Sister Projects Committee/Archive

Archived pages

Mailing list

From contributors who previously expressed interest.

Abigor
Amqui
Ebe123
Fajro
GChriss
Jmh649
John Vandenberg
Mahadeva
MF-Warburg
Mono
OhanaUnited
Pharos
PiRSquared17
Przykuta
Saper
Sj
Sp5uhe
Thehelpfulone
Ziko
Aschmidt
Odisha1
Hubertl
Micru
LauraHale
Base

Historical considerations

Previous discussion on the foundation-I (now wikimedia-I) mailing list regarding the need for a Sister Projects Committee noted the below areas for cross-wiki improvement. While they are out-of-scope for this proposal, relevant information is archived here for reference.

Superseded

Since 2012, when this proposal was initially created, some improvements to cross-wiki collaboration have arisen! Many of these were concerns brought up in the original document.

Conferences:
- Can be archived on Commons; previous proposal for a separate wiki
- MediaWiki extension proposal
- Event Registration tool, a project of the WMF (current spiritual successor)
Research papers and citations:
- Acawiki and WikiScholar proposals
- WikiCite is the spiritual successor
OmegaWiki was proposed several times; its spiritual successor is Wiktionary
Working with re-users of Wikimedia data to discover their needs
- Wikimedia Enterprise
- The Strategy wiki was closed, reducing maintenance and anti-vandalism work.
- Global user pages, CSS and JS!
- Global watchlist
- Community Tech's annual Community Wishlist Survey, plus WMDE's similar survey
- Abstract Wikipedia / Wikifunctions was approved by the Board as a new project
  - this is a crazy idea at first. Maybe even more crazy than our other projects. And the only way there is a chance of us being successful is, if, eventually, thousands of us work together on it. The only way this worked in the past is by being open, start out collaboratively, discuss the path forward, and work towards creating the project together.(from Abstract Wikipedia/Historic proposal). Back in 2013 when the Abstract Wikipedia proposal was created, it might seem crazy that in the future a whole WMF team would be dedicated to working on it, but that is the reality today! Liaising with the WMF is not just about the approval process, it can also mean utilizing Foundation resources to support the project.
- Wikijournal was submitted to the Board for approval
Movement Strategy Forum:
- During previous discussions for SisterCom, some commented that they would like to see the Committee conduct "project interviews" and "project reviews" that listen to community members, especially those belonging to smaller wikis, regarding the wiki's needs and concerns. Today, this would be best accomplished through usage of the Movement Strategy Forum.

"project interviews": talk to each project and identify the support that its community expects from the WMF and from other Projects. We all often hear that everything-other-than-en.WP-is-ignored but if we had some published/agreed expectations that would make it much easier to see what was needed.
"project reviews": review how each project is working, and what open problems it has; is it growing or not, does it have other perennial problems. identify needs and possibilities. "what would an evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut down such a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money in promoting it?"

Current

These initiatives still have relevance today and should be considered.

Merge of Wikispecies with the Encyclopedia of Life (many EOL contributors also contribute to Wikispecies)
Coordination of Wikispecies with Wikipedia and/or merging
Improving the translation system
Acquiring various domains and redirecting them; en.wiki is already owned by WMF but should redirect, [langcode].wiki, etc
WikiEducator and Wikiversity have the same mission, and would benefit from being merged; 'who hosts the site' is a minor issue compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus across two wikis.
The Outreach wiki and Meta have similar goals. A merge could be helpful (links to proposal, discussion).
Visibility: change "Wikimedia" bottom nav link to wikimedia.org, instead of wikimediafoundation.org - more visibility for sister projects, and wikimedia.org has a link back to WMF anyways
- Change "chapters" to "affiliates"
- Sort by pageviews, similar to wikipedia.org
- Center WMF logo

Related research

Eloquence's presentation at Wikimania 2010 on sister projects. Notably, it underscores the importance of strategic analysis and consultation with sister projects in their needs.

Quotes from supporters

Although our flagship project is highly successful, it would be good if we try to keep creating new communities. I have been sad for quite a while now that we don't create new projects any more. It would be great to see one new project every year :)

I had suggested earlier that we might even run this as an annual thing, with a Wikimania-style bidding process for the new sister projects.