Sj a écrit:
On 5/26/05, Anthere
anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I am not very convinced. I think the positions selected really stick to the Foundation issues. And it is not the Foundation role imho to get involved with "content" or "quality" or "usability" directly. These are more communities issues. Imho.
From the bylaws, as good a starting point as any :
"The goals of the foundation are to encourage the further growthand development of open content, social sofware WikiWiki-based projects (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge."
"further growth" - why encourage 'further growth', and not just 'growth'? Growth is not merely in size. The projects should continue to find new dimensions in which to grow; in audience and quality and a variety of verbosity levels and more... as well as in breadth and depth.
"and development" - it is not enough for projects to grow, they should also develop in accordance with with other goals. improved interfaces and improved usability, for instance, also improve the ability of the projects to 'provide their contents to the public.'
"social sofware" - (a typo in the original pdf) the social aspects of the project are not incidental to the foundation, but central to its growth and success. Any collection of contact points tasked by the Board with keeping up with developments on the projects should include someone with a sense of how the social aspects of the existing software are working, how users feel about it, and how this can be improved.
Okay :-)
As to Chris M's suggestion of an additional government-relations focus, I agree that this subject too merits regular attention, and a few people who attend specifically to keeping up with it. Many governments have subsections devoted to archiving, librarianship, promotion of free knowledge and education, and other goals closely aligned with those of Wiki[mp]edia.
SJ
Hmmm, I must have been distracted and missed this. where is this discussion ?
Ant