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<languages />
{{draft}}
{{Proposal|type=policy|status=consensus|discussionpage=Requests for comment/Sister Projects Committee}}
{{process header
{{process header|title=Sister Projects Committee|section=|previous=← [[Wikimedia committees]]|next=|shortcut=SisterCom|notes=<span></span><!--do not remove-->
| title = Sister Projects Committee
* [[Special:MyLanguage/New projects process|New projects process]]
| section =
* [[Special:MyLanguage/Proposals for new projects|Proposals for new projects]]
| previous = ← [[Wikimedia committees]]
* [[:Category:Sister Projects Committee]]}}
| next =
<translate>
| shortcut = [[SISTERS]], [[SPCom]]
<!--T:20-->
| notes = This page provides information about committee responsible for creating and reviewing sister projects. Have a look at, help to write, and add your ideas to:
The '''Sister Projects Committee''' ("SisterCom") reviews requests for creating, significantly modifying, and closing Wikimedia projects. Reporting to the Global Council, the Committee supports contributors interested in its mandate.
* http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/spcom-merging
* http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/spcom-newwikis
* http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/spcom-existingprojects
* http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/spcom-goals
* [[Sister Projects Committee/Draft charter]]
; A IRC channel exists at {{channel|wikimedia-SPcom}}.
}}


== Charter== <!--T:21-->
A '''sister projects committee''' is a proposed community committee that would be responsible for developing a clear policy and documentation for creating and reviewing sister projects. This would include adopting non-Wikimedia projects, and supporting and coordinating [[new project proposals]] to help them be successful; as well as considering requests to close, merge, or spin off existing sister projects.


=== Mandate === <!--T:22-->
For similar community committees whose processes we could learn from, see the [[Language committee]] and the [[Chapters committee]].
</translate>
# <translate><!--T:23--> Review requests to create, significantly modify, and close Wikimedia multilingual projects.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:24--> Examples of significant modifications include merging, splitting, adopting, and changing the logo of projects.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:25--> Multilingual projects are those that do not have a specifically-defined language for content, as well as entire wiki families.</translate>
### <translate><!--T:26--> Examples of "not multilingual": en.wikipedia.org, simple.wiktionary.org.</translate>
### <translate><!--T:27--> Examples of "multilingual": wikimania.org, commons.wikimedia.org, the Wikibooks project.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:28--> Provide community members with support regarding its mandate.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:29--> Deliver feedback for improving proposals.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:30--> Contribute guidance on options for incubating projects (e.g. [[<tvar name="1">m:Wikispore</tvar>|Wikispore]]).</translate>
## <translate><!--T:31--> Facilitate consultation of technical needs with the Technology Council.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:32--> Ensure the wide distribution of proposals through venues such as CentralNotice, local Village Pumps and mailing lists.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:33--> Develop implementation plans for approved sister projects.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:34--> Liaise with the Technology Council in tasks such as reserving relevant domain names.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:35--> Publish an Annual Report and regularly document its operations publicly.</translate>
<translate>
=== Authority === <!--T:36-->
</translate>
# <translate><!--T:37--> The Sister Projects Committee reports to the Global Council.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:38--> Its decisions may be vetoed by the Council. However, the Council may not decide in issues within its mandate without previously consulting the Sister Projects Committee, unless the Committee lacks quorum.</translate>
<translate>
=== Composition === <!--T:39-->
</translate>
# <translate><!--T:40--> The Committee is comprised of eight voting members (including one Chair and one Vice-Chair), two observers, and one Global Council liaison.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:41--> Until the Global Council is established, the Committee is to have one Board of Trustees liaison.</translate>
## <translate><!--T:42--> The Committee may appoint additional liaisons as appropriate.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:43--> The Chair breaks ties among Committee members.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:44--> The Vice-Chair assumes the role of the Chair in their absence.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:45--> The Chair and Vice-Chair are to be selected through a majority vote of Committee members.</translate>
<translate>
==== Quorum ==== <!--T:46-->
</translate>
# <translate><!--T:47--> Quorum is set at five members.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:48--> In the absence of quorum, the Global Council has jurisdiction over the Committee's mandate.</translate>
<translate>
==== Appointment ==== <!--T:49-->
</translate>
# <translate><!--T:50--> Members of the Committee serve for a term of two years.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:51--> Members may serve for a maximum of three consecutive terms.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:52--> The Global Council issues a call for nominations:</translate>
## <translate><!--T:53--> at the expiration of a term, and</translate>
## <translate><!--T:54--> upon the resignation of a member.</translate>
# <translate><!--T:55--> The Global Council appoints Committee members.</translate>
<translate>
=== Amendment === <!--T:56-->
</translate>
# <translate><!--T:57--> This Charter may be amended through community consensus.</translate>


[[Category:Wikimedia committees{{#translation:}}]]
== Current new project process ==
[[Category:Sister Projects Committee]]
[[New project proposals]] page lists a process for gathering support for a proposal, and suggests criteria for interest and support that should be met before a proposal is reviewed. The 'review' step once a project meets those criteria needs to be worked out. [Historically it has only happened via a site-wide RfC and a cross-project discussion and vote; which is hard to launch and a lot of work.]
* [[:Category:Proposed projects]]
* [[Strategy:Category:Proposals for new projects]]

== Current projects ==
* [[Wikimedia projects]]
* [[Complete list of Wikimedia projects]]

== Related discussion and suggestions ==
A recent thread on Foundation-l discussing the need for such a committee noted relevant categories and topics:

; communication and overviews
* - "project interviews" : talk to each project and identify the support that its community expects from the WMF and from other Projects. We all often hear that everything-other-than-en.WP-is-ignored but if we had some published/agreed expectations that would make it much easier to see what was needed.
* - "project reviews" : review how each project is working, and what open problems it has; is it growing or not, does it have other perennial problems. identify needs and possibilities. "what would an evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we shut down such a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest money in promoting it?"

; naming, branding, visibility
* - naming conventions: rename Commons to "WikiCommons"? claim wikispecies.org?
* - branding and cross-wiki promotion: have a WMF brand easily visible on every project header? Link visibly to all sister projects from the bottom of the sidebar / bottom nav?

; merge considerations
* - merge WikiSpecies -- w/ WikiData, or back into Wikipedia?
* - merge-or-spinoff considerations: wikieducator and wikiversity have the same mission, and would benefit from being merged; 'who hosts the site' is a minor issue compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus across two wikis.
* - merge meta wikis: Outreach + Strategy + MetaWiki into wikimedia.org? ([[Wikimedia.org|proposal]], [[Talk:Wikimedia.org|discussion]])

; improvements and feature requests
* - "easy improvements with high value". Start with Wiktionary
* - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists. help valuate, prioritize and organize these feature requests

; related research
* [//wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Beyondencyclopediawikimania2010-100714133959-phpapp02.pdf&page=17 Eloquence's presentation] at Wikimania 2010 on sister projects

; annual cycles, trying new things
: "Although our flagship project is highly successful, it would be good if we try to keep creating new communities. I have been sad for quite a while now that we don't create new projects any more. It would be great to see one new project every year :)"
: "I had suggested earlier that we might even run this as an annual thing, with a Wikimania-style bidding process for the new sister projects."

== Participants ==
{{/Members}}

== Task list ==
Here is a laundry list of potential tasks. Please add your own, and mark them as important/unimportant, and in/out of scope.

; Positional issues
* Defunct private wikis: grants.wikimedia.org (private, rarely used, unused since 2005), spcom (special projects committee, unused since 2006), &c
* Single-purpose, now dormant wikis: ten.wikimedia.org, sep11 wiki, &c.
* Periodic wikis: wikimania2005-wikimania2011
* Combining meta discussions: Strategy, Outreach, Meta
** Better plan for custom Meta namespaces: Grants, Research, &c?

; Topic-specific issues
* Conference proceedings and research papers on wikis - where do they go? See recent proposal for a conferences wiki extension; openmeetings.org (tentatively offered to the WMF as a domain to host); &c.
** See also Acawiki / [[WikiScholar]] proposals
* Coordinating wiktionary with omegawiki.org: This was the original goal of omegawiki, the community still wants it; it addresses an underlying technical data-structure weakness.
* Coordinating wikispecies (monolingual) with species data on wikipedia (multilingual). Merge? More formalized plan for coordination with Encyclopedia of Life (many of whose contributors edit wikispecies too).
** Claiming the wikispecies.org domain: how important is this?
* Translations: Meta, translatewiki, interlanguage links... all are used in some way by translators. How should this work?

; Data issues
* Which of the above questions has an answer that may be modified once wikidata is fully functional?
* Is download.wikimedia.org in scope for this group?
** Working with reusers, from researchers to [[dbpedia]] and [[metaweb]]. do they need special affordances?

; Functional issues
* A prioritized bug list for each sister project? (e.g. [[oldwikisource:WS:BUGS]]) Large-scale questions? Ex: the 100MB file size limit on Commons (unchanged in 5 yrs!), the lack of a public image dump for Commons, proofreading extensions for wikisource, custom dual-category lists for wikinews.
* Summarizing expectations each project has of the WMF
* Summarizing expectations projects have of one another [esp. when they rely on eachother], and that WMF and readers have of projects
* Defining the spectrum of support options for projects by Wikimedia: from minor traffic generation/grants for Movement Partners, to vanilla hosting on the Labs/toolserver of a protoproject, to inclusion as WMF Project (with SUL, suffrage in global votes, adherence to shared principles).

== Project plans ==
Projects that pass initial milestones for being added as a sister project should have some sort of roadmap or project plan, before final adoption. See for instance [[commons:Commons:Project_plan|Commons:Project_plan]].


[[Category:Committees]]
[[Category:Sister projects committee]]

Latest revision as of 00:11, 22 June 2024

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SisterCom

The Sister Projects Committee ("SisterCom") reviews requests for creating, significantly modifying, and closing Wikimedia projects. Reporting to the Global Council, the Committee supports contributors interested in its mandate.

Charter[edit]

Mandate[edit]

  1. Review requests to create, significantly modify, and close Wikimedia multilingual projects.
    1. Examples of significant modifications include merging, splitting, adopting, and changing the logo of projects.
    2. Multilingual projects are those that do not have a specifically-defined language for content, as well as entire wiki families.
      1. Examples of "not multilingual": en.wikipedia.org, simple.wiktionary.org.
      2. Examples of "multilingual": wikimania.org, commons.wikimedia.org, the Wikibooks project.
  2. Provide community members with support regarding its mandate.
    1. Deliver feedback for improving proposals.
    2. Contribute guidance on options for incubating projects (e.g. Wikispore).
    3. Facilitate consultation of technical needs with the Technology Council.
    4. Ensure the wide distribution of proposals through venues such as CentralNotice, local Village Pumps and mailing lists.
  3. Develop implementation plans for approved sister projects.
    1. Liaise with the Technology Council in tasks such as reserving relevant domain names.
  4. Publish an Annual Report and regularly document its operations publicly.

Authority[edit]

  1. The Sister Projects Committee reports to the Global Council.
    1. Its decisions may be vetoed by the Council. However, the Council may not decide in issues within its mandate without previously consulting the Sister Projects Committee, unless the Committee lacks quorum.

Composition[edit]

  1. The Committee is comprised of eight voting members (including one Chair and one Vice-Chair), two observers, and one Global Council liaison.
    1. Until the Global Council is established, the Committee is to have one Board of Trustees liaison.
    2. The Committee may appoint additional liaisons as appropriate.
  2. The Chair breaks ties among Committee members.
  3. The Vice-Chair assumes the role of the Chair in their absence.
  4. The Chair and Vice-Chair are to be selected through a majority vote of Committee members.

Quorum[edit]

  1. Quorum is set at five members.
  2. In the absence of quorum, the Global Council has jurisdiction over the Committee's mandate.

Appointment[edit]

  1. Members of the Committee serve for a term of two years.
  2. Members may serve for a maximum of three consecutive terms.
  3. The Global Council issues a call for nominations:
    1. at the expiration of a term, and
    2. upon the resignation of a member.
  4. The Global Council appoints Committee members.

Amendment[edit]

  1. This Charter may be amended through community consensus.
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