[Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation

[Alec Conroy]

Prompted by discussions in another thread, I ask a related question--

;1--  A roadmap towards affiliation

How should a currently-unaffiliated project go about becoming 'part
of' Wikimedia?

One easy step they could take would be to simply  say, on their
website, "This site considers itself to be part of the Wikimedia
Movement".   (alternate text welcome )

Later, a self-identified affiliate could be formally designated as
"part of the Wikimedia Movement" by the global community or the
foundation or both.

Such recognition would have lots of benefits for the new projects that
share our values-- other WM projects would know to visibly link to
them whenever they have relevant content (as we currently do across
WMF projects).  We could permit access to the unified login, we could
allow template-sharing or image-sharing.  We could set up
interwiki-linking, and other interoperability functions.

Such recognition would have even bigger benefits for us.   We could
get an affiliation with an established, successful project that shares
our values.  The kinds of project that we would build ourselves if
someone else hadn't already built it.   Their userbases and readership
would see get to Wikimedia as something larger than just WP, and it
would help cement public understanding that Wikimedia is a Movement,
very big, very diverse, and very special.

; 2--   We need a name for self-identified project affiliation.

External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative,
that they are "part of" something.    That something should be a
something that is connected to us.

But self-identified affiliation has no gatekeeper, so whatever it is
new projects can be "part of", there could be lots that we don't
approve of.

I'm the founder of a project and I want signal my ideological
affiliation to WM.   I think my own project's values match the
Wikimedia's values, in my opinion anyway.

Recognizing that I may or may not be right-- what should I say I am a
"part of"?

We could just tell projects in this situation to say they are "Part of
the Wikimedia Movement", but perhaps that name is one we want to
reserve just for officially recognized projects.   If so, what name
should such projects use instead?

Note that they need to be saying something different than just "I like
Wikipedia, here's a link".  They need to be _identifying_ their own
efforts as _under the umbrella_ of what we do.   They need to be
"investing" in us and our mission, saying "This project is our attempt
to help share the world's information".

Right now, I think we can craft any statement, logo, or button we want
and like-minded projects would use it if prompted.   We just have to
be thoughtful about what we want those things to look like.   We will
no longer have total control over whichever name or logos we recommend
projects use for self-identified affiliation.

So that's my question -- what should third-party wikis say they are
"part of", if they want to express a connection to us?

Alec