Talk:Proposals for new projects/Archive 4

Wikitainment Guides is now working

http://wikitainment.selfip.org/Wikitainment/index.php/Main_Page

Wikitainment Guides is now working!! I'm looking for Administrators, tell your friends!!! --T-man 04:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

If you need any help, if you want me to become an adminnistrator let me know. T®eebark 16:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I need as many enthusiastic people as possible. Just go to the ling and have a blast!! (and that also goes for everybody interested) Enjoy--T-man 18:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Rodovid.ORG -- unnecessary long header

I hope we can resolve this dispute on the talk page without any further edit warring. Firstly, the reason the other party has not explained themselves is that he is Ukranian and does not think that he will be able to convey his message succesfully with his limited grasp of English. Now, onto my main point. Most pages, as you say are wikisomething.org, and that "something" in their names is what the project is about - wikikids, a wiki for children; wikiforum, a forum wiki. This means that a reader of the page can tell from the contents what the proposal is about. However, if an English speaker just hears Rodovid, he does not know what it means. Therefore, I think some explanation in the header is necessary. Meanwhile, I do agree that the header is perhaps longer, and is unfair on other proposals. Therefore I propose a header such as Rodovid.Org (Genalogy Wiki), which will explain the content of the site without being a special exception with a cute slogan. What do you think?--Bjwebb 09:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Notes on proposed names and duplication

i believe a lot of the projects proposed can be incorporated into existing projects.

• Wikitextbook.co.uk = > wikibooks (subdomain)
• Wikinac = > Wikipedia (as long as it accepts NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:V)
• Wikihistory => Wikipedia (would enhance wikipedia!)
• WikiTimeLine => Wikipedia (would enhance wikipedia!)
• Wikibibliography => possibly Wikipedia, but could also be independent, don't know.
• WikiPharma = Wikipedia
• Wikiglot => Wiktionary

Wikshelf has a bad name, but is a good thing. As is Wikiscope.

I doubt WikiBrain, WikiConspiracy or WikiCitizens will be adopted. I don't quite understand the scope of Wikilists, and i dont understand PermaWiki at all.--83.181.84.38 15:45, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. With all your comments. Wikshelf came from following the idea of virtual books. The logical thing would vbe to contain them in a bookshelf, We have a wikipedia, a wiktionary and wikibooks so I turned the bookshelf into a "wik"shelf.--T-man 05:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikilists sounds like a project that would offload all of the "List of..." articles—which are not encyclopedia articles as such, and are only marginally encyclopedic—from Wikipedia.

Wikshelf is not a terrible name. It could also be something that alludes to the idea of a reference library or reference librarian: bibliowiki, wikibrarian?

Wikitainment Guides is an excellent idea. Currently in English-language Wikipedia pop-culture trivia overshadows actual encyclopedic content of pop-culture topics. This type of information is valuable, but doesn't belong there, and there ought to be a place to take the pressure off. An open alternative to IMDB, allmusic.com, treknation, etc. —en:user:Mzajac

Yes those are the exact ideas behind both projects. Wait a little for the Wikitainment Guides. The place will be ready to go in a week or two.

The main difference with allmusic or allmovie.com would be the encyclopedic style and the absense of reviews (unless the reviews are quoted from a good valid source, of course) and the main difference with Wikipedia will be the focus on non-academic content and clear acceptance of verifyable trivia.--T-man 01:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the editors there could be called "wikibrarians", I think the idea is good and goes with the original spirit of wikipedia and wiktionary.--T-man 01:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: WikiKids

I would like to start "WikiKids". This would be for kids ages 6-18 and others are welcome to help edit. I would like to set-up a website but I don't have the money. Please feel free to contact me at resourcesofsheboygan@yahoo.com and let me know your ideas! 209.103.228.71 01:45, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Start it on http://editthis.com although I think the project has already been started as wikichildren. I think WikiKids is catchier, but whatever. --T-man 01:54, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

No project has yet been set up, but if you do set it up let me know and I will be willing to help. See Wikikids. The project was not started as wikichildren because people liked Wikikids better but they still haven't gotten enough votes for Wikikids to start. You may wish to host it on meta.wiki so it is a wiki project but in your own way, if you know what I mean. Thanks. T®eebark 15:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

What about Wikijunior? NuttyGorilla 23:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikikids Interest Poll

It's now been almost a month in a half since the new proposal of Wikikids and shouldn't an Interest Poll be started by an outsider now? Thanks. T®eebark 01:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be an outsider! And yes, there is a lot of interest... +sj | help with translation |+ 06:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: The Philosophic Method

Since I am not espeically computer literate, I will just write my idea here (it seems to be the right place) and see if it gains any interest. If not, I may have means to pursue this independantly several months from now. I apologize for making it kinda long, but this idea has to be seen in its entirity for it to make any sense. Basically, it is a way of conducting original research in a manner that is peer-reviewed and has a means of falsification.

Mission Statement: While the natural sciences gain rapid progress in advancing humanity’s understanding of the world, the discipline of philosophy seems to spend a great deal of time floundering in idle speculation and endless arguments that shed more heat than light, especially in the areas of politics and religion. Through the Philosophic Method, it is my intention to develop a systematic means of answering the higher-level questions about the world with a level of efficiency comparable to that of the natural sciences.

Format: The Philosophic Method should be published in a hypertext format in order to accommodate all of the additions, deletions, and revisions that will be applied to it. It is also recommended that venues hosting the Philosophic Method utilize some form of rating system or other means of preventing it from transforming into a glorified discussion board.

Universal Guidelines: All venues claiming to host the Philosophic Method must follow the eleven guidelines listed below but are free to decide all matters that these guidelines do not explicitly address.

I. New theories can be brought into discussion by simply submitting one that has not yet been discussed on this venue. Once a theory is submitted, it remains until its validity, soundness, or coherency is successfully challenged.

II. Alternate theories to existing topics can be submitted in the same manner as above. It is not necessary to challenge an existing theory in order to submit a new one. The existence of opposing theories, however, should be seen as an invitation by others to challenge one of the theories or find a way to reconcile them.

III. If someone wishes to challenge the validity of a theory, it is not enough to simply assert that one disagrees; one must point out the logical fallacy in the challenged theory’s argument. If the contention is successful, then all parts of the theory that follow from the fallacy are sent to the “Philosophic Graveyard”, an archive where all failed theories are kept (along with the arguments that defeated them) in case someone finds a way to salvage them in whole or in part and also to prevent people from making the same mistakes over and over.

IV. If someone wishes to challenge the soundness of a theory, they must devise some form of experiment to test that theory. If the theory is demonstrated to be false, the theory is sent to the “Realm of Hypotheticals” (unless it has also been proved invalid, in which case it will go to the Graveyard), along with the results of the test, in case someone wishes to repeat the experiment. Results of testing will also be attached to a theory when it is not demonstrated to be false.

V. If someone wishes to challenge the coherency of a theory, an alternate presentation must be submitted. Simple grammatical and spelling errors can be fixed in whatever manner is most convenient and efficient. When two theories are reconciled as being different ways of saying the same thing, then the presentation that is more coherent will remain and the other will be deleted from the database (or the two can be combined if each is clearer in different areas). Judging coherency will require the attention of trained professionals. Some criteria might include:

1.  Simplicity of argument (unnecessary material should be minimized)
2.  Clarity in writing style.
3.  Engaging to the reader.
4.  Precision of language.
5.  Concreteness of expression.

VI. “Interesting Explanations” of existing topics—such as metaphors and analogies—can be submitted directly. These will be published alongside the topics they are about for anyone who is interested in reading them. “Interesting Explanations” will not be subject to the same level of logical scrutiny as the theories they are attached to—they cannot be challenged, but readers can rate them (so others can get a sense of whether the “Interesting Explanation” really is interesting enough to be worth reading) as well as discuss them (see IX). If a theory is challenged for coherency and loses because it is not expressed concretely (see V-5), then the losing theory will become an “Interesting Explanation” attached to the winning theory rather than being deleted altogether.

• VII. Each theory shall include a glossary at the end of the article where terms can be defined. Articles that use terms in nonstandard ways and don’t define them will be suspect.

• VIII. Each article will be prefaced by a list of all the premises and assumptions that it is based on. Articles that leave this section blank will be suspect.

IX. Links to discussion boards will be included wherever they are useful, including but not limited to: theories, “Interesting Explanations”, glossaries, and premise lists.

X. Each venue that follows the guidelines of the Philosophic Method should include an easy-to-find list of the arbitrator’s assumptions, including but not limited to what they consider a logical fallacy.

• XI. To eliminate arbitrator bias, several venues following these eleven guidelines will be maintained so that they can compete with each other. Distributors may restrict permission to submit articles in whatever manner they like, but all information published under the Philosophic Method will instantly be copyrighted into the public domain.

• Added by the suggestion of Nicholas Boydston.

The Philosophic Method was originally written by Will Petillo on January 20th, 2007, 12:53am.

Process: Wikimedia Incubator Status

This page has indicated for quite some time that "In the very near future this page, among others, may be integrated into the process at Wikimedia Incubator." Does anyone know anything about the status of this potential integration? Also, is Wikimedia Incubator itself an approved or merely proposed project? Squideshi 22:10, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Incubator exists, see incubator:. Someone has added that note on this page and on Requests for new languages, but nobody has removed it since then. I support moving these two pages to Incubator, but I think most people would oppose it. SPQRobin 15:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Which two pages? Requests for new languages and this one? Requests for new languages would be possible, but why this page? The new policy (that you created) only allows hosting existing Wikimedia projects... --MF-Warburg(de) 14:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. I forgot that :S SPQRobin 16:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I know that Incubator already exists, but is it an approved or still only a proposed project? In other words, has an official decision been made that Incubator will be maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation? If such a decision has been made, then I support moving Requests for new languages to Incubator; however, if such a decision has not yet been made, then I don't yet support such a move. Also, I agree that this page, Proposals for new projects, should not be moved to Incubator, unless Incubator is for both new language versions of existing projects and completely new projects. Please see this discussion on Incubator for more about the purpose of Incubator. Squideshi 05:09, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Given that the Incubator project is a firm requirement of the new language policy, there is no doubt about its status as being official and being supported by the WMF. Thanks, GerardM 08:53, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Incubation

I suggest create wikilanguage.wimimedia.org for new language sister projects and use incubator only for new projects and proposal of new projects (language versions of new approved projects in Incubator can later be tested in Wikilanguage). --Mac 08:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Don't do that. Incubator only hosts testlanguages and projects are against the policy. If you want to create a site for new projects try to get that through. --Ooswesthoesbes 08:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Please see this discussion on Incubator for more about the purpose of Incubator. Squideshi 05:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Wikilaw.

The project that I would like to suggest is a database of laws - a place where anyone could upload any law of any country, state, city, international treaties, etc. I believe such project would have an EXTRAORDINARY value for DEMOCRACIES around the world - it would facilitate the access to laws, make it easier for people to know and understand their rights and obligations. We could associate the pages for the actual laws with pages of explanation/interpretation of these laws. Or, perhaps, create pages talking about legal themes (rights, obligations, regulations, etc.) with quotes of the legal basis for those rights, which would link to the pages of the actual laws. The pages for the laws would be some sort of wikireference, whereas the interpretation or explanation of rights, obligations or other legal themes could be made either under Wikipedia or under this new project. For names, I suggest calling it Wikilaw (which would be translated to every language) or Wikilex (lex means law in Latin). The wiki format would be excellent to go through the laws, since laws do A LOT of reference to other laws (which would be easily accessible by making links to this articles or laws that are being quoted). WIKILEX would make studying the law a piece of cake, comparing to how it is done this days - and that's why I think it would be a success.

I'm convinced that such project would attend an already existing need - which is pervasive to almost the entire population, not only a specific sub-group. It would be used by legal professionals (lawyers, judges, attorneys, lawmakers, legal assistants, diplomats, etc), lay people (who want to understand their rights and obligations, be it civil rights, labor rights, etc) as well as any professional, since almost everything in society is regulated by laws (businesspeople would use, as well as accountants, engineers, administrators, small entrepreneurs, journalists, etc.) I believe that, considering the broad scope of such project, it would not make sense to be done in Wikia - it is perfect for the Wikimedia Foundation. I believe that eventually the very authorities that make laws (city halls, congresses, etc) would start publishing their laws in such database - to attend their own need and obligation to make laws available, and because more and more of their constituencies would start asking them to do so. Only a Foundation such as Wikimedia could have the credibility (because of its non-commercial nature and its commitment of spreading knowledge) to welcome such public and/or official support to make such project successful. I believe such project would be especially instrumental in poor countries, where the governments don't have the means to create such database by themselves. Basically, wikimedia would be doing a very important public service and fostering democratic participation.

This idea occurred to me because of my work and my educational background. I'm from Brazil, where I went to law school, but I've been living in the US for almost 5 years. Currently, I work for a tax software company; my position is called Legal Research Analyst (I'm not an attorney in the US). Basically, I research tax laws of 50 different countries, and, in my department, the 5 of us research tax laws of about 150 countries. One of the hardest part of this work is to find the laws - and I always imagine how great it would be if every law was under one database. Also, I know that I could already be working to build such database: since I am already doing this work of finding so many laws, I could as well just upload them in a place where it could be easily available to everyone. I love Wikipedia so much, and I would love to work to make this project happen. I would take responsibility for the project, but I definitely would need help, because my knowledge of internet systems is very limited, but I learn fast and I'm driven and motivated. And I definitely can contribute heavily with the content and engage other people to do the same.

We would need to create a skeleton mirroring the legal system with all its layers and subjects (constitutional laws, labor laws, tax laws, etc) and also by authority level (country, state, county, municipalities, international treaties, etc.).

What do you think???

You are a genius. I support this.

Proposal: Wikicorp

My idea is to create a wiki that would track corporations and their subsidiaries: for example if someone wants to know who owns their TV station or their telephone provider, etc.

A typical page might be structured like this:

Conglomocorp-

• Conglomoairline
• Conglomocommunications

1. Conglomotelephone
2. Conglomovision

• Conglomofashion

1. Conglomo department store

-Wikipedia on Conglomocorp

-link to conglomocorp website

I have found an online directory with this type of information, however it is proprietary and requires a paid subscription. This is the sort of information that should be available to the masses for free, so that people know who owns what.

I am not willing to take responsibility for the project, its just an idea i had. I will, however, be an avid contributor if it takes off. I think it could have a structure very similar to Wikispecies, with big overarching companies like Viacom as kingdoms, and smaller subsidiaries as phyla, genera, and so on down to actual brand names or businesses like Lucky Charms or Home Depot. It could also link to information about these companies and who runs them- CEO's etc., in Wikipedia. If you like this idea or think you could be a part of it (or if you have any suggestions) please write under this post!

[user:aozeba]

Wikilaw and wikicorp

I suggest that both of you go and create your own wikis. I'll be glad to set one up for you, ad-free, but you'll be hard pressed to find a community. Besides, the talk page is not where new proposals go... 72.149.111.10 19:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: GeoNet Wiki

This is a proposel for a Geographically organised Wiki not a mapping database. Google has a large following of contributors adding location specific information to their Google Earth service, however they own every commentand useful fact.

A Wiki to contain this sort of information needs to be set up before too many people invest their efforts making Google money. The development of this kind of GeoNet database will be inherently limited if it is owned by a company, as the company will not share the information with it's competitors and segregated databases will result in this concept being laid to waste.

I live in Christchurch New Zealand, a Wiki page could contain infomation about the city, not just encyclopedia style basicc facts, but entertainment, local events, sports teams, schools, universities anything. Now take this further, like Google Earth the resolution could be higher, down to suburbs. For example local clubs and organisations and their upcoming events. Not all this information even needs to be added to the wiki directly either, the most important part is the Geographic organisation.

A certain location (i.e GPS coordinates) would be its own page, this may contain a school or non-profit club, who may then add a page for themselves. However a business/big organisation may require a more elaborate web page so the wiki-location page could instead contain a redirect to the companies page. With time a detailed geo-graphically organised database would grow, and software such as Google Earth would be free to use this information for their services (donations would of course be accepted however!). It is important that this is done in an open source enviroment and not through a company such as google who owns the information and therefore inherently limits it's development.

The geographic layout would novel ways of organising and intepreting internet information, and would take services like Google Earth to an entirely new level. A novel use of this could be information on the fly. Many cellphones and pdas now come with GPS and wireless internet connectivity, which could allow constant updates telling you everything you need to know about your current location.

The result of this project would be an entirely new may to browse the net for information. Most of the time average people use the net to check local information specific to where they live, but are bombarded with irrevelent international information, instead of the local bus schedule! The information is mostly already out their, the main purpose of this Wiki would be to make the internet more intuitive and easier to use, while also making new services possible such as GPS based information.

For more information on this kind of web-structure try this link:[1]

I would appreciate any comments on this that you may have. I do realise their are several organisations dedicated to developing a GeoNet, however I do not know of a currently existing GeoNet Wiki.

Proposal: n:WN:RADIO

A proposal is being developed on Wikinews for MediaWiki Radio a radio station encouraging all Wikimedia projects to produce and package audio content for use in a streaming service.

There is a great deal of detail in the existing pages on this over on Wikinews. I intent to port over the proposal within the next few days and list where appropriate. In the interim I would greatly appreciate any advice on how to formulate what we have as a serious proposal that is likely to be given consideration.

There are a number of software aspects to the project that would need resolved. This would not be a http:// service, but an mms:// service. The tools exist to create this, what would be required is "glue" software to run things like Icecast and Liquidsoap from a schedule maintained in a wiki. The liquidsoap people have shown some interest in helping out with this and given examples of how their software can be controlled.

With Wikipedia and other projects more regularly producing podcasts, it is my opinion that this is an idea that's time has come. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:09, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup: subpages and archiving talk

Perhaps these would both be productive actions. --Emesee 09:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Support

1. ElectricalExperiment 22:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
2. Agreed. Template:Sofixit +sj | help with translation |+ 04:55, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

... who would be interested in seeing the contents of this page (and probably the talk page too) that are truely inactive (probably most of it) archived and then it opened up to new additions? --Emesee 02:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Me :-) And you... dive in! +sj | help with translation |+ 23:56, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to close this page

Hi, this proposal for new projects has been tagged as {{historical}} after a RfD discussion earlier this month (discussion), and thus is no longer maintained and though some of the ideas in the proposal are good, I don't think any of these proposals will ever be adapted into a new wiki, its probably better to try it in another wiki farm..--Cometstyles 21:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

There is surely a need for aplace for new project proposals. Instead, this pages should be moved to a clearly-historical archive, and opened to new proposals. I don't agree with you that none of these proposals will wbe adapted into a new wiki -- and certainly don't like the idea of pushing good projects to less-free wiki farms, so until there are other equally free and ad-free farms we should provide a forum for people with good ideas to discuss them here. Wikimedia has spawned surprisingly few new projects in the past two years, which IME is not a good thing at all -- shutting down one of the venues for proposing such ideas doesn't help. +sj | help with translation |+ 23:56, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Closing that discussion without raising it on this talk page, or with the active / recent editors of this page, was poor form. I've removed the tag and unprotected the page -- I hope other historical pages are not being protected as well... perhaps we should have a bit in the way of style guidelines for future practice. +sj | help with translation |+ 04:55, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: WIKILIFE

Good morning veils I have an idea as Wikipédia finally not exactly. I ask you to create a new for wiki the wikilife or every user be able account its life, am for these small children, am to make family trees or else for simply so that everybody can kept one of his life.

some combination of journalwiki and wikifamily? Hmm. +sj | help with translation |+ 04:55, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Offline Client

Could you create a client that downloads wikipedia articles for offline viewing? That way, wikipedia could be used like an offline encyclopedia, which would be useful on laptops.

Since wikipedia is constantly being changed, somesort of update service would be needed to fetch new articles and update cached articles. Since wikipedia logs all changes to articles, the update service would be able to simply apply changes, without redownloading the entire article, saving bandwidth. Each client could also be limited to quota, or downloading could be more manual than automatic, meaning the user would have to browse through categories, and select the ones they want to download. Since images would use the most bandwidth, the update service could be limited to thumbnails, and download full size images when requested upon connection to the internet (or be placed in queue for when a connection is made). And to save further bandwidth, the client could be distributed via bittorrent, in several versions; one that consists of just the client, one that comes preloaded with various articles, and one that comes with the entire wikipedia database (which I imagine would be several dozen gigabytes).

When viewing pages, they could integrate into the client. Links could be available on a right pane, or in a top menu bar. An indexing service, available through the update service, could be used to quickly search the entire wikipedia database offline. Articles not cached could appear greyed out. Umm, okay, my ideas are endless...

Anyway, I'd be grateful if the guys at Wikipedia would code such a client =P

• http://download.wikimedia.org/ will give you some ideas as to how large the various language editions of wikipedia are.
• See toolserver about a system that already replicates wikipedia in real time, read e.g. in the mailing list on the toolerver about several incidents that halted replication and the amount of labour and time required to get it back to be up-to-date. You will need to set something similar up in a pretty fool-proof way and for multiple users.
• Is not keeping all articles updated a huge overkill? There is little chance that a user in his whole life will ever read even a small fraction of them.

--Purodha Blissenbach 03:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

About timestamps on the "people interested joining" sections

I wonder why timestamps are almost never used in the "people interested joining" sections (an example), after all, they can help to see the evolution of the proposals and can be very helpful to find out things by making temporal reference easier in searches. I think that timestamps are never "unnecessary" in a page with so many editions as this. Are there any special reasons to avoid using them or is it just some kind of tradition? --0 º 23:18, 8 January 2009 (UTC)