---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com Date: 18 October 2012 13:48 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi
Sue Gardner started working on this document on Meta a couple of weeks ago - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus The document outlines some rather big changes in the priority for WMF and future responsibilities it will agree to keep. I am surprised by how little attention this is getting from the larger community. There are comments but mostly from the same individuals on Meta, little to none from some of the most active voices and the larger English Wikipedia community.
This is the new direction being considered by the WMF, to basically abandon or cut back on majority of activities from the last few year. Here are some points- 1) No more Fellowships. 2) No more direct work in the developing markets (aka Global South- India, Brazil, MENA) 3) No more support for International events, and cutting back on Wikimania
Instead of these, things like Editor engagement, Mobile and FDC/grant making are being made priorities for WMF in the future. A large majority of editors have had no interaction with grants and are unlikely to have so with FDC as well, same with some of the mobile initiatives like Wikipedia Zero which are limited to certain developing markets. A lot of these changes will have a lasting impact, its not just relevant to those interested in governance issues. Some of the implications are - Fellowships would be removed all together, little to no spending on Hackathons, possibly GLAM camps and other international events all together, less spending on Wikimania and scholarships, the work in India and Brazil will be moved away from WMF completely for a "partner" organization to take over with a grant from WMF. If you do find some time, please consider taking a look and commenting on these developments before they are approved. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus
Regards Theo
The document has some interesting quotes -
"The Wikimedia Foundation is not a think tank or a research institute. We're not an advocacy organization or a lobbyist, and our core mission isn't to keep the internet free and open. We are not a general educational non-profit. (We are a website, or set of sites, and everything we do needs to be understood through that lens.) We don't just reactively "support the community"—responding to requests from editors and doing what they ask us to do. Our purpose isn't to provide MediaWiki support for third parties (but it's in our interest to ensure that a healthy third party ecosystem develops around MediaWiki). We're not, ourselves, content creators. Our purpose is not to ensure the chapters grow and develop, nor is it to support the chapters in their growth and development: rather, chapters are our partners in supporting editors and other content creators.
The Wikimedia Foundation is not the only fish in the sea of free knowledge; not everything that needs to be done must be done by the Wikimedia Foundation, and it's not our job to do work that other individuals or entities are better positioned or mandated to do, however important that work may be. When we try to do work that more properly belongs to other individuals or groups, we imperil our ability to get our own core work done, and we arguably make it less possible for other entities to do what they're supposed to be doing." _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
So Sue sees the need for some sort of clearer "mission statement", I suppose. A natural reaction on coming up to five years as Executive Director, would be one way to look at it.
Charles
I suppose I'll put in a positive word for what I see here so far. It's interesting because I was arguing, during the expansion of the WMF, for some things vaguely along these lines, but I had assumed that battle was lost by now.
Two things in particular I like:
1. The Wikimedia Foundation should not become some kind of overarching NGO, but should look at what we actually do better than other organizations, and partner with other organizations (or even leave it entirely to them!) in other cases. The strength of grassroots-driven organizations is that they have a necessary but limited bureaucracy and legal apparatus, which keeps the servers running, handles legal matters, gets money where it's needed, but mostly stays out of the way. I'm very skeptical of professionalization of such organizations, where the professional staff takes the lead in big, costly initiatives (nonprofits of that kind start looking more like a bizarro-world version of corporations, complete with highly paid executives and big org-charts and that kind of thing).
2. I'm hugely skeptical of the "Westerners bring enlightenment to the third world" style of philanthropy, which has a quite bad history, tying into colonialism and Christian missionaries. So I think it's a very good direction to have efforts in the Global South driven by people and organizations actually from there, rather than from a San Francisco office. It doesn't appear that this propose would rule out those being local Wikimedia chapters, or funded via the FDC process, just that the efforts wouldn't operationally be run from the US-based headquarters. It would also be nice to partner more with existing organizations: goals like, "educate rural Indians" are not new goals, and many organizations actually based in India, with longer histories, have much more knowledge about the sticking points than we do.
Plus, decentralization of operations and dissemination of funds to support decentralized operations seems rather in keeping with the general Wikimedia spirit.
-Mark
On 10/18/12 3:27 PM, David Gerard wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com Date: 18 October 2012 13:48 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi
Sue Gardner started working on this document on Meta a couple of weeks ago
document outlines some rather big changes in the priority for WMF and future responsibilities it will agree to keep. I am surprised by how little attention this is getting from the larger community. There are comments but mostly from the same individuals on Meta, little to none from some of the most active voices and the larger English Wikipedia community.
This is the new direction being considered by the WMF, to basically abandon or cut back on majority of activities from the last few year. Here are some points-
- No more Fellowships.
- No more direct work in the developing markets (aka Global South- India,
Brazil, MENA) 3) No more support for International events, and cutting back on Wikimania
Instead of these, things like Editor engagement, Mobile and FDC/grant making are being made priorities for WMF in the future. A large majority of editors have had no interaction with grants and are unlikely to have so with FDC as well, same with some of the mobile initiatives like Wikipedia Zero which are limited to certain developing markets. A lot of these changes will have a lasting impact, its not just relevant to those interested in governance issues. Some of the implications are - Fellowships would be removed all together, little to no spending on Hackathons, possibly GLAM camps and other international events all together, less spending on Wikimania and scholarships, the work in India and Brazil will be moved away from WMF completely for a "partner" organization to take over with a grant from WMF. If you do find some time, please consider taking a look and commenting on these developments before they are approved. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus
Regards Theo
The document has some interesting quotes -
"The Wikimedia Foundation is not a think tank or a research institute. We're not an advocacy organization or a lobbyist, and our core mission isn't to keep the internet free and open. We are not a general educational non-profit. (We are a website, or set of sites, and everything we do needs to be understood through that lens.) We don't just reactively "support the community"—responding to requests from editors and doing what they ask us to do. Our purpose isn't to provide MediaWiki support for third parties (but it's in our interest to ensure that a healthy third party ecosystem develops around MediaWiki). We're not, ourselves, content creators. Our purpose is not to ensure the chapters grow and develop, nor is it to support the chapters in their growth and development: rather, chapters are our partners in supporting editors and other content creators.
The Wikimedia Foundation is not the only fish in the sea of free knowledge; not everything that needs to be done must be done by the Wikimedia Foundation, and it's not our job to do work that other individuals or entities are better positioned or mandated to do, however important that work may be. When we try to do work that more properly belongs to other individuals or groups, we imperil our ability to get our own core work done, and we arguably make it less possible for other entities to do what they're supposed to be doing." _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 18 October 2012 22:19, Mark delirium@hackish.org wrote:
<snip>
Plus, decentralization of operations and dissemination of funds to support decentralized operations seems rather in keeping with the general Wikimedia spirit.
I agree. Though at this point we have little enough idea about how the FDC will be run. It is kind of hard to see how it could operate in a "lightweight" way if it is a main channel by which donated funds are spent.
Charles