Talk:Wikimedia.org/2012 proposal

• Excellent idea. It is a pain having so many seperate wikis. It makes searching for stuff harder. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

• I think in general this is a good direction. Makes a lot of sense from movement branding and end-user experience perspectives. Would merging Wikimania also be worthwhile if we're going to consider the Events namespace? Perhaps a Wikimania namespace as well? I imagine there are, but for sake of discussion, reasons to not also consider the incubator? This would also be a nice and logical place for an additional Teahouse or Ask.wikimedia.org (Q&A site) style concept to help house broad help for smaller WMF projects and end-users of third-party wikis running MW. --Varnent (talk) 03:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

• Can't see any major problem with the proposed merger, but multiple benefits. Would like to see a Journal namespace as well. -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 03:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

• +1. The idea of some of these namespaces (like moving old things to the Attic) sounds extremely useful. The less needless cross-wiki work we have to do the better. The number of man hours wasted at the Foundation alone on which wiki we should use would boggle the mind. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:35, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

In general this looks like a pretty good proposal (much as I hate to give up the design at https://www.wikimedia.org, I just reworked it!).

But I'm worried about turf issues a bit. Meta-Wiki has always been the Wikimedia community's wiki and it's very old and established. It has a quirkiness about it and—much as people hate to admit it—even a small community within it. I worry about Meta-Wiki becoming a central hub of Wikimedia Foundation projects and initiatives.

As much as I've advocated having fewer wikis (for a lot of reasons), I worry about the consequences of Meta-Wiki being hijacked. Its quirky character and charm are at stake, I think. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

I personally don't accept the distinction between the community and the Foundation that you just made: the community made the Foundation, community members work for the Foundation, and the Board that runs the Foundation is mostly from the community.

But to answer your actual concern... I don't think as long as there are volunteer admins and Stewards running amok (I mean that in a good way) that the Wikimedia Foundation is going run herd over Meta or whatever we call it. And I don't think anyone would accept taking away people's well-earned sysop bits as part of any migration to a new domain. For things that should seriously not be edited by volunteers, we have wikimediafoundation.org (though even there folks like yourself have accounts and edit). We put things here and on MediaWiki.org because we want volunteers to read and edit them, not because we are in need of "our own" wiki. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:23, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

Regarding "I don't accept the distinction", well, durr. You work for the Wikimedia Foundation. They've even branded your account name with it. I think we knew where you were going to come out on this one.

I wasn't really talking about adminship and things of that nature, though of course that's an issue as well. In this post, I was talking about Meta-Wiki's quirkiness and character and how I think both are in jeopardy of being damaged by this. I have a few other points to raise regarding this proposal, but I'm still working on articulating them clearly. There are a lot of underlying issues that have to be examined that aren't readily apparent with this idea. Technical problems, social problems, organizational problems, etc.

I'm not sure what you meant by "We put things here and on MediaWiki.org because we want volunteers to read and edit them, not because we are in need of "our own" wiki." --MZMcBride (talk) 04:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

On the last point I made: it seems like one of your concerns is that WMF staff want to iron out the weird parts of Meta. I just wanted to point out that staff aren't necessarily here to standardize a wiki and smooth out its rough edges so that it makes sense for us. We're here because Wikimedians are here. For example: having a page like keywords actually doesn't do any of our work any harm, even if it's possibly "quirky" to have a page criticizing our language on the same wiki where a lot of those terms are used in reports. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

I don't think that's his concern, Steven. I also don't ever recall having an impression that WMF staff can iron out the weird parts of any wiki. I don't know what you are referring to in "a page criticizing our language" - The fact of the matter is, WMF staff are on this wiki and have been, this proposal, would not affect them in the slightest. The concern here is for everyone else, the translators, the stewards, the global flag holders, who have been using this wiki for several years. It is pretty old, a rename and move, would in no way be an easy task. There are several implications covering several other wikis, policy pages, that need to be considered first. There is also an existing community here. I don't see anyone of them commenting or supporting this proposal above. They should carry the most weight. As far as merging dead wikis go, I am all for it, just without renaming or changing Meta, if possible. Theo10011 (talk) 06:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

I support merging strategy and outreach, but I oppose a renaming to wikimedia.org only. Meta should remain to be called Meta because that's just what it is: A place where the members from all projects can meet in a meta environment. I couldn't tell a reason to change it.--Aschmidt (talk) 09:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

I also support merging the old wikis to Meta, but I don't support the rename. It would require lots of resources to re-educate and re-link pages (yes it would work technically, but we would still want to re-linklots of stuff) without a clear benefit. MBisanz ^talk 20:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC)\Reply

• I think strategy and outreach should be just merged into Meta, and I do not see why renaming is necessary. Btw strategy uses liquid threads, which must go after merging, and one needs to take care of this (how to replace LT with mediawiki hypertext preserving the histories).--Ymblanter (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

So I started one of "those other wikis" that everyone is so down on, ten.wikipedia.org, and the plan we followed through with was closing the wiki when it was not needed anymore, and then keeping it in read-only form for perpetuity as a document about the 10th anniversary. Considering that, but for a few exceptions, strategy wiki is a document of the 2009-10 strategic planning process, I would suggest that one option would be to simply make it locked and transwiki import the select few pages we really want to keep editing. Just one alt idea. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

That sounds like a reasonable approach for the Strategy wiki. Are there any pages worth interwiki importing from ten under this proposed model? Should these sites just be taken down, redirected and archived in the Attic namespace? --Varnent (talk) 04:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

Re: SW, I think the Proposal: namespace ought to be moved over, as well as some other selected pages. I agree that the rest can probably just be made read-only.--Eloquence (talk) 04:58, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

Varnet: we already imported World Heritage and a few other things I think. In terms of other imports, we discussed a lot of transwiki questions on the village pump already. One idea in particular was seeding an events namespace with the few hundred anniversary pages, but there were some objections to that. In any case, I think tenwiki is one that should actually not be put in the Attic, because it has a special Main Page, FAQ, Village Pump, and some other features that would seem weird being imported entirely. Or maybe I'm just attached to the little wiki still. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

We've been discussing this on the Sister Projects Committee and brainstorming ideas. You can look at the etherpad links to see what we've been up to so far, we're working on tidying that up and moving it on to Meta soon. The Helpful One 13:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

I think it would be easier if Wikimedia.org redirects to meta main page. I would propose this. I would support the coping of less than active wikis such as strategy wiki to here. We should just create a new namespace rather than a new wiki in most cases. Consider meta an incubator for backend projects. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 06:04, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply

• I am strongly against this restructuring. There are 2 issues here, the dead wikis and Meta. Meta, still has very much of it's own identity and community. This process can not go on without giving weight to the existing community's opinion here first. It is used primarily by stewards, translators and cross-project work, it doesn't need to be renamed or superseded. If the intention is to find a home for the dead wiki, then adding a redirect to Meta, or creating a central page for dead wikis would have been a better solution. Theo10011 (talk) 06:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply
• I agree with Theo here. Meta is a very active project and cannot be merged or renamed just if we feel like that. I remember I raised the issue once on #wikimedia about why we are using the URL wikimedia.org in the channel topic. Because that domain does not give anything useful other than links. I proposed to use the URL wikimediafoundation.org instead. And per this I propose wikimedia.org to be redirected to wikimediafoundation.org or make that page an interactive portal but leave Meta as is. — [ Tanvir | Talk ] 11:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply
• I don't support the merging of wikis into meta because Meta-Wiki is not a storage room nor the trash where you can send dead wikis to rest in peace forever here. I don't support the rename of meta per Theo above. —Marco Aurelio (audiencia) 20:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply
• I also object to, and oppose, the rename of meta - www.wikimedia.org currently serves as a block selection / index of all the wikis which the WMF operate - to lose that index, unless an alternative was put in place, would possibly make things more difficult for people. Usability and all that jazz? :) BarkingFish (talk) 21:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC) Reply