Thanks for bringing this up, Mike. I think WikiReview sounds like a great idea, WikiJournal sounds like it would suffer from a number of very serious flaws, WikiWrite could be interesting, and that there are probably a number of other project ideas that are equally interesting but not necessarily ideal for Wikimedia expansion.
My sense has been that some of the newer projects, including Wikiversity, tend to have limited readership and limited participation. I'd be happy if someone could provide some data to stack against this sense.[1] I think that without making a major splash early on, new Wikimedia projects tend to languish. While projects without widespread popularity are still useful, particularly if they are highly specialized, projects like WikiReview/Journal/Write would depend on public consciousness and participation levels to achieve relevance. We'll agree, I think, that relevance isn't a nice benefit, its essential in order to attract readers and editors. Any new project must meet a heretofore unmet need significant enough to draw an active and self-perpetuating community. It isn't enough, then, to offer a cc-by-sa alternative to a proprietary but sufficient source - we have to be able to do whatever it is better.[2] Wikimedia has done this with fantastic success with Wikipedia, other projects fill smaller but vibrant niches - but we have some that don't meet this sort of criteria, and any new project ought to. Lastly, can we reconsider the naming scheme for future projects? The "wiki-" prefix shouldn't be mandatory. Something like "writereviews.org, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation" could be an interesting alternative to "wikiwrite.org" or "wikireviews.org" that doesn't immediately bring to mind the proliferation of personal wikis on the web. Nathan [1]: The English Wikiversity, for example, has less than 12k "content pages", while the German Wikiversity has only 1800. En.wikiversity has 175k registered users, but only 25 administrators. The English WikiSource, with roughly the same number of users and administrators as en.wikiversity, has ten times as many content pages. [2]: A limited resource of uneven quality is not a preferable substitute for an easily accessible, free-to-use and reliable resource that is owned by a for-profit corporation. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
