We're discussing setting up an "Affiliation committee" to oversee simple, low-overhead wikimedia affiliates and associations. These could be organizations 'under the umbrella' of free knowledge -- requiring just basic review of their work and standards to confirm they are in line with our basic principles. [1]
Wikimedia Associations could be individual wikiprojects, clubs, or meetups run by one or more people that want to establish a lasting identity as part of the movement. Third-party wikis and larger groups could be Wikimedia Affiliates. Both could use web-badges and icons to identify them with the movement (derived from the WM community logo?). SJ [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_roles_project/New_group_models On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Alec Conroy <alecmcon...@gmail.com> wrote: > Prompted by discussions in another thread, I ask a related question-- > > ;1-- A roadmap towards affiliation > > How should a currently-unaffiliated project go about becoming 'part > of' Wikimedia? > > One easy step they could take would be to simply say, on their > website, "This site considers itself to be part of the Wikimedia > Movement". (alternate text welcome ) > > Later, a self-identified affiliate could be formally designated as > "part of the Wikimedia Movement" by the global community or the > foundation or both. > > Such recognition would have lots of benefits for the new projects that > share our values-- other WM projects would know to visibly link to > them whenever they have relevant content (as we currently do across > WMF projects). We could permit access to the unified login, we could > allow template-sharing or image-sharing. We could set up > interwiki-linking, and other interoperability functions. > > Such recognition would have even bigger benefits for us. We could > get an affiliation with an established, successful project that shares > our values. The kinds of project that we would build ourselves if > someone else hadn't already built it. Their userbases and readership > would see get to Wikimedia as something larger than just WP, and it > would help cement public understanding that Wikimedia is a Movement, > very big, very diverse, and very special. > > ; 2-- We need a name for self-identified project affiliation. > > External projects needs to be able to claim, on their own initiative, > that they are "part of" something. That something should be a > something that is connected to us. > > But self-identified affiliation has no gatekeeper, so whatever it is > new projects can be "part of", there could be lots that we don't > approve of. > > I'm the founder of a project and I want signal my ideological > affiliation to WM. I think my own project's values match the > Wikimedia's values, in my opinion anyway. > > Recognizing that I may or may not be right-- what should I say I am a > "part of"? > > We could just tell projects in this situation to say they are "Part of > the Wikimedia Movement", but perhaps that name is one we want to > reserve just for officially recognized projects. If so, what name > should such projects use instead? > > Note that they need to be saying something different than just "I like > Wikipedia, here's a link". They need to be _identifying_ their own > efforts as _under the umbrella_ of what we do. They need to be > "investing" in us and our mission, saying "This project is our attempt > to help share the world's information". > > Right now, I think we can craft any statement, logo, or button we want > and like-minded projects would use it if prompted. We just have to > be thoughtful about what we want those things to look like. We will > no longer have total control over whichever name or logos we recommend > projects use for self-identified affiliation. > > So that's my question -- what should third-party wikis say they are > "part of", if they want to express a connection to us? > > Alec > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
