Thank you for your replies. Sue has kindly answered some questions on IRC, as well: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2010-10-14
Sue Gardner, 13/10/2010 03:58: > Below are some questions and answers re the targets that might be > helpful for the discussion. (Erik wrote most of this, and I've just > now added a few bits.) If you read this and there are still issues > that you want addressed, please just say so :-) Is Thomas' interpretation correct? Thomas Dalton, 12/10/2010 13:37: > This was a concious decision and I believe it is explained in the FAQs > or somewhere (Sue certainly mentioned it in at least one of the > (many!) presentions I've seen her do about the plan - there are slides > for those somewhere too). The FAQ Sue posted here doesn't answer at all to my question. «The “number of Wikipedia articles” is expected to be useful as an _indicator_ of the overall amount of information we offer»: it just can't. > In summary (from memory), the reason was > basically one of "bang for your buck". The vast majority of our users > are using Wikipedia and not the other projects, But this could change. For instance, I think that people spend much more time reading/studying dictionaries and other books than encyclopedias (in whatever form). You can't say what it's possible. As a dictionaries addict, I used to believe (in 2005-2006), for many reasons, that a wiki dictionary wasn't going to be very useful (and I was a Wiktionary admin, I cared about it!); now en.wikt is IMHO better than many traditional English dictionaries, and it could attract most pageviews of its competitors if only people knew it. And I don't see why en, fr and some other Wiktionaries should continue to be the only successful ones. But this is only an example. > which means even a > small improvement to Wikipedia is likely to have more impact than even > a large improvement to one of the other projects. Sue was very clear > that prioritising Wikipedia only applies to the WMF. The community > can, and should, continue to improve the other projects, the WMF just > feels that its limited resources are better used where they will have > more impact. A very small improvement to Wikipedia may cost much, much more than a huge improvement to projects where we've never invested almost anything. And I could give you a list of examples (from the past) and proposals (for the future), but we would be OT. John Vandenberg, 11/10/2010 05:20: > I am likewise disappointed. The five year plan _should_ have seen the > other projects as the most likely source of new talent, contributors > and innovation, and should have focused on developing them. I want to stress this, again. Samuel J Klein, 12/10/2010 20:52: > It is good to see discussion of the targets. There is also a final > strategic plan document, which is almost finished and which the Board > reviewed at our meeting over the weekend. There were small wording > changes in the final plan. This? http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF (Or a later version of it.) > The problems with focusing only on Wikipedia articles were noted. The > text of this target in the final strategic plan refers to growth in > articles available 'on Wikimedia projects', not just on Wikipedia. > This is still only a very rough estimate of growth in meaningfully > available knowledge. [1] > > The target does not say anything about the growth of Commons, though > this shows up elsewhere in strategy discussions. I hope the Commons > community will develop its own targets and priorities for growth, of > both its collections and its community. I don't think it's enough. > On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 11:20 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: >> I am likewise disappointed. The five year plan _should_ have seen the >> other projects as the most likely source of new talent, contributors >> and innovation, and should have focused on developing them. > > That is how I see the focus on innovation, by the way, including > "other users of MediaWiki" along with "the other projects". Yes, we often overlook the other users of MediaWiki, as well (at least, I do); and actually, it's quite surprising that the long-term proposal of setting up a "MediaWiki Foundation", which has been discussed several times (if I remember correctly), didn't come up on strategywiki. Perhaps it's something to think about for the next five-years plan. :-p > [1] It is worth noting that Wikipedia, thanks to having the > preponderance of editors and traffic, is sometimes used as a casual > shorthand for the effective size of Wikimedia, even within our > community. This is a skewing of focus that requires effort to > overcome -- but the effort is worth it, as Wikipedia alone will not > fulfill our mission. That's exactly what I want to underline. Wikipedia isn't enough. And if we focus our efforts only on Wikipedia, we could waste our energies.[1] Therefore, I think that our main measure for the second goal should include all WMF projects. For instance, the number of entries on all projects. (This doesn't include MediaWiki, though.) > Better communication about the sister projects' > work and news may help. > > This holds true for public discussions as well. I was speaking at a > library conference last week, and mentioned Wikisource. A librarian > interrupted with enthusiasm, "there's also a Wikisource?" and later > had ideas about how to contribute digitizations. Many potential > partners in disseminating knowledge may be able to contribute directly > to one of our projects, but not the others. This is a good example. And there are many. Michael Peel, 10/10/2010 19:54: > In any case, I think one of the major benefits of the strategy > exercise was to get Wikimedians considering where Wikimedia should be > in 5 years and setting their individual aims accordingly. Getting the > WMF Board to recognise those aims is only a secondary consideration, > really, as it's the community that drives Wikimedia's success and > breadth/depth/etc. of content. Yes, but I'm also interested in WMF's priorities. :-) And you forgot chapters. ;-) Nemo [1] We could reverse Thomas's argument and be even more harsh than he is: Wikipedia is our most developed project (and our main source of income); it can't grow much. Let's use the income from our core product to conquer other (big) markets. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
