Hi Katherine,
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Katherine Maher <kmaher(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller
<eloquence(a)gmail.com>om>:
With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
"essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
maintained by different groups).
There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would be
controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but
advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is "a
world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all
knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or
ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've made
great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
Indeed, Wikipedia has become more influential than anyone thought likely
ten years ago.
For each person who felt we should moderate the
language of the direction,
there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this
ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world
something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer matter-of-fact,
sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for NPOV
content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The
drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier
versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire
movement actors and external partners.
I understand the psychology of stretch goals, but I'd still say that some
goals are not worth aspiring towards.
It's in the nature of the human mind to be vulnerable to ambitions for
world domination. That vulnerability is well encapsulated in the jocular
saying "Power corrupts, but absolute power is kinda cool."
Ultimately, whenever idealists have achieved such absolute domination, the
systems they established were eventually used to some ends that were
anything but cool. Checks and balances are key to a healthy system.
Best,
Andreas