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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Strategy Wiki

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Why was Strategy Wiki closed?

The strategic planning process has concluded. Unnecessary maintenance to remove spam and vandalism has ceased. This closure was conducted in accordance with the project closure guidelines and an archive of community discussion is shown below.

Thank you for your participation. Another strategic planning initiative may begin again at the discretion of the Board of Trustees.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.

This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

The proposal is accepted and the proposed actions should be taken.

  • A Language Committee member provided the following comment:
    I have written the following to the Board, after nobody in Langcom (which indeed does not have much to do with this), had objections. >>In the discussions about the "sister projects committee", it was thought of that that committee would care for the closure of such wikis once it is established, but since the Closing proposal has now been opened, so be it: It is not really Langcom's business, but I can as well summarize the comments which were made for the Board:
The basic rationale for closing the wiki is: The strategy planning there has ended and all edits that still take place on Strategy Wiki are vandalism.
The proposer proposes "locking Strategy Wiki and selectively importing useful proposals and content to Meta as a more public location tocontinue any work." This view is shared by quite some [most?] of the commenters there, who basically say "Lock and merge to Meta" in order to keep discussions central and making it easier for everyone to follow. Some commenters, however are of the opinion that having the Strategy discussions (which they expect to continue/restart sometime in the future) at a separate wiki is a good idea. But they mostly do not oppose the closure of strategywiki for a time until such a planning would restart.
To my mind, the wiki, which really has no activity except spambots at the time should indeed be closed now. Whether or not it should be reopened for a new "strategic plan discussion" in the future or whether Meta would be used for that, seems to me to be a thing that the Board has to decide. -- Concerning the content, those pages that are suitable for Meta can easily be imported there by any Meta admin, as Strategy is set as an import source for Meta.<< --MF-W 18:10, 20 September 2012 (UTC) --- as there were no objections, bugzilla:40614 has been filed. --MF-W 11:26, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Type: 2 (non-routine proposal)
  • Proposed outcome: closure
  • Proposed action regarding the content: selectively importing useful proposals and content to Meta
  • Notice on the project: Village pump
  • Informed Group(s): (Which chapters, wiki projects, and other community groups have been informed, if any.)

Strategy Wiki was used for a limited amount of time to facilitate a strategic planning process to develop a plan up to 2015. The planning process has been concluded and no additional significant actions have occurred on their own since the end. There is a significant amount of useful content, but it has been hidden from view. At this point, the main edits on Strategy Wiki are maintenance. I propose locking Strategy Wiki and selectively importing useful proposals and content to Meta as a more public location to continue any work. Having a smattering of wikis for all events has proven to be unsuccessful as they often fall apart. TenWiki has been locked in a manner similar to my proposal. This has been discussed on-wiki and through email lists (see strategy:Village pump, Wikimedia-l and previous messages for some recent examples) many times in the past and the consensus seems to be to lock the wiki at some point. This proposal is a formal request.  ℳono  00:46, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • ten.wikipedia.org was indeed silly. But I'm not sure it would be less silly to lock this wiki temporarily if it's going to be re-used in a year or so. (I imagine planning for the next strategic plan will start in January 2014, so I guess a bit over a year from now.)
    I wonder if a "temporary closure" would be a good idea? That could really be implemented by any user with access to the title blacklist or could be done via a formal request to the sysadmins (which would lock out local administrators and allow only stewards to edit there). But in either case, it would limit the amount of spam and other nonsense on the site until the wiki is ready to be re-opened. Unless, of course, we want to use Meta-Wiki instead next time. It's not clear to me that there's a consensus in either direction right now. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:58, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In hindsight I think it was a mistake to run the previous Strategy process on a separate wiki rather than meta. The wisdom of crowds has a problem when crowds get ever more subdivided. If the next Strategy process is going to be run from here then I think it makes sense to import the existing Strategy wiki first - except only for stuff that should be deleted anyway. But one of the other problems with Strategy was that it used liquid threads - can a liquid threads discussion be imported to a different wiki that doesn't use Liquid threads? WereSpielChequers (talk) 16:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Repeating some of what I said on the mailing list, I don't favor locking it. We will need to update the strategic plan in a couple years. The original plan was intended to last through 2015, and I think the next planning process will need to start no later than 2014 (to say nothing of interim updates to the current plan). Because it's a recurring or ongoing topic, I think it's different from ten.wikipedia.org, which was clearly designed to focus on a one-time event.
I wouldn't mind having the content migrate to Meta, and that might be helpful if the concern is spam and vandalism. I know there were well-considered reasons why the strategy wiki and various others were created as separate sites, but I'd like to see us do that more as dedicated spaces within a common site. --Michael Snow (talk) 04:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support developing future strategy work here on Meta. I don't support locking strategywiki unless the entire wiki is migrated to Meta. As for importing LiquidThreads: I don't think such an importer has been written, though it is possible to do. It is importing in the other direction that is hard. (we could also revisit implementing LiquidThreads here on Meta...) –SJ talk  07:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not support the closure. Strategy is for planning for the Wikimedia movement in ties with the Annual Plans of the Wikimedia Foundation. Strategy has the ability to continue to work with the community and the WMF in processing the five year plan. I think it is important to keep WMF planning work separate from the volunteer project of meta. Keegan (talk) 06:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close it - No useful recent edits, all I found there where spambot accounts. Stewards have enough work with other active wikis to keep the spammers out, no need to watch dead wikis as well. -Barras talk 06:48, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge and CloseSmallman12q (talk) 19:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not think we should close the site. And think who proposed, who has to prove the reason for closing, not the opposite. And close it is to say that we will never do anything like that. I think we could encourage Chapters to use the platform to develop their plans, and programs of Wikimedia. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton m 03:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is mostly a copy of what I posted on the wikimedia-l email and I'm going to try to expand a bit more or tweak it after work today:
    • While part of me doesn't have an enormous issue with merging content into meta if people really want it though I don't think it helps much and I think locking it could hurt things.
    • I think creating StrategyWiki as its own entity when it was done was necessary and important. I don't think the strategy process would have been as successful without doing it.
    • I don't think that creating strategyWiki was part of a 'fad' by the foundation or others to create new wikis. We have certainly created separate wikis which I do not think needed to be made (and hurt their purpose) but Strategy was not one of them and, if anything, was the 'start' of the fad and, like most fad starters, was the one with the most legitimate reasons. Everyone follows the trendsetter because they want their results, but forget that they're different.
    • There are many reasons the separate wiki was/is good but to keep it short I'll give the biggest one: The StrategyWiki required a fresh community with as much activity and new blood as possible from around the projects and the movement as a whole. Meta was not, and is not, a fresh community. It does many things well but it is still its own community with its own rules and structure. Sadly you just can't invite a fresh, new community into an old community (it's the same reason the travelWiki proposers were saying that it would be best to start off with a fresh, new, name etc). I don't think it would have done as well if it didn't have the flexibility that a new community allowed (turning on liquid threads for example etc).
    • Overall I think the strategy project actually showed that splitting off to a new wiki can be helpful at times and I think that it should be done for the new strategy plan (likely to start next year, at the latest, I'd imagine) should do the same and either use Strategy or a new wiki. Using Strategy would probably be best and keeping the historic pages could be helpful.
      Jamesofur (talk) 18:48, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Import the useful stuff on meta and close it. There's no need to use another wiki for planning. --.sEdivad (msg) 01:51, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close it - its hard enough trying to deal with Meta. Too difficult to keep track of what's going on where. MathewTownsend (talk) 18:59, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Keegan. I understand the problem of dead wikis but if the problem is spam a softlock can be implemented or make it a fishbowl wiki such as wmfwiki to prevent it in the meanwhile; then reopen it when the new strategy phase starts. Useful things that need more discussion and are strictly within Meta's inclusion policy can be imported here to continue the discussion but I strongly oppose importing all or random content here at Meta just because the wiki has been closed. Meta is not a storage room nor the trash. We already have more than enough to do here. Regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:21, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose closing, but I think it would be ok to at least partially lock it. Gopher65talk 20:04, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Please elaborate - closure basically means a lock. --MF-W 22:06, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move content to Meta and close it, strategy planning can occur on Meta without any problem. Amqui (talk) 20:58, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lock and merge with Meta. --Ixfd64 (talk) 17:26, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the proposal, meta is the place for this work, this site is just fragmenting discussions. JzG (talk) 09:11, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Should be made fishbowl as suggested and reopen when the second strategy process starts. --Hydriz (talk) 09:43, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also find that Stragetywiki is kind of segmented and is best suited for close and merge with meta. OhanaUnitedTalk page 01:33, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Keegan & MarcoAurelio --Shujenchang (talk) 00:30, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I share the same opinion of Marco. If we are not using it right now, it is likely that we will use it another day and we can stop edits for a while, without locking it definitely. I hope we are not making decisions according to the ammount of spam the wiki received as it is not a reason for closure. Larger projects have much more spam and for that there are other measures. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it is an attribution of the Language committee to decide here. I mean... "language"?‴ Teles «Talk ˱@ L C S˲» 04:31, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support the proposal to close and archive this wiki, and selectively merging (or at least linking to relevant content from this wiki) into Meta. I do not support deleting this wiki. I don't see the need for a full merge as long as this wiki is archived.
    • I would love to see the next strategy process (or even better, a set of smaller, community-driven, strategic planning / doing iterations) happen on Meta rather than on its on wiki. However, in order for this to be maximally effective, there will need to be easier or other ways for people to contribute. MediaWiki talk pages should not be the lowest bar way for people to participate in these discussions, because you will not get a maximally useful diversity of thinking that way.
    • As Jamesofur points out, there were lots of good reasons to start a new wiki the first time around, and I think there were a number of great benefits for the community at large. That said, it is possible to bring a new community into an existing community, and in fact, that is a healthy, worthwhile process. I would argue that doing the strategy process on a separate wiki helped with this the first time around. I've noticed many shifts on Meta since 2010, and I'd like to think the strategy process and wiki were partially responsible. Given enough time and work, I also think this process could happen successfully directly on Meta this next time around. As MichaelSnow points out, it's coming up soon (I would say mid-2013 would be the ideal target date), and so now is a great time to be thinking about this.
    • I disagree with Keegan's framing of the strategy process. While it was initiated by the Wikimedia Foundation, it was designed to be a community process (of which the Foundation is obviously an important member). I hope that future processes occur in the same way.
    • Eekim (talk) 14:26, 17 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.


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