subject:"Re\: \[Foundation\-l\] A Wikimedia project has forked"

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:26 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
> My point is that without specific focus, these
> other sites languish and slowly die. A software package that was built for
> an encyclopedia can't work for a dictionary. It doesn't work for a
> dictionary. It also can't and doesn't work for a number of other concepts.

Of course, up to this point we all agree. That said, far from a myopic
focus on English Wikipedia, strategies to support specialized needs
and exploration of new ideas have long been very much a high priority
for WMF. It's an issue that's very clearly articulated in the
"Encourage Innovation" section of the strategic plan:

[begin quote]
Support the infrastructure of networked innovation and research.
- Develop clear documentation and APIs so that developers can create
applications that work easily with our platforms.
- Ensure access to computing resources and data for interested
researchers and developers, including downloadable copies of all
public data.
- Continually improve social and technical systems for volunteer
development of core software, extensions, gadgets and other technical
improvements.

Promote the adoption of great ideas.
- Develop clear processes for code review, acceptance and deployment
so that volunteer development does not linger in limbo.
- Organize meetings and events bringing together developers and
researchers who are focused on Wikimedia-related projects with
experienced Wikimedia volunteers and staff.
- Showcase and recognize the greatest innovations of the Wikimedia
movement, and create community spaces dedicated to the exploration of
new ideas.
[end quote]

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary/Encourage_Innovation

That strategy is very much reflected in our actions and our budgeting,
as is evident from consulting recent activity reports.

One can legitimately criticize that this helps achieve incremental
improvements across the board, but leaves a gap of "large, focused
investment to meet specialized needs" (e.g. build new software to
support a wiki-based dictionary). But it doesn't necessarily have to
do so.

IMO, the question that's worth asking is: What's the constraint that's
keeping more people from launching successful initiatives under the
Wikimedia umbrella? There are clearly both technical and social
constraints. One technical constraint is the fact that taking an
initiative from scratch to a successful launch requires considerable
WMF support along the way. How can we reduce the need for WMF
organizational support?

The Wikimedia Labs project (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Labs ) is designed to push
that boundary. In the "Test Dev Labs" environment, the goal is to make
it possible to test and develop software under conditions that are
very close to the WMF production environment. This means that,
provided you're willing to invest sufficient resources, you should be
able to get a project much closer to "WMF readiness" than you are
today with far less WMF help. Indeed, it is designed to not become an
on-ramp for new volunteers not just in development, but also site
operations.

That's of course a risky project and it may not live up to our
expectations. But it's IMO a smarter bet to make than just picking
(with an unavoidable element of arbitrariness) one of the many
specialized areas in which we currently aren't succeeding and throwing
$ and developers at it. Because it could enable us to approach far
more organizations and individuals to invest time and money in complex
free knowledge problems without having to pass through the WMF
bottleneck.

There are literally thousands of mission-driven organizations that
would love to find ways to help solve problems in the free knowledge
spaces we're occupying. Yet, even Wikimedia's own chapter
organizations are still only a relatively small part of the ecosystem
of technical innovation (which is no discredit to the many things they
have done, including some great technical work).

Having organizations take on challenges either because they are
inherently suited to do so, or simply because they have the
organizational bandwidth, seems like a fairly rational path to
increase our ability to get things done. If that's the world we want
to live in, it also seems entirely rational to me that WMF should
focus on general high impact improvements while continually investing
a considerable amount of its capacity in helping more people to build
great things.

In addition to technical support systems, forks can be a very good and
healthy part of that development (to break out of social constraints),
as can be the development of new organizations. A Wikinews
Foundation, or a Wiki Journalism Foundation, or some other such
construct may make a lot of sense in the long run, specifically when
it comes to the problem of citizen journalism.

--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikim

Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread geni

On 12 September 2011 23:45, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> Now: what do we need to do to make Wikinews better and more useful?
> What are the costs and technical or other work involved?

Very little. Mostly wikinews is misstargeted. Yet another website
rewriting AP reports is never going to draw crowds. Wikinews needed
original research and never really had very much of it. It is also
operating in an extremely crowded market where as wikipedia had the
field pretty much to itself when it started.

>  MZM, you are
> confused in this thread - Wikimedia doesn't exist to serve EN:WP, or
> to serve its most popular *current* project, it exists to support the
> global dissemination of all sorts of knowledge, and collaboration to
> create that knowledge.

The reality is however that it's always en.pedia that is on the
receiving end of whatever the foundation wants to do at any given
time.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Stephen Bain

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:26 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> I would characterize WMF's prioritization as an "A rising tide lifts
> all boats" policy. Improvements are generally conceived to be widely
> usable, both in Wikimedia projects and even outside the Wikimedia
> environment, and to have the largest possible impact. Even if a first
> deployment is Wikipedia, they will generally benefit other projects as
> well.

I believe the correct name for that is the trickle-down effect :)

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.b...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:24 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>> The current reality is that nearly any
>> project besides the English Wikipedia has almost no technical support.
> 
> That's a misunderstanding of what's happening.
> 
> I would characterize WMF's prioritization as an "A rising tide lifts
> all boats" policy. Improvements are generally conceived to be widely
> usable, both in Wikimedia projects and even outside the Wikimedia
> environment, and to have the largest possible impact. Even if a first
> deployment is Wikipedia, they will generally benefit other projects as
> well.

Huh. I always thought it was "a rising tide sinks all ships." ;-)

> 1) WikiLove has been enabled on Swedish, Malayalam, Hungarian, Hebrew,
> Arabic, and Hindi Wikipedia, as well as Commons, all on request of the
> respective project communities.

I was pretty clear about other projects (read: Wikipedias) being peripheral.
Your argument seems to largely be "but at some point, this development work
might help other sites." My point is that without specific focus, these
other sites languish and slowly die. A software package that was built for
an encyclopedia can't work for a dictionary. It doesn't work for a
dictionary. It also can't and doesn't work for a number of other concepts.

> 2) ArticleFeedback has been enabled on Hungarian Wikipedia, Portuguese
> Wikibooks, and Hindi Wikipedia. (Wikinews, BTW, still runs the
> predecessor ReaderFeedback extension.)

The parenthetical demonstrates Wikinews' abandonment, right?

> It's also not true that Commons development has anything to do with
> grant money. WMF received a one-time grant for Commons-related
> development, but all recent development has been funded from WMF's
> operating budget, and it's part of our standard roadmap -- for the
> simple reason that investing in Commons serves all our projects and
> increases our impact world-wide. And that's, of course, why we sought
> the grant in the first place, not the other way around.

It seemed to me that the grant funded a hastily put together extension that
was in such poor shape by the time the clock struck midnight that it had to
be further developed by Wikimedia to be even somewhat salvageable.

> It is true that projects like Wikinews and Wiktionary, to fully
> succeed (if success is possible), almost certainly require more
> specialized product development and devotion in addition to the
> general development work that benefits all projects.

Is it fair to contributors of those projects to be put on indefinite hold?
Everyone agrees that focused, specialized development and devotion is
needed, but I don't believe it's anywhere on the horizon. Is Wikimedia
purgatory the best that these projects can hope for?

MZMcBride

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:45 PM, K. Peachey  wrote:
> Ahem, The first of those were Hindi, and that was basically only after
> a B# fight in the bug report that there shouldn't be any restriction
> to installing it on the non en.wikipedia project

With any feature there are normal considerations about when it's ready
to be pushed out more widely. Having a feature that's under very
active development, with known issues, widely deployed beyond its
original staging ground can cause significant and avoidable burden.
That's what those discussions are about (which were mirrored by
internal conversations about readiness). There's no internal WMF
faction that argues for "only serving English Wikipedia", and there
never has been.

-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread K. Peachey

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:26 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> But let's take other completed extensions as examples.
>
> 1) WikiLove has been enabled on Swedish, Malayalam, Hungarian, Hebrew,
> Arabic, and Hindi Wikipedia, as well as Commons, all on request of the
> respective project communities.
Ahem, The first of those were Hindi, and that was basically only after
a B# fight in the bug report that there shouldn't be any restriction
to installing it on the non en.wikipedia project

> 2) ArticleFeedback has been enabled on Hungarian Wikipedia, Portuguese
> Wikibooks, and Hindi Wikipedia. (Wikinews, BTW, still runs the
> predecessor ReaderFeedback extension.)
Hindi again had the reluctance of no one wanting it to enable it in
the first place as well...

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Domas Mituzas

> For starters, they weren't happy with the server maintenance by WMF. They
> couldn't get essential components deployed for 2 years or so. 

for every wikinews pageview there're 1600 english wikipedia pageviews. 
oh, and 60% of wikinews pageviews come from bots (wikipedias are at around 10% 
bot traffic methinks)

the only project less popular than wikinews is wikiversity and that says 
something.

it is much more rewarding to work on projects that impact lots of people ;-)

Domas
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:24 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> The current reality is that nearly any
> project besides the English Wikipedia has almost no technical support.

That's a misunderstanding of what's happening.

I would characterize WMF's prioritization as an "A rising tide lifts
all boats" policy. Improvements are generally conceived to be widely
usable, both in Wikimedia projects and even outside the Wikimedia
environment, and to have the largest possible impact. Even if a first
deployment is Wikipedia, they will generally benefit other projects as
well.

But let's take other completed extensions as examples.

1) WikiLove has been enabled on Swedish, Malayalam, Hungarian, Hebrew,
Arabic, and Hindi Wikipedia, as well as Commons, all on request of the
respective project communities.

2) ArticleFeedback has been enabled on Hungarian Wikipedia, Portuguese
Wikibooks, and Hindi Wikipedia. (Wikinews, BTW, still runs the
predecessor ReaderFeedback extension.)

3) Narayam (an extension to support Indic languages) has been enabled
on Malayam Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Wikisource and Wikipedia,
Tamil Wikibooks and Wikisource, and Sanskrit Wikipedia, Wikibooks,
Wikisource, and Wiktionary.

MoodBar will be made more widely available as it matures. And so on
and so forth.

It's true that English Wikipedia often (not always) serves as a
staging ground for new features, but that's an entirely different
matter and doesn't negate the intent of achieving maximum
cross-project/cross-site impact with the work we do.

It's also not true that Commons development has anything to do with
grant money. WMF received a one-time grant for Commons-related
development, but all recent development has been funded from WMF's
operating budget, and it's part of our standard roadmap -- for the
simple reason that investing in Commons serves all our projects and
increases our impact world-wide. And that's, of course, why we sought
the grant in the first place, not the other way around.

It is true that projects like Wikinews and Wiktionary, to fully
succeed (if success is possible), almost certainly require more
specialized product development and devotion in addition to the
general development work that benefits all projects.

It's my own view that specialized development is best-served by
ensuring that we give the global community great spaces to innovate
and create new things. We've put quite a bit of development effort
recently into improving MediaWiki's support for gadgets, and we're
also working on the Wikimedia Labs project to this end (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Labs ). WMF's role for
specialized improvements should ideally be to review and deploy code
that's ready to serve a well-identified purpose and that doesn't have
harmful side-effects.  Where we haven't don't do so in a timely and
reasonable fashion, we must strive to do better.

-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Nathan

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 7:04 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

>
>
>
> Wikimedia indisputably now exists to serve the English Wikipedia. Wikimedia
> is quick to call Sue "Wikipedia Executive Director," isn't it? Or plaster
> "Wikipedia founder" on every fundraiser-related publication?
> Thanks for volunteering to clarify some of my confusion. :-)
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
"Wikipedia founder" is, well, true and meaningful.

In any case... While I'm sure that Wikinews has lacked for attention from
the WMF, it seems a reach to blame its current state on that factor alone.
It has an ecosystem problem, structural problems that are inherent in its
wiki nature, and as Kim mentioned... a potentially serious and long-term
personality problem. As I understand it, English Wikinews has for its entire
history (or nearly so) been virtually dominated by a single individual with
a reputation for volatility. This has often been cited as a drawback of
contributing there. Given the small community, it's not hard to imagine how
severe personality conflicts could lead to dramatic consequences over time.
The problem with Wikinews is the sum of all these factors, not the direct
and clear result of any lack of investment from the WMF.

Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Stephen Bain

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 8:24 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
> 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.

Wikinews never had the kind of substantial organic growth that many of
the other projects had. According to Eric Zachte's stats, active
contributors (five or more edits in a month) peaked in July 2005, nine
months after the project was started, and before the Foundation really
had any significant clout in determining the direction of the
projects. And that peak was at just 110 users. New contributors
(making at least 10 career edits) per month has averaged in the single
digits for years.

Certainly there are valid points to be made about the level of support
over the last few years, but which is the chicken and which is the egg
here?

(With the caveat that I'm not now, and never have been, a Wikinews contributor:)

Wikinews offers some outstanding original reporting and interviews,
but that's an extraordinarily scarce resource. The rest is pieces
synthesising news from elsewhere, and in that regard Wikipedia has
needed no assistance in drawing attention and contributions away from
Wikinews. What good is yesterday's synthesis today?

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.b...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

Samuel Klein wrote:
> MZM, you are confused in this thread - Wikimedia doesn't exist to serve
> EN:WP, or to serve its most popular *current* project, it exists to support
> the global dissemination of all sorts of knowledge, and collaboration to
> create that knowledge.

You're on the Board still, right? So you probably have more readily
available access to these stats than I do: out of Wikimedia's share of
resources over the past five years, what percentage has gone to Wikipedia
and what percentage has gone to Wikinews? What about Wikiversity? Wikiquote?
Wikispecies? Wiktionary?

Wikimedia indisputably now exists to serve the English Wikipedia. Wikimedia
is quick to call Sue "Wikipedia Executive Director," isn't it? Or plaster
"Wikipedia founder" on every fundraiser-related publication? Out of the last
X extensions enabled on Wikimedia wikis, how many were written primarily for
the English Wikipedia (MoodBar, WikiLove, ArticleFeedback, etc.)? If you
can't provide percentages to the question above, do you know of any
resources that have gone to a site other than Wikimedia Commons or a
Wikipedia in the past five years? What resources have been devoted to
Wikinews in particular?

Thanks for volunteering to clarify some of my confusion. :-)

MZMcBride

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 03:50:55PM -0500, Tempodivalse wrote:
> Greetings everyone,

Heya Tempodivalse,

I understand that a lot of this fork is due to personality
conflicts, rather than with WMF itself? That's be a bit of a
 to know WMF weren't the folks causing the trouble.

How can we help both openglobe and wikinews flourish, according to
you and the current team?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning.oO(Keeping open the EGCS gambit as an option)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egcs#EGCS_fork

-- 

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 03:50:55PM -0500, Tempodivalse wrote:
> Greetings everyone,
> 
> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large
> portion of WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own
> project (http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply
> dissatisfied with Wikinews. The new wiki has finished its
> creation stage and is about ready to publish news articles.

I'm doing a little digging and asking around now. :-)

Here's a list of wikinews issues, from wikinews perspective (for
starters)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Dendodge/Project_focus


sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Ivay Martínez

I speak from the perspective of an administrator in the Spanish edition. The
fact that today Wikinews is not sufficiently relevantly, does not mean that
in the future will be equal. The project has unique values and
possibilities in the future may be successful.

It is true that even within the same community of Wikipedia editors we are
treated as peripheral, but the success of projects depends not only on
the internal
work that is in them, but promotion we ourselves do it. And it does not
depend on whether Wikimedia treat us well or not.

I hope that this fork is the result of the search for a project with clear
objectives and specific goals, not the fight between a group of editors and
other. If this is the case, however much success.

2011/9/12 MZMcBride 

> David Gerard wrote:
> > Wikinews is still recoverable. But what it's been doing so far clearly
> > failed. What can they do that would work? Open it up further?
>
> Sage Ross once discussed with me the idea of having Wikinews be foremost a
> source of news about the Internet. It could report on news and goings-on on
> various Web sites. The idea made the idea of Wikinews almost seem
> redeemable
> to me, though I'm not sure how much it falls within Wikimedia's scope.
> Perhaps he'll chime in here to elaborate, as I'm surely not doing the
> concept justice.
>
> If Wikinews had started as a site with news about the Internet and
> particularly online communities, I think it would've grown into a proper
> project over time. Instead, it primarily regurgitates news stories from
> elsewhere and outputs them under a free license, which there doesn't seem
> to
> be much of a market for. Some of the Wikinews interviews have been
> impressive, but beyond those, there isn't much to speak of after seven
> years
> online.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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-- 
*Atentamente:

Iván Martínez
Coordinador General
Wikimedia México
mx.wikimedia.org

Imagina un mundo en donde cada persona del planeta pueda tener acceso libre
a la suma total del conocimiento humano.
Eso es lo que estamos haciendo . *
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Samuel Klein

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse  wrote:

> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of 
> WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own project 
> (http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews. 
> The new wiki has finished its creation stage and is about ready to publish 
> news articles.

Hello Tempo,

Good luck.  What are the differences between the vision for OpenGlobe
and the current practice of English Wikinews?

Now: what do we need to do to make Wikinews better and more useful?
What are the costs and technical or other work involved?  MZM, you are
confused in this thread - Wikimedia doesn't exist to serve EN:WP, or
to serve its most popular *current* project, it exists to support the
global dissemination of all sorts of knowledge, and collaboration to
create that knowledge.

That doesn't necessarily mean we need to host projects covering all
sorts of knowledge -- we could support merging of our existing
projects into other great projects online -- and we should review
regularly how we can support cousin projects like WikiHow and
Wikitravel.  But it certainly means we need to find better ways to
improve the availability of freely-licensed collaborative news online,
and doing something about it.[1]

SJ

[1] News is an interesting case, because -- as is not true for
quotations, dictionary entries, or primary sources -- we *do*
contribute dramatically to coverage of current events via Wikipedia.
We just haven't yet successfully bridged that popular and effective
channel of work and interest with Wikinews or other news-focused
projects.  The only other project in a similar situation is
Wikispecies, where any data on species at least conceptually is
welcome in a Wikipedia article on the topic.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread phoebe ayers

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Tempodivalse  wrote:
> Greetings everyone,
>
> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of 
> WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own project 
> (http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews. 
> The new wiki has finished its creation stage and is about ready to publish 
> news articles.
>
> At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others 
> (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are active 
> remaining Wikinews contributors.
>
> -Tempodivalse

Hi Tempodivalse,

Thanks for the notice! I also wish OpenGlobe luck.

I went looking for discussion about this on Wikinews, and couldn't
find anything recent about this on the wikinews mailing list, the
English-language Wikinews (I didn't check the other languages) or on
Meta. I'm sure I just missed something. Can you point us to any
discussion links?

Thanks!
Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

David Gerard wrote:
> Wikinews is still recoverable. But what it's been doing so far clearly
> failed. What can they do that would work? Open it up further?

Sage Ross once discussed with me the idea of having Wikinews be foremost a
source of news about the Internet. It could report on news and goings-on on
various Web sites. The idea made the idea of Wikinews almost seem redeemable
to me, though I'm not sure how much it falls within Wikimedia's scope.
Perhaps he'll chime in here to elaborate, as I'm surely not doing the
concept justice.

If Wikinews had started as a site with news about the Internet and
particularly online communities, I think it would've grown into a proper
project over time. Instead, it primarily regurgitates news stories from
elsewhere and outputs them under a free license, which there doesn't seem to
be much of a market for. Some of the Wikinews interviews have been
impressive, but beyond those, there isn't much to speak of after seven years
online.

MZMcBride

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:08:10PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> 
> 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.

When Erik started working for the WMF, I think he had to go more
hands-off due to COI. GNSM sort of was symptomatic of that.

That said, the heavyweight structure was already coming in years
ago, I actually managed to cut my teeth on denting it once. (I
documented the pattern I used at [[:EN:WP:BRD]] ). 

I haven't tracked wikinews as well as I would have liked to, of
late. 

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

-- 

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

David Gerard wrote:
> On 12 September 2011 22:57, MZMcBride  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

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Jon Davis

I can't speak for the entire Wikinews community, but a lot of it was the
lack of technical assistance.  There was one major item which Wikinews
_really_ need to be even remotely useful and it was very difficult to get
any help at all.  Eventually the community wrote the extension themselves
but couldnt get the dev's to review it appropriately.  This was drawn out
over several years, and (at least from my view) the Foundation really
started to turn around and give much better support starting about 1 year
ago.

There is also a host of other backend and support style related issues...
but they are ones that the Foundation really wasn't well equipped to handle
in the first place.  Simply put, the Wikinews concept needs a much more
specific set of assistance than the general "Here's a wiki, have fun".

-Jon

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 14:14, Kim Bruning  wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 05:59:34PM -0400, Chris Lee wrote:
> > I didn't mean what is a fork, or how to fork etc...
> >
> > I meant more along the lines of the difference in scope, guidelines. Why
> did
> > they break off?
>
> For starters, they weren't happy with the server maintenance by WMF. They
> couldn't get essential components deployed for 2 years or so.
>
> I'm not sure what the entire set of circumstances was. Someone should
> probably
> do a debrief and postmortem.
>
> sincerely,
> Kim Bruning
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread David Gerard

On 12 September 2011 23:17, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On Sep 12, 2011 11:10 PM, "Thomas Morton" 
> wrote:

>> It's a tiny bit disappointing that the tone here is "oh well, we tried and
>> failed".
>> When really it should be "cool - now we have a competitor, what do we need
>> to give WN to help them stay in the market"

> In what way are we competing? Our vision is a world where people have free
> access to all knowledge. It doesn't say we need to be the ones to provide
> that knowledge.
> We've failed. Maybe someone else will do better. If they do, our goal will
> still be achieved.


Wikinews is still recoverable. But what it's been doing so far clearly
failed. What can they do that would work? Open it up further?


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Thomas Morton

>
> We've failed. Maybe someone else will do better. If they do, our goal will
> still be achieved.


 Well that's exactly the problem :)

This should be a last gasp kick up the backside.. not a shrug of the
shoulders.

Just saying.

Tom
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 03:13:51PM -0700, M. Williamson wrote:

> It's worth noting that several of the other English language
> projects suffer similar levels of inactivity.

Well yeah, first let them wither on the vine, then declare them useless
when they're almost dead.

Then congratulate everyone when they cut off the fat.

One day I'm going to write a manual, and that move is going to be in
there. ;-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread George Herbert

I am seeing a lot of "lack of support from WMF for these smaller
projects" but not being a smaller projects editor I don't know what
specific issues there are.

Can someone up on the situation send out more specifics?

Thank you.


On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:13 PM, M. Williamson  wrote:
> It's worth noting that several of the other English language projects suffer
> similar levels of inactivity.
>
> English Wikiquote, which I've always considered to be one of our most
> pointless and least useful projects, has a total of 5 users who make more
> than 100 edits a month. This is a project in English, our highest-traffic
> language, that has been open since 2003. That's ridiculous. English
> Wikibooks has only 10, which is more than can be said for most language
> editions of Wikibooks, which are all but dead.
>
> There are two problems here, I think. The first one is lack of support from
> WMF, which everyone likes to talk about a lot. The other one is the
> assumption that these projects are worthwhile and that WMF or anyone else
> *should* care about them.
>
> Let's say a GeoCities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities ) site about
> your grandmother's pet cat somehow ended up being one of our sister
> projects. Since it's not very useful to most people, it remains a very
> low-traffic site, and WMF doesn't put a lot of energy into it. Then a lot of
> people come along and bellyache that WMF is not giving Grandma's GeoCities
> cat site any support and that it's undervalued, with the assumption that
> just because it is a sister project, it should be treated exactly equally to
> Wikipedia, with the unproven assumption that it offers just as much
> potential and just as much educational value as our "flagship" site. Of
> course that's nonsense, who cares about your grandmother's cats besides her?
>
> I do think some of the sister projects are extremely valuable (Commons in
> particular; Wiktionary can be useful in some ways, same with Wikisource;
> Wikibooks and Wikinews were at least nice ideas that don't seem to have been
> well-suited to the Wiki process in the end), but I'm tired of the assumption
> that people *should* support and care about sister projects just because
> they're sister projects, without proving their usefulness or worthiness of
> our support.
>
> 2011/9/12 M. Williamson 
>
>> I do believe it means exactly that.
>>
>> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers includes all users with at
>> least 1 edit in the last 30 days; that seems like a really low threshold
>> though. I took the liberty of collecting some data based on that page:
>>
>> - 23 users with at least 30 edits in the last 30 days (= average 1
>> edit/day)
>> - 8 users with at least 100 edits in the last 30 days
>> - 2 users with at least 300 edits in the last 30 days ("super active"):
>> Brian McNeil and Pi zero
>>
>> I was a bit shocked to see these numbers myself. Seems rather low,
>> especially considering Wikinews is not like Wikipedia, where you only need a
>> handful of active users at one time to work on articles, but rather requires
>> high activity all the time to be a successful news outlet. English Wikinews
>> is, in my opinion, a failed project, at least currently. I have tried on
>> several occasions to switch to Wikinews as my primary news source, each time
>> I end up asking myself why on earth I did such a thing because it's almost
>> useless for people who want to stay informed about current events.
>>
>>
>> 2011/9/12 Kirill Lokshin 
>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse >> >wrote:
>>>
>>> > At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several
>>> others
>>> > (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are
>>> active
>>> > remaining Wikinews contributors.
>>>
>>>
>>> Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active
>>> contributors
>>> prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?
>>>
>>> Kirill
>>> ___
>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>>>
>>
>>
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-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Thomas Dalton

On Sep 12, 2011 11:10 PM, "Thomas Morton" 
wrote:
>
> It's a tiny bit disappointing that the tone here is "oh well, we tried and
> failed".
>
> When really it should be "cool - now we have a competitor, what do we need
> to give WN to help them stay in the market"

In what way are we competing? Our vision is a world where people have free
access to all knowledge. It doesn't say we need to be the ones to provide
that knowledge.

We've failed. Maybe someone else will do better. If they do, our goal will
still be achieved.
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread emijrp

Interesting link, but a bit focused on software. No mention to content
communities.

Wiki[pm]edia suffered other forks previously, like Enciclopedia Libre.

2011/9/12 Jon Davis 

>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_fork#Forking_free_and_open_source_software
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 14:32, Chris Lee 
> wrote:
>
> > Not interested in all the details, but does anyone know how is this
> > different from wikinews?
> > ___
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>
>
> --
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> [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
> http://snowulf.com/
> http://ipv6wiki.net/
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread M. Williamson

It's worth noting that several of the other English language projects suffer
similar levels of inactivity.

English Wikiquote, which I've always considered to be one of our most
pointless and least useful projects, has a total of 5 users who make more
than 100 edits a month. This is a project in English, our highest-traffic
language, that has been open since 2003. That's ridiculous. English
Wikibooks has only 10, which is more than can be said for most language
editions of Wikibooks, which are all but dead.

There are two problems here, I think. The first one is lack of support from
WMF, which everyone likes to talk about a lot. The other one is the
assumption that these projects are worthwhile and that WMF or anyone else
*should* care about them.

Let's say a GeoCities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities ) site about
your grandmother's pet cat somehow ended up being one of our sister
projects. Since it's not very useful to most people, it remains a very
low-traffic site, and WMF doesn't put a lot of energy into it. Then a lot of
people come along and bellyache that WMF is not giving Grandma's GeoCities
cat site any support and that it's undervalued, with the assumption that
just because it is a sister project, it should be treated exactly equally to
Wikipedia, with the unproven assumption that it offers just as much
potential and just as much educational value as our "flagship" site. Of
course that's nonsense, who cares about your grandmother's cats besides her?

I do think some of the sister projects are extremely valuable (Commons in
particular; Wiktionary can be useful in some ways, same with Wikisource;
Wikibooks and Wikinews were at least nice ideas that don't seem to have been
well-suited to the Wiki process in the end), but I'm tired of the assumption
that people *should* support and care about sister projects just because
they're sister projects, without proving their usefulness or worthiness of
our support.

2011/9/12 M. Williamson 

> I do believe it means exactly that.
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers includes all users with at
> least 1 edit in the last 30 days; that seems like a really low threshold
> though. I took the liberty of collecting some data based on that page:
>
> - 23 users with at least 30 edits in the last 30 days (= average 1
> edit/day)
> - 8 users with at least 100 edits in the last 30 days
> - 2 users with at least 300 edits in the last 30 days ("super active"):
> Brian McNeil and Pi zero
>
> I was a bit shocked to see these numbers myself. Seems rather low,
> especially considering Wikinews is not like Wikipedia, where you only need a
> handful of active users at one time to work on articles, but rather requires
> high activity all the time to be a successful news outlet. English Wikinews
> is, in my opinion, a failed project, at least currently. I have tried on
> several occasions to switch to Wikinews as my primary news source, each time
> I end up asking myself why on earth I did such a thing because it's almost
> useless for people who want to stay informed about current events.
>
>
> 2011/9/12 Kirill Lokshin 
>
>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse > >wrote:
>>
>> > At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several
>> others
>> > (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are
>> active
>> > remaining Wikinews contributors.
>>
>>
>> Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active
>> contributors
>> prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?
>>
>> Kirill
>> ___
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>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 05:59:34PM -0400, Chris Lee wrote:
> I didn't mean what is a fork, or how to fork etc...
> 
> I meant more along the lines of the difference in scope, guidelines. Why did
> they break off?

For starters, they weren't happy with the server maintenance by WMF. They
couldn't get essential components deployed for 2 years or so. 

I'm not sure what the entire set of circumstances was. Someone should probably
do a debrief and postmortem.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Thomas Morton

It's a tiny bit disappointing that the tone here is "oh well, we tried and
failed".

When really it should be "cool - now we have a competitor, what do we need
to give WN to help them stay in the market"

Tom
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 05:57:37PM -0400, MZMcBride wrote:
> Tempodivalse wrote:
> 
> It's a great injustice to countless contributors that they receive support
> in name only (as "one of Wikipedia's sister sites" in a handful of
> publications), but it's indisputably the reality. A classic example of this
> reality, incidentally, is the GoogleNewsSitemap extension fiasco on the
> English Wikinews.

Yes, WMF essentially failed there. Priorities are not set correctly.

Actually, this same set of failures is evident in all projects (even en.wp).
However, most projects are larger, and therefore the cost of forking 
outweighs the advantages, so far.

> I'll echo others in wishing you all the best of luck going forward. I
> sincerely hope whoever administers your new site will treat you better than
> Wikimedia has.

Hey, we can all still help out. It's a wiki, after all! :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

-- 

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Thomas Dalton

Sounds interesting. It is certainly true that wikinews was never as
successful as we had hoped. Perhaps this new project will manage more. Good
luck!
On Sep 12, 2011 9:51 PM, "Tempodivalse"  wrote:
> Greetings everyone,
>
> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of
WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own project (
http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews.
The new wiki has finished its creation stage and is about ready to publish
news articles.
>
> At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others
(including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are active
remaining Wikinews contributors.
>
> -Tempodivalse
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread David Gerard

On 12 September 2011 22:57, MZMcBride  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 infratructure 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.

- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Chris Lee

I didn't mean what is a fork, or how to fork etc...

I meant more along the lines of the difference in scope, guidelines. Why did
they break off?

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:39 PM, Jon Davis  wrote:

>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_fork#Forking_free_and_open_source_software
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 14:32, Chris Lee 
> wrote:
>
> > Not interested in all the details, but does anyone know how is this
> > different from wikinews?
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
>
>
> --
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> [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
> http://snowulf.com/
> http://ipv6wiki.net/
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread M. Williamson

I do believe it means exactly that.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers includes all users with at
least 1 edit in the last 30 days; that seems like a really low threshold
though. I took the liberty of collecting some data based on that page:

- 23 users with at least 30 edits in the last 30 days (= average 1 edit/day)
- 8 users with at least 100 edits in the last 30 days
- 2 users with at least 300 edits in the last 30 days ("super active"):
Brian McNeil and Pi zero

I was a bit shocked to see these numbers myself. Seems rather low,
especially considering Wikinews is not like Wikipedia, where you only need a
handful of active users at one time to work on articles, but rather requires
high activity all the time to be a successful news outlet. English Wikinews
is, in my opinion, a failed project, at least currently. I have tried on
several occasions to switch to Wikinews as my primary news source, each time
I end up asking myself why on earth I did such a thing because it's almost
useless for people who want to stay informed about current events.

2011/9/12 Kirill Lokshin 

> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse  >wrote:
>
> > At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others
> > (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are
> active
> > remaining Wikinews contributors.
>
>
> Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active
> contributors
> prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?
>
> Kirill
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

Tempodivalse wrote:
> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of
> Wikinews' contributor base has forked into its own project
> (http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews.
> The new wiki has finished its creation stage and is about ready to publish
> news articles.

>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.

It's a great injustice to countless contributors that they receive support
in name only (as "one of Wikipedia's sister sites" in a handful of
publications), but it's indisputably the reality. A classic example of this
reality, incidentally, is the GoogleNewsSitemap extension fiasco on the
English Wikinews.

I'll echo others in wishing you all the best of luck going forward. I
sincerely hope whoever administers your new site will treat you better than
Wikimedia has.

MZMcBride

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread John Vandenberg

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 7:39 AM, Kirill Lokshin
 wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse wrote:
>
>> At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others
>> (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are active
>> remaining Wikinews contributors.
>
>
> Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active contributors
> prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?

According to the stats, en.wn has
less than 50 contributors with >5 edits per month, and
less than five contributors with >100 edits per month

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikinews/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikinews/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt100.htm

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Kirill Lokshin

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Tempodivalse wrote:

> At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others
> (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are active
> remaining Wikinews contributors.

Wait, does this mean that Wikinews had fewer than twenty active contributors
prior to the fork?  Or am I horribly misinterpreting the statement here?

Kirill
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Jon Davis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_fork#Forking_free_and_open_source_software

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 14:32, Chris Lee  wrote:

> Not interested in all the details, but does anyone know how is this
> different from wikinews?
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Jon
[[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread Chris Lee

Not interested in all the details, but does anyone know how is this
different from wikinews?
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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Tempodivalse  wrote:
> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion
> of WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own project 
> (http://theopenglobe.org)

Congratulations to the successful launch of the fork and good luck!
Hopefully this will lead to some new discoveries that will benefit all
efforts in this space.

All best,
Erik

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Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

2011-09-12 Thread David Gerard

On 12 September 2011 21:50, Tempodivalse  wrote:

> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of 
> WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own project 
> (http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews. 
> The new wiki has finished its creation stage and is about ready to publish 
> news articles.
> At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others 
> (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are active 
> remaining Wikinews contributors.


Any comment from the Wikinews contributors who just posted to
foundation-l saying everything was fine and people saying it wasn't
were clueless?


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked