[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

[David Gerard]

>  Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a
>proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english
>wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia
>are not really applicable to other wikipedias?


This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to
make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a
disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working
pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.

Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his
blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason
appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that
they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively
misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work
wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.

Anthere has also said, when asked directly, that there is an active
meta community but they don't actually do their work on meta, rather
on mailing lists and IRC. Which doesn't sound to me like a work wiki,
but evidently does to her and others. So I proposed a "meta2", which
can actually be used as a work wiki. The current meta incumbents have
decided this is in fact a proposal for an en: wikipedia Meta, when it
wasn't actually anything of the sort, but anyway.

Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for
other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like
Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on
Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured
images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins
who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was
*invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point
is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where
the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a
work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.


- d.