Talk:Closure of WMF projects

Moving projects to the incubator

Thanks a lot for taking the initiative to address this issue!

It should be further clarified what exactly should go to the incubator.

1. I would propose that only the payload is considered. User pages and village pump contents should not be preserved, unless the community requests so.
2. What is going to happen with projects that have no content other than the Main Page (one example being Kanuri, others do exists)? I do not think that we need a collection of orphaned main pages on the incubator.

These are rare cases, these few pages don't hurt, imho better keep them so as to preserve history.

1. Since moving pages to another wiki erases their version history, this brings up the question of copyright. I understand that contributions are owned by whoever made them. If it cannot be traced back any longer, than this would constitute a GFDL violation. Is there a technical way of preserving the history?--Johannes Rohr 09:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

We have now incubator:I:Importing which also preserves the history. --MF-Warburg 14:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Decision making process, wrt to "non-strict" issues

I welcome the proposal to handle the decisions not via public voting. The rows over the Siberian and Moldovan wikis are most undesirable situations which should best be avoided. However, I strongly favour a process which is fully transparent at all stages.

As a rule, the arbitration committee will have to take advise from non-members, for the simple reason, that usually, no member will be able to understand the language the particular project is written in. I do not really expect any proposals to close projects in more common languages, such as English, French, Chinese or German. Most proposals will deal with lesser known, sometimes barely codified or even constructed languages. Therefore the requirement for external advise should be considered in the policy. --Johannes Rohr 09:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Dealing with really small wikis

Looking back at the discussions regarding the proposed closure of inactive and dead wikis, I would suggest, that those clearly orphaned or stillborn wikis should be dealt with summarly, rather than on individual basis. This is just so time-consuming, and it takes half a year or more to get a single dead wiki off the SWMT list. I propose that wikis above a certain age (e.g. > 2 years), below a certain threshhold (e.g. < 10 legitimate articles), without active admins should be killed without a lengthy procedure. Else, cleaning up the wiki space might literally take centuries. --Johannes Rohr 15:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't sleep!

This is a quite interesting proposal, why does it sleep? Anyone still interested in it? (Me yes.) --Thogo (talk) 14:07, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Too many unclarities.

Imho, a pretty large proportion of the proposal is worded in a way that renders it unusable. It is not easily enough understood. But easy understandability is a must. You want to get cooperation of people whose native language is not english, and/or who will have to resort to translations and have to react based upon them.

Addressing clarity, and fairness:

Any unclear request will not be considered. A month will be reserved to get the request worded in a way that is clearly understood.

OK. But:

This month is also available to address the issues raised.

Sorry, NO! While this overlap should not be disallowed to be used, of course, you must allow a fair amount of time after clarification, so as to address the issue. Everything else was simply not fair, so (following the existing trait)

Another month is available to address the issues raised, once they have been clarified.

Imho, if ongoing discussion warrants it, or there are changes underways which likely lead to changed assessments, sufficient time must be allocated that these can be incorporated in the final findings.

In order to not accidentally, or purposely, circumvent a community getting sufficiently involved, I'd even suggest a requirement to address all, or a sufficient amount, of the more active users of a project in the projekt language in a certain way, such as per community page(s) and on their talk pages and via e-mail, etc. e.g.

I have problems to see the necessity of yet another committee, especially since the committee cannot be assumed to be sufficiently well informed, and uniformly well informed, about the peculiatites of all specific small languages and their individual peculiarities, etc. etc. But if committee members are not, then fair, and just, treatment is likely not guaranteed.

Greetings. --Purodha Blissenbach 23:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Notes

When I read:

it may mean that content is deleted;

I'd like to annotate that, deleting content, edit history, and author informations of edits which are in line with the wiki charter or denomination, may be seen as an infringement of the GDFL, so we should try to avoid it. --Purodha Blissenbach 09:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)