Proposals for new projects/process

Promoting or removing proposals

suggestion by Diez2

Some of these proposals are dating back to summer 2006, making it impossible to contact the proposer about the proposal because he/she isn't really watching the proposal anymore. Also, some of these proposals have 30+ users supporting it, while some others have none. Is there a set criteria for promoting and/or removing these proposals? Diez2 18:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

If not, I propose that we give any and all future proposals 3 months (1 month for projects nominated beyond 3 months ago at time of passage) to accumulate 20 or more users wishing to join the project. Also, that proposal must not violate any policy concerning project proposals here on meta.

• If a project hits the 20 user threshold, then that project is given space on the Wikimedia Incubator (or some other "incubator") for 1 year to grow and develop the new wiki.
• Afterwards, the final proposal would be brought before the entire Wikimedia community for inclusion as a Wikimedia project. Diez2 18:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

For the record, as I said in another place already, I oppose. Incubator has a policy that it should be a new version of official existing Wikimedia project. You cannot change it without any discussion with incubator editors. --Aphaia 13:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Can we at least agree on a policy for removing some of the items? Sitting around forever does no good, and there are some items that just won't ever be promoted. For example, Wiki Simplify already exists in the form of the Simple English Wikipedia and has been sitting around since January, while WikiCook is redundant to Wikibooks:cookbook and was submitted in May. I can understand the proposing editor getting pissed off at a quick dismissal of their ideas, but at the same time, sifting through so many dead proposals is a bit of a waste. EVula // talk // 15:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the process should be that if a consensus is reached against establishment of the project on the project talk page, then the proposal will be considered rejected, and it will be removed from the list. 71.114.79.165 22:14, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Strong support for concept. This is the type of proposal that definitely needs to be implemented if we are ever going to see innovative new Wikimedia projects started. We have to deal with that backlog.--Pharos 03:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

support. These proposals don't seem to be going anywhere. There needs to be a mechanism for categorising proposals, for merging similar proposals. for editing and developing proposals. This suggests each proposal needs a page where it can be developed until it is ready to call for discussion. Discussion would be a bit like feature article nomination and a bit like deletion discussion. Conclusion could be that tit's a good idea but should be within an existing project: That it's a good idea but outside our remit and they should do it elsewhere; that it's a terrible idea; that there is the germ of an idea there but it's needs further work ot even that it's a great idea and we should go ahead.85.133.32.66 16:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Strongly against It is the board that approved new projects. When you build a procedure that takes this away, you will get all kinds of project proposals where people say; "we have build our incubator project, we have content and community and now we should be allowed to go life." It just does not work that way. This does not mean that we should not allow for new projects or approaches, this way is just not going to work. GerardM 10:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no process currently. We need something like the language proposals, where there is an initial evaluation in a timely period, and the failed ones are archived quickly, when they fail to receive initial support. That reform alone would enormously reduce the backlog. But certainly, just because something gets in the incubator doesn't mean it should be passed. There would of course be a harsher review of the proposed project after the incubator period, and no expectation of success just because people put work into something.--Pharos 23:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

No there is no process. So you either are creative and make your project happen or nothing happens. There is no committee procedure that makes something happen. Consider what happened with Wikiversity, the last new project, it took dedicated effort over a long time for it to be realised. GerardM 08:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Support

• Many of them are 'verbatim' duplicates of other proposed/running projects, or can be integrated in them;
• others are not suitable to be under the Wikimedia 'umbrella', and would be better as stand-alone wikis;
• only a few are really interesting and useful (at least for me) and would benefit the other projects.

Also, we should encourage other users from WP, Commons, etc. to vote and make suggestions on proposed projects, so we can quickly reject 'bad' projects, integrate duplicate projects into others, and promote 'good' projects, which should be given the proper space. --Ricordisamoa 17:45, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

soft-pruning proposal

by Sj

Rather than adding layers of bureaucracy that will be monitored by rules laywers and potentially used to delete useful proposals that have only 15 supporters and a 30-article demo rather than 20 supporters and 50 pages, let's just clean. up.

I took 3 hours and created a new template, and applied it to half of the projects here. I made the cutoff for "top of the page" proposals a bit stricter: an active demo site and over 10 supporters. And I added archive pages for proposals that are repetetive or inactive (mergingb with a previous list). We don't have that many new proposals; this sort of cleanup isn't that hard. Someone just has to do it. If we spend as much time on basic cleanup as on these arguments about /how/ to cleanup (or how to shut down the process, as per recent RfD), it will start to function again. Now let's get back to discussing *how* to implement the strongly-supported projects on this page. +sj | help with translation |+ 05:56, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

A more "wiki" proposal idea

Instead of proposals why not just allow anything inside some sort of sandbox. Those things that show promise and people like are made into projects. Everything else can be archived and eventually thrown away or deleted. The current proposal method is too formal. We need a way of trying out new ideas instead of just junking ideas before we have tested them. A posteriori, not a priori. Always make judgments after you have experience not before.

Unclear

I have read through these pages following a suggestion by Jimmy Wales that this policy might be used to determine if the Schools Wikipedia is a Wikimedia Foundation project or not. I guess that the same issues apply to the Release Version series. However this is all worded as though the projects are of a nature like Wikipedia: i.e. generating content. Projects to distribute content (which seem to be equally important and there are proposals all over the place) don't seem to fit here. Should they? I could create a section for them. Or not (in which case where do they go)? --BozMo 13:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

revival

I posted this to Foundation-l in response to a nice critique of the process by Laura Hale of FanHistory; I'd like to see this discussion revived.

Regardless of the merits of FanHistory itself -- and I agree with the criticisms others have brought forth for whether the project should join the WMF -- Laura's criticisms of process are legitimate. For all intents and purposes, there is no process for proposing new projects, whether home-grown or brought in from outside.

Yes, Wikiversity was created in 2006; it was also pushed through by some extraordinarily dedicated editors (especially user:Cormaggio) who were willing to take part in meta-discussions for *years*. It was also created under the aegis of the Special Projects Committee (meta:SPC for those who don't remember), which worked with the Wikiversity editors and brought forth a proposal to the Board after much back-and-forth.

The SPC doesn't exist anymore, and there's not really anything to take its place (such as it was) that I'm aware of. Even with an expanded Foundation staff, it's unclear what area such proposals would fall under: new projects aren't business development, and they're not really outreach either. High-level strategic development? But clearly not all proposals are created equal, and not all are of potential interest, and not all are fully developed. And it's not at all clear to me that this kind of discussion/decision should even go through the office or board, at least initially; it's really undefined what "the community" (whatever that means) wants in terms of WMF projects.

To my knowledge, there hasn't been a good discussion on the topic of new projects in the community in a long while; I don't know if there has been in board or staff discussions. Questions that I'd like to see discussed on a large scale are:

• Do we want any new projects? Right now? In the future? Ever?
• If so, do we only want projects that follow traditional reference book models of organizing information? (e.g. Wikiquote, which follows the model of books of quotations)
• or perhaps only educational projects?
• do all projects have to follow NPOV? What about the other guidelines: NOR, V?
• do we only want projects we start ourselves, or would we consider projects started by other organizations?

And yes, this could go on the strategy wiki -- but I don't know of a good, unstructured place to have a discussion about such things there (that isn't a specific proposal or strategic objective or whatever). To that end, I'd like to try and revive this meta page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects/process

which was started last summer then faded out.

And yes, Laura, to your specific question: if you want to see anything happen with your project anytime soon, I wouldn't pick the WMF. Whether this is a failing of a disorganized, bureaucratic system, or a benefit of a deliberative, community-based system, I leave as an exercise to the reader. -- phoebe 05:07, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I find myself very much in agreement with Phoebe's call for a renewed look at developing a process for new WMF projects.

I think that in considering future steps, one middle option that may be considered is the "virtual wiki", the namespace-specific subproject that may be hosted at a larger project while still developing its own specific norms.

Consider the Wikiversity and Wikijunior projects, both started as "virtual wikis" on Wikibooks. Wikiversity eventually took its own path, while Wikijunior after some discussion was still felt to be best as part of the mother wiki.

I feel that this Wikiversity/Wikijunior model could prove valuable again in the development of new types of WMF reference works, whether they may be also hosted as subprojects of Wikibooks or perhaps of another project.--Pharos 02:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Strategic planning

There is/was a task force working on this: strategy:Task force/Content scope. --Nemo 12:22, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

A related process proposal

Posted back at Talk:Proposals for new projects. –SJ talk | translate   06:04, 11 July 2011 (UTC)