[Foundation-l] Re: Wikijunior - Wikispecies, Mk 2?

[Michael Snow]

Delirium wrote:

> I'm sure others disagree, but IMO it would be better if there were not 
> a particularly easy way to start new projects.  We so far have exactly 
> one highly successful project, from what I can tell---Wikipedia.  
> Wiktionary has been languishing for years now in relative disuse (and 
> in my brief attempts to use it to look up words, doesn't have enough 
> words in it to be useful as a dictionary, driving me back to 
> reference.com), Wikisource is still getting off the ground and is 
> fairly disorganized, and Wikibooks has only in the last 6 months seen 
> any books that are remotely close to being reasonable books (and even 
> the ones labeled with 4 blocks as "complete" are still *far* short of 
> book length and detail... we have nothing on Wikibooks that can 
> compete with a commercial textbook).  I'd rather we spent some time 
> working on these projects we already have instead of spawning off 
> still more projects, lest we become a clearinghouse of ideas that were 
> started but never really carried through.
>
> To be clear, this isn't opposition to Wikinews---I think Wikinews is a 
> well-defined project with a clear group of users interested in working 
> on it and minimal overlap with other projects, but I think that would 
> be a good place to stop for now.  After starting Wikinews, and 
> counting Wikispecies, we'll have six projects---Wikipedia, Wiktionary, 
> Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikisource---of which only one, 
> Wikipedia, is really in a well-developed state.

Perhaps I shouldn't presume to speak on behalf of projects I have yet to 
participate in, but the list seems to be missing Wikiquote, the 
Wikimedia Commons, and the 9/11 Memorial wiki, at least two of which I 
would consider more significant and more successful than the 
controversial Wikispecies. Frankly, I wondered why there was so much 
insistence on having Wikispecies when contributions stopped completely 
after a few days, but now they seem to have started back up again.

I agree that we are close to tackling more projects than we can hope to 
do well for now. Wikinews makes a persuasive case, and I see Wikijunior 
(or whatever we call it) as being less a fork than a subproject of 
Wikipedia, so I'm happy if they manage to go forward. But if we need 
challenges, I would like to see us get serious about tackling other 
types of media (starting with print), not just cast about for new 
specialties in the one medium we've done well in so far.

--Michael Snow