[Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread WereSpielChequers
One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.

But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.

On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?

This would make it much easier when people create an article on
wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
between editors across what are currently different projects if you
had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
work across what are currently quite separate  news, quote and pedia
projects.

WereSpielChequers

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[Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-05 Thread WereSpielChequers
We seem to be conflating three different things here,

1 Rebranding Wikipedia and possibly other projects, this is a
perennial idea that I can't see ever convincing me or most
wikimedians. I don't see this as being particularly relevant to the
idea of merging wikis, so may I suggest that if people want to bring
up the idea they differentiate it from the merge wikis thread by
giving it a relevant subject such as Rebrand Wikipedia? They might
also want to consider the arguments against this at
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Change_the_name_of_the_Wikipedia_website_to_OmniScience
as there is not much point reviving an idea unless you have a response
to the known fatal flaws in it.

2 Merging wikis where we have overlapping groups of editors working on
different projects within the same language. So the Klingon
Wikisource, WikiQuote, Wikinews and so forth would become different
spaces within one wiki giving editors the benefit of single userpages
and in many cases a larger crowd of editors. Some editors have
objected to this on the not unreasonable grounds that some small
projects would feel swamped if they were put in the same wiki as one
of the large projects, and John vandenburg raised the issue that
policy in such a wiki would necessarily be more complex than if we
continued to have at least one wiki per project. I still think that we
have much to gain here and especially that the wisdom of crowds
requires crowds, but I'd like to suggest that we trial this by having
some consenting languages work this way and see how well it could be
made to work.

3 Merging wikis where we have the confusing situation of multiple
wikis for the same project. So ten, strategy and outreach are all
within the scope of Meta and as several people have said there is no
benefit and considerable disbenefit in running them as separate wikis.
 Merging them into meta should be an easy and uncontentious win.
Startegy and Outreach perhaps need their own spaces within Meta in the
same way that Research has, and perhaps for ten we need a "meetup"
space .

WereSpielChequers

On 5 July 2011 13:00,   wrote:
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>   1. Re: Merge wikis (Thomas Morton)
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>   3. Re: Merge wikis (John Vandenberg)
>   4. Re: Merge wikis (Pharos)
>   5. Re: Merge wikis (John Vandenberg)
>   6. The Signpost ? Volume 7, Issue 27 ? 4 July 2011
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> ----------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 00:11:50 +0100
> From: Thomas Morton 
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        
> Message-ID: <-6316025283354768456@unknownmsgid>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>>>> if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
>>>> "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
>>>> to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".
>>>
>>>
>>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
>>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
>>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
>>> Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
>>> ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
>>> Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
>>> and our foundation--   whether the foundation ever changes its name
>>> formally or not, there should be a  brand name for "Wikimedia
>>> projects, their users, and their allies".  And unlike our other brand
>>> names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
>>> already know what it means.
>>
>> I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
>> here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
>> of Wikipedia. Even if you tried, it would be to no avail. It was a huge
>> mi

Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Ziko van Dijk
Dear colleague,

What you say makes absolute sence. I have the suspicion that there was
a time, around 2009, that new activities in WMF were eager to have a
wiki of its own: Strategy, Outreach and so on. Alas, after a while of
retention, there came Ten wiki. The intention was to have a website
for the public, but I don't believe in creating again and again more
and more communication channels. I see the same tendency in WMNL, by
the way.

About the sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource: there is
ALS.WP doing that already, maybe knowing that it would be hard to
create thoses sister projects in ALS (Alemannic). In general I would
like to see more bounds between the sisters, including Wikipedia. We
had that discussion with regard to a rebranding, going under the name
of Wikipedia only and have a Wikipedia Foundation, a Wikipedia
dictionary (Wiktionary), a Wikipedia Text Books (Wikibooks) and so on.

But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance
to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to
avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on
their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians
come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules
differ.)

Kind regards
Ziko van Dijk




2011/7/1 WereSpielChequers :
> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
>
> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
>
> On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
> wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
> of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
>
> This would make it much easier when people create an article on
> wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
> just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
> watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
> language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
> between editors across what are currently different projects if you
> had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
> work across what are currently quite separate  news, quote and pedia
> projects.
>
> WereSpielChequers
>
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>



-- 
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The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Fajro
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 6:52 PM, WereSpielChequers
 wrote:
> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
>
> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.

I second that.

--
Fajro

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Fajro
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

> About the sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource: there is
> ALS.WP doing that already, maybe knowing that it would be hard to
> create thoses sister projects in ALS (Alemannic). In general I would
> like to see more bounds between the sisters, including Wikipedia. We
> had that discussion with regard to a rebranding, going under the name
> of Wikipedia only and have a Wikipedia Foundation, a Wikipedia
> dictionary (Wiktionary), a Wikipedia Text Books (Wikibooks) and so on.

I don't second that.

Also we need to consolidate the brand Wikimedia.

I wrote in this list about that and made some mockups but had no
feedback.[0] :(

[0] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-December/063014.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Tom Morris
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 22:52, WereSpielChequers
 wrote:
> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
>

Outreach and Strategy could and should be folded back into Meta...

-- 
Tom Morris


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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread . Courcelles
I couldn't agree more, now that the date has passed, so should
ten.wikipedia.  Outreach and Strategy have a mission, but nothing so
distinct that it would be out of scope on Meta, and combining those three
projects would reduce the overhead in time and process required to maintain
all three/four wikis.

On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 6:24 PM, Tom Morris  wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 22:52, WereSpielChequers
>  wrote:
> > But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
> > each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
> >
>
> Outreach and Strategy could and should be folded back into Meta...
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> 
>
> Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of
> it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. Nor will I waste your
> ink/toner with 300+ lines of completely pointless and legally
> unenforceable cargo cult blather about corporate confidentiality.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Fred Bauder
> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
>
> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
>
> On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
> wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
> of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
>
> This would make it much easier when people create an article on
> wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
> just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
> watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
> language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
> between editors across what are currently different projects if you
> had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
> work across what are currently quite separate  news, quote and pedia
> projects.
>
> WereSpielChequers

Sometimes templates used on different wikis can be incompatible.

Fred


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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Chris Keating
Yes, by all means, let's fold some of the different wikis back into one.

Every day I seem to bump into a new wiki which someone is expecting me to
keep track of.

The proliferation of different wikis creates confusion, frustration and
generally sub-optimal user journeys.

Also, if it was possible to use access levels in a more sophisticated way,
we could further reduce the number of wikis we are expected to remember...

Chris
WMUK
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-01 Thread Milos Rancic
On 07/01/2011 11:52 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
> 
> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
> 
> On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
> wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
> of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
> 
> This would make it much easier when people create an article on
> wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
> just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
> watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
> language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
> between editors across what are currently different projects if you
> had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
> work across what are currently quite separate  news, quote and pedia
> projects.

Thanks for raising this issue. Previously discussed system of redirects
and Incubator Extension [1] would help not just to the Incubator, but to
the languages with smaller amount of speakers, as well as to Meta forks.
So, instead of having numerous meta wikis, we could have just one
(Meta), with separate namespaces, which would get redirects. Thus,
namespace "Strategy:" could be strategy.wikimedia.org; namespace
"Research" could be research.wikimedia.org etc.

[1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/235020?page=last

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-02 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)
There are much more "meta-wikis" that could be merged: 


Ziko van Dijk, 02/07/2011 00:14:
> But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance
> to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to
> avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on
> their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians
> come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules
> differ.)

And with good reason.
See also 
 
(this is a perennial proposal).

Nemo

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-02 Thread Alec Conroy
> Sometimes templates used on different wikis can be incompatible.
>
> Fred


We really are starting to need a "global template space" for
multiwiki, potentially multilingual templates, that can be transcluded
into any mediawiki install we want to allow.
A "Commons" for templates.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-02 Thread Ziko van Dijk
Hi Nemo,
you are not very specific - the discussion on Strategory you are
linking to contains a lot of good reasons provided by Dedalus. Indeed,
if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
"Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".

With regard to the sister projects, I feel a lot of vigorous emotions
but no arguments.
Ziko


2011/7/2 Federico Leva (Nemo) :
> There are much more "meta-wikis" that could be merged:
> 
>
> Ziko van Dijk, 02/07/2011 00:14:
>> But in those sister projects communities, I have met fierce resistance
>> to any new branding or technical rearrangement. They even tend to
>> avoid to associate themselves with Wikipedia. They want to grow on
>> their own appeal and strengh. (They also are annoyed when Wikipedians
>> come to a sister project and don't learn immediately that the rules
>> differ.)
>
> And with good reason.
> See also
> 
> (this is a perennial proposal).
>
> Nemo
>
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-- 
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The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-02 Thread Alec Conroy
> if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
> "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
> to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".


There's an even bigger opportunity here--
Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
and our foundation--   whether the foundation ever changes its name
formally or not, there should be a  brand name for "Wikimedia
projects, their users, and their allies".  And unlike our other brand
names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
already know what it means.

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Re: [Foundation-l] merge wikis

2011-07-02 Thread Robin McCain
It seems silly to proliferate so many wikis when many of them focus on 
related issues. It becomes the nightmare of having to visit the web site 
of every user group every few hours vs having all the new posts sent via 
email to one address so you save time.  The real question to me seems to 
be how to make the software capable of sharing data across silos. Our 
hardware is much more robust than 10 years ago, our software has matured 
and now it is time to do content aggregation. We can (and probably 
should) use the name with the widest recognition as the root of our 
tree. Then all the branches can continue to function "as if" they were 
independent for a time - even though they are part of the same trunk. 
Over time their quirks will need to be harmonized and fiefdoms 
consolidated into a coherent whole.

We already use disambiguation pages to distinguish between topics with 
similar names, go one step further and have a multiple articles page. 
Some contributors have great insight but terrible writing skills and 
that is where the skills of an editor are needed. Having to police all 
the differing opinions of supposedly factual matters is more of a 
censorship (shudder - who will watch the watchers?) or judicial 
function. Thank goodness for the page history function.

I've setup and used several wikis inhouse, and currently run MediaWiki 
on the server. The biggest problem I have is with user fears - fear of 
creating a new page, fear of doing something someone else "should" be 
doing, learning curve issues. Currently teams are working on a better 
GUI experience that will (hopefully) make it much easier for a new user 
to be able to contribute productive work without having to learn a new 
programming language. Creating a disambiguation page is a good example 
of something that should be relatively easy to do the first time rather 
than spend 3 or 4 hours learning how to do it in the current wiki 
programming environment.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-03 Thread Steven Walling
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, . Courcelles wrote:

> I couldn't agree more, now that the date has passed, so should
> ten.wikipedia.  Outreach and Strategy have a mission, but nothing so
> distinct that it would be out of scope on Meta, and combining those three
> projects would reduce the overhead in time and process required to maintain
> all three/four wikis.
>

Just to speak about tenwiki...

There has been an open discussion since March (no rush to close) about what
to do with the site.[1] You're all welcome to participate in that if you
have an opinion about what to do.

That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
work.

Best regards,

Steven

1.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ten/wiki/WP:VP#Ideas_for_what_to_do_with_tenwiki_in_the_future
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-03 Thread Fred Bauder
> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, . Courcelles
> wrote:
>
>> I couldn't agree more, now that the date has passed, so should
>> ten.wikipedia.  Outreach and Strategy have a mission, but nothing so
>> distinct that it would be out of scope on Meta, and combining those
>> three
>> projects would reduce the overhead in time and process required to
>> maintain
>> all three/four wikis.
>>
>
> Just to speak about tenwiki...
>
> There has been an open discussion since March (no rush to close) about
> what
> to do with the site.[1] You're all welcome to participate in that if you
> have an opinion about what to do.
>
> That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
> such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
> pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
> work.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steven

How about making it read only and just leave it as an archive?

Fred


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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-03 Thread Mono mium
A bot could do it, but that's not completely relevent.

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, . Courcelles  >wrote:
>
> > I couldn't agree more, now that the date has passed, so should
> > ten.wikipedia.  Outreach and Strategy have a mission, but nothing so
> > distinct that it would be out of scope on Meta, and combining those three
> > projects would reduce the overhead in time and process required to
> maintain
> > all three/four wikis.
> >
>
> Just to speak about tenwiki...
>
> There has been an open discussion since March (no rush to close) about what
> to do with the site.[1] You're all welcome to participate in that if you
> have an opinion about what to do.
>
> That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
> such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
> pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
> work.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steven
>
> 1.
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ten/wiki/WP:VP#Ideas_for_what_to_do_with_tenwiki_in_the_future
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-03 Thread Alec Conroy
> That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
> such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
> pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
> work.

We  need to lower barriers to cross-project collaboration.A
SUL-linked userspace and crossproject transclusion will be a good
first start.We ultimately want to be in a place where merges can
be done with only  trivial effort.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Tom Morris
On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 22:48, Steven Walling  wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, . Courcelles wrote:
>> I couldn't agree more, now that the date has passed, so should
>> ten.wikipedia.  Outreach and Strategy have a mission, but nothing so
>> distinct that it would be out of scope on Meta, and combining those three
>> projects would reduce the overhead in time and process required to maintain
>> all three/four wikis.
>>
>
> Just to speak about tenwiki...
>
> There has been an open discussion since March (no rush to close) about what
> to do with the site.[1] You're all welcome to participate in that if you
> have an opinion about what to do.
>
> That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
> such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
> pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
> work.
>

With tenwiki, as with the older Wikimania wikis, there doesn't seem
much point in merging them into Meta. Just leave 'em once they are
done, but Outreach and Strategy are continuing and it'd be a lot
easier if they could just be part of Meta.

Plus, the "tenth anniversary year" of Wikipedia is still rolling, and
the tenth anniversary of Wikipedias in Polish, Afrikaans, Norwegian
and Esperanto are coming up this year.

-- 
Tom Morris


Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Alhen
While I agree on principle, it can be more than difficult to merge sister
projects at this point of time. Wiktionary, wikibook, and wikisource and so
on have very different users. Some of them even dread the idea of belonging
to Wikipedia. Cross-project colaboration must be encouraged, yes, but
placing all of them in one wiki won't make things better in principle.

However, small not cared projects should be joined. Those without a visible
community after some talking with the only existing editor(many wikisources
and wiktionaries) could be merged as to foster the develop of those
projects.

Alhen
@alhen_ at twitter
591-79592235




On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 8:09 AM, Tom Morris  wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 22:48, Steven Walling 
> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, . Courcelles  >wrote:
> >> I couldn't agree more, now that the date has passed, so should
> >> ten.wikipedia.  Outreach and Strategy have a mission, but nothing so
> >> distinct that it would be out of scope on Meta, and combining those
> three
> >> projects would reduce the overhead in time and process required to
> maintain
> >> all three/four wikis.
> >>
> >
> > Just to speak about tenwiki...
> >
> > There has been an open discussion since March (no rush to close) about
> what
> > to do with the site.[1] You're all welcome to participate in that if you
> > have an opinion about what to do.
> >
> > That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
> > such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
> > pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
> > work.
> >
>
> With tenwiki, as with the older Wikimania wikis, there doesn't seem
> much point in merging them into Meta. Just leave 'em once they are
> done, but Outreach and Strategy are continuing and it'd be a lot
> easier if they could just be part of Meta.
>
> Plus, the "tenth anniversary year" of Wikipedia is still rolling, and
> the tenth anniversary of Wikipedias in Polish, Afrikaans, Norwegian
> and Esperanto are coming up this year.
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> 
>
> Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of
> it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. Nor will I waste your
> ink/toner with 300+ lines of completely pointless and legally
> unenforceable cargo cult blather about corporate confidentiality.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Aaron Adrignola
>
> From: Steven Walling 
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
> Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 14:48:09 -0700
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis
>
> That discussion was interesting for this one, because it brings up issues
> such as that merging even a relatively small wiki like ten (565 content
> pages, 3,204 total pages) into Meta would probably take some considerable
> work.
>

We did something similar when Simple English Wikibooks was closed and its
content merged to English Wikibooks [1].

I note that there's been protest on the discussion page that the content
would be out of scope for Meta, however.  This reminds me when content was
pushed from Meta to Wikibooks [2] for MakerFaire 2010 [3], supposedly with
the blessing of stewards and Cary Bass [4].  This content is "out of scope"
for Wikibooks, especially given its encyclopedic format, but it goes to show
that a project's scope can evolve.  Wikibooks used to host video game
strategy guides, for instance (and had a lot more visitors as a result).

-- Adrignola

[1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Simple_English_merger
[2] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MakerFairePedia
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/San_Francisco/Maker_Faire_2010
[4]
http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Category:MakerFairePedia&oldid=1799308
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Liam Wyatt
Within the general concept of Merging Wikis I agree, it would be good in
principle to have one uber-wiki that is the central hub of all community
things (meta, outreach, strategy...). Each time we create a separate wiki
Ward Cunningham kills a kitten.

I wonder - would it be possible in MediaWiki to make it possible for User
accounts to be given read/edit permissions to different areas of the Wiki.
If that were possible (which I'm sure is a common request from MediaWiki's
Corporate users) then we would also be able to merge InternalWiki,
CheckuserWiki, ChapComWiki to this uber-wiki. The WMF would also be able to
merge their OfficeWiki, BoardWiki, and WikimediaFoundation.org. I'm sure
that many Chapters also run at least two Wikis - one for the public and one
for their elected Board.

Personally would like to this new uber-wiki be hosted at *
http://www.wikimedia.org/* (rather than Meta) which is currently just a
placeholder that points to all of the projects. Other relevant additions to
MediaWiki would be having universal watchlists and universal User/UserTalk
pages as well as the ability (which is coming in LiquidThreads
v.3)
to Watchlist specific individual threads in talkpages.

On a separate note, have we had a discussion recently about the name
"Wikimedia Commons" and whether it would be a good idea to simply call it
"WikiCommons" to make it consistent with the rest of the projects? Or, is
this a perennial proposal? From what I understand, the reason that it was
called that Wikimedia Commons originally was that was created to be a
"service project" for the Wikipedia language editions and was not expected
to be considered a "sister project" alongside WikiSource, WikiNews,
WikiBooks... Now that it definitely IS a sister project, do you think it is
a good idea to rename it? I note that a lot of people who reuse our
multimedia are attributing it as coming from WikiCommons already anyway (google
news search for the
termfor
example.)

-Liam

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Tom Morris
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 15:31, Alhen  wrote:
> While I agree on principle, it can be more than difficult to merge sister
> projects at this point of time. Wiktionary, wikibook, and wikisource and so
> on have very different users. Some of them even dread the idea of belonging
> to Wikipedia. Cross-project colaboration must be encouraged, yes, but
> placing all of them in one wiki won't make things better in principle.
>
> However, small not cared projects should be joined. Those without a visible
> community after some talking with the only existing editor(many wikisources
> and wiktionaries) could be merged as to foster the develop of those
> projects.
>

Yep, I wasn't suggesting merging Wiktionary and Wikisource into
Wikipedia. But we don't need new wikis for cross-project collaboration
or outreach: we have Meta, so use it!

-- 
Tom Morris


Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Juergen Fenn


Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>> if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
>> "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
>> to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".
> 
> 
> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
> Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
> ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
> Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
> and our foundation--   whether the foundation ever changes its name
> formally or not, there should be a  brand name for "Wikimedia
> projects, their users, and their allies".  And unlike our other brand
> names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
> already know what it means.

I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
of Wikipedia. Even if you tried, it would be to no avail. It was a huge
mistake to introduce the sister projects under a different brand and to
keep them apart from Wikipedia proper. After all, it did not foster
creativity and diversity, but it rather split the movement into parts
irreconcilable.

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Thomas Morton
On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn  wrote:

>
>
> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>>> if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
>>> "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
>>> to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".
>>
>>
>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
>> Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
>> ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
>> Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
>> and our foundation--   whether the foundation ever changes its name
>> formally or not, there should be a  brand name for "Wikimedia
>> projects, their users, and their allies".  And unlike our other brand
>> names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
>> already know what it means.
>
> I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
> here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
> of Wikipedia. Even if you tried, it would be to no avail. It was a huge
> mistake to introduce the sister projects under a different brand and to
> keep them apart from Wikipedia proper. After all, it did not foster
> creativity and diversity, but it rather split the movement into parts

I disagree, speaking from a position of some experience.

Wikipedia was not marketed well, per se. It was an innovative ANC
exciting idea, launched at the right time to the right audience.

Even to this date; very little serious marketing had been done.

Now. With that said I agree - there is not a lot of point trying to
establish a new brand. But WikiMedia is worth pursuing as an umbrella.
This is a new decade, the internet has moved on (in a way it could be
said to have left us behind, and we survive by being well known) and
this is the perfect opportunity to work on the brand.

Im very hopeful the board has something to input here; this is
squarely in their ballpark and we need quick and pivotal action on it.

This is not at all a re-branding issue but one of brand-extension -
something any marketer would be on top of!

I do agree that more interaction should be fostered (although
independence is a good thing for projects with radically different
aims) and that smaller projects should be offered the opportunity to
hijack wikipedias brand to Market themselves.

But remember they are still a little behind WP in age, in a few years
they will hopefully pervade our consciousness in the same way.

Tom

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Pharos
On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> On 07/01/2011 11:52 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
>> One thing I find irritating and complex about our structure is the
>> proliferation of small wikis. Now I've no objection to the idea that
>> we have a wiki for every language on Earth, though where languages are
>> mutually intelligible such as the major dialects of English  it seems
>> sensible to me that we combine them in one wiki - if necessary with
>> spelling and alphabet being subject to user preference.
>>
>> But I see no reason why ten wiki, Strategy and the various wikimanias
>> each need their own wiki as opposed to being projects within meta.
>>
>> On a broader and more radical note, why do we need separate wikis for
>> wikiquote, wikiversity, wikipedia wikinews and wiktionary? Surely each
>> of those could be separate namespaces within a language wiki?
>>
>> This would make it much easier when people create an article on
>> wikipedia that is really a wiktionary or wikinews article as one could
>> just move it. It would immediately reduce the number of userpages,
>> watchlists and usertalk pages that one needed to maintain to one per
>> language (plus meta and commons). It would also foster cooperation
>> between editors across what are currently different projects if you
>> had one wiki for each language, as individual wikiprojects would now
>> work across what are currently quite separate  news, quote and pedia
>> projects.
>
> Thanks for raising this issue. Previously discussed system of redirects
> and Incubator Extension [1] would help not just to the Incubator, but to
> the languages with smaller amount of speakers, as well as to Meta forks.
> So, instead of having numerous meta wikis, we could have just one
> (Meta), with separate namespaces, which would get redirects. Thus,
> namespace "Strategy:" could be strategy.wikimedia.org; namespace
> "Research" could be research.wikimedia.org etc.
>
> [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/235020?page=last


I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
forward to me.

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread John Vandenberg
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos  wrote:
> ..
>
>
> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
> forward to me.

Or we could just leave the sister projects alone.  That is also a viable option.

For the English projects, clear separation between the projects is
necessary so that they can grow different cultures.  The sister
projects are progressing nicely enough.

It is much easier to tell a potential transcriber about the Wikisource
project, as opposed to trying to warn them about all the policies of
Wikipedia, most of which have no bearing on transcribing.

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread Pharos
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos  wrote:
>> ..
>>
>>
>> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
>> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
>> forward to me.
>
> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone.  That is also a viable 
> option.

[snip]

Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:", etc).

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-04 Thread John Vandenberg
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Pharos  wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:02 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Pharos  wrote:
>>> ..
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree, a focus on new namespaces (perhaps with differentiated
>>> editing permissions, per Liam) certainly looks like the best path
>>> forward to me.
>>
>> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone.  That is also a viable 
>> option.
>
> [snip]
>
> Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
> Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:", etc).
>
> Thanks,
> Richard

Thanks for clarifying Richard.  I agree with merging those meta
projects together.

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-05 Thread Alec Conroy
>> Clarify: I mean new namespaces are the best way forward for our
>> Meta-type content ("Strategy:", "Outreach:", "Research:", etc).
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>
> Thanks for clarifying Richard.  I agree with merging those meta
> projects together.

Right now, we're host to an assortment of projects, a collection of
communities more than a single community.  If we want to grow-- if we
want to become a coherent global movement with a coherent global
community,  we need to work on reducing these inter-project barriers.

There are two very different strategies for how to do that.

The first strategy is to merge whenever possible.   Try to
designate/create a global space for ANYTHING meta, movement, or
user-space style social content.So, for example, instead of being
forced maintain multiple users pages, a user could have a single
'central'  user page on the uberproject. (if they chose).

But there is another way we could do this.  This second strategy is to
keep separate things separate, but to reduce barriers across the
'separate' projects.  Instead of fully merging, we just make it much
much easier to 'connect' across projects.  So, for example, creating a
central set of global, multilingual templates that can be 'pulled'
into any project.

Two different strategies in two different directions.
To succeed, we're going to need them both.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-05 Thread Alec Conroy
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Juergen Fenn  wrote:
>
>
> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.

Wikipedia will always be Wikipedia-- but what about Wikimedia??   What
does its brand say beyond "We host Wikipedia and stuff like it"
Now compare that with the magnitude of our vision of a world where
everyone has access to all the world's knowledge and information.
This is an awesome vision, a "Moonshot" kind of vision.Are we sure
we just want to call it "The movement and foundation associated with
Wikipedia"?

> I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
> here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
> of Wikipedia.

Not only CAN you introduce such a 'movement' brand name, but such a
name is inevitable.Mediawiki is becoming ubiquitous and easier to
use every day.  As our movement and its projects undergo rapid
diversification, there WILL be a name for the movement that takes the
"The Wikipedia Vision" and  extends it to every kind of content
imaginable.

That paradigm shift is going to happen-- indeed it's already well
underway. The Wikimedia Foundation is about more than just
Wikipedia, and "The Wikimedia Movement" is about _way_ more than just
Wikipedia.Unless we really think Wikimedia is the best name, it's
never too late to switch.   The general public doesn't know Wikimedia
exists, they just call it "Wikipedia".   We do so much more than just
that, so we're ripe for a brand extension.

Alec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-05 Thread Milos Rancic
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 07:02, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> Or we could just leave the sister projects alone.  That is also a viable 
> option.
>
> For the English projects, clear separation between the projects is
> necessary so that they can grow different cultures.  The sister
> projects are progressing nicely enough.
>
> It is much easier to tell a potential transcriber about the Wikisource
> project, as opposed to trying to warn them about all the policies of
> Wikipedia, most of which have no bearing on transcribing.

There are two types of Wikimedia projects: those which could be
reasonably treated as extensions of Wikipedia and those which couldn't
be. For example, Wiktionary (as it is presently) and Wikibooks are
obvious extensions of Wikipedia: If you need shorter definitions, more
philological than encyclopedic, you would put that in the form of
dictionary. If you need to write in depth about some topic, you would
use the form of book.

Wikisource and Wikiversity couldn't be treated as an extension of
Wikipedia, as they assume a type of work different from Wikipedia:
Wikisource gathers texts as they are, while Wikiversity has to
question even basic principles of Wikipedia, as it indents to be an
academic project.

Wikinews is in the middle. Creating news have different dynamics from
creating the articles, but Wikipedians are keeping news up to date,
although it is not the primary purpose of Wikipedia.

So, a small community could benefit from having Wiktionary and
Wikibooks inside of their Wikipedia. At the other side, the same
community would benefit more if it has technological and
methodological support from Multilingual Wikisource. LangCom's
proposal is on that line, but I am not sure has it been verbalized
publicly.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Samuel Klein
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> Within the general concept of Merging Wikis I agree, it would be good in
> principle to have one uber-wiki that is the central hub of all community
> things

+1

> I wonder - would it be possible in MediaWiki to make it possible for User
> accounts to be given read/edit permissions to different areas of the Wiki.

It's possible, just rough around the edges.

> Personally would like to this new uber-wiki be hosted at *
> http://www.wikimedia.org/* (rather than Meta)

Yes.

> On a separate note, have we had a discussion recently about the name
> "Wikimedia Commons" and whether it would be a good idea to simply call it
> "WikiCommons"

Also a good idea.

SJ

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Samuel Klein
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Alec Conroy  wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Juergen Fenn  wrote:
>>
>> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
>>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
>>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
>
> Wikipedia will always be Wikipedia-- but what about Wikimedia??   What
> does its brand say beyond "We host Wikipedia and stuff like it"
> Now compare that with the magnitude of our vision of a world where
> everyone has access to all the world's knowledge and information.
> This is an awesome vision, a "Moonshot" kind of vision.    Are we sure
> we just want to call it "The movement and foundation associated with
> Wikipedia"?

A rebranding like this could be launched in tandem with the next
significant project launch or makeover.

> The Wikimedia Foundation is about more than just
> Wikipedia, and "The Wikimedia Movement" is about _way_ more than just
> Wikipedia.    Unless we really think Wikimedia is the best name, it's
> never too late to switch.   The general public doesn't know Wikimedia
> exists, they just call it "Wikipedia".   We do so much more than just
> that, so we're ripe for a brand extension.

Right.

S.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Arlen Beiler
I like a lot of what has been said, and would like to add my part.

Milos Rancic wrote:

There are two types of Wikimedia projects: those which could be
> reasonably treated as extensions of Wikipedia and those which couldn't
> be. For example, Wiktionary (as it is presently) and Wikibooks are
> obvious extensions of Wikipedia: If you need shorter definitions, more
> philological than encyclopedic, you would put that in the form of
> dictionary. If you need to write in depth about some topic, you would
> use the form of book.


While I agree that Wiktionary looks like it would be an extension of
Wikipedia, it would definitely need it's own namespace. I don't have any
experience on it, so I don't know what they're opinion is. As for Wikibooks,
it would never work. They are two different projects entirely. You can't
write in-depth on a topic without leaving an encyclopedic form of writing
and that would never work on Wikipedia.

Wikisource isn't going to merge for obvious reasons, just in case anyone is
still wondering. Nor is Wikiversity, since Wikipedia would go up in smoke.
WikiQuotes hardly sounds like an encyclopedia. Wikinews is too dynamic and
has it's own set of problems to merge easily. It could be done though if
given it's own namespace, and Wikipedia would definitely benefit. There are
logistical problems though that would have to be dealt with. I'm not even
sure why there is a WikiSpecies, though I have hardly looked at it.

I like the sound of "WikiCommons", it makes it sound as important as the
others while still keeping the Common idea.

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Alec Conroy  wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Juergen Fenn 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
> >>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
> >>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
> >>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
> >
> > Wikipedia will always be Wikipedia-- but what about Wikimedia??   What
> > does its brand say beyond "We host Wikipedia and stuff like it"
> > Now compare that with the magnitude of our vision of a world where
> > everyone has access to all the world's knowledge and information.
> > This is an awesome vision, a "Moonshot" kind of vision.Are we sure
> > we just want to call it "The movement and foundation associated with
> > Wikipedia"?
>
> A rebranding like this could be launched in tandem with the next
> significant project launch or makeover.
>
> > The Wikimedia Foundation is about more than just
> > Wikipedia, and "The Wikimedia Movement" is about _way_ more than just
> > Wikipedia.Unless we really think Wikimedia is the best name, it's
> > never too late to switch.   The general public doesn't know Wikimedia
> > exists, they just call it "Wikipedia".   We do so much more than just
> > that, so we're ripe for a brand extension.
>
> Right.
>
> S.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Thomas Morton
>  Wikinews is too dynamic and has it's own set of problems to merge easily.
It could be done though if given it's own namespace, and Wikipedia would
definitely benefit.

+1

In the topic area I work there are a lot of contributors writing content
that is vastly more suited to Wikinews. A News: namespace would be really
interesting; but of course it's unfair to step on the toes of a fledgling
project. But perhaps in hindsight it should have been launched as a
namespace.

Tom
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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Juergen Fenn


Am 05.07.11 14:39 schrieb Alec Conroy:

>> I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
>> here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
>> of Wikipedia.
> 
> Not only CAN you introduce such a 'movement' brand name, but such a
> name is inevitable.Mediawiki is becoming ubiquitous and easier to
> use every day.  As our movement and its projects undergo rapid
> diversification, there WILL be a name for the movement that takes the
> "The Wikipedia Vision" and  extends it to every kind of content
> imaginable.
> 
> That paradigm shift is going to happen-- indeed it's already well
> underway.

Well, not in this country. Whenever I have a talk to non-wikipedians I
have to explain at lengths what Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, etc.
are all about. To put it bluntly, this collection of terms and projects
is a complete mess, and it is no good because it just does not make any
sense to split it all up into parts and pieces. Wikimedia is not the
umbrella for all to hide underneath because hardly anybody knows it.
People don't (and, they won't ever) say, let's look it up in Wikimedia,
but rather in Wikipedia. You won't succeed if you would try to change
it. So, get real, please. The fact is that Wikipedia made it into Duden,
not Wikimedia.

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Merge wikis

2011-07-06 Thread Milos Rancic
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 19:27, Arlen Beiler  wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>> There are two types of Wikimedia projects: those which could be
>> reasonably treated as extensions of Wikipedia and those which couldn't
>> be. For example, Wiktionary (as it is presently) and Wikibooks are
>> obvious extensions of Wikipedia: If you need shorter definitions, more
>> philological than encyclopedic, you would put that in the form of
>> dictionary. If you need to write in depth about some topic, you would
>> use the form of book.
>
> While I agree that Wiktionary looks like it would be an extension of
> Wikipedia, it would definitely need it's own namespace. I don't have any
> experience on it, so I don't know what they're opinion is. As for Wikibooks,
> it would never work. They are two different projects entirely. You can't
> write in-depth on a topic without leaving an encyclopedic form of writing
> and that would never work on Wikipedia.
>
> Wikisource isn't going to merge for obvious reasons, just in case anyone is
> still wondering. Nor is Wikiversity, since Wikipedia would go up in smoke.
> WikiQuotes hardly sounds like an encyclopedia. Wikinews is too dynamic and
> has it's own set of problems to merge easily. It could be done though if
> given it's own namespace, and Wikipedia would definitely benefit. There are
> logistical problems though that would have to be dealt with. I'm not even
> sure why there is a WikiSpecies, though I have hardly looked at it.
>
> I like the sound of "WikiCommons", it makes it sound as important as the
> others while still keeping the Common idea.

I don't think that you've understood the idea properly. Redirects +
Incubator Extension would allow to xyz.wikipedia.org to have virtually
separate project xyz.wikibooks.org. Yes, they would share the same
admins (if they want that), their "global" RecentChanges and other
technical benefits from having one project, but they would be also
separate projects, with their own dynamics. So, you could write poetry
inside of the special namespace "Poetry:" if you want and it wouldn't
interfere with encyclopedic articles.

So, as it wouldn't be a technical issue, the things about we need to
think are social. For example, it is not a technical problem to have
Wikisource as a virtual project inside of one Wikipedia, it is just
more sane to put it on Multilingual Wikisource because there are
people who know how OCR and proofreading processes should be
implemented. Similarly to that, having Wikiversity as virtual project
inside of one Wikipedia would be harmful for both small groups: in the
sense of editorial policies, Wikipedia has to follow strict rules,
Wikiversity mustn't follow strict rules; which would create confusion
inside of one small community.

Wikinews is in between based on how serious the work on news would be
done. If it is dominated by short news about current events, virtual
project inside of Wikipedia would be good enough. However, if there is
a serious group of journalists, which want to work on other
journalistic forms, like interviews are, for example, then they should
have a separate project. And, again, it is not because of technical
issues, but because of different approaches.

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