[Foundation-l] Wiki Activism (Project Proposal)

[Cormac Lawler]

On 5/19/06, Nicholas Barry <hss2t at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello! - my name is Nicholas Barry. I am "willing to take responsibility" for this project, but I don't feel that this description/proposal is ready to go on the actual Proposals for new projects page (so it's on the Talk page). I'm new at the project proposals game, so I would really appreciate help, advice, or constructive criticism. Actually, even hateful, unconstructive criticism could help let me know where I go wrong (ha ha).
>  The Idea:
>  WikiActivism is a project for past and present social movements such as the Civil Rights movement, Animal Rights movement, and the blooming Immigrant Rights movement. The meat and potatoes of the project will be a page for each separate movement. The majority of pages (great in number, though less important than the main page for each movement) will list evidence used by or against each movement, organizations associated with each movement, and other such items. (Most links on each page will probably go to Wikipedia for explanation of various terms and issues.)
>  How is this different than the existing pages on Wikipedia?
>
>    It will be more in-depth than the Wikipedia articles. This will include:
>       Evidence and statistics cited for or against movements
>       Organizations associated with movements
>       Detailed mapping of the inter-relations between movements
>       A deeper consideration of the issues of the movement
>
>    There will be sections devoted to the ongoing activity of each movement (almost like melding Wikipedia with Wikinews for these movements).
>    Each movement will have a page or pages describing practical actions that potential movement members or supporters can take to further the movement
>  Issues, Concerns, Objections and Questions:
>  Many of the concepts and ideas on the pages have explanations on Wikipedia, and would be unnecessary (and maybe against copyright) to copy over content from the 'pedia to this project. Is it considered bad form for many of the links on a particular project to actually lead off to other projects? Or is that considered necessary? I notice that Wikibooks has a lot of that, so I guess it's okay.
>  It is possible that this project will not fall under the WikiMedia Foundation charter, which is to spread information. This project is meant to spread information, but is also meant to have practical information on how to contribute to various movements. Is that okay? Please opine.
>  - Nicholas Barry
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Hi Nicholas,

thanks for your detailed project breakdown here - it's an interesting
subject. However, I don't personally think that it would be the kind
of thing which would be started as a separate Wikimedia sister project
(or, at least, not in the immediately foreseeable future). Instead, it
might be an idea to look into starting it at another wiki hosting site
such as wikia <http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia> (used to be called
Wikicities) or seedwiki <http://www.seedwiki.com/>. You could quickly
start whatever you wanted to do without waiting for it to be started
under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation - some proposals have
been in existence for about three years now!

However, there is obviously a lot you could do in Wikipedia itself -
through categorisation, creating navigational templates (to show your
"inter-mapping"), and then, of course, writing subarticles, like
"Criticisms of [activist movement x]" etc. There might also be the
possibility of using Wikisource as a repository of your "evidence"
pages (providing it is free content). However, if you wanted to
specify exactly how to contribute to such movements etc., it would
probably be outside Wikipedia's policy of NPOV.

On linking in Wikipedia, it is certainly better to keep links as
internal Wikimedia links (ie to link between Wikipedia and
Wikisource), but obviously external links are fine too, providing they
aren't done extensively or intrusively. External links within the
article are generally to the source of that information, and then the
rest are at the bottom of the page for further reference - which could
include your WikiActivism project, if you set it up separately.

I hope this helps in some way.

Cheers,

Cormac (Cormaggio)