This is a subpage; for more information, see theRequests for comments page.

In light of the two consultations initiated by theSister Projects Task Force from June 27 – July 27, 2025:

• Public consultation about Wikispore
• Public consultation about Wikinews (extended to August 15)

The followingthree related but distinct questions are put to the Wikimedia communities:

• ApproveWikispore as Incubator-like project?
• Establish multilingual data portal for Wikinews?
• Change status ofWikinews language editions?

Participants are encouraged to look at all of the various options given below!

The three proposals are not meant to be in competition with each other. For example, someone may support establishing the multilingual data portal for Wikinews, while maintaining the various Wikinews language editions substantially unchanged. Note that there are also several sub-questions for each proposal.

These options concern theWikispore proposal.

Proposal: A limited version of Wikispore should be implemented as a 2-year production pilot, per theWikispore Basic proposal.

1.  Support as proposer, I think that with the consensus atWikispore#Discussion established over 5+ years, it is high time to implement this for a 2-year pilot as a subdomain of Incubator.--Pharos (talk)08:38, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2.  Support but I think having it as a 2-year pilot is like taking 20 steps when you are asked to do 10 steps. Sister project committee wrote that numbers of recent edits are low, and while that is true, I think the success of the project should be measured in graduation percentage of number of projects/spores. There is no number to beat to graduate an project/spore however. I think the low number of recent edits is probably because the editors in question belive they have done enough to graduate, but there have also been reports of Wikimedia Cloud not keeping up with high edit counts per minute.https://wikispore.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:MostLinkedCategories indicates multiple projects are large enough to graduate.--Snævar (talk)15:06, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3.  Support I'm of the view that restricting the scope of a wiki can greatly improve the quality of contributions. Focusing the scope of WikiSpore to something like artworks/art exhibitions/ art movements could give it renewed purpose and is at least worth a trial. Sharing culture as well as knowledge is a big part of the value of the Wikimedia movement, and yet there is a gap in our representation of art. On Wikidata, projects likeSum of All Paintings are creating very detailed data about hundreds of thousands of art works (sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, and other art forms in addition to paintings). On Wikipedia, there are articles about art works that are notable in their own right (although if you write about art works that are discussed in multiple scholarly books or papers, in practice this overwhelmingly means art from European culture). There is scope for something imbetween: narrative accounts of art works, exhibitions, or art careers, that aredocumented but still below the threshold of Wikipedia notability. This could be offer a much more diverse view of art than what is given by Wikipedia. The effort put into documenting art on Wikidata and Commons, the proliferation of art-related Wikidata-driven applications, and the interest in other aggregators likeArt UK,Europeana, orGoogle Arts & Culture, show the utility of aggregating and sharing open knowledge about art.MartinPoulter (talk)16:24, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4.  Support I feel that letting Wikispore grow in this way, and specifically, with support for their arts focused pilot, will help take pressure off Wikipedia users who are trying hard to include more information about topics that struggle to meet notability standards because of bias in the way secondary source material is historically produced, especially around art and artists.(13ab37 (talk)03:29, 13 August 2025 (UTC))[reply]
5.  Support but I don't know if Wikispore could have Wikibase coverage, which would make it way more useful for niche knowledge bases. -Theklan (talk)13:19, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
6.  Support It should include Wikibase coverage as well as alone standing wikibase features. What I want to say: We need to combine the waste broad data available in Wikidata as well as the possibility to handle own data. For example I would like to (re-) implement weather data coverage on Wikinews but that, modifying the temperature information of a station once an hour is not within the scope of Wikidata. In the scope of Wikidata would be to actualizize the average temperature once a year. So we need another "playground" where to collect and proceed those data. Else, I am endorsing most of the things people said above. --Matthiasb (talk)17:24, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
7.  Support Happy to see more people who familiar with Wikispore joining the discussion. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)01:29, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
8.  SupportGryllida07:17, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
9.  Support This is an interesting direction and logical next step for the project.Tduk (talk)16:16, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
10.  Support while keeping Wikispore as a pilot for multiple new projects, instead of restricting it towikispore:Art Spore alone (which would defeat the purpose of Wikispore as a pilot).Chaotic Enby (talk)13:25, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
11.  Support Considering the use-case possibilities, this gets a support from me. -18:24, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
12.  Support This proposal is a good way of moving Wikispore forward past the current stage, while addressing some of the concerns brought up during the consultation.DraconicDark (talk)23:00, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
13.  Support This is a very interesting proposal that I can see benefiting/working well with various GLAMs. --Kiraface (talk)14:49, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
14.  Support though with reluctance about the scoping to thematic focus without extensive tooling. The proposed theme can and should be productive and can build on a persisting base in Wikidata. However, I do feel that distinctive and innovative ways of exploring, say,"What was this cultural movement?" could benefit from "unconventional extensions": tooling to visualise and explore networks beyond what is available just now. My view is also that innovation should be extensive at this point, drawing on and playing outwards to participate in new forms of federation (Fediverse, etc.).AllyD (talk)19:21, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
15.  Support as I kept suggesting WIKISPORE having more then one wiki instance assafe andbrave tech-decisions, since a while (and love that Richard and Wikimedia NYC is willing to lead on this)... Meanwhile I fully agreeAllyD's comment - there needs be support for a more tech structure 'brave' version also that could render-test for production one.Zblace (talk)05:02, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
16.  Support It will give Wikispore room to grow and demonstrate real impact. It's long overdue that a Wikispore-like platform became an integral part of the Wikimedia Movement.Vis M (talk)15:51, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
17.  Support I think it's needed to get Spore to its next stage, the project is on a good track.Eleanorsilly (talk)21:09, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
18.  Support I strongly endorse this project. Great initiativeShahadusadik (talk)15:40, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Wikispore should have increased visibility in the Wikimedia ecosystem, such as a listing atTemplate:Main Page/Sisterprojects or further integration withWikidata.

• Strongest possible support. Also add Wikifunctions to sister templates across the Wikimedia network (enwp is missing WF in its sister template).Kinopiko (talk)20:07, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as first choice (above the Wikispore Basic proposal). Allows further visibility and interconnection while not sacrificing smaller spores.Chaotic Enby (talk)20:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as successive step upon Wikispore Basic approval.Zblace (talk)05:05, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Much needed.Vis M (talk)16:26, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Wikispore should just continue to function as currently onWikimedia Cloud Services.

•  Weak support - I'm sorry, i just don't see that much interest in this at the current stage. It doesn't seem like there is much interest in incubating new sister projects in general at Wikimedia. That may change, but i think that attitude should change first before WikiSpore, not the other way around. WikiSpore itself is not very active, I just checked RecentChanges and there was like 2 content edits in the last sixty days. Of projects currently being incubated there, they mostly seem to be of the form: imagine Wikipedia without the notability requirements (Or perhaps, imagine Wikipedia if it allowed primary sources), which to me personally seem more like arules-fork of Wikipedia then an actually different project. I think most of the WikiSpore spores would better find a home on Miraheze than the Wikimedia movement.Bawolff (talk)20:38, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The goal of Wikispore Cloud was never to maximize its own edit count. Instead, this was mainly intended to provide a micro-platform for experimentation and a simple proof of concept. We've been trying to navigate Wikimedia Foundation processes for several years now, with theprimary request from them being a flagship product with independent funding and resources. It's for that very reason we deprioritized short-term growth on-wiki and instead have focused more on a strategic effort likewikispore:Art Spore which would be the focus ofWikispore Basic.Pharos (talk)14:57, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't really care about the edit count per-se, i just want to see a demonstration of interest, and not just talk but people actually doing. The demo wiki looks pretty dead to me. That is not reassuring that people are actually interested in WikiSpore or any of the spores. Its not clear to me why making WikiSpore an official "sister project" would result in more activity. Even if it did, I'm unconvinced that a wiki for small scale experimentation is even neccesarily a good thing for the Wikimedia movement. I don't think Wikimedia should try to do everything.Bawolff (talk)09:02, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What is "Miraheze"?

  WikiSpore itself is not very active, I just checked RecentChanges and there was like 2 content edits in the last sixty days. Well, it might be that only very few people know about the existence of WikiSport and what to do with it. Not being the debate about Wikinews I would hever have learned at all that hat project exists. However, taking in account my arguments that we should enhence Wikinews by weather data, market data, a news ticker and other multi language content that needs an engine where to produce such contents and from where to provide it to the different language versions. That should be a full scale offical Wiki sister project but I guess that still WikiSpore should stay open for inventing and testing of other ideas, also for such provided to WikiProjects other than Wikinews.

  I do not consent to the statementI don't think Wikimedia should try to do everything. That does not mean I want to try to do everythingbut we need the possibility to invent and try out concepts, ideas, and features.

  Oh, and as I said above I only learned about WikiSpore like four weeks or so ago and maybe am naive but have no clue what really is possible to do at WikiSpore and how to get things going. Because of two edits in two months are not the way to gain interess as well as to develop something at all. --Matthiasb (talk)17:11, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Miraheze is a not for profit wiki host that often hosts wikis that wouldn't be a fit for Wikimedia. Imagine Wikia but not terrible. For examplea wiki of the hotels of ballarat,an (italian) wiki on documenting religious medals,a wiki on early american potraits,a wiki about lakes of england, etc

  i don't think we should create sister projects on the idea that the increased profile might drive interest. The interest should come first. Otherwise we'll just end up with a bunch of dead projects. Its hard enough to create a succesful project even when the interest is there. As you yourself said, you arent sure what is possible at wikispore - i feel like that should be obvious prior to promoting to sister project.

  As far as enhancing wikinews with stock ticker, weather (we actually had that in the past), etc, i actually think this type of thinking is a major problem with Wikinews. ItsBikeshedding. These sorts of things do not add value and will not drive traffic. People focus on them because they are easy not because they are useful.Bawolff (talk)01:25, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am okay with you having a different opinion but at this point we cannot rule out any possibility of improving, more we cannot to afford not to try any possibility. IIRC but much water went down the Potomac/Rhine the owner of the weather bot left the project but we never had the opportunity to look into the metrics since Wikimedia statistics did look only into Wikipedia that time. Stock market data the German WN takes from the ES WN. It isn:de:Portal:Märkte (Portal:Markets) which is maintained vian:de:Template:Börsenindizes. BOT-Superzerocool used to do this every ten minutes but now only twice a day. We have these data live + 30 minutes since 2012 and from two languages (es/fr/de) it was extended to other languages as well- Funnilyn:en:Template:Stock Market data is maintained in the EN WN as well but I guessit never got out of the sandbox.Matthiasb (talk)19:57, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not opposed to improving things, but doing random things does not actually improve things. People should focus on the core value proposition - namely writing articles that people actually want to read. Articles that provide value. All these side ventures like weather or stock market data are just distractions that nobody really cares about. Nobody cares because they are just mechanically reproduced from other sources with no human value added. Wikis are about people creating content. Wikinews needs to focus on that. The fact that Wikinews contributors seem to lack an understanding of their own core value proposition, is a much stronger argument for shutting down Wikinews than anything the task force has put forth.Bawolff (talk)00:48, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Au contraire. The need to defend Wikinews hinders me to produce Wikinews content for months. Worse, the committees witch hunt on Wikinews and how it was conducted resulted in people quitting the project. If Wikinews ultimately fails we can write on the memorial "died by WMF neglection".Matthiasb (talk)10:11, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You’re blaming WMF for your own community’s inactivity and, more importantly, lack of readership (which isn’t really anyone’s fault anyway).Dronebogus (talk)15:59, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support per Bawolff’s well articulated arguments. Love the concept; right now it’s just a moribund hosting service for moribund Wikipedia knockoffs. Which raises the question whether it should just be abandoned at this point as a waste of resources that will never actually be developed into a functional project (and even if it is will almost certainly be abused mainly as a way around people’s vanity project proposals getting summarily rejected here on Metawiki). --Dronebogus (talk)13:06, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral, I think what the two above say is correct. It's also true that we should try to increase its visibility. However, it's not always easy to attract contributors to a technical sister projects like this. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:59, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't have sufficient information on this proposal. How much would it cost to make such a decision? Based on the precedent with Wikivoyage, I'm assuming 1-10 M$ for the next ten years. What could we achieve if instead channeled such money towardsexisting wikifarms like Miraheze (and perhaps a restored Referata)?Nemo06:25, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't believe the specificWikispore Basic proposal here, given it would not use any non-standard extensions, would cost very much at all. Haven't gotten a direct response from WMF yet, but from what I've heard being hosted as a subdomain on Incubator shouldn't consume significantly more resources than currently. (If there was a meaningful estimate provided, I do believe it would be possible to raise independent non-WMF funds for it, and would volunteer to help lead that.) The idea is indeed to build closer bridges with projects like Miraheze and help concepts there be strengthened by getting closer to core Wikimedia ecosystem, which I think was always their aspiration.Pharos (talk)01:18, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Does the whole premise of Wikispore, that communities would use it to experiment with things they can't try on the main Wikimedia projects, inevitably lead to people asking for custom extensions? And if so, wouldn't they be better served by trying out such ideas in wikifarms where custom extensions are easier to try out?Nemo15:55, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikispore Basic will be a 2-year pilot for social experimentation in new genres, the existing Wikispore Cloud implementation will be for more technical experimentation with custom extensions. The current proposal is not at all about dedicated WMF resources toward new custom extensions, that is distinctly outside of scope.Pharos (talk)20:58, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support Bawolff and Nemo's comments here have convinced me.* Pppery *_{it has begun}20:45, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support Besides agreeing with Bawollf's cogent comments regarding a decided lack of interest and overlap with existing projects, I believe strengthening core competencies (Commons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia, perhaps Wiktionary if I humour myself) is a better use of WMF resources than embarking on idealistic new endeavours with little short-term return, especially in a era of technological and political tumult that threatens to undermine the WMF's prominence.Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)07:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support. Looking at every spore fromthe list I just don't see much activity or useful content creation in the project. Many of the spores' objectives seem too vague to my taste. I find the concept of Wikispore interesting but in its current state I don't believe it's worth the investment.Sophocrat (talk)19:25, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  SupportWell very well (talk)09:55, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Something needs to be done and sooner than later is better...Wikispore engagment of some of the key early contributors has been reducing several times due to lack of stability of cloud-service, general support and resources to grow this bottom-up in-movement initiative...meanwhile a lot of money has been spent on outward facing innovation-efforts of affiliates and external 'experts'.Zblace (talk)05:12, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Weak support, subject to the analysis of costs. The only reason to keep the Wikispore, IMHO, is to avoid the same experiments being performed elsewhere with no oversight by the Foundation. --Викидим (talk)21:07, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These options concern theWikinews Pulse proposal. Establishing the multingual data-based Wikinews Pulse athttps://www.wikinews.org would not necessarily mean any changes to the existing Wikinews prose language editions such ashttps://en.wikinews.org orhttps://ru.wikinews.org.

Proposal: Wikinews Pulse should be hosted at www.wikinews.org

•  Support I support this option in the hopes that it can revitalize/energize some of the Wikinews language projects through the collaboration. en.WN would certainly benefit from a better foundation in Wikidata to perhaps make our content more readily shared across projects.Michael.C.Wright (talk)12:53, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment See discussion atAbstract Wikipedia/Location of Abstract Content.YoshiRulz (talk)07:19, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment This feels a bit premature. I think people should make a prototype first, show it to Wikinews folks, and Wikinews folks should discuss among themselves if they want it on www. or not. I appreciate that all this is connected, but it still feels wrong to have this discussion with the other one in the same RFC.Bawolff (talk)03:43, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support I think this can be explored. -Theklan (talk)13:20, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Too weird to replace multilingual portal, Wikisource already caused confusions by directly setting up[1] as a wiki. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk)00:17, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose* Pppery *_{it has begun}20:42, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support Increased collaboration and centralisation between the languages is something that Wikinews would benefit from; I note that it seems incredibly premature to make final decisions on and may need more input from the Wikinews' themselves.coleisforrobot (talk)19:32, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Too experimental, and many unanswered issues left pending (cf. my comment in the section below). Needs to be incubated if we want a deployment on such a visible place.Chaotic Enby (talk)10:39, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Strong support, archive old wikinews articles on another portal and create a new, multilingual project ! --Wyslijp16 (talk)17:53, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  SupportWell very well (talk)09:56, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Support This is a very important and active project, where many participants are involved, generating unique content. --Vyacheslav84 (talk)11:40, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I have some doubts about aspects of the project (e.g. will links to OR articles be allowed?), but overall I think I can Support the Pulse.Dsuke1998AEOS (talk)11:17, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Proposal is premature. Create the service first; official project status can be decided later.Harej (talk)01:51, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Wikinews Pulse should be hosted elsewhere in the Wikimedia ecosystem.

•  Support Just at Meta-Wiki, we don't need more domains, save the server spaces please. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk)00:16, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support This seems like a good use case for Wikispore. Definitely needs to be fleshed out with use and clear use cases, have support expressed by past / current / future news editors, and some successful integration with Wikidata, before being at a root domain likewww.wikinews.org. –SJ  22:25, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Interesting idea, this can also solve many people's concerns. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:00, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• No objection to this; the idea is worth trying out but shouldn't usurp the standard wikinews portal.* Pppery *_{it has begun}20:42, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Weak support, the idea of an Abstract Wikipedia-like portal could be interesting, but I would like to see it being worked out somewhere before directly replacing the root domain. I am a bit skeptical about building headlines automatically from Wikidata alone, but it is certainly something that deserves to be tried. The current proposal does not specify whether AI assistance will be used and to what extent – we'd want to have that clarified before formally launching it. Beyond the headline building aspect, the other main issues to consider center around verifiability (which can be lacking on Wikidata and would be crucial here) and systemic bias (especially since it might be stewarded by an American user group).Chaotic Enby (talk)12:52, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Changing to full Support as an alternative to directly hosting it at the root, given the lack of technical details on the plan. We can't discuss such a major change without having a better idea of what it is actually going to be.Chaotic Enby (talk)13:37, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support. Yes, I think it should be established somewhere else, not occupying existing domain.BilboBeggins (talk)17:43, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support, not that you need an RfC to start your own news data project.Harej (talk)01:50, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support, there have to be a point of coordination for all Wikinews local editions as well as with news-related activity on all Wikipedias such as portals dedicated to news, "In the news" section on EWP mainpage and so on. --Ssr (talk)10:28, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support, perhaps at news.wiki.ChildrenWillListen (talk)02:37, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Wikinews Pulse should not be established.

• The proposal is interesting but it cannot be done by Wikimedia Foundation alone. It needs to be led by asuitable coalition of stakeholders including news professionals. Have we contacted any?Nemo06:26, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I strongly agree with your coalition approach and have started outreach to a wide set if stakeholders, though it's obviously premature at this stage to declare a formal consortium yet.Pharos (talk)21:15, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Weak support Nothing I've seen thus far has convinced me this'll attract the level of sustained interest necessary to realise its goals.Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)07:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose I don't think the Wikimedia Foundation should support stakeholder-led projects, which would be the exact opposite of a non-profit-led wiki.Chaotic Enby (talk)12:54, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The proposal is that "Wikinews Pulse shouldnot be established" (emphasis mine). Presumably you meant to support that proposal/status quo.Sophocrat (talk)04:09, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  My bad, I amNeutral on the status quo – I was confused by the above comments talking about having the proposal led by stakeholders, which is what I strongly oppose.Chaotic Enby (talk)10:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose Support per Chaotic Enby.--Ophyrius (he/him
  T •C •G)22:51, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Are you for Wikinews Pulse being established or not?BilboBeggins (talk)17:42, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support A very vague idea. The current event page is already news aggregation. Most wikipedias show already the most important news on their main pages. What data from wikidata are people proposing to feature exactly and is there a notability/importance check by humans? If there is, isn't this just ITN all over again. If there isn't, is newly added data to wikidata important to non-wikidata editors/readers? --Rolluik (talk)10:07, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These options concernWikinews as currently constituted in its various language editions: English Wikinews, Russian Wikinews, etc.

Proposal: Wikinews should focus on a narrower scope of work, for instance original local reporting, expert interviews, or journalist-volunteer collaborations.

•  Oppose I see a few problems with this. First, this proposal is too vague -- which "narrower scope of work"? But, more importantly, I do not believe that the Foundation, or Meta, should decide this; Wikinews editors are better positioned to decide where to "focus" their efforts. And I don't see this as addressing any of the concerns raised in the report. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs)21:36, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  OpposeOf course, but there shouldn't be hard and fast rules. I believe each community is clear about what they are most competitive about and will do so if they have the conditions. But if a volunteer wants to write an article like "The UK Labour Party has achieved a parliamentary majority," what's the problem?

In addition, long-form non-original reports that integrate multiple sources have always been one of WN's important contents and have unique value and advantages. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)02:19, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support though I think this should be altered to “Wikinews should be redeveloped asWikimagazine, focused on in-depth original reporting of topics underreported by major media outlets”. That’s a fancy way of saying the same thing but it will probably garner more support. In any case Wikinews should definitely stop reporting on major events as it’s redundant to Wikipedia and not realistically competing with even small news organizations, and generally avoid subjects of fleeting significance and very little general interest (i.e. “new gas station built in Anytown, USA” or “car crash injures 2 in Wherever, Kansas”) --Dronebogus (talk)12:45, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  As far as I oversee it people tend to write articles on themes they are interested in. You don't get them into other stuff. For example: years ago we had an active user in the German WN who only wrote blue light articles in the Kaiserslautern area. Possibly he was working at the police or the firefighters, He would not write articles on what so ever. So the German WN possibly had the most complete archive on traffic accidents on that highway B 39 ever. Until the day some user critizized him for those articles and proposed he should take on another item. He never wrote an article again. --Matthiasb (talk)23:55, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That sounds like the editor did a lot of original reporting of topics underreported by major media outlets. It would be fine with me. I'm not sure why Dronebogus opposes it. When there are more original articles with broader interest, they would be far heavily promoted on the main page. Wherever, Kansas stories don't do any harm and forbidding them would harm editor interest as mentioned.Aaron Liu (talk)19:36, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support to original content and interviews: I do not see the value in synthesis articles. They simply repeat what one can find in any one or two articles from traditional outlets, and they obscure the original reporting by sheer volume. Looking at the current articles frontpaged on the English Wikinews—all of which are synthesis—I see no reason I should read them instead of any of the more in-depth, long and trusted reporting from trusted outlets cited or the in-depth, living articles on Wikipedia we know why to love; if I—an outsider—am mistaken, please explain. Note that I would still include original reporting that incorporates other news articles.
  I agree that the original question is vague but that doesn't mean we can't discuss ideas that fall under it.Aaron Liu (talk)01:24, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  From my personal memory, I saw zhwn often features in-depth articles that synthesize information from multiple sources, but there are also many articles like you said. I agree that much of the non-original content we can see on enwn's homepage right now isn't that unique, excellent, or competitive, but in-depth articles that synthesize information from multiple sources do exist. I don't know about the situation in your area, but I believe that for many news events, traditional media outlets only publish a short article and no longer systematically follow up. Our articles help readers understand and maintain a complete understanding and record, and our pursuit of neutrality also contributes to this. We shouldn't and can't give up these. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:05, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Looking at zhnews (which is indeed so much better than ennews that it surprised me the first time I saw it, congrats to you and kitabc!), most synthesis without a zhwiki article rely on about one or two sources, and the whole story can pretty much be found in one of these sources. The only exception out of the first ten on the front page isn:zh:宿管张大爷高温中离世，学生自发悼念称值班房没空调, which IMO should be labeled original reporting since it has a lot of analysis.

  For non-interviews, I'm usingn:zh:东航空难调查报告为何“危害国安”？ for the minimum standard of original reporting. I'm not proposing that no articles can synthesizing things from existing sources; I'm saying that all articles should have original reporting.Aaron Liu (talk)01:56, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for your careful reading and compliments. However, I don't think zhwn is "indeed so much better than enwn". I'm satisfied with its current homepage too(it's not bad), but it's from a month ago sadly, I have to admit. Fortunately, we always produce some value during our active period. You're right and perceptive. You mentioned the article "Dorm Manager Mr. Zhang Passed Away in the Heat; Students Spontaneously Mourned, Claiming the Duty Room Had No Air Conditioning." This is a good example of what I mentioned earlier (albeit a bit self-praiseworthy) as "non-original articles that are longer and more in-depth, synthesizing information from multiple sources.", "has uniqueness and complementarity". You also noticed that the article contains a bunch of analysis and lyrical language, which lyrical language was mainly added by Kitabc after the article was published, as you can see, this is a wiki(Yes, we overwrote a new version with some additions after the release, and that's nothing bad). but it doesn't qualify as original reporting in our local area. There wasa version of this article without any lyricism(I tried to submit the English version to enwn, but I don't know if it's fit locally) when it was published; you can refer to it. What I've always opposed is not "narrow content" but forced, one-size-fits-all approaches (which the proposal doesn't clearly state it is or not). Why can't a report like this be published? ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:02, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The lyricism is good, but not what I was talking about. It has original analysis, including that of certain keywords on the university's website and that of the trustworthiness of various sources and perspectives, none of which are present in the original sources. The former was Kit's, but the latter was yours. You also put facts that present an added conclusion when put together that the cited sources do not put together, together, which is considereda form of original research on many-a-Wikipedias. Seeing those, even without the keyword analysis, I would support classifying the article as original reporting.(continued below)Aaron Liu (talk)05:29, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  As I've always said, Wikinews is Wikinews, not something else, so these investigative analyses are normal, as journalism requires logic. I also listed university websites as sources, and I didn't specifically judge the keyword issue. As for source validity, online rumors are obviously online rumors, labor rights platforms are labor rights platforms, and mainstream media are mainstream media. I think it's inappropriate to classify this type of reporting as original reporting and the lower limit of Wikinews. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)01:26, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think what you want to get rid of is actually"Article spinning"（洗稿）? ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)01:16, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah, I guess it is. The minimum for what's allowed should be at least the articles I linked to.Aaron Liu (talk)05:29, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Fair enough. However, the necessity still needs to be discussed. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)01:27, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Could you elaborate?Aaron Liu (talk)20:55, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  No, just waiting for a wider WN community discussion, as I don't see any big downside to not banning this kind of article especially given the current WN situation. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)07:00, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Isn't the current situation the community discussion?Aaron Liu (talk)20:33, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah So let's wait! ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)09:01, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support a preference for original local reporting, expert interviews, or journalist-volunteer collaborations. I'mNeutral on "synthesis" articles (i.e., Wikinews articles that re-write what other/professional news articles have already published, while adding nothing new); they have limited value but not actuallynone. I specifically would like to prohibit using Wikinews as a mirror/repository/archive of other news sources.WhatamIdoing (talk)01:53, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose This is something that should be decided by the editors of the projects, not imposed by Meta or the Foundation. Additionally, I find it hard to believe there'd be more than a scrap of content on each wiki if this were imposed. Synthesis articles do have value, asSheminghui.WU put it, “long-form non-original reports that integrate multiple sources have always been one of WN's important contents and have unique value and advantages.”. I also note that its NPOV policy provides additional value to synthesis content.coleisforrobot (talk)19:47, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose I believe any alteration in scope substantial enough to make Wikinews viable is substantial enough to warrant consideration as a new project through the new project proposal pipeline rather than wearing the corpse of Wikinews as a skinsuit. However, asstarting new projects would be ill-advised in current circumstances, it's worth considering working within a existing project (for instance, a "Wikimagazine" could find a home within Wikibooks) or operating outside of the WMF mothership (if such a project is successful, it could come into the WMF fold later à la Wikivoyage).Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)07:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It is much easier to harness a project's existing resources and userbase dedicated to the same exact principles.Aaron Liu (talk)02:28, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  My point is that I believe that any worthwhile alteration of scope will inherently constitute a alteration of principles.Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)05:06, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Could you elaborate on the principles that would be altered with the alteration that I described?Aaron Liu (talk)13:19, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose This will only worsen the amount of new content Wikinews can produce, though I'm not opposed to setting a preference for original reporting. //shb(t •c)01:08, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Restricting the topics people can write about in this way will only decrease the contributions of writers, the readership and relevance of the project. --Rolluik (talk)10:55, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Quantity is not quality. Also, restricting to original reporting does not limit the topics and only requires original research to be done.Aaron Liu (talk)20:53, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose I am not aware of a precedent where we externally restrict a Wikimedia project's scope like this.Harej (talk)02:01, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose The individual projects shall decide this themselves. This is otherwise to restrictive. In the past, Wikinews has been used to conserve referenced news reports where the original sources are moved behind paywalls or subject to link rot. --AFBorchert (talk)16:03, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose IMHO the Wikinews issue is with the lack of collaboration, changing the scope of articles does not make a difference while the content creation process (that inherently limits the collaboration) stays the same. --Викидим (talk)20:59, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Викидим If I'm reading you correctly, you're opposing this because you don't think it has any point over mainstream media. The entire point of limiting to original content is to harness the project's potential to attract editors who will write stories not covered by mainstream media, as already seen in e.g. its interviews.Aaron Liu (talk)01:46, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  My concern is simple: as an amateur in most of my Wikipedia (WP) contributions, I am definitely much less knowledgeable and skilled than my competitor, a contributor to a professional encyclopedia. This issue is offset by the presence of many other contributors, some amateurs, occasionally quite skilled, that (1) improve my texts and (2) keep me honest (I hope that I do not really need the latter). Imagine how much worse the WP would be if its processes were different and copied from the printed encyclopedias, where single author writes the text of an article, this text is published after a check by a (usually single) editor and then is closed to further changes. I would posit that such news-like Wikipedia would be a complete failure, because I, an unpaid amateur, would be forced to compete, one-on-one, against a a paid professional. But from the 50,000 feet, the Wikinews (WN) arrangement looks exactly like this: execute the same processes that professionals employ in the real media, but using amateurs instead of professionals. IMHO, no matter how the topics of the WN articles are shuffled, it will be still a series of one-on-one fights of an amateur against a professional, which the amateur is bound to badly lose almost all the time. I think that in order to have decent quality of the news in WN (required for readership), we need to somehow harness the Wikimedia advantage of a self-organized collaboration by the huge crowd of unpaid and unskilled laborers. Unless some Jimmy among us figures this out, no amount of additional effort thrown in will save WN IMHO.Викидим (talk)04:07, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What I mentioned is outpacing the competition: Covering stories others have not covered monopolizes the coverage of those stories, which is something only possible with the scale of volunteers constantly discovering novel original stories.Aaron Liu (talk)04:29, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Novel stories about radish festivals in nowheresburg?Dronebogus (talk)12:15, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The latest en interview isn:Wikinews interviews Australian Fusion Party President Drew Wolfendale. The latest en non-interview original article isn:Authorities arrest Belarusian Wikipedia sysop and only bureaucrat Maksim Lepushenka. And then the category bugs out due to DPL, but one I remember off the top of my head isn:England: Staffordshire town celebrates LGBTQ+ pride despite funding issues, as well as what @Zanimum had analyzed in the consultation:

  It's also a case that a big fish in a small pond can get seen a darn lot: while theShimon Perez interview -- an amazing score for Wikinews -- has had 20k views since the current page views tracking began in 2015 (the article itself is from 2008),the juggling article has had 14k views since it debut in April 2024.The most read article this month? It's a 2019 interviewwith a planetary scientist discussing martian brines.

  And what advantage does the current state have over encouraging such articles? Is it really preferable to close language editions down instead?Aaron Liu (talk)23:00, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am the reporter for this interview. and If the page statistics are almost accurate, the three original reports (including one interview) I published on zhwn this month have all received over 6,000 views. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)12:12, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There are many online platforms that would happily accept a free news story. WN should offer the aspiring journalist something beneficial, so they would decide to publish their work in a Wikimedia project. I am yet to hear what benefits can be offered by WN. Without such advantages, even an article on obscure topic, if it is any good, most likely will be published elsewhere.Викидим (talk)10:03, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know any of these platforms. I feel like the one with the most visibility, transparency, or copyediting/second look resources is still Wikinews. I do not see any of the wonderful interviews, for example, published elsewhere.Aaron Liu (talk)22:45, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  As a member of the Wikimedia movement, I understand that everyone here is a volunteer, isn't that right? I am yet to hear what benefits can be offered by WP or WV. Of course, your point may has merit, and more encouragement might be good. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)12:08, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Opposeexcept for the Russian Wikinews. If the scope of Wikinews was narrowed, the functions of Wikinews would have to be transferred to another Wikimedia project. No such project has been specified. Nor is there any evidence that the community on any such project have agreed to the transfer. For example, as far as I can see WP:NOTNEWS is still in force.James500 (talk)06:36, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If the scope of Wikinews was narrowed, the excluded functions would by default simply disappear. It's not gonna be or recommended to be forced onto any project unless the Merge content proposal passes.Aaron Liu (talk)22:43, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The policy NOTNEWS is viablebecause Wikinews exists. If the scope of Wikinews were narrowed, then the scope of the policy NOTNEWS would need to be narrowed with it. The problem is that it is not clear that the merge content proposal can narrow the scope of the policy NOTNEWS.James500 (talk)02:34, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:NOT exists because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not because other projects exist.dringsim11:28, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't see any reason NOTNEWS without any Wikinews would fail to keep news content out.Aaron Liu (talk)14:28, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  NOTNEWS and Wikinews both exist as a means of resolving a dispute within the Wikimedia community about whether news should be included in the encyclopedia. The abolition of Wikinews would reignite that dispute. The abolition of Wikinews would necessarily amount to an admission that news is encyclopedic, and would necessarily turn NOTNEWS into an obsolete and disruptive policy. NOTNEWS and Wikinews are dependent on each other. If either of them was removed, the other would collapse like a house of cards.James500 (talk)18:48, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  No, NotNews is to resolve disputes over Wikipedia's scope. In fact, it was there years before the WMF—let alone Wikinews—was a thing. Closing Wikinews would not suddenly change dozens of editors' attitudes about including news on Wikipedia. Not to mention the most popular new scope would have Wikinews only do original reporting, which is what news actually is.Aaron Liu (talk)22:25, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If Wikinews is prohibited from including non-original news, the most likely outcome is that significant numbers of editors will stuff Wikipedia with massive quantities of non-original news, and it will not be possible to stop them. Many of the provisions in criteria 2 to 4 of WP:NOTNEWS would become unpopular and would likely become largely impossible to enforce. Restricting the scope of Wikinews now would be like removing a safety valve. [The dates given by Aaron Liu above appear to be mistaken: Wikinews was launched on 8 November 2004. Only a month before that, WP:NOT was marked by an admin as a policy on 7 October 2004, apparently without discussion, having apparently been proposed ("policy thinktank") by a non-admin on 30 September 2004. Before that, WP:NOT appears to have only been an essay.]James500 (talk)09:36, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Should WMF run a web hosting service to enforcew:WP:NOTWEBHOST?dringsim09:46, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's the day the category was createdtongue-in-cheek. NOT has been part ofw:WP:PAG since the latter page was created in 2001:w:Special:PermanentLink/294531Aaron Liu (talk)17:02, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose It's funny that even this section was used for some russophobia. Blogs are better forinstance original local reporting and so on and can be freely licensed.Lvova (talk)15:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Certain Wikinews language editions should be closed, or have incompatible policies that must be changed.

• Seems possible? But I don't think that this follows from the report, and I see no reason that the normalclosing projects policy cannot be followed if this is the case. So I Oppose taking action on this based on this RFC. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs)21:43, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Closing down the language from the top down is meaningless and goes against the spirit. I Oppose. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)02:12, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Please also see my comments under "No Change" if you are willing. I believe unless there are extremely dire and extraordinary circumstances, all the closures should follow normal local procedures and no one outside can interfere. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)07:22, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We already have a process for closing moribund wikis and I don't see a compelling reason to depart from it. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)09:02, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose I am fine with closing inactive projects, but i think we can use normal process for that (Or individual projects can decide they want to be closed). I'd even be fine with making the criteria more strict for wikinews given that unlike most wikis, its publish model means it has to be actively publishing to be meaningful (unlike Wikipedia which sort of just has to exist). However i think normal procedures for that can be used, including a normal RFC to ammend the closing procedures. As far as "Have incompatible policies that much be changed" goes, what type of question is that? Name the policy and projects in question.Bawolff (talk)03:47, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Closing projects policy explicitly says "Inactivity in itself is no valid reason". You can't close projects because of inactivity only.Amir (talk)22:18, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd be supportive of changing the closing projects policy to add it. My general view is that Wikinews should not be special. Either inactivity is a valid reason or it isn't. Everyone should follow the same rules.Bawolff (talk)06:30, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Closing half of the languages I Support. I think the following wikinews languages should be closed after looking at their statistics:
  • Fewer than 5 editors a day on average or fewer than 150 editors a month: Limburgish, Romanian, Shan
  • Bots more than 30% of daily editors: Serbian, Dutch, Korean, Spanish, Esperanto, Czech
  • Both too few users and too many bots: Finnish, Albanian, Tamil, Bosnian.--Snævar (talk)12:52, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Adding the criteria that any profits of closing said languages go to other wikinews languages and wikinews pulse if it gets accepted.Snævar (talk)13:33, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support closing at leastsome WN language editions summarily. Limburgish can easily go— it’s a minor language spoken in a small area, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most speakers also know English or Dutch. The LimburgishWikipedia is barely active, why would the Limburgish edition of the least active project do better? --Dronebogus (talk)12:54, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  "Limburgish can easily go—it's a minor language spoken in a small area." What does that mean?? I don't really familiar with the situation there, but it seems to me that's not a legitimate reason. Should minor languages be eliminated? That's clearly wrong. In my opinion, it is precisely because it is a small language that is about to go and only spoke in a small area as a second language maybe like you said, then it has more significance than the amount of content.

  Inactivity is certainly a valid reason. But in any case, doesn't the local community have the power to decide whether to close its own project? And what serious consequences would we face if we don't make intervention immediately and shut them down? Maintenance fee? (Of course, if you can prove that maintaining them would significantly impact WMF's funding, I'm fine with this question.) I have no intention of changing your vote, but I disagree with your views. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:49, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The last article on Limburgish is from over a year ago and the front page still shows images from2020. Nobody is using this wiki let alone reading it. But if you think it should go through a formal closure request instead of just being closed as obviously inactive then that’s fine too.Dronebogus (talk)12:49, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So, back to the original question, since you said "it's fine too", then there's no point in intervening top-down violates the spirit of grassroots self-governance now. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)03:24, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am not glad with the concept of closing projects due to inactivity since this is highly influences by the users themselves. For example, years ago I was one of the most active editors in DE WN, and I am the only German WN user ever doing and finishing the Hundred Wikidays challenge but the death of my mother, some related issues and all the burcracy connected with this prevented me from continuing on this pace. Such things can change quickly but should not put the whole language version in danger of closing. I strongly condemn any arguments based on costs. Given how much money the WMF is spending for other things, including an on presence Wikimania I conclude that there is no money problem at all, and if there even would be one, then it is the problem that the WMF has way to much money to spend.Matthiasb (talk)17:34, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't agree with that either. I don't agree with any reason for closing a project except in extremely dire circumstances(havn't see that). The only valid reason could close a project is the will of the local community(Because there's precedent). And this obviously also needs to take into account the feelings of past and future community members.

  I personally think that unless there is a really bad impact, it is not appropriate to shut down a website at any time, because it is strange to soft-shut a website and claim that you will wait for it to revive, which will only cause more trouble for future contributors.

  Thank you for your long-term contribution and persistence. You are right. and, Even if a small Wiki is sometimes active and sometimes not, it still has its value. A garden will bloom beautiful flowers in the spring, but not in the winter, so what? Do demons grow in the winter ground? I also believe that the funding problem does not exist at all. It's just a versatile question that cannot be falsified. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)01:02, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We have a policy on closing individual projects atClosing projects policy and it does not need the community in question to agree.

  Having a flower bed is actual work. Weeds need to be removed and flowers need their nutrients. If you have too many flowers in a small box, then some of them will die. Sometimes failing flowers are removed, either because they look bad or in order to give more room to the successful flowers, giving them access to more nutrients.

  I come from a Wikipedia language that was classified by WMF as being small and is now medium. While I do not have wikinews experience, I do know that a project that is too small will not blossom like a flower. I would be ok with adding a clause that says that the profits of closing the wikis will go to the other Wikinews, including Wikinews Pulse. That way, just like with the flowers, the larger Wikinews are nurtured to blossom.Snævar (talk)13:04, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  However, it says"Inactivity in itself is no valid reason; additional problems are.". But What you said is worth considering, and perhaps some maintenance costs and budgets need to be made public for everyone to consider. When we dig up a small flower, we need to carefully consider the meaning of its death. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)23:29, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I would guess we can close most Wikinews subdomains with little loss. Some language committee members have indicated that they could do it more easily if we managed to build consensus on some criteria to do so. Inactivity, as measured by the number of edits or editors, doesn't seem particularly useful as criterion; people seem mostly angry about very active subdomains anyway. As things stand, for example, I wouldn't oppose closing the Italian Wikinews, because already its main page tends to be misleading most of the time, but I would actually oppose closing it if it becameless active, and focused on presenting the original content (you could keep theinterview with Umberto Eco as the only item on the main page forever and it would be a perfectly educational wiki). So, I don't have any easy quantitative criterion to propose, but we could try out something based on the average staleness of the frontpage.Nemo15:55, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  "you could keep the interview with Umberto Eco as the only item on the main page forever and it would be a perfectly educational wiki." I totally agree with this sentence you said. Wikinews isn't a journal that relies solely on activity. Even occasionally publishing non-original content that meets timeliness(an extreme case) can still serve as a beneficial supplement. Meanwhile, this type of original content such as expert interviews is largely unaffected by timeliness. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)23:54, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support closing (not deleting) those language editions that have too few active editors with a native/near-native fluency in that language to form an active, productive community. IMO the necessary minimum number is somewhere between 5 and 10 editors in each month.WhatamIdoing (talk)01:47, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Weak support Making provision toclose incredibly inactive wikis could have my support, but closures must be individually approved using similar procedures toCPP.coleisforrobot (talk)19:57, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Strong support As Whatamidoing said, some projects are inherently too small to survive, given that Wikinews is quite a niche endeavour. In the unlikely event that five years from now Wikinews becomes the next big thing, then they can be un-closed.  novovtalkedits04:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikinews as a Citizen journalism is not a niche topic, at least it is much more mass than civic textbooks and civic universities. Of course, I am not blaming textbooks and universities, because I do not agree with these ideas, and I am also a contributor to Wikibooks. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)11:33, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Strong support Our project closure policy is both too restrictive and too onerous to deal with inactive or barely-active projects which have little hope of resuscitation and more importantly, effectively constitute a false promise by the WMF that a "free news source" is available in a given language.Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)07:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support as second choice to a more substantial archiving / mothballing of Wikinews in general. If there doesn't prove consensus for that, at least close all language editions with fewer than some number of edits in the period before this RFC (to prevent gaming, i.e. total edits in Jan 2024 - June 2025). I would suggest 100 edits per month as the minimum threshold, e.g. at least 1200 edits per year. Editions that are just over the limit are checked that there wasn't a wave of spam or users editing the sandbox or the like. My suspicion is that this would result in the closure of almost all editions barring the three most active languages or so.SnowFire (talk)18:15, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose. On the contrary, I think there should be more Wikinews in different languages introduced.BilboBeggins (talk)17:36, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If so, start the process of opening them at theincubator.Aaron Liu (talk)00:12, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  SupportWell very well (talk)09:57, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support with the points ofSnævarEleanorsilly (talk)12:48, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support some of the inactive smaller wikinews can be closed, but I think it's best to evaluate each project individually. That being said, I am not sure how different would it be from proposing it's closure to langcom.--BRP ^ever14:55, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support I proposed on the consultation that all projects with no new articles since 1 January 2025 should be closed for that reason since these projects completely lack a readerbase. These are truly dead projects. //shb(t •c)01:09, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  In fact, what you say is true for many websites. But this is not a reason to violate the existing mechanism and interfere from the outside. I certainly support the existing system, as we have done in the past, but this vague proposal does not seem to point to that. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)11:25, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support pls close dead projects. --ɱ10:33, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support To be clear, I support this as a second preference. My first preference is closing/archiving all the wikinews. --Rolluik (talk)08:09, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Strong support Just get rid of these badly designed, dead/zombie projects that should never have been created in first place. If not all of them, at least the majority.--11:29, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Vague proposal. We already have a process for closing moribund wikis and I don't see a compelling reason to depart from it.Harej (talk)02:01, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Opposeexcept for the Russian Wikinews. If you want to close an edition of Wikinews, use the normal procedure for closing wikis atProposals for closing projects.James500 (talk)06:37, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose The problem with Wikinews is not their language.Lvova (talk)15:31, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support: A good start.ChildrenWillListen (talk)14:04, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support —Matrix (_{user page}^{(@ commons)} -_talk?)10:48, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Existing Wikinews content should be merged or incubated within another Wikimedia or independent project.

• What does this mean? Is this proposing thatall Wikinews content be moved elsewhere? Or is it proposing that, e.g., content from a Wikinews article be integrated into a Wikipedia article? If it means the former, I Oppose for the reasons I give below. If it means the latter, this requires no decision from Meta or the Foundation -- anyone could do this, consistent with the terms of the license and the receiving site's policies. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs)22:13, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose the predominant “option” I’ve seen thrown around is merging into Wikipedia, which makes absolutely no sense and would be a disaster for both communities. No other options have been seriously considered, especially not outside projects (which would basically just be a fork/split from WM, a different solution entirely). --Dronebogus (talk)12:57, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support merge, maybe into separate namespace on Wikipedia called News:. There definitely is demand for community run journalism, however, Wikinews as it currently stands is not prime for that. On the note that Wikipedia is not a news site and that Wikipedia articles should not be original reporting, the fundamental problem is that MediaWiki is not well suited to host news articles. If a different microblogging software was used maybe we would not be here. I think though that if there were to be a merge (or if there were to be a keep), articles should be secondary reporting from places like AP rather than primary original journalism. It is grossly incompatible with the purpose of a wiki to have articles uneditable after a set timeframe.Aasim01:33, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose This hasn't reached a consensus in either the WN or WP communities, and again, it's "far from it." Furthermore, many Wikipedia homepages already have links to Wikinews and news sections. I believe these two should complement each other and not be merged. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)03:30, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose because of the German WP folks would be keen to kill off any Wikinews stuff by deletion requests. They hate Wikinews way more than any other thing in the world --Matthiasb (talk)17:35, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support If Wikipedia already allows writing news articles, then Wikinews is just a weird site. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk)00:09, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedia does not allow news articles, see for examplew:de:WP:WWNI, number 8. Orw:en:WP:NOTNEWS. What WP does allow is writing of enyclopaedic articles on topics which are in the news. Most of them aren't notable to warrant an own article. BTW: While some languages of WP, e.g. DE, EN have an own box for articles on actual events on the main page, others don't have those. e.g. FR while IT presents all sister projects on its WP mainpage with the latest articles published on WQ, WN, Commons, WS and WV.Matthiasb (talk)12:23, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @MatthiasbNOTNEWS?Liuxinyu970226 (talk)06:54, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wdym ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)07:58, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  First of all, from what I can see, this page is full of external links. I can't find any press releases, and scrolling further back only yields a few brief messages related to Wikipedia projects. Furthermore, the page is titled "Vernacular News," and the only reference to "Wikinews" is in parentheses above and in the categories below. I respect the different policies and priorities of each version, but I don't think this is the same thing as what we mean by Wikinews, and it doesn't prove that "Wikipedia can host news content" or that a merger would be beneficial. Could you explain more about the commonality between this page and our topic? ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)08:11, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Is there a consensus within the Wikipedia community on this? Wikinews doesn't. So I don't think merging the two would bring much benefit. It would also make Wikipedia weird. I don't actually think Wikinews is sufficiently established to be merged into Wikipedia, nor should it's content be included in Wikipedia. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)23:39, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose, Wikipedia disallows news articles (see Matthiasb's comment above) and a merged Wikinews will not be aligned with Wikipedia's mission as an encyclopedia.Chaotic Enby (talk)13:19, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: While this has been discussed many times during the consultation, I have seen little support for the idea from any community that might be the target of a merge. As Mdaniels notes above, a selective merge is always possible if a community wants to host the content, and doesn't need an RfC; most Wikipedias have indicated they are not places for news. A crisper question might be: for any wikis that are archived or closed: should they be moved to the incubator. –SJ  22:25, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I've seen support for moving/merging them to an "independent" (i.e., not WMF-based) project. Otherwise, I agree: no Wikipedia wants Wikinews' existing content in their project.WhatamIdoing (talk)02:12, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• This proposal is functionally equivalent to the next one, "Archive content". Nobody's going to force any existing wiki to import Wikinews content. So first you archive the wikis, then maybe some other wikis will voluntarily import their content.Nemo15:55, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose No other Wikimedia wiki to my knowledge supports news articles and and making it independent would solve no problems, but instead just make it someone else's problem.coleisforrobot (talk)20:01, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose As other editors have stated, the content isn't really suited for other projects.  novovtalkedits04:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose: this wouldn't lead anywhere. To my knowledge no other project would welcome an import of all of that mess. Wikinews is out of scope for other projects (and not only WP). —Alien 3
  3 313:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose and speedy-close this as clearly lacking consensus (and also a concrete place to merge). There's never been any support for this option as it'd blur the definition of whatever project tried to "take" Wikinews.SnowFire (talk)18:15, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• How is it even possible? Wikinews specifically because of WP:NOTNEWS rule in Wikipedia.BilboBeggins (talk)17:38, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:NOTNEWS guidelines is for Articles or mainspace pages only. Could be possible if there’s any other namespace (eg. by creating new namespace, like "News:") 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬)17:42, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedia would have to agree to it and it goes against theirpurpose, as an encyclopædia. This feels like shoving the circle into the square hole; you can, but that doesn't mean you should.coleisforrobot (talk)18:57, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose Those who proposed this option do not understand the fundamental difference between sister projects. --Butko (talk)19:48, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose because of the difference of content between projects.Eleanorsilly (talk)12:49, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I make no comment on Wikiversity or Wikibooks (as I'm not familiar with these projects), but IStrong oppose merging WN content into Wikipedia, as a fundamental policy violation (WP:NOTNEWS in en.wp,WP:NONOTICIAS in es.wp,WP:NICHT #8 in de.wp and so on). I also strongly oppose merging them into other Wikimedia projects, because they all have a limited scope that does not include news content (I'm saying this as a Wikinewsie myself).Dsuke1998AEOS (talk)11:17, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose I fail to see where Wikinews content could be reasonably merged. Wikipedia would likely be the closest and even then, many Wikipedia projects have policies along the lines of NOTNEWS. //shb(t •c)01:11, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose I don't see any merge opportunities but people are ofcourse free to use any material they want in whatever way they want. --Rolluik (talk)11:34, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Significant engineering effort that would break thousands of links and accomplish nothing useful.Harej (talk)02:01, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Harej, are you thinking of links on external/non-WMF-hosted websites?WhatamIdoing (talk)05:38, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think he thinks on links in Wikinews articles linking to Wikipedia articles. That is true for each and every Wikinews article in at least 5 to 7, sometimes more than zehn isntances.It mostly could be done by bot I guess but there might stay some case to case stuff to do as well.Matthiasb (talk)10:04, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose. You would have to abolish WP:NOTNEWS etc, and there is no evidence the Wikipedia etc community have agreed to that.James500 (talk)06:38, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose I don't know a project in Wikimedia ecosystem that will take it within the framework of their scope.Lvova (talk)15:30, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Existing Wikinews content should be archived.

• What does this mean? At least on the English Wikinews, it is archived in that it (mostly) cannot be edited once published. If this is referring to, e.g. backups, I don't think that taking any special measures beyond what is done with e.g. Wikibooks is needed.

If this is referring to closure of all languages, I Oppose taking action here. The report shows that (1) Wikinews is rarely in search results, (2) Wikinews is not read worldwide, (3) Wikinews has few volunteers editing each page, (4) Wikipedia does not cite Wikinews and (5) Wikinews articles are rarely edited after publication. [The report seems unaware that (1) Citing Wikinews is prohibited on (at least) the English Wikipedia, for the same reason that citing Wikipedia is prohibited, and (2) at least on the English Wikinews, articles are fully-protected after a certain amount of time.] I am skeptical that these warrant closure. But I see no reason that theclosing projects policy process is inadequate to respond to these concerns -- take a look at each Wikinews and decide based on its own merits. If each individual Wikinews is closed, on its own merits, then I would think that closure of the entire sister project could be done relatively uncontroversially. And if it is decided that a particular Wikinews should remain open, then closure of that Wikinews would of course be inappropriate. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs)22:08, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I believe this refers to the latter, Mdaniels5757. I Oppose with this, because judging by the public consultation and other discussions, the community clearly hasn't reached a consensus on closure—far from it. Furthermore, I don't believe the discussion on whether WN should continue or close has been sufficiently thorough. Even the data in the Document is still widely debated on the public consultation page, but no one from the Document's author has responded. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)02:29, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Normal procedures should be used for closing projects. I believe projects should stay open so long as people are interested in contributing to them. If the issue with Wikinews is that trend lines are bad, while if the trend continues the problem will eventually sort itself out and we can have this discussion when it eventually does.Bawolff (talk)03:50, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  How long to wait? What if the trend line does not sort itself out?Snævar (talk)13:19, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  “If the trend continues the problem will eventually sort itself”, true for reference works like Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, etc. They're surely gradually improved. For Wikinews, a news periodical, the trend line is not always rising. It can frequently drop sharply.dringsim04:00, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Neutral this is the least favorable option I don’t outright oppose. I don’t think WN should be closed (the obvious actual meaning here); however I would prefer this over keeping it in its current state and far prefer it over some clumsy attempt at merging it into Wikipedia. --Dronebogus (talk)13:11, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose having understood that it refers to the later version defined by Mdaniels. Victoria truely wants to shut down Wikinewses, all of them. That would result in "archiving" as in put them in read-only modus. I don't want this, therefore oppose. It it is meant that articles should not be modified after publication I think this should be decided within each language version (lv). The German lv does semi-protcec articles since the beginning I guess., at least since my arrival in 2007 or so. Personally I think that it is the right way to do it but discussion in German WP showed this a a big pront of critique. So the archiving of articles by semi-protecting them, formerly or indeed thought as a method of preventing vandalism as well as protecting the article to people in good faith modifying them by erroriously not knowing the rules, could or should be discussed by each lv individually. --Matthiasb (talk)23:16, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• If 'archiving' means "close all", I have perhaps Weak support for that. However, I think that "Fork all" to an independent, non-WMF-dependent project would be much better. I think that something like aw:en:performance improvement plan would be more relevant: Set an objective, easily measured standard for what Wikinews needs to do to be kept. That might sound like "At leastx editors each month, writing at leasty original articles andz synthesis articles", but the goal for the plan is to have everyone to be able to see whether the goal has been met.WhatamIdoing (talk)02:18, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose If that means close all languages, I would like to note that

1. There is not community consensus, as seen in the consultation
2. I do not see how the concerns risen in the report could not be addressed through the existingCPP procedures for each language.

coleisforrobot (talk)20:08, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support Aside from the issues discussed atProposal for Closing Wikinews, any increase in Wikinews's activity or readership beyond its current dismal state is difficult to imagine in our contemporary cultural zeitgeist, where early-Internet visions of the transformational potential of uninhibited popular journalism have gradually evolved into a much more cynical perspective which leaves little room for projects such as Wikinews. Those who maintain the old idealism exist, but they are often hardly fond of the WMF or what it has come to represent.Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)07:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support The old model was a nice try, but it fundamentally didn't work, and it's questionable that the WMF should be the one spearheading this. Replacing it with Pulse seems reasonable, but we should also archive the old style as not something really supported anymore. (Usual disclaimer goes here that community-supported journalism is a good idea, but Wikinews isn't the way to do it.)SnowFire (talk)18:15, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• If this proposal means that Wikinews will be shut down in its entirety, then Strong support. It is clear at this point that Wikinews is a failed project with not much readership, and in my experience (through theSWMT) the majority of the activity on a lot of the existing Wikinews projects is dominated by non-constructive editing such as by cross-wiki vandals and spambots (example) - and this adds a lot onto the SWMT burden. Shutting down Wikinews would reduce a less-monitored avenue for spammers and vandals and the like without any real negatives such as a loss of significant readership.JavaHurricane13:08, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's an argument for closing down inactive language editions, not closing down absolutely everything.Aaron Liu (talk)15:17, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose I don’t believe that taking a drastic step without first trying other alternatives is the best approach. Shutting Wikinews down would not contribute to our shared goal of collecting the sum of all knowledge, and it would leave a gap in the broader Wikimedia ecosystem. I recognize that social media has changed how news reaches people, but if we are able to use it effectively to promote Wikinews and its reliably covered topics through social media, the project could grow significantly.

At a time when much of the media landscape is politically influenced, a venue like Wikinews is needed more than ever. I strongly urge the Board not to take this step. Instead, I encourage focusing some resources on promotion, updating Wikinews to current standards, and exploring its potential. Wikinews was not a mistake; it simply has not yet had the chance to flourish to its full potential.--BRP ^ever15:14, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  OpposeBRPever summed it up well. We need to reassess policies that slow publication while keeping safeguards against bias and inaccuracies. A Task Force recommendation in that context could drive needed change and help revitalize the project.Michael.C.Wright (talk)16:15, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose per BRPever. Archiving it (which is really just closing it) without letting the local community assess its local policies to ensure that it's still sustainable in the future feels excessively authoritarian, all the more so in an era when many independent news outlets are being defunded across the world. //shb(t •c)01:16, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Strong support pls close dead projects. --ɱ10:32, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support closing and archiving all wikinews projects. Readers should be able to read what is there but no further edits should be made (except for legal/technical reasons by the WMF). Maintenance should be scaled back and resources put into other projects. Inherent in the term "news" is that it is about new things. If there isn't an original article at minimum once a week, it is not a news source. I don't think any of the wikinews projects are active enough (the least active ones should be the first to close) or read enough to keep going. The few times I visited the Dutch or English wikinews, I noticed pretty early that wikipedia's coverage of important current events is far superior. The signpost is better for news on the community (I think that it should allow coverage of the other projects, since it is editor facing. I don't know if that is the case). Local news is better for local topics. There is a lot of free news (in the only sense readers care about, that they don't have to pay) on the internet and all news media do it better. If paywalls start going up, I could see a revival of a similar concept to wikinews. --Rolluik (talk)11:36, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Signpost for Metawiki?Dronebogus (talk)05:08, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Strong support for closing projects that over such a long time already are lacking enough participation in order to fulfil their purpose. Regards,Aschmidt (talk)13:01, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Strong support the idea of Wikinews doesn't work, and I don't see how this could ever change. --Icodense (talk)23:11, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Strong support Just get rid of these badly designed, dead/zombie projects that should never have been created in first place.--11:25, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Zombie projects?BilboBeggins (talk)23:12, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose --DerMaxdorfer (talk)20:40, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose "Existing Wikinews content should be archived" is fatally vague. Why is it "should" – is there a scenario where it might not be archived? What is "archiving" in this context? We typicallyclose wikis. Wearchive discussion threads. I am open to these words attaining different meanings, but I can't support a proposal that can't even explain what it would do.Harej (talk)02:01, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Harej: I didn't write this section, but it seems clear that "should" simply reflects that this is "only" an RFC and we are not the WMF here. This RFC can provide the community'sadvice about what to do, but at the end of the day it will be the WMF that either closes Wikinews or keeps it running. Saying "Will be closed" would provide false certainty. As for "archive", this seems to me to mean "preserve existing articles, but forbid creation of new articles". Whether that will mean keeping the existing software but locking changes to anyone but stewards, or some sort of other archival strategy, is an implementation issue to worry about in a Phabricator ticket in the future, and probably not really that interesting to the community nor where its expertise lies.SnowFire (talk)02:25, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support (1) Wikinews have no chance of becoming a first-rate news source: an attempt to take on the professional media while mimicking their process (journalist->editor->publication) cannot be successful, as the competitors simply have more resources. Other Wikimedia projects, like Wikipedia, neatly circumvented the problem by usingen:WP:5P3,en:WP:OWN,en:WP:E, or their equivalents. (2) News, unlike, say, animal species, are inherently divisive. We have more than enough divisiveness in Wikimedia projects already. --Викидим (talk)20:30, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose. The worst of all worlds. The effect would be to close viable projects and prevent the deletion of objectionable material on others.James500 (talk)06:38, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support If it will be closed, it should not be lost.Lvova (talk)15:28, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support - Wikinews has clearly had a reasonable level of success, and plenty of decent articles published. It would be unfair on all the editors who have worked on it, both past and present, to simply have that work erased from existence.DaneGeld (talk)17:25, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support —Matrix (_{user page}^{(@ commons)} -_talk?)10:49, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Wikinews language editions should just continue to function as currently.

• - Comment This might make me seem like a conservative, but I genuinely don't see the point of additional top-down closures of small language versions if we choose to keep the Wikinews project. I believe the local community's decisions (as in the past) are sufficient, unless a community gangs up to control a language version and persistently spreads false information or something similar – like when someone armed group seizes control of Tasmania in my country, Australia, and starts bombarding the New South Wales coast. That's when those of us outside the local community and the WMF's institution should intervene. And this clearly hasn't happened. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)02:36, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So, unless it can be proven that maintaining these inactive at same time nothing happened versions incurs extremely high costs, I fail to see the rationale for violating the spirit of grassroots self-governance on Wikimedia by intervening in local communities. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)02:46, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, sorry, I just saw this is still a draft at the moment, but anyway that's my opinion, as long as this question still exist on this page ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)02:53, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A general and vague option of NoChange under a reform proposal is difficult. But I believe that this option can lead to better reforms for Wikinews. This public consultation has already given the community a significant impact(include bad impact) and served as a wake-up call. Moving forward, our reforms will be more thorough and dynamic—certainly not worse than before the public consultation (when reforms were already active). If one does not support shutting down Wikinews, then supporting this option is reasonable. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)08:28, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Wikinews should operate like other projects and individual language editions should be closed following the standard process. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯08:27, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• The RfC has officially started, and now I personally Support this one. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)09:12, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I disagree with the wording of this proposal: I don't think that everything is perfect, and I don't think that anything should be set in stone. But I don't think any changes should be made across all subprojects based on this RFC -- there is simply not evidence that the normal processes are in any way insufficient. So count me under Support. —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs)22:18, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I ought to note, in light of comments made by a Trustee and taskforce member, that I have never made any substantive edit to any Wikinews project. (My "contributions" are all from renaming files on Commons.) So perhaps I count as unbiased? —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs)00:18, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I guess I am supporting this. I think changes should be made to Wikinews projects, but they should come from within based on the desires of those who are participating.Bawolff (talk)03:51, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose There are activity problems on half of the Wikinews, see my comment under narrow languages for details.--Snævar (talk)13:04, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Wikinews as it currently exists is failing to deliver the promise of being a realistically useful news outlet. While I wouldn’t be surprised if 100% of all major news outlets are paywalled by the end of the decade, Wikinews is not the solution; people will just go to Wikipedia for news since it’s bigger and draws from those paywalled sources.Dronebogus (talk)12:38, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would like to ask all the contributors who are not WP sister projects to think about this: if this is the case, why don’t people go to WP to find travel information and tutorial content? People do often do this. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:44, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Kind of anw:wp:OTHERCRAP argument, but whilesomebody might hypothetically be using voyage or books for their intended purpose,nobody gets their headline news from Wikinews. In any case a guidebook from 5 years ago will probably still be useful today; a travel guide needs frequent updating, but is not going to vary from day to day; news, on the other hand, is inherently time-bound and “perishable”— it’s not “olds”.Dronebogus (talk)10:21, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There's been a lot of discussion on the public consultation page about how Wikinews can do more than just let you know, "Wow, there was a car accident on Moscow Street yesterday," so I won't rehash it. If you think I'm making an OTHERCRAP argument, does that mean you think the other sister projects shouldn't exist? Other Craps? What is the Crap? And then you go on to talk about the timeless value of Wikivoyage and Wikibooks.

  Also, please don't change the subject. You seem to be trying to deny the value of Wikinews, rather than whether the language versions of Wikinews should be allowed to maintain autonomy for this. If you want to talk about this, you should go to other relevant proposals(such as Archive Content). While the arguments you cited maybe are valuable, the ENWP rules clearly don't apply outside of ENWP. Just to remind, you seem to frequently cite the terms and guidelines of the ENWP. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)03:02, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  News are "inherently time-bound and 'perishable'— it’s not 'olds'", Ok， So, is News on Wikipedia no longer a “perishable” "Olds"? And people have already said a lot on the public consultation page about why WP can't replace Wikinews. While you might not seem like someone familiar with Wikinews, you're at least a Wikipedian right? Wikipedia's community has strict standards for notability and prohibits extensive coverage of news items, you're not unaware of that, yes? ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)03:07, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  While I wouldn’t be surprised if 100% of all major news outlets are paywalled by the end of the decade, Wikinews is not the solution; people will just go to Wikipedia for news since it’s bigger and draws from those paywalled sources. Well I agree fully with your beginning, but the rest won't work out. If all mayor news outlets will be paywalled Wikipedia stops drawing from these sources. But even if there would be a sustainable number of users having access to these outletsand still writing in Wikipedia Wikipedia still is NOTNEWS. Or to show it by an example.n:de: Dutzende Dorfbewohner in nächtlichem Angriff getötet is a Wikinews article I wrote last night. This event never will be covered in Wikipedia. Why? While there is enough material to write a news article there is not sufficient material to write an encyclopaedic article. Isn:en:German unemployment tops three million for first time since 2015 covered somewhere in Wikipedia? Dunno. But yeah…The unemployment rate published byEurostat amounts to 3.2% as of January 2020, which is thefourth-lowest in the EU. — No. Whatever will be it will not be Wikipedia where people inform themselves. Aside from really big developments they do not understand at all.Matthiasb (talk)08:26, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikinews still isn’t the solution. Because nobody reads it, largely because it only publishes one article every few months about a car crash in spotsylvania that happened a week ago. Nobody is interested in that stuff.Dronebogus (talk)11:17, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support While this section is labeled "No change," I believe change is exactly what English Wikinews needs. We’re not fulfilling our mission and I don’t think we can under current policies, especially the review and archive processes. Resistance to change is strong among the few functionaries with the access needed for technical fixes, like correcting ourrobots meta tag. A clearly defined, realistic goal and deadline, something like a shot across the bow, may be what it takes to prompt meaningful reform. This is a vote against closure or merger, but also against preserving the status quo without substantial change.Michael.C.Wright (talk)01:27, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It appears that a Wikinews closure was discussed to some degree at the 2023 Wikimania[2] and the following process overview was presented then, but to my knowledge, for some reason not executed. This is precisely what I envision above; the Task Force has made its proposal. The next step could be probation with extended support for a course-correct (attempted restart) and then a final re-evaluation against pre-defined and reasonable progress indicators to then determine sunsetting or remaining active to continue progress on the restart.

Proposal→ Probation→ Extended support→ Sunset→ (Restart?)

Michael.C.Wright (talk)14:13, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the callback to that discussion. Yes it would be have a version of this procedure as an option for this RFC. –SJ  20:56, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment I think I agree with your basic diagnosis. The option#Narrow scope was meant to address this type of path forward, but perhaps something more comprehensive as a "Probation" option would be helpful.Pharos (talk)16:36, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support I would like to endorse what Michael wrote. Ifno change means that Wikinews remains an active sister project, that reads. But like Michael is stressing it: some change is desperately sought. It turned out in the discussion so far that some users do have ideas what could be tried to make Wikinews more attractive and actually that should have been the first step for the commitee to do. I also appreciate that the New York chapter volunteers to help out in the further development (and hope that this is not only meant for the English language version (lv)). As I have envsioned elsewhere I see WikiSpore as one engine to improve wikisource. But am not sure if I am understanding WikiSpore as a sisterproject correctly. What we need is the possibility to add content which is created automatically and usable for alle lvs simultanousely like stock market indexes, weather data and so on. --Matthiasb (talk)23:39, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose No change will only result sock masters happy. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk)00:23, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What is this "Sock Master" you're talking about? Someone who collects socks or something? If you mean a puppet or something, how many times have you made this kind of random accusation on a Wikinews-related talk page? Andagain, I won;t include "Rejecting this proposal would only make the rumormonger happy" in my support reason. I don't think your vague personal attacks are effective or in line with the rules. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)03:23, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Please elaborate on that.BilboBeggins (talk)05:22, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Comment Is there any feedback fromreaders' perspectives? --dringsim11:02, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Great question. I'm not aware of any. We can infer interest based on page-views but we don't know the basis for the interest, i.e., we don't know if they come interested to read a train-wreck of an article, or because of interest in the content reported.

  A reader survey might help, assuming it was conducted usefully and effectively.Michael.C.Wright (talk)17:36, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Good question. I've shared some of our assumptions about our readers to you before, but we do lack research. We've experimented with reader surveys, but we initially set a small sample size. The results were quite positive, but I personally don't think they're very valuable. zhwn recently ran a survey, not about WN but about a social issue, but perhaps it can also reveal some aspects of our readership. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)00:34, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The question is always: "What readers?" For example, the German-language Wikinews has created one (1) article in the last month. It was written by a brand-new account and feels like a press release from a politician. It's been read once or twice a day recently, including by people in this discussion (e.g., me).

  https://wikinav.toolforge.org only works on Wikipedias, so I can't check this, but: I would not be surprised if all of the (few) non-editor readers were arriving via search engine, and therefore it doesn't matter whether the page is at de.wikinews.org vs de.something-else.comWhatamIdoing (talk)02:08, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose This project is clearly in dire need of intervention.Amir (talk)22:15, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support I'm not seeing any evidence that Wikinews isso fundamentally broken as to warrant overruling individual wikis' autonomy.* Pppery *_{it has begun}20:40, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose We have identified problems; we should take appropriate action. Saying "just continue to function as currently", when one of the identified problems is that many of the Wikinews are currently non-functional, is not an appropriate action.WhatamIdoing (talk)01:57, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support WN needs change but none of the proposals raised here solve them. I echo the words of Michael.C.Wright. I also echo previous words of mine that the solutionshould be decided by the editors of the projects, not imposed by Meta or the Foundation.coleisforrobot (talk)20:12, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose The WMF shouldn't have to go along with the wishes of a very small group of people simply since they were the last to stick around in a metaphorical dying town. If they want to continue doing their own thing for a very small audience, there is always Miraheze.  novovtalkedits04:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You mean people in China’s Henan Province could vote to abolish your hometown, which might only have a population and economy of a few hundred thousand (if she is)? ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)10:59, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You mean the 钉子户? Yes.Aaron Liu (talk)11:55, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  For those who don’t speak Chinese:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate)#Nail_houseDronebogus (talk)02:49, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose See my comments atRequests for comment/Sister Projects next steps#Archive content.Hazarasp (talk ·contributions)07:30, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Wikinews is not reflective of the vibrancy that we want to foster and support within our movement. If we treat Wikinews in the same way that we treat other projects, readers will expect the same quality content there as in other projects. By Wikinews not being of the same quality as other projects, readers' expectation of quality across the projects declines, potentially leading them elsewhere and not supporting peoples' formation as editors.JuxtaposedJacob (talk)17:39, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Pls provide evidence of what readers expect. And add evidence of "readers" expecting what so ever "as in other projects", that they even realize that the different sister projects are "sister projects" and not only another wiki appearing similar to Wikipedia.Matthiasb (talk)10:34, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  After the 2023 skin update, very little wikis appear similar to Wikipedia, except for Miraheze and regular readers don't really come across Miraheze wikis either. There's also a list of sister projects on almost every Main Page curious readers will no doubt stumble into.Aaron Liu (talk)15:19, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose. See the PDF the SPTF wrote up, which remains pretty stark. Wikinews is in trouble, and isn't a site anyone would visit for news (local, investigative, etc.). The last people still trying to make it work are to be commended for trying, but they can't have the veto here given how incredibly tiny and non-functional the project is.SnowFire (talk)18:15, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Why should "the last people" standing not have the veto? At the end it is their time and their working power and there enthusiasm you and the committee are trying to decide on! Further: you're wrong when trying to make the point that closing the project would open up human resources. This can be doubted to a great extent. If Wikinews is closed the Wikinewsians very probably won't change [back] to Wikipedia, a project many (not all) Wikinewsians left years ago in frustration and dissent- Those won't go back. Some perhaps even cannot because of blocks and bannings in their respective WP language version. Perhaps one or two will end up in another sister project but this also can be doubted as those projects are different. If one is affluent in writing news articles he might be bored by transcribing old texts for Wikisource. Or searching vor quotes to Wikiquote (whose German language version in turn isn't very attractiv because its admins are thriving away all new users). He even might not be able to contribute to Wikispecies for example lacking knowledge. What should a Wikinewsian do in Wikibooks or Wikiversity? I am pretty sure that almost none of the human resources so far spent to Wikinews will end up in another sister project. Most of those Wikinewsians will be lost to the movement. Resulting in bad faith and bad publicity. (IMHO this affair already has evolved into a PR disaster but the WMF never was prone to care on what people are thinking.) --Matthiasb (talk)09:36, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'll keep it brief, but A) This isn't a PR disaster. Nobody cares. If anything, it mightprevent a future PR disaster if some scandalous Wikinews article is published. B) Of course they can't have a veto. This isn't a standard enforceable anywhere, including on Wikinews, and you know it. If an earnest Wikinews contributor makes a horrible, non-publishable article, they don't get to keep it and publish it because they insist that they have to sign off on refusing it. The same for any other sister project. If you agree with this principle on a small scale - that the creator of a Wikipedia article doesn't need to sign off on deleting that article if the rest of the community thinks it needs to go - then you agree with the principle on a larger scale.SnowFire (talk)17:05, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural Support - Wikinewsies have flagged several problems with the process leading up to this RFC, including some alleged inaccuracies in the report, an overly narrow scope, misinterpretation of the purpose of Wikinews, and blaming the problems of one or two languages on the project as a whole. By itself, that wouldn't necessarily be enough for me to take this position, because I frankly do not know enough about Wikinews to evaluate those arguments. But for me, the damning part is that Wikinews was (apparently) not consulted. You can't do that. If you're going to write a report like this, it needs to be written in a collegial spirit, and it should focus on determining whether and how the project can be salvaged or improved. If closure is to be recommended, it should be the final option after you have exhausted all alternatives. Looking over the PDF, that is not the report that the SPTF delivered, so I believe it is fundamentally flawed and cannot be used as the basis for any next steps. The report should be scrapped and redone from the ground up, with the direct involvement of the Wikinews community (to the extent they are even willing to participate, given what has already happened). --NYKevin (talk)20:14, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support. This seems reasonable, most Wikinews editors are for saving project.BilboBeggins (talk)17:34, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wellof course they would be. It takes a special kind of suck for people to jump ship on their own project; that doesn’t make every project with internal support automatically not suck.Dronebogus (talk)13:23, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  BilboBeggins is a Russian Wikinews contributor.WhatamIdoing (talk)06:07, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support best choice from proposals. Let the Wikinews communities develop their projects. Also, this choice does not prevent the addition of original local reporting, expert interviews, or journalist-volunteer collaborations as it proposed in#Narrow scope. --Butko (talk)19:33, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Since you are active at the Russian Wikinews, it's hardly surprising that you want the current arrangements to continue. But I still wonder why the only option you will accept is "Let the Wikinews communities develop their projects – as a WMF-hosted website, under WMF rules, with WMF donors paying for everything" instead of "Let the Wikinews communities develop their projects – on their own website, under their own rules, with their own donors paying for everything".WhatamIdoing (talk)06:07, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I strongly disagree the idea that only the local community can decide to close a project or not. Yes, the local community can choose to continue to "develop their project", but WMF can also decide whether to host a project or not. --dringsim08:09, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Support, lets leave WN alone. It has a great potential that is already largely limited by WMF imposed technical boundaries. Let's not make everyone's life harder further. --Base (talk)18:51, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What are theWMF imposed technical boundaries you speak of?Sophocrat (talk)19:18, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  AFAICT the only technical boundary imposed by the WMF is: No wiki usingmw:Extension:DynamicPageList is allowed to import tens of thousands of articles from other websites at a time. The Russian Wikinews crashed all the servers twice this way. You can choose whether to import 100,000 articles in a dayor to have DPL installed, but you can't choose both at the same time.WhatamIdoing (talk)01:36, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Also I don't think importing 100,000 articles per day is in line with the scope of Wikinews.dringsim03:43, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It is surely true, that it was poorly executed though I think it was initially done in good faith. For what reason importing 100.000 news articles per day should not be within the scope of wikinews?Matthiasb (talk)16:04, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  For what reason importing 100,000 news articles per day IS WITHIN the scope of Wikinews?dringsim17:16, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Krassotkin, the main admin of ruwikinews, thought that it would be "good" to import all news articles released under a free license.Well very well (talk)00:00, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Isn't it Wikisource's task instead of Wikinews's?dringsim02:03, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Is that why Russian Wikinews is so big?Coleisforeditor (talk)12:28, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Coleisforeditor, yes, that's why the Russian Wikinews have so many articles. They write almost no articles. They primarily copy/paste from other websites.WhatamIdoing (talk)05:41, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Krassotkin thought that it would be good because of all those news articles' websites had been closed by THE Government shortly after. Krassotkin deserves a noble price for that.Matthiasb (talk)07:49, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Isn't it Internet Archive and Wikisource's task instead of Wikinews's?dringsim08:16, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know the situation very well, but I haven't seen Wikisource doing this, and I don't really think they should. As for the Internet Archive, I haven't seen any of them overwriting RuWN archived content either, de facto. However, I do not support every Wikinews to carry out such large-scale import of old news. If you would like a Wikiarchive, you could propose it, perhaps on Wikispore. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)11:59, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  i) I do think Wikisource can import these free articles (at least those from some notable sources); ii) Whether “Wikiarchive” exists or not, massive importing old reports is definitely not in the scope of Wikinews, a news source (not an archive of external content).dringsim17:25, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think this was Wikinews's responsibility either, but I'd say it was a decision made by the Ruwn community(should be), and it achieved the desired effect. Of course, it caused serious technical problems, which is also a fact and it was a bad mistake, one we've learned from and should not repeat. And regardless of what you and I think, the Wikisource community doesn't seem to have a consensus on this at the moment. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)06:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Maybe build an independent project and don't force Wikinews to fit in the MediaWiki model (like OpenStreetMap)?dringsim01:45, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Are you suggesting Wikinews leave the Wikimedia umbrella and find a different host? Because that’s a great idea. Neither party seems towant each other; why salvage a metaphorical failing marriage?Dronebogus (talk)05:03, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe the two parties involved in the marriage are WN and WMF, and I've only seen some third parties comment on this. I also don't see either party being bullied, unless you consider these actions to be bullying. And when there's no bullying going on, it seems immoral to persuade someone to break up. After all, there's a Chinese saying about "encouraging reconciliation, not separation", which I believe also applies to Christianity and more. It's clearly a universal moral principle. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)11:46, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose Something clearly needs to be done. --Rolluik (talk)11:44, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Something needs to be done.Sohom (talk)01:59, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose Something needs to be done. --11:31, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Reluctant Support because none of the stated proposals are actionable or good ideas. Let's continue the wiki way of iterative improvement, and using the existing project closing process to close specific wikis that are no longer feasible.Harej (talk)02:01, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The wiki way of iterative improvement works well for reference works. But I don't think it works for periodicals.dringsim02:42, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe he meant that the proposal to close Wikinews should be iterated on. Think: "I don't like these five proposals about Wikinews. Go fetch me five new proposals about Wikinews. Maybe I will like one of them."WhatamIdoing (talk)05:43, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, in a deciding process it is not uncommon that the first three or five solutions do not lead to a consensus and another round has to be begun.Matthiasb (talk)09:58, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose I don't know what the best solution is for Wikinews, but at least as to the English Wikinews, it is not succeeding at being a news site or at attracting significant numbers of readers or editors -- and it would need a lot more editors to produce the quantity of new content needed to attract readers. Doing nothing and leaving the site as it is with no changes is not going to make the site better. --Metropolitan90 (talk)00:51, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You're right. However I believe that "no change" here is the most beneficial for the reform of each WN site. This option is actually a play on words; "no change" refers to the status of each version, not how the site operates. Of course, we need reform, and it's impossible not to reform. For example, enwn was actively reforming even before the public consultation began, but I won't comment on this. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)08:58, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose The Wikinews (WN) are irrelevant to the world as a news source, and have no chance of a major improvement: why would a first-rate journalist work for WN and not for, say, NYT? Other Wikimedia projects work well because they attract a critical mass of amateur collaborators, but there is nothing in the current WN content creation model that distinguishes it from the mainstream news sources.en:Wiki is all about collaboration. Until (and unless) a news creation model is found that uses collaborative efforts of a large crowd of amateurs to create asingle news item, the WN projects should not go on IMHO. It makes little sense for Wikimedia to continue providing a technological platform to very few journalists that do not want to publish their work elsewhere. --Викидим (talk)20:53, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I understand that you support archiving and closure, but if Wikinews is not ultimately closed, the issues you raise can only be improved through reform of Wikinews, which is what this option is most beneficial for. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)11:28, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Support,except for the Russian Wikinews,but without prejudice to further proposals through normal channels. No evidence has been presented that any change is needed that cannot be dealt with through normal procedures, such asProposals for closing projects. The English Wikinews seems to be doing okay. It seems to have plenty of readers (judging from the front page and articles listed there, which is what matters) and editors and content.Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Esperanto Wikinews was recently speedily closed on grounds that the proposal was frivolous and vexatious. As far as the English Wikinews is concerned, my !vote isspeedy support without exceptions on grounds that the proposal appears to constitute unambiguous disruption as far as that wiki is concerned.It seems to me that the real issue here is with the Russian Wikinews, and particularly with the use of robots there, and I suggest that project be dealt with separately. At this point in time, I have no opinion abouthow that project should be dealt with.James500 (talk)06:41, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Closing Wikinews was obviously something the SPTF was going to do through normal procedures. Nobody is suggesting to sidestep that.Aaron Liu (talk)23:03, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would disagree with that.Bawolff (talk)16:32, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Could you elaborate?Aaron Liu (talk)21:59, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If it intended to follow normal procedures they would start a request to close the project, not this RFC. Nothing about this process has followed normal project closure procedures.Bawolff (talk)01:15, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I do not think the Public consultation would've closed the project straightaway if there was no opposition. From what I see, it was soliciting discussion of the SPTF's findingsbefore starting the project closure process with a closure proposal. Going straight to the latter would've been a lot less productive than the in-depth threaded discussion we got.Aaron Liu (talk)02:32, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think James500 is referring to the closure of the project website. If we're discussing whether this proposed closure followed normal procedures, he's right: it certainly didn't. "Special procedures," established for broad discussion, coexist with normal procedures without conflict, but this "special procedure" seeks to bypass them. The "special procedure" has already taken place, and if it passes, it would seem to bypass normal procedures and execute a mass execution. Like him, I personally don't see the point of doing so. When it comes to shutting down a website, normal procedures are always sufficient. There's plenty of theoretical support for this, but little evidence to the contrary. Also, happy National Day, if you celebrate PRC National Day. If not, I'd like to wish you a happy Mid-Autumn Festival in advance. ~Sheminghui.WU (talk)05:51, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Oppose I don't see an ideal solution, but also don't see even enWN as a project that should be in Wikimedia - it seems that people who are in a specific bubble see more sense, but it is about a bubble, not about the project. It is not a source for other projects, not an archive, not a good news source.Lvova (talk)15:27, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
•  Oppose: Something has to be done, per the others.ChildrenWillListen (talk)02:17, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Requests for comments (open)
• Requests for comments in 2025
• Sister Projects Taskforce
• Wikinews
• Wikispore