Jump to content

Submissions/Creating a new sister project, the re-birth of Wikivoyage

From Wikimania 2013 • Hong Kong

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

Submission no.
4001
Subject no.
S1

Presentation Media



Title of the submission
Creating a new sister project, the re-birth of Wikivoyage
Type of submission
Presentation
Author of the submission
Peter Talk
Country of origin
USA
Affiliation
Wikivoyage Association
E-mail address
peter@rugendo.org
Username
User:Peterfitzgerald, User:Jmh649, User:DerFussi
Personal homepage or blog
Abstract
The story of Wikivoyage's birth provides all sorts of insight regarding the topics of forked content, community management, and the process of creating a new Wikimedia Sister Project. Rich with intrigue, drama, and irony, it's also just one heck of an interesting story!
Detailed proposal
Our presentation will review the tortuous process that led to the birth of the Wikimedia movement's newest Sister Project, Wikivoyage, and discuss the lessons learned. As over six years had passed between the launch of the Wikimedia movement's newest sister projects Wikivoyage and Wikidata and the last launch (Wikiversity in 2006), the Wikivoyage community and interested Wikimedians were left in a position where we essentially had to create a process on the fly for accepting and launching a new sister project. Another huge challenge was the thorny legal issue of accepting and how best to present the forked content (from Wikitravel) present in the Wikivoyage language versions, particularly that of English Wikivoyage. The process of the fork itself also provides lessons on community management, coordination, a balance between tactfulness and transparency, and legal questions regarding the very right to fork.
We will detail the history of the project, from the initial 2006 creation/fork of Wikivoyage as a project in German and Italian, the migration of content from other language versions to Wikivoyage in 2012, the process of gaining the approval of the Wikimedia community to accept Wikivoyage as a Sister Project, and the ins-and-outs of preparing and executing the launch itself. We will also look at current issues regarding the integration of an existing external community with the Wikimedia movement, regarding conflicts that have arisen between the two, and how such conflicts have/can/should be resolved. We will then move to a questions and answers format to delve deeper into the issues raised, and their implications for the future of the Wikimedia movement and wikis and free content in general. We will explore what went right, what could have been done better, and what can be done to fix anything that didn't go as well as we might have hoped.
Track
  • Analysis and Public Engagement
Length of presentation/talk
50 Minutes
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Possibly.
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests
None.


Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

  1. Jmh649 (talk) 21:05, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. DerFussi 10:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Varnent (talk)(COI) 15:31, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. WikiVoyage is introducing the Wikimedia movement to demographics which previous Wikimedia projects could not reach otherwise. Blue Rasberry (talk) 08:46, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. MPelletier (WMF) (talk) 04:04, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:07, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Slashme (talk) 17:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Waldir (talk) 21:50, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Jdforrester (talk) 11:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 13:22, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Ocaasi (talk) 16:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Bishdatta (talk) 17:37, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. LeslieCarr (talk) 18:28, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  14. John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 23:31, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Multichill (talk) 14:24, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Graham87 (talk) 10:33, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Superbellymonster (talk) 03:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Archeologo (talk) 14:11, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Mitchan14 (talk)
  20. Eloquence (talk) 05:58, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Ovedc (talk) 09:24, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  22. --Andyrom75 (talk) 20:21, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Poco a poco (talk) 09:55, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]