[Foundation-l] proposed new project - wikistandards
Robert Scott Horning
robert_horning at netzero.net
Sat Aug 26 16:19:34 UTC 2006
No Spam wrote:
>I would like to propose a new wikiproject, called wikistandards, in which the community at-large contributes to the creation of international standards (a wiki version of ANSI and ISO).
>The first standard I would like to begin work on is a Project Management standard. The impetus for this comes from my frustration over the Project Management Institute's standard www.pmi.org
>It is also an IEEE standard:
>http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/product.asp?sku=IEEE+Std+1490-2003
>And there is also the ISO standard:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10006
>PRINCE2
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2
>There are other lesser known examples of closed committee works or this nature.
>
>The PMI standard suffers from 'design by committee' and is, to say the least, stultifying.
>Lets see how the wiki community does at designing standards.
>
>I look forward to comments.
>I am willing to start the first project off but need some guidance and advice on how to proceed.
>
>Regards
>Al
>
>
Have you seen the pages on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikistandards
and a competing proposal
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards
It should be noted that this proposal has been formally "voted" on by a
small community that has sought to create this idea into a full
Wikimedia sister project. I am unsure of its current status by the
special project committee, especially as Wikiversity has been far more
dominent in the conversations that have been going on with that group.
I was actually planning on trying to move Wikistandards to the Incubator
Wiki (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/) to do a trial run of this idea,
but I'm currently quite overwhelmed right now trying to get Wikiversity
going instead (for myself). I know that there is already a small
community of people who are interested in seeing something like this to
be developed, and it would really be just a matter of informing that
group if something were put together and to try and restart the momentum
that had occured earlier.
I would have to agree that a Wiki being used to develop standards in a
very open process is something that would be beneficial to the standards
development community. The costs of purchasing "standards" range from
merely very expensive to insane. In fact, one reason that has often
been given for the price of some standards is to act as an
anti-competitive pressure to make sure that those who purchase the
standards have the financial means to really make something work, or
specifically to discourage new people from getting involved in the
development of the standards. I have seen some of these standards go
for a price of over $100,000 for a single 300 page book.
ISO standards are ones that are "merely very expensive", as I don't
think paying $500 for a 500 page book is necessarily a fair value for
the standard. The reason given behind why they charge so much, even for
a PDF version of the standard that you download off the internet, is
supposedly the network bandwidth and server storage costs. You are also
indirectly helping to pay for the standards development committees, and
for the office staff of the standards agency (which for the USA is
located in downtown Manhattan).
I believe that such standards can be made much more cheaply. Network
bandwidth and storage costs are not nearly what ANSI or IEEE make them
out to be (both are local agencies or "chapters" for ISO in the USA). I
also beleive that there are sponsorship opportunities to help pay for
these costs that could be obtained by the Wikimedia Foundation
specifically to make sure that these standards are made available, and
they could be made free.
--
Robert Scott Horning
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