[Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage: Chance, bore, or hazard

[Craig Franklin]

Ziko,

Thanks for these thoughtful posts, it's always good to consider the long
term and what we might learn from our experience on other projects.  Of
course, it's up to the Wikivoyagers themselves to decide how they want to
run their project, but a bit of advice and insight never hurts!

The Australian businessman Kerry Packer once quipped that before Parliament
made a law, they should be required to first repeal one.  While we cannot
make this a requirement on Wikimedia projects, it's a good rule of thumb to
live by.  On English Wikipedia, we have a dense tangle of rules, policies
and essays that has raised the bar for entry to new users.  This tangle has
developed over the years as a result of kneejerk reactions to things like
the Siegenthaler incident and the Essjay controversy.  With a relatively
clean slate upon which to write, the Wikivoyagers can consider the
structure of their project in a holistic way, being proactive in thinking
about how they will manage such incidents before they actually arise, and
avoid choking their project up with hundreds of rules created as a reaction
to unfortunate incidents that could have been avoided by deciding on a
simple set of rules to start with, and then consistently enforcing them.

Not being a travel writer, I don't have the foggiest on where the lines
should be drawn, that should be left to the experts on the projects (with
input and assistance from the WMF legal department, ideally).  But it
sounds like they're already off to a good start if the project "still a
rather limited set of rules, and wishes to remain so."

Kind Regards,
Craig Franklin