Hoi, There is much in the 2018/19 plan that I like. What I like is that it aims to align all Wikimedia efforts into one coherent plan.
There are a few things where a different approach can be considered. Michael Peel made a good suggestion and complementary to this I would increase the fund raising effort away from the United States. People who I do not characterise as trolls tell me that it is justified to spend so much money in the USA because it is where the money has been raised. In addition to this proper fund raising raises visibility profoundly; Wikimedia is a project that deserves (y)our money, (y)our effort!
As it is, too much money is spend on English Wikipedia related activities (including software). The best way to point this out, is comparing it with our traffic; less than 50% of our traffic is English Wikipedia.
While I applaud the use of artificial intelligence, it has one huge problem. It is what the data is uses is based on. Arguably this works well for the subjects we already cover well. But what about the subjects we do not properly cover, the subjects that matter more outside our comfort zone. Subjects like the Ottoman Empire, pre Raj India..
We also miss opportunities when we remain as inward looking as we have been. We have done well is libraries and librarians (particularly in English). The question is what is our aim? Is it our own good; citations for articles so that we become more robust or is our intention to have our audience, our readers read more (an objective we share with librarians). Read more books for instance. Once the links hidden in Freebase pointers to OpenLibrary becomes available, the OL folks will disambiguate its identifiers and provide us with their latest links. As a consequence we can easily open up books available for reading.. There are many high quality citations in there, there is no cost and, it is legally ok.
So yes, we are doing well. It is just that we could be more effective. Thanks, GerardM
[1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=12560
On 29 March 2018 at 22:42, Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm delighted to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan for FY18-19 is now on Meta[1].
This year, we have organized our efforts around three goals that focus on making critical improvements to our systems and structures to ensure that we’re better positioned for our coming work against the strategic direction[2]. The Foundation’s goals for this year should not only move us closer to knowledge equity and service, but will prepare us to execute against the 3- to 5-year strategic plan which we intend to develop this year in order to guide the Foundation’s work into the future.
As you’ll see, we’ve made some changes to the structure of this year’s annual plan. This year’s plan is organized around three goals for the Foundation’s work in the year to come. By restructuring the Annual Plan, we have written a plan for the whole Foundation, rather than an aggregation of plans from all of our departments and teams. In this sense, we’re seeking to become a better-integrated institution, rather than a collection of teams and departments with disparate goals.
We’ve also reduced the overall length of the published Annual Plan. We wanted to make sure that the focus and goals of our work don’t get lost in the details. Of course, we know that many community members enjoy reading the particulars of our planned work, so you can still access the details of departmental programs through links to their descriptions on Meta or MediaWiki.org. These links will provide interested readers with detailed departmental programs, which describe the specific and detailed program goals, impact and outcomes. This change does not sacrifice the depth and rigor of our planning process, but rather, it is meant to keep the Annual Plan lean and focused while allowing interested readers to dive deep into the details.
Finally, we’ve expanded the planning framework we instituted last year for cross-departmental programs to all of our programs across the Foundation. This allows us to clearly link a program’s resources to outcomes and measures. As such, we’ve presented the Annual Plan budget in terms of our investments in the three defined goals rather than in terms of our internal organizational structure.
Thank you all for your support over the past year. I'm really looking forward to your feedback on this year's proposed plan during the open comment period -- a reminder it runs through May 15th.
Thanks! Katherine
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_ Annual_Plan/2018-2019/Draft [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017
-- Katherine Maher
Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104
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