On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 12:24 PM Samuel Klein <[email protected]> wrote:
> I see no reason to shut down projects, nor to tell participants to stop > collaborating on X in the spirit of a Wiki. > Unfortunately, in theory, projects in zombie mode should not pose a problem on their own. In practice, they do affect our guidance to users in other projects and often results in poor, contradictory or confusing advice. At least in English Wikipedia, Wikinews keeps being referred to as a legitimate place to steer people, either out of aspirational hope or ignorance of just how dormant Wikinews is. Just peruse the Wikinews Recent Changes log, and on most any given day you're hard pressed to find any meaningful edits. The bulk of the changes are automated talk page additions, spam blocking, or maintenance edits. On the English WP:NOT page, we are serving users poorly by promoting the fantasy that it is a legit companion to Wikipedia when we know it is not the case. In the spirit of comity, we tend not to detail the hard truths about the deficiency of projects. (Actually we don't really have good ways to put anything in review or probationary status.) Instead, when well-meaning editors try the softer approach of removing over-enthusiastic endorsement of failed projects in policy pages, we see the edit warring below. Should we be OK with directing people in good faith to Wikinews in its known failure state? -Andrew --- Over the years, it has been revert city regarding conflicting advice on Wikinews in en:WP:NOTNEWS: Wikinews is not a place to steer people: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=763544913&oldid=763543985&diffmode=source Yes it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=763547213&oldid=763544913&diffmode=source No it isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=869215367&oldid=868178515&diffmode=source Yes, it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=869218732&oldid=869215507&diffmode=source No it isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=892851061&oldid=892427747&diffmode=source Yes it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=892895993&oldid=892851061&diffmode=source And so on. -- -Andrew Lih Author of The Wikipedia Revolution US National Archives Citizen Archivist of the Year (2016) Knight Foundation grant recipient - Wikipedia Space (2015) Wikimedia DC - Outreach and GLAM Previously: professor of journalism and communications, American University, Columbia University, USC --- Email: [email protected] WEB: https://muckrack.com/fuzheado PROJECT: Wikipedia Space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WPSPACE _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
