Wikipedia:Esperanza

This project is officially inactive as a result of this Miscellany for Deletion discussion. Some of the former Esperanza projects are now functioning as independent projects: Admin coaching Reach out Stress Alerts Tutorial Drive Calendar: now part of the Birthday Committee Collaboration of the Month: superseded by Article Creation and Improvement Drive.

The conception of Esperanza's logo was a joint effort by multiple Wikipedians.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/sandbox Esperanza was a Wikipedia project, founded on August 12, 2005. Its goals were to support the encyclopedia indirectly by encouraging a sense of community. It was the belief of Esperanza that a friendly, supportive community within Wikipedia would help the encyclopedia by keeping editors happy, productive, and on the project. The name is derived from the Spanish word for "hope," and the original goal was to offer hope for the Wikipedia community and bring it together. When proposing the association, the founder wrote the following:

Esperanza or Esperanza Association is a proposed association of wikipedians dedicated to strengthening wikipedia's sense of community through establishing a support network for wikipedians in an environment that is often hostile and apathetic. Esperanza takes its name from the Spanish word for hope. We have taken this name the in spirit of offering hope to wikipedians who feel isolated and ignored. Spanish is used in the hope that a segment of the wikipedia community will never again feel so isolated that it breaks away from the community as did a portion of the Spanish wikipedia community did to form Enciclopedia Libre.

Towards those goals, Esperanza attempted a number of initiatives, such as:

• A stress alerts page that would alert Esperanza if someone was ill or feeling highly stressed due to issues on Wikipedia or in real life, or if someone left Wikipedia.
• Admin Coaching, where newcomers could get assistance from Wikipedia administrators.
• Reach Out, which provided consoling.
• Tutorial Drive, which aimed to write a series of tutorials for using and editing Wikipedia
• A calendar for members to list their birthday, first-edit day, etc. Esperanza tried to send out birthday wishes to Wikipedians.
• The to-do list.
• Trading Spaces, where Wikipedians could request help for designing their user page.
• The coffee lounge for casual discussion.
• The User page awards for well-designed user pages.
• The Barnstar Brigade which gave out barnstars to users for good work.
• Stressbusters, which investigated the source of wikistress.

Some of these programs survive as independent projects.

Esperanza was governed by a charter, which stipulated an Advisory Council with staggered terms, as well as an Administrator General who was selected by the council to lead the project. Amendments to the charter could be made through week-long discussions held on Wikipedia talk:Esperanza. This was criticized as being heavily bureaucratic; Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy.

Esperanza was first nominated for deletion in November 2006. Critics of the group argued that Esperanza distracted people from contributing to the encyclopedia proper by providing an environment for social interaction. Esperanza was also criticized for having regular Council elections, which were seen as nothing more than popularity contests. Following a no consensus result in the first motion to delete Esperanza, the organization engaged in a series of reforms, which resulted in the deletion of the coffee lounge, the user page awards, Stressbusters and the Barnstar Brigade. The group also attempted to promote participation in the article namespace by creating an Esperanza Collaboration of the Month. While most of the reform discussions ultimately reached a consensus, the overhaul discussions related to Esperanza's goals, its charter, its governance, what constitutes membership, and the noticeboard weren't completed.

A month later, Esperanza was once again nominated for deletion. Noted complaints included:

• The overhaul, which was allegedly done to prevent the deletion of Esperanza rather than to actually fix it, was unsuccessful in reforming Esperanza.
• Esperanza had a "holier-than-thou" belief that without Esperanza, Wikipedia would melt into the ground. Likewise, there had been noted complaints that non-Esperanzians were treated as inferior.
• Esperanza had set non-Esperanza members apart through their activities, such as Esperanza Collaboration of the Month.
• The bureaucracy at Esperanza is anti-Wikipedia; the council made binding decisions through off-wiki conversations which were only made available after the event.
• Esperanza was a nice idea but impossible to implement; additionally, a large project isn't needed to spread hope and good cheer.

After long discussion, it was ultimately decided that Esperanza was to be decentralized and disbanded; see above for a list of now-independent projects. Other pages about Esperanza themselves were redirected to this page, which was replaced with the summary above.