[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[MZMcBride]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:24 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> The current reality is that nearly any
>> project besides the English Wikipedia has almost no technical support.
> 
> That's a misunderstanding of what's happening.
> 
> I would characterize WMF's prioritization as an "A rising tide lifts
> all boats" policy. Improvements are generally conceived to be widely
> usable, both in Wikimedia projects and even outside the Wikimedia
> environment, and to have the largest possible impact. Even if a first
> deployment is Wikipedia, they will generally benefit other projects as
> well.

Huh. I always thought it was "a rising tide sinks all ships." ;-)

> 1) WikiLove has been enabled on Swedish, Malayalam, Hungarian, Hebrew,
> Arabic, and Hindi Wikipedia, as well as Commons, all on request of the
> respective project communities.

I was pretty clear about other projects (read: Wikipedias) being peripheral.
Your argument seems to largely be "but at some point, this development work
might help other sites." My point is that without specific focus, these
other sites languish and slowly die. A software package that was built for
an encyclopedia can't work for a dictionary. It doesn't work for a
dictionary. It also can't and doesn't work for a number of other concepts.

> 2) ArticleFeedback has been enabled on Hungarian Wikipedia, Portuguese
> Wikibooks, and Hindi Wikipedia. (Wikinews, BTW, still runs the
> predecessor ReaderFeedback extension.)

The parenthetical demonstrates Wikinews' abandonment, right?

> It's also not true that Commons development has anything to do with
> grant money. WMF received a one-time grant for Commons-related
> development, but all recent development has been funded from WMF's
> operating budget, and it's part of our standard roadmap -- for the
> simple reason that investing in Commons serves all our projects and
> increases our impact world-wide. And that's, of course, why we sought
> the grant in the first place, not the other way around.

It seemed to me that the grant funded a hastily put together extension that
was in such poor shape by the time the clock struck midnight that it had to
be further developed by Wikimedia to be even somewhat salvageable.

> It is true that projects like Wikinews and Wiktionary, to fully
> succeed (if success is possible), almost certainly require more
> specialized product development and devotion in addition to the
> general development work that benefits all projects.

Is it fair to contributors of those projects to be put on indefinite hold?
Everyone agrees that focused, specialized development and devotion is
needed, but I don't believe it's anywhere on the horizon. Is Wikimedia
purgatory the best that these projects can hope for?

MZMcBride