[Foundation-l] Closure of projects

[Andrew Turvey]

First, if the conclusion is that no procedure exists, a notice should be put on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects stating this so that peoples' expectations are appropriately managed. 

Second, is that correct? Looking at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Herero_Wikipedia it seems that there certainly was a procedure in the past where articles were shifted back into the Incubator. 

Most importantly, should there be a procedure? Keeping projects open is a drain on resources, such as removing vandalism. There is a level of activity below which the positive benefits of the project are outweighed by the drain, although it's clearly not worth closing a project if the effort to do this is not a worthwhile investment. 

Do you need particular user rights to action such requests? 

----- "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote: 
> From: "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> 
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
> Sent: Thursday, 20 August, 2009 19:01:39 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal 
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Closure of projects 
> 
> Hoi, 
> There is no procedure because what comes closest to a consensus amount to a 
> lot of work. Work that does not forward our mission one iota. The fact that 
> people vote and comment is not that special, people do ... if they vote that 
> I will wear a tutu at Wikimania and a consensus says that I should, I still 
> have to volunteer to wear that tutu. It is the same as voting for a bug in 
> bugzilla. The votes are not considered so why bother ? 
> 
> As to the language committee, it does only consider new requests for 
> projects ... if it were to expand its services it would be in indicating 
> what issues exist that deal with language support that would make a 
> difference to the usability of our software. It would not be drinking from 
> the poisoned chalice that is closing projects. The closest we came to 
> expressing an opinion is that we would prefer the content of a to be closed 
> project to be imported into the Incubator. This is a not good for Incubator 
> because they get dead wood loaded into their project .... 
> 
> So all in all in my opinion it is best to leave these things as is and 
> ignore requests for closure. 
> Thanks, 
> GerardM 
> 
> 2009/8/20 Huib! <Abigor at forgotten-beauty.com> 
> 
> > Hello, 
> > 
> > I noticed that there are still a lot of open request for closure on Meta 
> > so I decided to contact a LangCom member (Robin) asking him about how 
> > and when the projects will be closed or when the requests will be 
> > closed, but I recieved a answer I didn't expected. 
> > 
> > Robin told me there was no policy ( 
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closure_of_WMF_projects ) about the 
> > closure of projects so the request can stay open for always. 
> > 
> > 
> > I think its kind of strange that we people can make a request, that 
> > there are people who are voting and spending there time commenting on 
> > the request or even worse have stress because there project could be 
> > closed but the request will never be closed. 
> > 
> > 
> > Is there a way to change this with a new policy, or with a different com 
> > for the closure, because this seems to me a waste of time for a lot of 
> > people, people can stop editting projects just because the think the 
> > project will be closed. 
> > 
> > At this moment there are 27 request for projects to be closed, ( 
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects ) I think 
> > 50% is a easy closure for keep or close. The oldest project is from 2007 
> > that would mean its still open after 2 years :/ 
> > 
> > -- 
> > *Huib Laurens* 
> > 
> > Web: Forgotten-beauty.com <http://www.forgotten-beauty.com.com/> 
> > Email: Abigor at forgotten-beauty.com <mailto:abigor at forgotten-beauty.com> 
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> > 
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