[Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[Birgitte SB]

--- On Thu, 6/24/10, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:06 PM
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM,
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an
> expert) from many
> > people the idea that you will get what you give,
> meaning that if you
> > treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they
> will often become
> > a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children
> as dumber
> > versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to
> be just that.
> > (again, I'm not an expert)
> 
> A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults
> are creating
> dumb articles because they think that their children are
> dumb, which
> in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;)


I think you all are getting rather sidetracked over the details of content of some proposed project that I do not believe you are actually interested in joining.  Surely any detailed decisions as exactly how to approach writing medical articles for children would be an internal conclusion. The real issue here is what merits the creation of a new wiki versus some specific project being setup as subset of an existing wiki.

I have come the conclusion the biggest factor leading to success of a new wiki is a large enough community with a strong sense of a separate mission.  If all you have is a small group of hard core content editors you will be more successful as subset of an existing wiki, if one is so kind enough to make room for you.  One thing that happens in a small wiki is all the happy energy which was geared towards the content must be siphoned off into seemingly endless administration tasks. It takes a while for the community to grow enough to overcome that deficit.  I would not recommend anyone to be in a hurry to make their own new space.  The longer you can use an existing wiki to experiment with the your project the stronger you can grow your community, and maybe you can find a way to permanently fit within the existing scope while meeting the needs of your specific mission.  If you can it do that it will greatly improve your ability to work on content. I would
 advise this group that as exciting as having their own Wikipedia must sound, they might be more successful as a project within de.WP or de.WB And even if they are dead-set on an independent wiki, they will benefit from starting within an existing structure to grow a good sized proof of concept.

Birgitte SB