[Foundation-l] New Project Process

[Samuel Klein]

With the launch of the WikiData effort, I am reminded that we should
return to our early willingness to experiment with new project ideas.
This means both starting new types of projects (like commons, like
wikidata!) and closing / archiving / spinning off projects (like the
sep11 wiki).

Two things I would love to see in the near future:
 - a fixed new-project process, and at least one proposal evaluated
through it.  Starting to work through the backlog of new project
ideas/requests that have existing active projects elsewhere
 - a global list of areas needing free knowledge, and how far we are
as a society towards reaching that goal

SJ


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Samuel Klein <sj at wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 2:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] They do make or break reputations
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>


I would love to see the new project process on Meta come back online.
(much of this email is posted to [[m:talk:new project proposals]])

I could use some help in making this happen - we need to start an
incubator process for ideas with support, and a separate process for
proposing existing projects that have been incubated elsewhere for
support or hosting.   The meta page for each proposed project should
track its progress, whether offsite or on the incubator...  a project
infobox should be designed... an interested group (if less formal than
langcom) should go through and review the backlog of proposals and
suggest the necessary next step for each.


On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You can always make Wikinfo a sister project.

A space to hold POV debates would be an interesting intermediate
ground between no-restraint edit wars and topic bans, for those in
heated argument.  Is Wikinfo designed for this?  I was thinking of
something more like 'Wikireason'.  There have been various proposals
for an 'argument wiki' over the years, but I've never seen a working
implementation.

> I have actually been independently trying to think of other wikis that
> should be "sister projects".   Some are really obvious and
> non-controversial--

> SNPedia, for example, an encyclopedia of single nucleotide polymorphisms and related studies
Yes.  Link:  http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/SNPedia

Genealogy:  WeRelate and Rodovid.  Both remarkable and lovely
projects.  Combinable, if all parties could be brought together.
Both could use support; I've touched on the possibility of becoming
WMF projects with each, and they are willing to discuss it.  The
result would be by far the largest free collection of genealogy
information, with support from one of the major libraries studyig and
archiving related data in the US

Children's encyclopedia: WikiKids, Vikidia, Grundschulwiki, Wikimini.
These projects could be coordinated better to share ideas and lessons,
and could use more visibility.  Some people active in these projects
are already Wikimedians.

Dictionaries: OmegaWiki.  This multilingual dictionary could help
revamp our toolchain for Wiktionary, which remains a bit broken.

Interface translation: TranslateWiki.  iirc it does not want to be a
WMF project per se, but could use more explicit support than we have
given so far.

Citations and bibliography: AcaWiki (and the budding WikiScholar).

Wikified maps: Wikimapia. currently profitable and popular; probably
fine on their own.  However they use a non-free map stack and use an
NC license; finding a way to help that project migrate to a free stack
and license  [now that there is a free orthorectified aerial map
available http://blog.stevecoast.com/im-working-at-microsoft-and-were-donating-ima]
would be of benefit to the whole world.


Other projects for which there is a supply of raw materials available
from content donors (which we cannot currently accept):
* Annotated source materials and their translations:  Part of Wikisource++ ?
* Translation memory:  Part of Translatewiki++ ?
* Public datasets: Wikidata
* Music scores: Wikimusic


> We're at the point where the lack of diversity of our English language
> project 'styles' may be a major factor dissuading new users from
> participation.

It is certainly one of the factors.


Sam.


-- 
Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266