Hi all,
OK, I've been reading this plus the emails that I got off-list. It seems that there are a lot of diverse ideas and priorities, and probably the best way to gather and prioritize them is through a strategic planning process somewhat like what WMF and the community did in the last time around. I'm not sensing a lot of appetite for strategic change that involves moving away from the WMF hosting model, although am sensing interest in ongoing conversations with WMF about expectations for how WMF behaves toward the community especially around software deployments, and interest in a number of other Meta-level issues. As probably could be expected, a lot of people say "I'm upset about X" or "I want to change Y" but the level of interest in walking through the steps that it takes to actually do something about X or Y beyond talking about them is limited to a relatively small number of people. I want to thank those who spoke up and hope that everyone stays active in the already underway WMF-led strategic planning process as that goes forward, and that we keep our ideas ready for when the right time comes to provide input into that process.
Thanks again. This is of course not the end of the discussion about strategic issues, so please continue talking if you wish. (:
Pine
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 07/14/2014 10:39 AM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
I still believe, that the success of English Wikipedia hinges on the ability of
the
community to generate content, and that that's the absolutely most important part of English Wikipedia - all else, including consumption by end users - follows from that.
I don't believe that's where the value lies. While I am certain we have a number of contributors who write for the sake of writing; ultimately we are *all* beholden to the readers. Collecting the world's knowledge and making it available only has value insofar as it is, in fact, used as such.
The servers running, the editors editing, the coders coding are all necessary components but all, in the end, subservient to the actual objective of serving the readers. Everything else is replacable.
In my long stint on the meta-side of the biggest project (and keeping abreast of what goes on elsewhere) I saw a very great deal of self-important navel gazing, but very little actual consideration that the "community" (if there is such a thing) is only a means to the actual end. The WMF certainly does not do everything perfectly, but at the very least it actually /attempts/ to keep an eye on the prize.
-- Marc
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe