Talk:Sister Projects Committee

Merging Wikis

Some thoughts with regards to merging the wikis. Is it feasible to merge a few wikis together? For example, if we take Outreach, Strategy and Meta, these must have been linked hundreds of times across our projects, on mailing lists and other websites, so if we merge to wikimedia.org, then I presume we will keep the all the links (meta.wikimedia, outreach.wikimedia, strategy.wikimedia..), both external and internal. All user contributions should be on the new central wiki, if that's possible.

A question that needs to be answered is what will we do where a certain page exists under the same name on both wikis? One solution would perhaps to make new namespaces, such as Outreach: Strategy:.

If we do merge wikis, we'd need to take into consideration which of the wikis is the larger wiki, in this case it would be Meta-Wiki, thus a potential route would be to make meta.wikimedia.org --> wikimedia.org and then import the pages from Strategy and Outreach Wikis. The Helpful One 14:53, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Interesting question. However a merge of Outreach and Strategy to Meta might even be a simple task as opposed to the other merge examples given on the page ... Wikispecies' data into Wikidata or Wikipedia ; WikiEducator + Wikiversity.

I think we do not yet need to think about specific cases, but can already see that if a merger were to be done, it needs to be well-thought-out *how* it should be done [by the committee, probably]. --MF-W 00:18, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, I imagine that's one of the reasons this committee has been proposed. ;) The Helpful One 00:21, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

There is no problem for old Backstage projects IMO, like Strategy:, Outreach:, Usability:, Wikipedia 10:. Hovewer, we have on meta-wiki too many namespaces Grants, research etc, etc. Maybe we could start central wiki for backstage/special projects with these (Strategy:, Outreach:, Usability:, Wikipedia 10:) namespaces? Backstage wiki? Of course without Test wiki, MediaWiki and other tech wikis. Przykuta (talk) 10:29, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it would help to split these "backstage" wikis by type? Seems what's being talked about here are "brainstorming" Wikis? There are also "user" information storage wikis, like the Wikimania ones seem to be. Are there other kinds being discussed? - Jc37 (talk) 04:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree that all the non content Wikis should be merged. Having these sorts of discussions spread out over many sites makes it more difficult to coordinate activities. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:34, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to the Committee

Hi all. Welcome to the official Sister Projects Committee! Our work will require a substantial amount of discussion, which can take place on this take page but also we can use the new wikimedia-l mailing list for wider input from the community. To start off with, I'm going to create sections for each of the topic areas that need discussing, copying and pasting what Sam started off as inspiration. If you know anyone else that would be interested in either joining the Committee or helping out, feel free to send them to this page and the main page to see what needs doing. The Helpful One 14:00, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Preferably, I'd like to discuss these topics in a new mailing list. Mahadeva (talk) 16:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I was discussing this with SJ yesterday, and he wanted to try to avoid mailing list bloating. As this topic was brought up on foundation-l and is relatively well suited to it, I think keeping it on wikimedia-l is okay for now, but if people start to complain that it's getting off-topic or it's substantially increasing traffic to the list, then we can move to a new mailing list relatively easily. The Helpful One 17:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it is the best to keep most thing in the initial phase here on wiki pages on Meta. But from experience from the Language committee, I can say that a specific mailing list where you have a "thread" for every issue (i.e. in the case of Langcom, every Proposal for a new language version that is discussed) is very useful. I.e. in the case of this committee, I think we should indeed get an own mailing list later on once we discuss more specific issues than the general planning of the committee's works. --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Good points. I agree, let's keep it simple using this talk page for now. Mahadeva (talk) 16:15, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

1. Positional issues

• Defunct private wikis: grants.wikimedia.org (private, rarely used, unused since 2005), spcom (special projects committee, unused since 2006), &c
• Single-purpose, now dormant wikis: ten.wikimedia.org, sep11 wiki, &c.
• Periodic wikis: wikimania2005-wikimania2011
• Combining meta discussions: Strategy, Outreach, Meta
  • Better plan for custom Meta namespaces: Grants, Research, &c?

Meta:Babel#Proposal to clean Meta-Wiki namespaces is something that might be useful here, once those namespaces are cleaned up, you can see some numbers of the pages in each namespace. The Helpful One 14:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

• We need to define the process of handling proposals for new projects and to see what is the possible connection to the Incubator (whether the projects should be opened there first, or reviewed first, or whatever)--Ymblanter (talk) 16:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

  About Incubator (I say this as an Incubator admin); Incubator currently only allows new language versions of existing WMF projects - and this is for a good reason as we'd otherwise get full of proposed projects "test" versions that never have a chance of becoming a WMF project. I agree that first when we define a policy for approving new projects, we can think about this issue. Demo versions of proposed new projects surely are very useful in order to see how they'll work. --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

  About single purpose wikis: Both sep11wiki and tenwiki have already been closed via PCP. I think PCP currently is a good place in handling these (wikimania wikis are always locked after the Wikimania is over, anyway) - we could even think about handling the "combining meta" thing via a PCP. (If so, this committee could maybe take over Langcom's functions for type 2 proposals ... but ok, I think this is already going too far). --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Approval of "proposals for new WMF projects": I can envision a process similar to the LPP process with 1) project building + community discussion 2) langcom decision 3) board decision.... of course that'd need quite some modifications, with more community input than in the New Language versions process. Currently we have hardly any process for creating new WMF projects at all, so we can build it up from scratch.
In the LPP process, a "development wiki project" (these are the tests you find on Incubator, OldWS + BetaWV) play an important role; for new project proposals, for some it could probably also be good to have such (as I said above, it would be to discuss how Incubator could be used for it). For other such proposals, user could however already come up with "demo versions", ie. full-fledged non-WMF wikis that could migrate to being hosted by the WMF - for these, it seems to me that it would just be to discuss 1) if the communities agree to it, 2) if it fits into WMF's scope/vision/etc. --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I think we need one more step: 0) proposal submission + sanity check by siscom; 1) building test project (can be in incubator) etc. Then we can avoid all the above problems.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Is there a proposal to allow the creation of more than just new language versions of existing projects in Incubator? Many people with proposals are not able / interested in setting up their own WikiMedia server just so they can have a demo to show us. And most proposals come from people within the WM movement who do not wish to go off to another site to create demos. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:40, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

No, there is no such proposal. With the current situation (no process at all for approving no projects), it would of course be inacceptable to allow 'demos' of new projects as I mentioned above; but when a proper process for new projects is made, they can be included on Incubator as well. --MF-W 15:15, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Sure while I propose that we allow the creations of demos in incubator once the new project proposal has generated sufficient support here on meta. As demos are typically part of the new project acceptance process we should provide some resources for this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:01, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

2. Topic-specific issues

• Conference proceedings and research papers on wikis - where do they go? See recent proposal for a conferences wiki extension; openmeetings.org (tentatively offered to the WMF as a domain to host); &c.
  • See also Acawiki / WikiScholar proposals
• Coordinating wiktionary with omegawiki.org: This was the original goal of omegawiki, the community still wants it; it addresses an underlying technical data-structure weakness.
• Coordinating wikispecies (monolingual) with species data on wikipedia (multilingual). Merge? More formalized plan for coordination with Encyclopedia of Life (many of whose contributors edit wikispecies too).

  I'm not too familiar with wikispecies, but an inclusion of its data into Wikipedia(s), e.g. via Wikidata, seems like a good idea. --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

  I would like that too. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 21:48, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

  • Claiming the wikispecies.org domain: how important is this?

    Depends on what Wikispecies' community thinks about it & what one thinks what should happen to Wikispecies in general. --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

• Translations: Meta, translatewiki, interlanguage links... all are used in some way by translators. How should this work?

We could combine the WikiScholar proposal with the Wikipedia Journal proposal bringing us up to 20 people to try to start a pilot.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:51, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

3. Data issues

• Which of the above questions has an answer that may be modified once wikidata is fully functional?

  The data from wikispecies might be suited for Wikidata, stage 2 or 3. --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

• Is download.wikimedia.org in scope for this group?
  • Working with reusers, from researchers to dbpedia and metaweb. do they need special affordances?

4. Functional issues

• A prioritized bug list for each sister project? Large-scale questions? Ex: the 100MB file size limit on Commons (unchanged in 5 yrs!), the lack of a public image dump for Commons, proofreading extensions for wikisource, custom dual-category lists for wikinews.
• Summarizing expectations each project has of the WMF
• Summarizing expectations projects have of one another [esp. when they rely on eachother], and that WMF and readers have of projects
• Defining the spectrum of support options for projects by Wikimedia: from minor traffic generation/grants for Movement Partners, to vanilla hosting on the Labs/toolserver of a protoproject, to inclusion as WMF Project (with SUL, suffrage in global votes, adherence to shared principles).

  "Inclusion as WMF project" or "integration on an existing project into WMF" or whatever we want to call it is very related with the question of how to approve proposals for new WMF projects (see above). --MF-W 20:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Different things mixed

The general idea of a sister projects committee is very interesting. However, folks are mixing up different things of issues with a high degree of complexity on only one complex issue.

1. Discussion related to coordination wikis that aren't sister projects;
2. Discussion related to the thousands of Web 2.0 collaborative projects under copyleft licensing terms;
3. Discussion related to the sister projects.

• Coordination wikis: these aren't projects, only websites that acts simultaneously as collaborative workspaces and showcases for interested partners and the general public. Listing them side-by-side with what is really a sister project will only accentuate the Wikipediacentrism issue, since unfortunatelly the most majority of those wikis refers to actions made by and at Wikipedia. Please don't mix core activities (atividades-fim on my mother tongue, Portuguese) with non core activities (atividades-meio on my mother tongue). BTW I've just found this interesting article when trying to reach the English translation to those mentioned word expressions.

• Wonderful projects that aren't (yet) Wikimedia Foundation projects: please focus this new committee with the current issues that Wikimedia Foundation currently have. Surely the entire proccess for creating/proposing new projects needs to be fully rewritten, but pretty please leave this mission to a group of volunteers that can focus on it.
  • This don't excludes talking about Omega Wiki, originally a long-time proposal to supersede Wiktionary, neither Wikidata, already a sister project despite the fact that are yet only on the planning stages (but IMHO it's best to leave Wikidata discussions with the team interested on with, at least on the current stage).
  • Remember also that Wikimedia probably never will have enough resources to act as a free hosting for unlimited copyleft platforms, but this is kinda off-topic and an issue to be discussed by the committeee to act on the new projects issue.

• Discussion related to the sister projects: what can ben done on the current list of copyleft projects (Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, Wikijunior (hosted at Wikibooks but surely with enough complexity to be upgraded as a independent project like what happened with Wikiversity) and Wikidata)including but not limited to talk about the tech specific needs, how to attract new users and how to publicise the projects to the general public.

Best, Lugusto • ※ 03:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

• Have you been to the etherpads?--Ymblanter (talk) 09:29, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

  • Not before your comment. Ok, now I've looked at all the four linked in the draft page but I'm unable to found a single line related to my concerns. Could you clarify your comment? Lugusto • ※ 16:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

    • I though in the etherpads it is more clear what the focus is. Apart from the organizational structure, we have been actually discussing two major things: recommendation for new projects (yes, we believe to be that group of volunteers) and merging Meta, Strategy and Outreach, as well as potentially a number of smaller wikis. Somehow you assume that the core of our mission is to take care of the existing sister projects, which so far has not been at all in focus of our attention. Well, right now we have a status of a self-proclaimed group of volunteers which happen to include a Board member, and, in principle, the Board / the community might be unhappy with what we think is our scope. We also did not get much input from the existing sister projects, and we considered an option of contacting them (this is in the organizational etherpad). But right now the situation is such that we did not discuss these issues. I do not think we are doing a collection of different useless things. We are just not doing what you think we are doing or are supposed to do.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

      • Thanks for your clarification. Well, good luck on your efforts, but it's sad that the volunteers continues to plan things for the non-Wikipedia projects with low priority (the absence of a clear focus on a committee named in the current way sounds for me in this way, but I'm hope to be fully wrong on my view). Lugusto • ※ 16:53, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

        I believe the initiative for existing sister projects should come from inside these projects. I think we would be happy to support these initiatives, but I do not think we could generate them.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:51, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

There is some overlap between helping existing projects become better advocates for themselves - something a Projects Council would be able to help with - and helping mentor new projects that become accepted, up to and after their acceptance. Rereading Lugusto's comment, I have a slightly different view:

• Our coordination meta-wikis (Meta, strategy, outreach) are in my view part of a single sister project: thinking about, planning for, and sharing the future of free knowledge. We do them a disservice by treating them as something less -- for instance, but splitting them up into very narrow areas and not allowing a lasting community to grow, by not making of them a multilngual space like most other sister projects, but having them be mainly in English, &c. The end result is that much of the work of those wikis has been splintered even further into chapter wikis, or even more hyper-local wikis.
• Review of new project proposals, on the strategy wiki or mailing lists, or here on meta, is not "reviewing all web 2.0 projects on the web". It is reviewing a very small list of projects that someone feels we should have a single global place for, within Wikimedia. Very important difference. This is the context in which we most immediately need a committee.
• Review of / help for current sister projects: better technical support, more visibility, merging with natural complementary wikis/technologies. This is also very important.

–SJ talk  17:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• I respectfully disagree with you, Sj.

At the coordination projects issue, if you see the whole thing as an one sister project, you will need to include also the mailing lists, the planet.wikimedia.org, the OTRS system and son on, because all of those are tools to promote the free culture. In short, a simple merge of wikis isn't the solution to internationalize those things, but a fully redesign on all usage of those softwares with appended data related to the free culture promotion.

I was an active volunteer on 2004-2009. I don't know how many times I've read or listen to someone saying "this is very important" to the requests from the non-Wikipedia projects. During the period that Anthere was on the chair on the Board of trustees, all support we have gathered was the mention of the full list of sister projects in the most majority of press releases, some personal opinion on some subjects and things like Brion and Tim reviewing the source code for LabeledSectionTransclusion extension (a tool with high potential to both promote Wikisource and improve Wikipedia articles if cross-wiki transclusion is present) only after some weeks of cries that it was a long time coded proposal. And enabled only on Wikisource wikis because those are small wikis with very low potential to shut down the entire Wikimedia with a major bug.

Now I need to go to bed, no free time to make a full explanation of my point on this sub-subject, but those proposed backlogged projects have MediaWiki extensions on their demo-sites not even before enabled on any Wikimedia wiki... In short, the lack of adequate technical support that the current sister projects will be accentuated.

My proposal to focus on one issue related to the main issue of sister projects did not convinced you, so let's make a new attempt. Before making any precipitated action (like the single merge on coordination wikis), why you don't draft a detailed planning on what CAN be done in the current scenario and what is needed to arise the issues on approving new projects, internationalize the free culture promotion and the technical needs for the current and new sister projects?

A merge on coordination wikis (followed by database deletions and HTTP redirects, locked wikis on pretty URLs really don't help anytihing on it) and a creation of a pile of international Village pumps as it was done during those years on Wikimedia Commons can be a good start, the usage of the technical expertise gathered on the last years at Commons for internationalization things too, but next steps such new improvments on the MediaWiki base code or even the LiquidThreats extension getting enabled on the new/merged space can be a good second stage etc.

Only to make clear: I'm interested in helping on the sister projects committee, but firstly I need to assure that this committe really have any chance of getting at least a small portion of their actions with some concrete usefulness, not a unfortunate waste of volunteer time as I've see on some old committes that have started saying "OMG I NEED TO DO THINGS, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO BUT I WILL START TO DO SOMETHING!!!!1111".

Best,

Lugusto • ※ 02:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Do we have a priority list from at least one sister project on what needs to be changed? Would you be prepared for instance (not necessarily tomorrow) to prepare such a list? Do you know someone who would like to prepare such a list?--Ymblanter (talk) 07:10, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

A Top 5 or 10 list of priorities based on community consensus for each sister project would be useful. Than we would simply need to determine how much work they would each take and find some resources to implement them out.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:24, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I can raise the issue on Commons where I am a regular user (though my impression is that Commons is pretty much well served).--Ymblanter (talk) 10:31, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Now I realized that this highlights one more problem. For instance, I guess we want to have such a list from Wikinews, but not from every language Wikinews project. But from what I know there is no platform which serves all editions of Wikinews and where these things could be discussed. I am not even sure at the moment what would be the most practical way - to post in English in all Wikinews village pumps? To provide such a platform? To only ask largest projects (I assume in most cases these would be English projects) and extrapolate their opinion?--Ymblanter (talk) 10:34, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Lugusto, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I like your ideas above about focusing on multilingual free culture outreach, the value of sister projects, and supporting current projects - to make sure that we can support any new projects we might create. Our first steps may not solve all problems, but we must keep those goals in mind. –SJ talk  10:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Users

I haven't seen this anywhere, so my apologies if I missed it : )

But in merging wikis, there may be an issue of SUL and attribution. Plus what if the same person had different accounts on a particular wiki? Will someone be checking on this? I presume the wikis involved don't have millions of users : )

Are they all GDFL/CC-By-SA, etc? Has anyone checked into license compatibilities? - Jc37 (talk) 04:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

All WMF wikis are cc-by-sa. Wiki merges can lead to attribution issues; users aren't always the same, and user data doesn't get merged. Generally the text is just exported and imported; with an edit summary pointing to the original (now closed and locked) wiki. So to find the full original attribution you have to trace the trail back. That's ok by the license. –SJ talk  05:15, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

So it's essentially a copy/paste move? And thus the edit history is left behind? - Jc37 (talk) 06:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

There is an option on Special:Import (if you have the import user right you can access this) for " Copy all history revisions for this page" - this is ticked by default but if we untick this then we stop any potential user data attribution issues. Yes, the edit history is left behind but we can leave links to the previous edit history of the page - I don't think that we're actually going to be deleting the old wikis, just getting the pages/data from them onto wherever they are being merged to. The Helpful One 10:11, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'll bite. If the old wikis aren't being deleted, what's the point of moving/merging? - Jc37 (talk) 11:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Because there is still some (low-key) activity going on (check the new changes), and this activity belongs to Meta rather than to separate wikis.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:17, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

But that doesn't explain why the old wiki is not being removed/deleted. if the point is to merge the wikis (to meta or to some unified wiki or whatever), then that "little bit of activity" would happen at the target of the merged wikis.

If the goal is to just close some wikis, and port over a couple pages which may or may not be still active, then that's not merging wikis, that's merely transwiki-ing, I would think? What do you feel I'm missing? - Jc37 (talk) 01:22, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The old wikis would not be deleted, but they would be locked, which is about as close as a wiki can ever come to death.--Pharos (talk) 01:52, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

So the goal isn't so much merging, as allowing some specific stuff and such to continue on elsewhere since the wikis are to be locked? (I'm just trying to understand - the word "merge" has apparently confused me : ) - Jc37 (talk) 04:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Just about everything would be moved over, not just a few select pages; I think that counts as a "merge".--Pharos (talk) 04:33, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Then I'm back to: What's the point? "better here than there"? If (nearly) everything is being moved, and this isn't about conserving server space, why bother? - Jc37 (talk) 08:10, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Fully agree with Jc37. I don't see the point to merge and keep the previous ones (sometimes with pretty URLs such as outreach.wikimedia.org) locked. It sounds to me only waste of energy that could easily be used on more important things at the comittee. Lugusto • ※ 15:23, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Sister Projects Committee membership

Hello, I just gave a quick look at the proposed membership list. It's a sister projects committee, a modicum of experience with sister projects should be expected of the proposed membership. As it stands, we got one user who has never edited outside of his home wikipedia, one who's pretty much never edited wikimedia projects, plus others with only a modicum of activity on sister project, bringing the total of members with clearly no significant experience with sister projects to 5. I would suggest that if members in a community committee on matter X ought to have at least a modicum of experience as active and engaged community members on one or more of our sister projects. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 14:15, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

+1 — Ningauble (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

+1 Lugusto • ※ 15:23, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

+1 Mahadeva (talk) 17:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

+1. Better perhaps to separate the list of 'interested people' from the list of active participants. To the extent that there is a core group that needs to come to consensus on decisions, it shouldn't be too large (10-12?) and I would say every participant should be active on meta/strategywiki in categorizing and reviewing new proposals, or active on at least two different free-knowledge wikis, whether Wikimedia projects or other. Input from people who love the idea of sister projects is also warmly welcome, but it's reasonable to ask them to become active in helping the existing backlog of proposals. –SJ talk  17:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that the committee needs to have members experienced in sister projects - I hope more interested users from all the sister projects will come up once we announce everything more publicly. I also don't think we can see the current "list of members" on the page as a final list already, when the committee is not yet official and all. There had initially been a list of interested people which was then turned into the list of members, but some of them have not been active with regard to the committee since then. --MF-W 15:35, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Of course, Wikipedia is sister project too! I agree, certainly, that we should have members experienced in all of the sister projects.--Pharos (talk) 16:06, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we need people that can represent and have knowledge of all of the Wikimedia Foundation's sister projects, I'd love to see at least one member that can represent and has in-depth knowledge of the working of each of the 9 sister projects (other than Wikipedia) listed at w:Template:Wikipedia's sister projects, Commons, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikispecies and Meta-Wiki. The Helpful One 16:11, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't really think that Wikipedia needs any kind of additional coordination or at least at a level that a committee named in the current way can offer. Serious guys, this proposal really needs a focus. In the current way it sounds only to me that your guys have picked a random grunt from some expecienced wikimedians and don't have any glue on how to work on it... Lugusto • ※ 16:15, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, no, it's not. Wikipedia has been, for better or worse, the flagship project of the WMF. People coming exclusively from the Wikipedias in major languages have no experience handling new and small projects. They have no skills or expertise in knowing what's needed to grow, keep sustainable a project or make it viable. I suggest that the current membership list, which has been made out of all the people "interested" at some point in the committee, be removed, and that those interested in joining the committee be approved one by one by the community, so that the candidate's expertise on the matter can be decided upon, and not simple some random users who listed themselves. These are people that will recommend to the board which projects should be opened, the community should decide who is qualified for the job, and that the candidates have the chance to explain why they feel they are qualified and prepared. Also, that term charts should be removed as the committee hasn't been approved and is just a draft, there are no terms yet. This is a committee tasked with serious and important responsibilities, its founding membership should be determined case by case thru a proper process. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 16:22, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a pretty much valid point, but I also think it is not up to us to decide in what way and what form the committee should be approved by the community. Right now, probably the most knowledgeable person in this respect is User:Sj, and in the first instance, I would wait for his comments.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:01, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the term charts can be removed; let's not make this too formal until we have a clearer sense of how the group should work. Participants with experience in each Project community, from a few different major languages, and a few meta-members with experience in non-WM wikis, are a good idea. The most pressing question is a better process for reviewing requests, not a new bureaucracy. Along the lines of how past committees have been formed, we could ask just one person with relevant experience to name an interim group to develop an initial process and charter (including membership, if this becomes a standing committee) for Board approval. –SJ talk  17:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Snowolf, especially when talking about having a committee with members selected one by one by the community. Mahadeva (talk) 17:15, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

So is the proposal to eventually have an elections to determine the members of this committee following site wide notices? I think that all that many new proposals need is simply some guidance on process and an areas in which to create a demo so that they then have something to pitch to potential collaborators. The process for creating a new project is not very clear and I do not think we need an elected committee to clarify it. The question is should the decision of what new ideas to pursue be within the hands of a small group or should consensus come more from the Wikimedia Movement at large.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Remember that committee or not, the decision of what new ideas that will become a full project remains in the hands of the Board. The role/authority of the committee is only to give advice/recommendations to the Board, and not to decide what new ideas will be pursue. Also note that a designated committee to analyze new ideas for project doesn't exclude the possibility of a wider discussion in the Wikimedia's community. Amqui (talk) 04:16, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

That is obviously correct, but it doesn't change anything of the above :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 23:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Communication

I am somehow lost as far as the main communication venue is concerned. I followed etherpads but they become depopulated several days ago. I suspect the main discussion is currently going on IRC and I think this is not a good idea since logs are not documented. I suggest either to keep it on-wiki or log the IRC. Otherwise it is very difficult to keep up.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see that much discussion going on on irc. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 18:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Then there is probably no discussion since Friday at all except for what we have at this page.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The project proposal backlog

This is the most pressing need in my opinion.

• Proposals for new projects needs a revamped process.
  • See This comment from January for an example of what is broken, and how broken it is.
  • The criteria for a successful proposal and demo need their own subpage, and more clarity.

    20+ participants, incubator-style commitment to drafting the core pages, a project plan covering any specific tech or import needs... what else?

  • At what point is an RFC written? How many people need to weigh in on a public discussion? In how many languages? What criteria should we use to evaluate whether a proposal is in line with our mission?
  • How are proponents contacted about the progress of a proposal? Are there roles other than 'interested contributor' that need filling? How should various language communities be informed about new projects in the works? (LangCom's experience here may be welcome.) How far can a new project develop in the incubator / on a self-hosted demo?

• Communication around new proposals needs to be organized.
  • Every original project proposer should get some update on the status of their proposal. Those with demos should hear back whether or not it is being considered seriously now. Those without (and those that are 'maybe') should know whether it would be wise for them to organize one.
  • Suggestions on the talk page or elsewhere should all get a response of sorts - from "{sofixit}" to pointers to where more pertinent advice can be found.

• Existing proposals should be merged around core concepts / types of knowledge
  • Similar project ideas here should be merged. I tried to do something like this with the various WikiCite and WikiScholar proposals last year; there are a few similar clusters, where original proponents should be notified and a merged proposal created.
  • Project proposals on strategywiki (and elsewhere? as essays on other wikis?) should be consolidated here.
  • Related work in other languages (probably on their own mailing lists or wikipedias) should be, too.

• "Alternatives to becoming a WMF project" needs to be written.
  • Other hosting options: with free or ad-supported hosts, on umbrella sites, &c.
  • Ways to improve a proposal or try again: merging with an existing stable project, improving the scope or scale of a demo

–SJ talk  20:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• We also have Proposals for new projects/process, for the record, although this proposal is five years old.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:30, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
• I still think we should only consider old project if there is still any interest. I am not quite sure what is the best way to check this. May be we should ask for all proposals which are more that one year old (say before July 1, 2011) on Meta that the proposer and supporters reconfirm, and for the proposals on Strategy that someone transfers them on Meta and becomes a proposer?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:49, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

The rest should still be kept as ideas as someone might come along and continue developing it.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Working on a new system for new projects. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 00:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Yaroslav: good suggestions re: old proposals and strategy proposals. If the original proposer isn't around to respond, the people who signed up as interested should be notified as well. I suspect any project that got 30+ votes of support at any point could find a similar number today if it had a champion; the real question in my mind is whether that idea is now being served in some other way: self-hosted, within a larger project, &c. –SJ talk  00:34, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• Do we agree on this? If there are no objections within couple of days, I will de-archive the 2012 proposals, and we could start working on them.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:00, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

  No objections from my side too. Though keep in mind that we are not yet "fully setup" to work on proposals ;) --MF-W 18:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

  No objections from me either. The Helpful One 18:28, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Consolidated proposal

Please read, review, and improve the following. –SJ talk  13:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

• A merged and refactored new project process, combining all suggestions to date. Fairly detailed, but just a guideline. Still needs templates for the two types of new project proposals, and clearer criteria for peer review.
• Draft charter for the committee, cleaning up MF-W's version.
• Currently this includes a proposed interim committee of 9 current participants. This should have minimal effect on the work of the group -- all work should be public and all wiki work world-editable, so this will only matter for the rare occasion of votes.

What is the exact need and basis for an interim committee? There seems to be no need for one, the committee should just be voted on along with the full policy. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 23:42, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I can see benefits of doing it either way. This was a new/tentative part of the MF-W draft, hence in italics. It allows the group to work for the first few months, while building criteria / templates / test cases / waiting for approval. On the other hand, 'membership' only really applies to votes, which are rare; all votes could simply be postponed / queued up until committee approval. The full-term committee would presumably be chosen after some more outreach / with a focus on having representatives from every sister project... as opposed to people self-nominated/active/editing right now.

Alternately, this part of the charter can be replaced with "Initial committee members are: <list of full-term members>" –SJ talk 

I agree that the appointment of an interim committee is not very important and all the votes could be postponed until the policies are completed and approved and the "final" or "normal" committee is working. The most important task to do at the moment is obviously writing policies rather than doing any voting. Note that my draft initially did not contain the concept of an interim committee, but I can accept either situation. --MF-W 14:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah! I hadn't checked the history. That gives it a different flavor; in that case, let's do without. I'd prefer to have a totally open committee, where membership is available to as many people as want to be involved and to do good work; decisions are made via consensus among all members who are active at the time that a decision arises (with a minimum # of people participating in a decision), and with an executive group that votes only on those occasions where we can't come to consensus. –SJ talk  15:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Open question; do we need to limit the committee size? Could we have 30 people productively channeled into different areas of work? I see a lot of different clusters of tasks that need doing. It is tempting to revise the membership criteria so that anyone interested who has a bit of background (active on 2 projects / in classifying new proposals) can become part of the group. That we aim for "consensus of all who weigh in" for decisions, and have a 'kernel' which explicitly votes in the very-rare cases where that consensus doesn't form. –SJ talk  13:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

We don't need to have a maximum number of committee members, but neither do we have to have a great focus on "who is in the committee" and who is not. By the way, the draft charter already says that "Every member should be active on Meta/Strategy-Wiki in categorizing and reviewing new proposals, or active on at least two different free-knowledge wikis, whether Wikimedia projects or other".

The committee is going to have a large field of different tasks, yes, but they're all closely related too (otherwise one could even form more committees).

Ideally, it is not that requesters come along and have to depend on the committee which would always be there and speak ex cathedra; but that consensus or something very close to it evolves in the discussions around the proposals here on Meta. The committee members should be active in those and base their recommendations to the Board on that (this is why I propose a mailing list for the committee to use only for discussing <u<their final decision). --MF-W 14:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

And btw the idea to have representatives from each sister project may still work now when we have 8? sister projects, but will definitely not work in the future when we have say 20 sister projects. As for the size, I would prefer to have it limited (say not more than 15) to keep the committee workable, but I woul not put a hard limit: If there is somebody around who has necessary expertise and wants to work, he/she can very well be included in the committee.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

As long as we aren't requiring that everyone involved in the group weigh in on every discussion/decision, there's little reason to limit the size of the group. Let's leave it open for now and revisit that if it becomes a problem. Now updated. –SJ talk  15:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Process needed: requests for project merge

Right now there's no place to leave a request for a project merge. For instance: recently someone who works on wikieducator asked me what the process would be to discuss merging that wiki into wikiversity. Of course there would have to be serious discussions on both communities' wikis, but there is also no place to float such an idea on Meta. Similarly, what if someone wanted to discuss spinning off Wikinews and merging it into OpenGlobe under their non-WMF hosting arrangement? Or if we already had a WikiGuide project and wanted to merge in WikiVoyage (and possibly rename the result), rather than the current proposal (in which case both a merge of sorts and a new project are being discussed)? –SJ talk  18:21, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

A project merge could go on one of the affected wikis and get a link there from the other wikis and from here. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 00:46, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Process needed: requests for project support

There's no clear place for sister projects to request support - community, technical, publicity, or other. Occasionally someone will express frustration that their sister project doesn't get enough attention. All SPs complain if feature requests that originated on their cafes and forums aren't processed fast enough. Wikipedias complain when their feature requests aren't accepted by the core developers. Smaller sister projects complain when they aren't included in outreach or research.

If this is to remain one of the processes mentioned in the charter, it deserves a page. And we should seed such a page with current lists of feature requests and community requests, or known unsolved problems for each SP. –SJ talk 

Make a noticeboard here. With a list of things to do. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 00:47, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Needing review: 4 recent proposals

The 4 most recent Proposals for new projects need review. It would be good to get back to each project within a month with an initial suggestion for what to do next. –SJ talk  18:28, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

• I think the Wikitravel is kind of special, since the process has already started, and there are a lot of opinions on the talk page and related pages. At some point, someone would need to summarize the discussion, I can probably do the initial work later this week. For the other three, I think we should start posting our reviews on the talk page, I wrote one quite some time ago.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:32, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
  • A summary would be useful. I agree there are lots of opinions there, and fairly straight support from those weighing in / signing on. We should suggest next steps if possible - or compare the current situation to what's covered in the draft process. The other three mainly need to clarify what they are proposing and start an incubator. I think this would be the first time in a while we've had a new Project use the incubator. –SJ talk  09:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
    • I'll try to sum up what happened for the four proposals so far:
    • For the 3 new project proposals, Thehelpfulone and I contacted the proposers on their talk pages (on de and en Wikipedia), but none of the them has shown up again here so far. In detail:
      • WikiExperts: Pharos proposed that it might be done as a Wikipedia-project or similar... This seems reasonable; though we should hear back from the proposer before proceeding... On a closer look, it rather seems to me that the proposal is unfitting for a WMF project; more like Citizendium and such projects. 22:50, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Wikiessay: Pharos suggested to deal with that under another proposal, Wikireason - would be nice to get some input from the proposer again on that.
      • GlobalTemplates: This should probably be put on hold to see if Wikidata will handle that, as suggested by, yes indeed, Pharos :)
    • Conclusion: For two of the three proposals, another solution that eventually having an incubator project seems better. By the way there has never been a new project (project as in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks) being started in the Incubator, as far as I'm aware (the last new project, Wikiversity, started out of Wikibooks and still uses its own betawikiversity: instead of Incubator). --MF-W 22:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

(outdent because of length) Concerning the Wikitravel proposal, let's check against our proposed New projects process:

• A proposal is then open for at least 30 days for comments and questions from the [everyone]. This is not a vote, and will be assessed by the committee on its merits and chances of flourishing. - comments were given there, indeed.
• If the community from the existing non-WMF project makes clear that they don't want to become a WMF project, such a proposal will be outright rejected. - They have rather made the contrary clear, so we can proceed.
• Within 1-2 weeks the committee decides if the proposed project could be a viable Wikimedia project. If appropriate, SPCom will give specific recommendations for improvement [...] - the committee is not official yet nor deciding anything, but we can think about this nevertheless.
• Does the proposal fit into one of the existing projects? & Would there be side-effects on existing projects? - possibly not; There has been a bit of discussion about it.
• compatible with general principles (freely licenced, spreading free knowledge, BLP rules), Vision & Mission statement - yes

Summary of the discussion: Lots of supporters of the idea, including current Wikitravel/Wikivoyage contributors. To my mind, what needs to be clarified now is: Is the project really acceptable/admissible as a new Wikimedia project (a point for SPCom consideration under proposed policy.)? Would we be able to get all the language versions + contributors here i.e. overcome the Wikitravel-Wikivoyage division? Less important points, which can be considered after these more basic things, include: The name of the projects, its domain, and the transferation of content. --MF-W 22:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this overview. There is a ~50:1 vote of support for the proposal idea on its talk page, which is a good sign. It seems admissible under SPCom's draft policy - though the process for 'adoption' as opposed to creating a new project deserves its own section. As Yaroslav notes below, community discussions about combining language versions seem to have made progress, including at the recent Wikivoyage gathering in Germany. While the committee is not official yet, it would be good to have summarized feedback for the proposers from the initial SPC group (and, if the proposal seems complete, a summary recommendation for the Board to consider).

Compare the process for recommending chapters for approval: the relevant committee helps the chapter develop detailed bylaws, reports on their projects, &c; and then drafts a short note recommending their recognition, referencing those documents and the page of criteria they have met.

Here the documents would be a detailed description of the proposed project, and its implementation -- i.e., how the issues you mention above would be addressed. A recommendation would reference those documents and the new projects process. –SJ talk  08:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Travel Guide

It looks like the negotiations have been completed, and both WT and WV voted for entering the WMF. Should we facilitate drafting the application to the board? I am not sure what our role should be in this situation. (For the record, I am a supporter of WT and put my name on the page of supporters a long time ago).--Ymblanter (talk) 08:11, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Reposnse to MF-W above: Well, we can also formulate these questions, I think they are pretty much valid. But I think it is important to indicate very clearly what the following steps should be between now and the submission of the application to the board.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Please look at Talk:Wiki Travel Guide#Plan.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:33, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I've commented there. If we help them update the proposal now, we can call people to a larger community discussion between now and Wikimania. If they want to move quickly, they could submit a proposal to the Board by the July Board meeting. –SJ talk  08:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

The travel guide proposal is basically ready to be submitted. Could someone other than me and Yaroslav give it and its talk page a look, including helping put up a sitenotice? –SJ talk  14:28, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes a local admin is needed for the site notice Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:15, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

There's a nice set of discussions on that voting page. It would be helpful for someone to summarize the various pros/cons listed. –SJ talk 

Meeting this week?

I'd like to have an IRC meeting sometime soon -- do the times below work for people? Please sign up for those that work or suggest another time.

Proposed agenda

add your own topics:

• Finalizing charter and getting it reviewed
• Outstanding requests, rate of new requests
• Ways to divide up / claim open work
• ...

Saturday, August 11 1500-1600 UTC --Ymblanter (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC) 2200-2300 UTC –SJ talk  20:06, 9 August 2012 (UTC) --Ymblanter (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC) Amqui (talk) 22:36, 10 August 2012 (UTC) (1500UTC is way too early on a Saturday morning)

Sunday, August 12 1500-1600 UTC --Ymblanter (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC) 2200-2300 UTC –SJ talk  20:06, 9 August 2012 (UTC) Amqui (talk) 22:36, 10 August 2012 (UTC) (1500UTC is way too early on a Sunday morning)

Monday, August 12 1500-1600 UTC –SJ talk  20:06, 9 August 2012 (UTC) --Ymblanter (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC) 2200-2300 UTC Amqui (talk) 22:36, 10 August 2012 (UTC) (1500UTC is directly during work hours in a lot of timezones, don't you guys have a job ?)

• All proposed times would more or less be possible for me, but I'm too lazy to put me into every section above now ;-) --MF-W 20:34, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

  And I can make the ones I didn't sign up for Sat/Sun, but would be multitasking. –SJ talk 

  +1 per MF, but my excuse is I'm editing on my phone, far too much work! The Helpful One 21:32, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

• It looks like today 2200-2300 UTC is the only slot which is good for everybody. Should we pick it up?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:05, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  Let's do that. --MF-W 16:52, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  I agree. Amqui (talk) 18:37, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  Good. I am not an IRC regular, so I would appreciate if someone leaves a link here.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:10, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  The channel is #wikimedia-SPcom on freenode. IRC has some information on how to connect. --MF-W 19:15, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  Alternatively, you can use freenode webchat, #wikimedia-SPCom^connect (click on connect). The Helpful One 20:31, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  Sorry for showing up here again, but I seem to be logged to the channel, but I do not see anybody else. This most likely means that I am doing smth wrong. I am using Mibbit if this matters, and login with my username and the channel name.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:59, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  As far as I can see from a quick googling, Mibbit seems to be banned on freenode. --MF-W 22:04, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, Mibbit access was stopped quite a while ago, try going through freenode's own webchat. The Helpful One 22:06, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  Thanks, as you all noticed, the freenode access worked.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:12, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Summary of the discussion

Participating in the discussion: MF-Warburg, Ymblanter, Ebe123, Thehelpfulone. There were other users present but they did not participate in the discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:24, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

1. Finalizing charter. The participated users agreed that the draft chartes is closed to completion. Point 2b of the Core processes part needs to be completed on-wiki. Point 3 is not ideal, but at this point the SPCom probably can not make it more precise. Once the activity is started, the interaction with sister projects will lead to more precise formulations of this point. The participated SPCom members decided that it is unclear what happens to the charter after it has been completed. One option is to submit it directly to the Board; another option is to submit it as RfC to the community, with or without the option to not follow the RfC result. An objection was raised that not following the RfC result may be difficult. Clarifications from the side of Sj are desirable.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:24, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
2. New requests. One issue is the travel guide RfC. At this point, there is very little SPCom can do about it, since the RfC has to be closed by an uninvolved administrator. Concerning the new requests, they need to be timely reviewed. MF-Warburg mentioned also that he contacted the proposers of some of the 2012 submissions, and never got a reply, which suggests there is no interest, and the proposals can be closed. On the other hand, there are at least four proposals submitted in June in July. The infrastructure to review them is in place, but the process is impeded by the fact that SPCom has no official status.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:34, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
3. Sharing workload. It would be a good idea to collect all prospective tasks of SPCom on a Meta page for an overview; then it will be more clear which tasks need to be shared. The SPCom members can select then in which tasks they are interested more.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:34, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
4. Miscellaneous. MF-Warburg and Ymblanter think that it would be a good idea to hold meetings on a regular basis.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:34, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the summary, Ymblanter. Sj still had joined after you left, and been given the log too. --MF-W 21:16, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikikids

Hi Sister Projects Committee !

I've recently updated and expanded the Wikikids proposal, and created some subpages to explain it. I am however not sure about what should be the project plan or schedule for the proposal. In particular, I wonder when should a requests for comment take place. Would there be as a first step a RFC that would only be announced on Meta ? Thanks for your advices ! Astirmays (talk) 21:20, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, an initial RfC announced just on Meta is a traditional way to start. Once the issues raised in that RfC are addressed, or there is a clear supermajority of support here, a wider RfC may take place. In this case, it would help for you to have an answer to questions about how to manage collaborative sites with young participants, particularly in the US and UK, given some of the recent mailinglist threads on the topic. –SJ talk  06:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Global Economic Map

Hello SPCom,

The Global Economic Map is requesting comments and looking for advice. Here is the project homepage: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Economic_Map

I'm meeting with Velichka Dimitrova and Sander van der Waal of the Long Term Projects Unit at the Open Knowledge Foundation Tuesday 6 am via Skype. We are going to discuss potential partnership/affiliations between the OKF and the Global Economic Map.

Thank you, Mcnabber091 (talk) 02:32, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for this proposal. I don't understand it: what is the format and data set you are talking about? All of the 'economic' entries on the Wikidata page you link to? Do you have any further input after your meeting with the OKFN members? I would appreciate seeing a longer list of similar projects, or a working demo, or even a single page showing the format and layout you have in mind. –SJ talk  06:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Revival of proposal

Hello! Is anyone still interested in having a Sister Projects Committee? Please see mailarchive:spcom/2013-September/000019.html and Wikimedia_Forum#Sister_Projects_Committee. PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:48, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello PiRS, someone is. Thanks for your involvement. The most urgent things needing review are the Proposals for new projects#Open proposals, particularly those with a redlink for 'comments'. Some of them clearly have extensive support, and need help moving to a Meta-RfC & synthesizing the feedback from initial votes into actionable improvements + open questions. –SJ talk  07:07, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Reform Recommendations / GChriss

After giving this thought, my recommendations on reforming the Sister Project proposal process:

a) Current proposals should be split into two groups: 'ideas' and 'proposals.'  'Ideas' for, well, early-stage whiteboard ideas that don't have pre-existing/extant base communities; the 'idea' itself may be novel in it's own right.  'Proposals' for well-defined proposals in need of specific action and attention, the most appropriate choice for project creation/merges/splits/decommissioning.  There should be no adoption bias in 'ideas' vs. 'proposals' even if there's an underlying assumption that ideas that generate momentum can/should transition to full proposals to facilitate adoption.  (Substitute 'ideas' with 'concepts' or similar if desired.)

b) I don't know that MediaWiki offers substantial advantages as a idea/proposal discussion form; the proposal process is more constructive evaluation than consensus-driven text editing.  A process functionally similar to the Knight News Challenge (KNC) submission system might be better for attracting recommendations/commentary from a wider community base; I especially like the idea of short introductory videos.  To preserve an open discussion environment the WMF Board proper should be the only entity making any decision on any of the proposals; the current SPCom committee would be charged with maintaining the submission system and fulfilling a mentoring and advisory role to applicants such that ideas and proposals stand the greatest chance of adoption.  Attached WMF staff recommendations would also be helpful (but not required).

c) If adopted, all of the current proposals should be categorized as 'ideas' by default. 'Ideas' can be linked to each other as appropriate; 'Proposals' may be meta-structured in a similar fashion if there's competing/opposing proposals.

GChriss (talk) 17:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the real problem is the MediaWiki; many proposals and discussions work fairly well on it. Proposed projects are also getting plenty of comments. The major problem, as I see it, is that after all these comments and discussions, nothing happens. The New project process would work, if the steps it mentions are actually carried out. But since SPCom is supposed to evaluate these proposals, and it doesn't, they just sort of die. -- Ypnypn (talk) 19:56, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The Wikivoyage proposal did recieve a lot of commentary and feedback, including by myself.

For illustrative purposes, which current/archived proposal represents the process working most ideally? GChriss (talk) 20:47, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The process mentioned was just a proposal; it was never actually implemented AFAICT. Wikivoyage didn't use any formalized process; it just had a few dedicated supporters push and push until it was accepted. The SPCom was meant to be a more formalized, standardized method, but since it doesn't do anything... - Ypnypn (talk) 21:32, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't do anything since it does not exist. --MF-W 00:01, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe this is the wrong place ...

... but I hope you don't mind, if I ask you for some advice. I created a draft for a sister project, that is focussed on the needs of children and people, who have certain difficulties in perception. Now I would like to make this project big, but I cannot find an environment for this. The incubator would be perfect, but obviousy they will not accept such a project being no new language version. Can you give me some advice what to do? Greetings --Liberipedia (talk) 16:22, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikijournal or WikiJournal?

Wikiversity Journal is a project in development that would hopefully one day be a separate sister project. It is now being renamed, to either Wikijournal or WikiJournal. We would prefer the latter, but it seems almost all sister project only have the first letter capitalized. If we choose to capitalize the J, would this be a disadvantage for a future consideration as a sister project? Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:07, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I bet it won't be. --MF-W 23:58, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reassurance! Mikael Häggström (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Member interest

I'd be interested in joining. Seeing the process at NonFreeWiki, WikiJournal, Wikispore, and Abstract Wikipedia, I am concerned about the haphazard way this is done. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:52, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

The committee has never been functional.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)