Proceedings:GP2/Full text

Wikimedia Meta-Wiki as a thematic coordination platform for WikiProjects

Guillaume Paumier (m:User:guillom)

Wikimedia Meta-Wiki aims at serving as a central coordination platform for Wikimedia projects. Though, this coordination is mainly for administrative or translation purposes. This Birds-of-a-Feather aims at exploring the possibility to use Wikimedia Meta-wiki as a thematic coordination platform between multilingual WikiProjects about the same topic. Potential obstacles and benefits should be identified and discussed.

History

The Meta-wiki was created in November 2001 at http://meta.wikipedia.org as a coordination wiki for Wikipedians. In its early ages, it was aimed at being a sort of forum where Wikipedians could discuss policies and write essays. Then, it has become a cross-Wikipedia coordination platform. Later it was moved to http://meta.wikimedia.org and became a cross-Wikimedia coordination platform.

Proposal

Although the aim of Wikimedia Meta-Wiki is to serve as coordination platform, the possibility to serve as a thematic coordination platfom does not seem to have been explored yet. On biggest Wikipedia wikis, major topics are managed through WikiProjects. Though, WikiProjects on different wikis but about the same topic rarely work together. This is quite a pity when one think about all duplicated efforts participants could avoid.

Multilingual coordination would also allow easier access to some resources located in foreign countries, as it would be easier to find Wikimedians in this area. Coordination would be possible with all Wikimedia projects, including for instance Wikimedia Commons or Wikisource. All wikis would benefit from such thematic multilingual coordination.

A challenge for multilingualism

Such a project would be a real challenge for multilingualism. It would be interesting to explore other ways than discussing only in English. If many users get involved in thematic coordination, the multilingual discussion system developed on Beta Wikiversity could be tried. If only few users get involved, this system would not work and it would be easier for participants to find a common language.