Talk:Proposals for closing projects/Archive 2

Archives

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1, 2

Archive 1 (before 2010)

Thai Wikinews <500 edits/year

Much as it pains me, I think it's pretty conclusive that the Thai Wikinews should be closed. See here for all edits within the last 365 days.

I can't write in Thai, so I'm not sure exactly where to alert the project to impending deletion. Can someone who reviews the above list of non-bot edits (<500 in a year) and knows some Thai alert them to this? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:35, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Old proposals

I have noticed that there are proposals dating back a few years with Burmese Wiktionary open since 16 August 2007. Of course, the Burmese Wiktionary page, the Dzongkha Wikipedia, the Tatar Wikipedia page and Chechen Wikipedia pages seem like they should be kept. However, many are floating about for a long time. Perhaps a change to how this system works. I propose to add the following to the content page:

1. All proposals that have less than 10 votes after a six month period from when they were first proposed will be closed without prejudice or determination of outcome. This will be determined as a keep per lack of discussion, and there will be no statement against restarting the discussion.

I would like to also propose the following:

2. All closes are provided with a closing date on the form (and carried over into the archive) and proposals are archived after a standard period of 7 days.

I think that would help make things run a little smoother and get more activity on individual pages instead of allowing some of the proposals to just drag on forever. Ottava Rima 01:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

These ideas look reasonable. Ruslik 16:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Support this process. ++Lar: t/c 15:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Pmlineditor ∞ 15:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

• To add, with the 7 days archiving, a section in the archive will contain those not yet locked at the top. Ottava Rima 01:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Mandatory warnings -- please ratify

It has been asserted that the line Proposals with no fair warnings to the projects will be ignored was added by an IP and can therefore be ignored. I hereby ask for formal ratification.

• Support Makes sense. Seb az86556 19:35, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support, agree. It's unfair that wikis (some with sizeable communities) can be in the dark for months that they could be shut down any minute, as with the Sotho Wikipedia. They should be given a chance to defend themselves IMHO. Tempodivalse [talk] 20:34, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support Per Tempodivalse --WizardOfOz ^talk 20:45, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support I think that the more relevant point was that the rule had no prior discussion, not whether it was added by an IP or a registered account. In any case, it makes sense to require warnings to ensure that it doesn't come as a surprise to the community if the project is closed. Jafeluv 22:04, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose so that this vote does not end unanimously. -- Prince Kassad 22:09, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment ratification for the sentence or the current version? As there is another IP added paragraph: [1] Bennylin 11:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement of what happens after closure

A recent addition to the description of common practices (not a policy), describing what happens after closure, did not appear to me to be entirely correct in a couple respects.

1. It is implied that a closed project cannot be deleted due to the GFDL and CC-BY-SA. Exercising permission to publish contributors' work under the applicable licenses does not create an obligation to continue publishing the work in perpetuity. Individual pages are routinely deleted from Wikimedia sites every day, and a difference in scale does not imply a difference in principle.
2. The unqualified statement that closed projects will be imported to the Incubator is overbroad. This only applies to content that meets Incubator policy and is potentially useful for a future WMF project. Sometimes projects are adopted at non-Wikimedia sites without being staged at the Incubator.

I have revised the paragraph accordingly, with some further elaborations, in an attempt to describe what appear to have been the common practices. The resulting language is rather indefinite about what will ultimately happen to a closed project, and intentionally implies that "long enough" is not a commitment for all eternity. Further clarification would be welcome, but it is hard to be precise about a procedure that is largely ad hoc, as disclaimed in bold red italics at the top of the page. ~ Ningauble 03:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess a dev could better answer this question. My knowledge of how a wiki is closes is that a dev locks its database and thus only stewards can edit it. But in the past projects have been also deleted: Proposals for closing projects/Deletion of Siberian Wikipedia & Proposals for closing projects/Deletion of Toki Pona Wikimedia projects are two examples.

I think that the content should only be imported to the incubator where that content can be useful and meets Incubator policies and guidelines.

-- Dferg ^{☎ talk} 10:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

German Wikiversity

Hmm. OK, it doesn't look like the German Wikiversity has been officially closed (AFAICT), so why does de.wikiversity.org return an error saying "wiki does not exist"? - dcljr (talk) 04:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Works okay for me... QU ^TalkQu 09:44, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just about to say it was back now. Anyone know what happened? - dcljr (talk) 09:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The weird thing is, the German Wikiversity was the only Wikimedia wiki (of the 790 I track the daily stats of) that was affected. - dcljr (talk) 09:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

how can i list my proposal on a separate subpage

how can i do this? can anyone help, please? Vincentangeles005 (talk) 14:04, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Close Wikinews completely, all languages?

I thought about formally proposing the closure of Wikinews in its entirety, after doing quite a lot of research on the usefulness of its language versions. But as this would be an unconventionally far-reaching proposal, I thought it would be best to ask for opinions here first. The following is a rough draft of what I would have written in a closure proposal:

This proposal may seem radical, but it is made after careful examination of all language versions of Wikinews. Although I don't read most languages, with the help of online translators the basic picture is clear enough and the same as in English Wikinews for all languages: Even where there is some activity, the site is simply not useful as a news source from a user point of view. The list of news in March 2013 in English Wikinews may serve as an example for this. The fact alone that for several days of the month, there are no news whatsoever might lead us to question the usefulness for people who want to read current news. The only news for March 6 to March 9 is Wikinews interviews British scientist Dr Paul Dolman about proposal to cull deer population - a valiant effort to provide some original content, but a random interview about a random topic as the only content for days isn't exactly what I would expect from a news site. And for most of the very meagre news content at Wikinews people turn better to other sites to get the news quicker and more completely than the re-telling at Wikinews. My findings for the individual language versions are, as of March 25, 2013:

• Arabic (ar): News archive lists a total of 17 news for March 2013 as of March 25 which were easily accessible on other news sites. Basically the same situation as English Wikinews, plus a lack of original reporting.
• Bulgarian (bg): Very old "news" on the main page (a "top story" about a solar airplane is from 2010, the "newsticker" has news from October 2012) and at the start there is a link to a "Current events" page on Bulgarian Wikipedia for current events... project looks pretty dead to me.
• Bosnian (bs): The only news in March 2013 so far is the election of Pope Francis. And the only news in February is the abdication of his predecessor. An obviously dead project, too.
• Catalan (ca): A bit more activity with at least one news item per day (for most days, only one), but this is also far from being a useful news source. If you look for Catalan news, "one to four random items per day" Wikinews certainly isn't what you're going to use - and, for example, on March 3 the four items were nothing but rugby results.
• Czech (cs): The only individual news article for March according to Kategorie:Březen 2013 seems to be the one about the election of the new Pope. There is, however, a kind of "daily chronicle", as it seems, with pages like 4. březen 2013, but missing for some days.
• German (de): Situation very similar to English Wikinews. A few random-seeming news items per month, such as (of course) the election of Pope Francis, or a shooting in Göttingen.
• Greek (el): Level of activity seems similar to Catalan Wikinews, i.e. content is still too sparse and random to be of much use.
• English (en): See description in introductory text. A particularly sad example.
• Esperanto (eo): Dead project. Three news items in March, eo-Wikinews not even managed to report the otherwise ubiquitous papal election...
• Spanish (es): See Catalan and Greek Wikinews. Still the same basic picture.
• Farsi (fa): Was difficult for me, as there doesn't seem to be an equivalent of the categorizing by month used in other Wikinews language versions, and Google Translate doesn't offer Farsi... but the Recent Changes list doesn't seem to indicate much more activity than in other Wikinews language versions.
• Finnish (fi): Pretty dead. Latest news item is from March 8 (as it seems, a list of the nominees for a Finnish fantasy award).
• French (fr): Seems to be one of the most "active" Wikinews sites, but "active" only in comparison to all those nearly contentless Wikinews language versions... One to eight items per day are still not creating a useful news source, and one of them is an often very meagre "chronicle" page like Évènements_du_9_mars_2013.
• Hebrew (he): Five news items in March so far, the last was the papal election. No news last week. Not useful.
• Italian (it): Zero to three news items per day. On most days, if there are any news at all, they're only football results. Only a few other news are mixed in... did I already mention the papal election? ;-)
• Japanese (ja): As of March 25, there are only eleven news items in March, therefore many days without any.
• Korean (ko): It seems that the latest news dates from February 23 and there was nothing to report in March...
• Norwegian, bokmål (no): Warns on its start page that Wikinews currently has "little activity" and indeed seems to have more or less stopped in 2012, with "news" on the start page going back as far as 2009. One of the "top stories" is Whitney Houston's death in February, 2012(!)
• Polish (pl): Level of activity similar to Catalan/Greek/Spanish Wikinews with one to four articles per day.
• Portuguese (pt): Similar to above, though several days without any news at all (e.g. March 7 to 9 and 14 to 16).
• Romanian (ro): Very dead. In 2013, so far only three articles in January, none in February and one in March.
• Albanian (sq): Inactive/dead. News on the main page are all from 2012.
• Swedish (sv): Very little activity. Top story is from January; there's only one from March on the start page (March 10, death of Princess Lilian).
• Tamil (ta): Similar to Catalan Wikinews, one or two articles for each day of March as of March 25.
• Thai (th): Project already closed in 2011, see Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Thai Wikinews
• Turkish (tr): Very little activity; top news on start page are from February. Only one news item for March so far, which is tagged for speedy deletion as advertising.
• Ukrainian (uk): Similar to French Wikinews, a bit more active.
• Chinese (zh): Very little activity. Only three news items in March so far.

• There are two exceptions that may be close to a working news site: Russian (ru) and Serbian (sr) Wikinews. Every day in March has seen several news items for those, 4 to 12 at Russian Wikinews. That's not overwhelming, too, but these may be exceptions worth continuing - maybe on a different platform? The Ukrainian Wikinews mentioned above shows also a bit more activity than most Wikinews versions...

A further argument for the closure of Wikinews is that Wikipedia has already integrated the "news" aspect and tends to include recent events very quickly into its articles. E.g. to find good information regarding the election of the new Pope, people didn't need to use Wikinews - Wikipedia quickly had nearly everything one could wish for in all major language versions. Bulgarian Wikinews referring to Bulgarian Wikipedia for current events is also a nice example of this trend.

Summarizing the reasons for closure:

• There is currently no language version of Wikinews really reporting a reasonable selection of current news (with the possible exceptions of Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian Wikinews, to some extent), therefore there is little user value
• Wikipedia integrates current events into its articles and is more widely used
• Keeping Wikinews active would mean maintaining a Potemkin village. It is not what it purports to be. A small random selection of (mostly) retold news is not a news site.

What do you think? Gestumblindi (talk) 02:28, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Please see Proposals for closing projects/Closure of English Wikinews - that was already proposed and failed. --Rschen7754 03:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

See also: Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_to_close_Wikinews. πr² (t • c) 03:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Strong support and close them all. This project is not pining! It's passed on! This project is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If the Wikimedia Foundation hadn't nailed it to Wikipedia's Front Page it would be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now history! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, it's run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PROJECT!! If it ever lived, that is. Wikinews is everyone's waste of time and an embarrassment to the Wikimedia project family. --Janneman (talk) 03:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Would you mind explaining your reasoning rather than using useless rhetoric? --Rschen7754 03:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • May sound like rhetoric, but I think it was merely an attempt at a parody. --Ohconfucius (talk) 03:53, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
• Comment on the (fa) note: Google Translate actually does support Persian... πr² (t • c) 03:25, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
• The problematic is the same for all the sites. There is free news everywhere; WN doesn't do original reporting, meaning that it simply rehashes articles from other news sites, so I'm not surprised that few people want to create articles. Add to that, writing these articles require considerable skill, to regurgitate in non-copyright violating form. The project its dying a painful death, so to pull the plug might be the kindest thing to do. --Ohconfucius (talk) 03:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
• Strong support: close them all. It doesn't matter that two proposals to close one or more WN sites didn't generate the required consensus: in my reading, that consensus will come sooner or later. Tellingly, such proposals are being posted with greater frequency as members of the Wikimedia movement become increasingly frustrated with the WN idea. I'd have strongly supported the original launching, in an era when traditional (commercial) journalism is on the ropes as a viable model; but my support would have been without the benefit of thinking it through and seeing it in action (or inaction, as the case may be). The original model for WM hasn't worked. There are three fundamental reasons:

  (1) Expensive and professionalised. Original news-gathering is a very resource-hungry activity, often requiring travel and accommodation for skilled, professional journalists.

  (2) Requires public status. Journalists engaged in original news-gathering need their outlet to have high and well-established public status and authority; this comes from the high circulation and notability of the news outlet (no one's going to give a toss if one of us emails or phones a source saying "I'm from WN"—we are not The Guardian or The New York Times or The Huffington Post, before whom sources tend to either cooperate instantly or cower. WMF outlets do have high public status, but not at all in journalistic terms.

  (3) Therefore second-hand and late. If almost the entire WM coverage is going to be second-hand (for reasons 1 and 2), it ends up having to paraphrase the major news outlets, well after their stories are released—this is fatally uncompetitive, given our free access to a plethora of free sites of large professional news organisations.

  There are at least three disadvantages to pretending that WN is viable and should be kept, limping along. First, it drags down the WMF trademark—it's actually pretty embarrassing for a movement that boasts such a prominent and respected worldwide trademark. Second, it costs Foundation money in technical assistance and server space. Third, it takes away jounralistically inclined editors from the forms of WP main-page-listed news—unfolding events being covered in the encyclopedia—that have proved to be much more successful. To this might be added my suspicion that WN in many languages is far from balanced, and possibly far from free of plagiarism and the close paraphrasing of copyrighted material. Gestumblindi has done an excellent job in surveying the amount of WN activity over all of the languages in which it has a site—thank you indeed; but it remains to be seen just what standards these sites have in terms of balance and copyright. If those three slavic WNs are slightly more active, I suggest that their corresponding WPs be assisted in beefing up their main-page In the news sections, so the WN editors can seamlessly transfer across to contribute to the unfolding news genre in their language WP—a more collegial environment that would add to rather than detract from the reputation of the Wikimedia Foundation. Tony (talk) 04:34, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Note that Serbian Wikinews simply copies all articles from the Voice of America's Serbian homepage, as far as I know. That is of course completely inappropriate given that the VoA has a strong pro-American bias. -- Liliana • 09:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)