On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
So the question is, what difference does it make for a wiki and its community to be part of a non-profit set of projects versus an ad-supported for-profit one? Quite a bit, I would say, in the long-term strategic sense of spreading a free culture movement based on sharing and collaboration. If Fan History became part of Wikimedia, it would be time to admit that, in some ways, Wikia and WMF are now competitors.
These are exactly the kinds of questions that the Expanding Content Task Force is exploring for the strategic planning process:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Expanding_Content
The underlying question is, when should Wikimedia say yes to projects that want to become part of the Wikimedia universe? Answering this question will make it clear what to do with proposals like Laura's (which, in turn, makes an excellent, concrete example to help us think through the higher-level question).
=Eugene