[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[MZMcBride]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 12 September 2011 22:57, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> From Wikimedia's perspective, I think this is "one down, several hundred to
>> go." Wikimedia has made it clear that its singular focus is the English
>> Wikipedia. All other Wikipedias are peripheral; all other project types are
>> abandoned. Perhaps with the exception of Wikimedia Commons, which is able to
>> pull in grant money, so it continues to receive some level of technical
>> support.
> 
> Considering Wikinews was started and pushed heavily by Erik Moller
> (early on he was personally bailing people up at wikimeets to get them
> to contribute to it), I suggest your analysis is on
> crack^W^W^Whypothesises too much cause for what is *entirely*
> explicable by a small community going insular and going for perceived
> quality over outreach. This is particularly given that Wikinews
> explicitly put in the heavyweight review infrastructure in order to get
> in good with Google News. And that review structure is just the sort
> of thing one would expect to leave contributors dissatisfied and
> feeling utterly un-wiki about bothering.
> 
> I don't know what would be an answer. The new site wants to keep a
> *lot* less reviewed. But then there's other failure modes for citizen
> journalism, e.g. Before It's News, which has been pretty much overrun
> by conspiracy theorists.

I fail to see how it's relevant how Wikinews started or who was the driving
force behind it. It's 2011, not 2004. What matters now is the current
reality, not the project's origins. The current reality is that nearly any
project besides the English Wikipedia has almost no technical support. It's
a catch-22, I realize: you don't want to invest finite resources into
projects that aren't performing well, but projects won't perform well
without resources.

Wikimedia has made its decision and the community has largely sat quiet on
the issue. Wikimedia has made it clear in promotional materials, donation
drives, and nearly anywhere else that its focus is the English Wikipedia. Of
all the criticisms you can make about the Wikimedia Foundation, I wouldn't
say that "it's not being upfront about its intentions or motivations on this
issue" is a valid one.

Where I see a problem is that it continues to put forward an idea that other
projects are receiving some kind of support (they're all "sister projects,"
see). It's completely disingenuous to those working on these projects to
pretend as though they're receiving any kind of support or will in the
immediate future. As time passes, frustrations will doubtlessly only grow on
other projects. I imagine we'll see repeats of this phenomenon (abandonment
--> forking) going forward. Other factors may contribute, of course.

Personally, I think a quick death is preferable to a slow one. Many of these
side-projects that have been abandoned ought to be outright shut down, in my
opinion. A re-focusing internally and externally would do a world of good,
but obviously political realities make some of this impossible. Nobody wants
to be the one to say that it's time to give up on Wikiquote or Wikinews or
even Wiktionary (if it can't get proper software support), but it may be
inevitable regardless.

MZMcBride