(thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)
The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the projects... but also those who care enough to donate money or critical rants or expert advice, readers who would not dare contribute to an encyclopedia but have relevant experiences in other areas of life to add to planning discussions, and the friends and colleagues and family of the above, interested enough to participate in such discussions if they knew about them but not yet aware they exist.[2]
Questions: what are the most important goals over the next few years a) for Wikipedia, b) for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Commons and any further media repository, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikiversity [I would forward to the other lists but for some of them it might double their annual list traffic] c) for Wikipedia and its sister projects in their secondary capacities of language preservation, debate facilitation, education, archiving d) for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a supportive entity and as an organization e) for each of us individually as community members
[forgive me for lumping together all of the smaller projects; and all languages, large, small, living, and dead]
Let us seed a longer discussion about planning for the future. To begin with, it would be helpful to gather together the many places where related discussions have already been held.
For instance, here is a new page on the subject: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/strategic_goals And an older page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Three-year_plan And a series of essays: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads
There are similar pages on individual projects and mailing lists, and in many languages other than English. Perhaps you have run across one before. I've started an Yet Another MetaMeta page on meta. Please contribute links to it and translate it:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning_for_the_future
++SJ
[1] Perhaps a very long time. http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html
[2] For those who feel broad-based discussions are criminal, or wastes of time: the process of discussing plans for the future helps strengthen shared purpose and naturally passes on the message of the projects. And we don't have enough people talking about these ideas now; even excellent suggestions for investigation and research are allowed to lie fallow. We are very far from having too many voices offering their pearls of wisdom.