Foundation-L Proposal

This poll is now closed. Result: foundation-l has been created.

There are currently mailing lists for each Wikimedia project (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource etc.), sometimes in localized versions. There is currently no mailing list for the Wikimedia foundation as a whole.

I (Erik Möller) propose that we create a new Wikimedia mailing list, foundation-l @ wikimedia.org for this purpose. The name is chosen to avoid "Wikipedia/Wikimedia" style typos.

Rationale

foundation-l could be used for:

• the initial planning phase for new projects
• foundation organizational issues
• discussing the setup of local branches of the foundation
• planning elections
• discussion of projects which don't already have a mailing list
• finding ways to raise funds

It could spur a new interest in exchanging ideas about what the Wikimedia Foundation is and what it can do.

Arguments against

We already have too many mailing lists.

• As of March 26, we have one list less (intlwiki-l). Mailing lists are the de facto place to discuss project-wide policies, and a useful method of spreading announcements. Moreover, the reality is that Jimbo, and some other members of the foundation, are not active on some or all Wikipedia projects.
• Until we decide to abandon mailing lists altogether, we should strive for consistency - clearly within our current system, foundation issues are discussed on wikipedia-l, which, after also taking the traffic of intlwiki-l, should not also be used for issues related to other projects.

Voting

Voting will last until Wednesday, March 31, 20:00 UTC. Please use the first few days to translate this page into your local language, or at least post an announcement.

One vote per person. Votes can be changed at any time until the deadline.

Yes, we should create foundation-l

1. —Eloquence 21:55, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
2. mav (only if we merge Wikilegal-l into it)
3. Raul654 22:16, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
4. Kurt Jansson 22:49, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
5. Seth Ilys 01:31, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
6. Angela
7. Sj 04:51, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC) (mos'def)
8. Tomos 05:12, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
9. Fire 11:01, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
10. RoseParks 17:39, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
11. [[User:Alex756|— Alex756 | talk]]
12. Timwi 09:23, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
13. Rename Wikilegal-l -> Foundation-l. That will keep history. Anthere 09:35, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • Could be unfair to existing subscribers, who would be auto-subscribed to the new list even if they don't want to be on it.—Eloquence
    • Could be nice on existing subscribers saving them to subscribe to yet another list :-) And if legal is merge into foundation, we can probably safely assume they will be interested in continuing reading legal stuff moved to another list. Anthere 17:15, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
14. Spikey 19:26, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Other

Wikilegal-l

How would you feel about replacing Wikilegal-L with either a page on Meta, or a page on each local project, e.g. "Wikipedia:Law school", for legal issues? I feel the mailing list format is not useful for asking for advice as you do not want to subscribe to just ask one question, and most of the issues on wikilegal-l will be advice type questions. The one which are not should be better discussed on either foundation-l or wikipedia-l, I agree.—Eloquence

Speaking of which, a alot more talk can and should happen on meta. What we need is a better way to thread discussions on talk pages (or to somehow merge MediaWiki with PHP BBS to create a Meta discussion module). But yes, having most of the legal talk on Meta would be best. --mav

There is already a lot of traffic on the mailing lists, which will increase now that Intlwiki-l has merged with Wikipedia-l. For this reason, I think it is useful to keep Wikilegal-l separate. A lot of people are not interested in legal technicalities, so a separate list is needed rather than forcing these issues on the main list. Angela 01:38, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was talking about moving Wikilegal-l to Meta (ala the Meta:Babel). Most other legal issues are going to pertain Wikimedia-wide, so Foundation-l would be a good place for that. --mav