[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[MZMcBride]

Philippe Beaudette wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 8:47 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> 
>> Is there a single staffer who's even thinking about any of them as
>> part of their work? I don't know of any. And, back to the original thought:
>> are there any Wikimedia initiatives to specifically (or "primarily")
>> improve
>> any of these sister projects? I also don't know of any.
> 
> Yes, there are three staff members in my team alone (me, Christine, Maggie)
> who are thinking about them as a part of their work.  I responded to a
> question on Wikiversity last night.  I read the major discussion pages on
> each of the English language projects (regrettably the only language I
> speak) weekly.  I try to hit the others with Google translate regularly, but
> not quite that.

My goodness. Boy was I wrong.

To be clear, I don't think it's really anything to be ashamed of. The
English Wikipedia is by far the most successful project and it makes sense
to invest heavily in what works. My issue is that I don't see Wikimedia
being very upfront about their actual objectives. The actual objectives are
to encourage Wikipedia's growth and to capitalize on its success as much as
possible. If other projects can be helped along the way, great. Which then
leads to the question of whether it's fair to the contributors on these
projects (and to everyone else, I suppose) to continue supporting these
sister projects in name only.

(Tangentially: John is a Wikisorcerer. People are really going to try to
argue with him about whether sister projects are being ignored? Don't be
silly.)

MZMcBride