Hi community members,
I'm wondering how many people might be interested in having an IRC meeting
regarding the community's relationship to WMF and potentially developing
our own strategic plan that would be independent of WMF. In the past few
days I've heard some defense of WMF but mainly criticism and pessimism,
especially people recalling past hurts and feeling powerless to negotiate
with WMF. Perhaps it's time that we in the community create our own
strategic plan and develop strategic options.
Please note that this would be a long-term planning meeting and we are not
likely to make major decisions, but we would start brainstorming and laying
some foundations.
Topics of possible discussion regarding our relationship with WMF:
1. Strategic options, such as finding alternative organizations to WMF for
hosting Wikimedia sites or creating a new hosting organization that is
aligned with community values.
2. Activism at the Board and grassroots levels.
Topics of possible discussion regarding other strategic issues:
3. Internal reform of the community, such as a fresh look at Wikimedia's
founding principles and the Five Pillars, including civility.
4. What we can do as a community about our active editor statistics.
I expect this would be an interesting meeting if people are interested in
participating, and I hope that we would brainstorm some ideas about how we
want to move forward on all of these questions and others if we have time.
If there are many participants, which would be *great*, then we may need
additional meetings or to move the conversation on-wiki.
If you're interested, you can respond on list but feel free to respond to
me off-list also. I'm just trying to get a sense of the interest level of
the community. I hear a lot of people being upset but what I feel we need
to know is how many people would be interested in creating a long-term
strategic plan and brainstorming strategic options.
Thanks,
Pine