Talk:New project proposals group
Sabine Cretella:
One thought on that - or maybe more:
I am quite sure that what already is online from wikipedia to wikisource can include everything.
Of course over time there will be changes in conceiving how information should be subdivided and then linked. When I read the message about the "believe-wiki" I thought: but this is already there ... in the different projects
Robert Horning, in response:
There are some projects, like WikiMusic, just as an example, that offer a very different vision for what could be done, and may even require some slight to substantial programming changes in order for the information to be edited. Of course, such efforts can be folded back onto existing projects, but on an experimental basis my be justified as totally different site.
Another is WikiData, where database type information can be added to existing articles. This is a totally new concept, and does deserve its own "team" to get it going, but this is more a software developer project rather than something more along the lines of a typical Wikimedia project.
I mention these two projects as hard examples of new project proposals that simply can't be accomodated by current projects. They really are very new ideas, and things that would help the community as a whole. And while both of these proposals will introduce some new legal issues, it is not substantially different than what is currently done. This is mainly new technical abilities and being able to do things in a slightly different fashion.
Finally I want to point out wikitree.org
This is an example of a new project proposal that has simply been developed indepenedently, and is also another very clear example of something that simply can't be accomodated by existing projects run by Wikimedia. Indeed it is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia, with even pages deleted because of people not having noteriety. For those not familiar with this site, it is geneological information that is being linked together using the MediaWiki software, but some substantial modifications. I mention this because it has been previously proposed as a new project to be run by the Wikimedia foundation, but instead has moved out on its own, partly because there was no way to push the proposal through. It was on the new project proposal page well before the website turned "live". It has even been left as a "dead" proposal, not even on the main project proposal page. There is merit to a project like this, and there are funding sources as well to help pay for a service like this... long term funding at that. Projects of this kind are also going to bring in some very different people into the community that normally wouldn't be working on things like Wikipedia. BTW, I have also seen several people from Wikimedia projects over there at wikitree, so I know for them at least this isn't a revelation. I do wish the people at Wikitree success and at the moment it is being done completely out of the pocket of the original organizers.
Keep in mind that my proposal is only to more formalize the process of becoming a new Wikimedia project, not to accelerate the process and flooding the Wikimedia Foundation with a whole bunch of unsupported projects. Again, I ask that detractors to this proposal come up with an alterative, and if they simply don't want new projects (with general consensus from the community) state that boldly that simply no new projects will ever be accepted, or will come from channels other than the new project proposal page. Let them know it is an exercise in futility, and that people like Sean Turvey are wasting their breath to even try (or myself for that matter).
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