX9g at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> ..
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
>>>> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
>>>> forward to me.
>>>
>>> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone. ?That is also a viable option.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
>> Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:", etc).
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>
> Thanks for clarifying Richard.  I agree with merging those meta
> projects together.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 12:05:31 +0200
> From: Wikipedia Signpost <wikipediasignpost at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] The Signpost ? Volume 7, Issue 27 ? 4 July
>        2011
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