[Foundation-l] Re: Official Wikimedia roadmap?

[Erik Moeller]

Anthere-
> For example, you seem to suggest that 1) the board should indicates its
> desire for a wikinews project (as a good idea to pursue... which implies
> there already is a good and definitive description of the project to be
> based our decision upon), then that 2) the project should be reviewed
> and approved by the community.

Approved or denied. The community doesn't have to rubber stamp the board's  
suggestions. However, we want a document that reflects the official -  
tentative - Wikimedia position. That position may change at any time, but  
in practice it probably won't change that much.

There are two approaches I see to create such a document:
1) The board tries to find the things everyone (in the board, and largely  
outside) agrees on. Being trusted by the community, they are a good set of  
representatives to make this decision. They compile it into a list, and  
the community builds the roadmap on that list, marking of course anything  
that has even the slightest potential for controversy as tentative.

2) The community makes the decisions right from the start. This is very  
difficult, because by the time a project has this level of community  
interest, it is almost ready to launch - not very useful for a roadmap if  
you can't look into the future. I don't see this working unless we create  
a systematic process by which the community evaluates and rates / votes on  
proposed projects early on.

Do you have any other ideas? If not, which one of these approaches do you  
prefer?

Regards,

Erik