Wikimania project domain

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Currently each wikimania has their own website directly under wikimedia.org such as:

It would make more sense if it were (g being global)

-- とある白い猫 chi? 10:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively we could simplify things by having each as a project within meta, perhaps with a Wikimania space. This wouldn't give us the long dreamed of aspiration of global watchlists, but it would reduce the number of unnecessary wikis. WereSpielChequers 12:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please vote with
#{{vote|timestamp=~~~~~|Username=your_user_name|Comment=Some comment (optional)}}

Option-1: Move to multiple wikimania wikis[edit]

This means the use of wikimania domain rather than wikimedia.

Yes[edit]

  1.  2nd option. I think this would make it more consistent and less confusing particularly for the newer users. - とある白い猫 10:36, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2.  I don't need any change but given the different possible changes this is the most reasonable one which would give some benefit over the current situation. - 80686 12:20, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    possible as we now own wikimania.org Manuel Schneider(bla) (+/-) 08:05, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No[edit]

  1.  Main principle: Keep It Small & Simple! - axpde 12:15, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose. Per my support for a wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012/etc style wiki. Rehman 12:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral[edit]

  1. There is currently a technical problem surrounding this option. I will change to support if we're assured that the technical problem can be solved. Deryck C. 19:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. What Deryck said -- Fuzheado (talk) 10:21, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Option-2: Merge all wikimania wikis into one wikimania wiki[edit]

Yes[edit]

  1.  1st option. I think it is too much for us to have this many wikis for individual wikimanias. Is there that much content? - とある白い猫 10:36, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. My second preference. WereSpielChequers 14:23, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. My primary preference. I understand Wikimania might wish to have its own community/environment separate from Meta. It is however a duplication of effort to create a new wiki each year and make volunteers start from scratch every time. Certainly there would be templates and procedures common to each year's Wikimania content? – Adrignola talk 14:31, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    When pages from previous Wikimanias are relevant, sysops of the new wiki (who are also on the local team) would use Special:Import to copy the page (including history) wholesale to the new wiki. Enough changes year on year that it makes more sense to copy things that are still relevant than to delete things that have become irrelevant. Deryck C. 02:52, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  4.  Seems more logical, should reduce the workload on setting up and building the content each time - QuiteUnusual 17:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5.  Main principle: Keep It Small & Simple! (primary preference) - axpde 12:15, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Strong support. Right now, we already have a dozen separate wikis for each past and future Wikimanias, and there's no doubt there'll be much more to come. Having a single Wikimania wiki (wikimania.wikimedia.org) for all conferences, instead of the current separate-wiki style (wikimania2012.wikimedia.org), would be much neater, easier to maintain, and easier to reuse key content like safety tips, etc.

    The issue of organizers needing absolute control (aka being an admin) of the conference wiki could be easily overcome by giving admin rights as and when necessary, (with the past organizers flags removed when seems right).

    As for the archiving/preservation: except for key pages (such as the Main Page), all other pages of each project could be created under the respective year's subpage. For example, all 2012 conference's pages would be under: http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012/page/page/etc. Additionally if necessary, any vital page requiring archiving could also be edit protected (cascading style too, if possible).

    I believe this would make thing much more simpler, neater, and would make reusing content much more easy. Rehman 12:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  7. Easier to organize pages and start new Wikimania when everything are in the same place. --Stryn (talk) 12:40, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8.  Makes it easier to reuse certain stuffs - Aurora 03:59, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No[edit]

  1. A separate wiki per Wikimania is absolutely necessary for technical privilege management: each Wikimania's wiki is managed by its local team. Otherwise, someone from each Wikimania local team needs to run for adminship on Meta or the Wikimania wiki, which may result in the nonsensical situation in which after winning the bid, a Wikimania local team has no control over their conference website. Having a separate website for each Wikimania also allows Wikimania organising teams to solicit sponsorships and other external support much more conveniently. Deryck C. 18:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I am sorry I do not see the point. We lock old wikimania wikis at the moment so whats the point of having multiple locked wikis instead of having them as one wiki? Old ones could be "archived" (moved to Year/ subpages) for example. I do not see how having multiple locked wikis would influence sponsorships or other external support. -- とある白い猫 chi? 19:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The point of having separate wikis is that the upcoming conference needs a separate wiki, so that the local team of each Wikimania can have absolute control over that Wikimania's official website. As for the practicality of moving pages onto subpages for archiving, James Hare has already answered that in his "pre-emptive" comment below. Deryck C. 11:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Each year's website should be preserved as a sort of time capsule. I will readily admit that if we had just one Wikimania wiki for everyone, as soon as Team Haifa was finished I would steamroll all over their work to make way for Wikimania 2012. At the same time, I'd feel really uncomfortable doing that because I know that organizing Wikimania takes a lot of effort, and they can't even get a lasting website as a reward. I feel it is much more respectful to have separate websites, plus I don't have to feel like I'm constrained by the past websites' organizations. Furthermore, what if I want to look up something from Wikimania 2007? What if I want to re-live the awesomeness of that conference? (Not to dismiss the other Wikimanias; just that I have only been to two.) Simply put, mixing all the Wikimanias into one website would lead to a chronologically confused website that would be difficult to navigate because of all the different chefs mixing their things into the stew. harej 19:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I feel compelled to preempt the argument made above that pages can simply be moved to archive pages. The problem with this is that it would break links everywhere, and systematically breaking links is something every website operator should avoid. There wouldn't be any uniformity, either. Think of this like a store. This option would have just one store front, but if you want to check out any of the equipment from the past businesses, you'd have to go to the closet in the back and sort through a bunch of boxes. If there were some compelling reason to do that, we would do that. But there's no reason whatsoever; it costs no more to have one storefront than to have ten million storefronts (i.e., subdomains), and doing that allows us to avoid the situation where we're awkwardly searching through boxes, hoping that one day we might be able to find that talk given by the Wikinews dudes in '07. Let's avoid this and just keep things the way they are now. harej 19:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Each year having it's own wiki makes sense, including for reasons of technical rights. More importantly, planning for Wikimania 2012, for example, gets underway long (April/May 2011) before Wikimania 2011 happens and people still want to look at the past years site past the time when everyone left Haifa. How things are now works okay and I see no reason to change it. Aude 19:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Completely agree with harej. -- OlEnglish (Talk) 04:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Searching for a particular session would be a mess, you'd get a mix of current and old sessions as a result. --Church of emacs talk · contrib 16:31, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Per above. Multichill (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Eclecticology (talk) 08:47, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. For forward planning flexibility, and backward compatibility with preserving each Wikimania as its own time capsule, we should keep it as is. As James Hare said re: Time Capsule argument. I've been involved with every Wikiamnia since 2005 and edited the first proceedings. It would be a pain for each and every Wikimania in the past, now and in the future to live on a single software instance of MediaWiki. Why create new problems? Sequester them in their own MediaWiki install of that era for simplicity and ease of maintenance. -- Fuzheado (talk) 10:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral[edit]

Option-3: Have each Wikimania as a Project on Meta[edit]

Yes[edit]

  1. A step towards simplification and an easier to use set of wikis. WereSpielChequers 12:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd agree that one wiki per wikimania is too much but so far the practice is a new wiki per year. I have created the section for a similar proposal. -- とある白い猫 chi? 13:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2.  Main principle: Keep It Small & Simple! (secondary preference) - axpde 12:15, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No[edit]

  1. Oppose Oppose - On the same grounds I did on tenwiki. Meta is not a storage room. -- Marco Aurelio 14:34, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2.  See my comment to "Merge all wikimania wikis into one wikimania wiki" above. - Deryck Chan 18:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Wikimania would get lost among all the other stuff on Meta. It needs it's own wiki where Wikimania is front and center, everything easy to find and with a spot to recognize sponsors, including top sponsors who contribute (e.g. $25,000 - $50,000+) on the main page. Aude 18:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4.  Per MarcoAurelio and Aude. Would cause more complications as it relates to organization. - Hazard-SJ 18:54, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. No organization I have ever heard of would take the website for their conference and mix it in with a bunch of irrelevant bureaucracy. As Wikimania is opened up to a broader and broader audience, including people who aren't utter Wikipedia wonks, we need to do everything in our power to make the Wikimania website more accessible, not less. harej 19:04, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6.  Arguments have already been made: Breaking links is a no-go, also Meta is not the right place for it, both wikis would be harmed / cluttered with other, non-relevant stuff. - 80686 12:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Oppose Oppose -- same as above. In addition, owning the wiki means customizing the sidebar (very useful: "Venue", "Program", "Accommodation", etc., instead of usual Meta sidebar) and featuring local sponsors (unthinkable on Meta). These two things are important for Wikimania organizers. Ijon 17:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    So what works well for WikiConference_India_2011 as a simpler way of doing things isn't theoretically possible? WereSpielChequers 09:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Oppose. Per my support for a wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012/etc style wiki. Rehman 12:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Multichill (talk) 14:36, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral[edit]

Option-4: Leave everything as is[edit]

Yes[edit]

  1. -- Marco Aurelio 14:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC) Simple.[reply]
     If it's not broken, don't fix it. - Deryck Chan 18:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. We are looking forward to solve a non-existent problem here? See my comments on the talk page. -Barras 18:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Seddon 08:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. With how it is now, organizers can have bureaucrat or whatever permissions to manage the wiki, and individual sites are important for sponsorship purposes, among other reasons. Aude 18:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. This is clearly a solution in search of a problem that would actually justify undoing seven years of precedent. harej 19:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. PeterSymonds (talk) 19:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. --Manuel Schneider(bla) (+/-) 19:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. If is working, don't touch it! :P Béria Lima msg 22:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  9. OlEnglish (Talk) 04:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Ruslik 11:07, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  11. If it's not broken, don't fix it and I kinda like the current system. Multichill (talk) 14:35, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. This avoids potential ambiguities for common pages like "Registration". Eclecticology (talk) 08:46, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Ain't broke, don't fix. -- Fuzheado (talk) 10:20, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Tentative yes, for technical purposes. --Tholh4 (talk) 13:59, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No[edit]

  1.  We'll ending up having dozens of small projects, time to live less than a year. Even worse: Some page won't be pretty much the same each year! - axpde 12:15, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose. This would make things very messy in the future. Rehman 12:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral[edit]

  1.  it could be asked to the techs of not an alias could be setup so both work/look the same. At least a redirect or generic landing page for *.wikimania.org could be a good idea - Walter 22:33, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2.  If not merged, better stay as it is, no point of moving - Aurora 04:01, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Moved to Talk:Wikimania project domain.