Hoi,
You ask for examples of organisations that I had in mind when I wrote about partnering. Here are some, there are many more.
There are many organisations like Kennisnet, for instance the Commonwealth of Learning, that have as its mission the provision of educational content to students. Many of them use MediaWiki in their own organisation or for content they create. We have the perfect opportunity to realise many of the needs that exist in this segment. When we were to provide IEEE-LOM meta data with our content, we would become more valuable to educational systems and this may lead to partnering on the sustainability and improvement of service of our services.
Several universities have projects that have or are building functionality and / or content, they are quite happy to make this available under a Free license. Among them is the University of Amsterdam who is working on a peer to peer implementation of MediaWiki. When we partner with the UvA on this project, it is likely that this functionality is realised sooner. The University of Leuven has expertise on the gathering of automated IEEE-LOM data. When we value a partnership like this we could provide quality IEEE-LOM data and improve on this as we learn better what can be done automatically and what can be improved by a personal touch.
The "Gilde Samenspraak" is a Dutch organisation that helps people who are new to the Netherlands and who are learning the Dutch language. Many of these people are jobless and would be quite happy to learn about Wikipedia.. these people would be passive users of the Dutch language Wikipedia but they could do a wealth of good on the many languages these people write. I am sure organisations like this one exist in many places. By giving these people something positive to occupy their time, we give people a sense of purpose and increase their self esteem.
Many academic organisations are getting to grips with Open Access. Open Access does not qualify as Free Culture. However, many scientists are also enamoured with "this Wiki thing". When we build more relations in the Open Access world and we actively invite academics to participate in our projects under our conditions, they will become more aware of the values that exist in what is a Free Culture. This will benefit the shift in academia that is happening towards Open Access, it is likely to lead in more content available under Free / Open licenses. It will make an increasing amount of content available. While we celebrate all the moves that are in the right direction, slowly but surely the dream of a Free Culture will be realised.
When the people organised in the Linguist List organise themselves to improve content in Wikipedia, it is a big thing. Recognising this publicly, the WMF shows its appreciation.. This in turn may give other people organised in similar structures an incentive to do likewise.
With organisation like the FSF and the Creative Commons we already have many links. Several of our people are involved with them. Organisations like these provide a global role, there are many organisations that provide a similar role on a national level. The Dutch chapter for instance is working with national organisations to make people and organisations more aware about issues like copyright and licenses. We ask for material that is currently lacking in the Dutch Wikipedia. It is the partnering of many organisations that to will make this a success.
These are many organisations we could collaborate or partner with. I do not know any organisations that we should merge with, I think this would only becomes clear when we build a working relationship. When we find that activities have an overlap that make the continued existence of activities in both organisations redundant, we could merge the activities. This might lead to a merging of organisations but this would only become clear in time.
I am really happy that the notion of collaboration / partnering with other organisations is not as foreign to the WMF as it has been in the past. I welcome it when the collaborations that exist are made more prominent and when we increase the number of partnerships and collaborations.
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/22/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/22/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
My hope is that with an organisation that will grow in its efficiency,
there
will be more room for and importance given to explicit partnering with organisations with whom we share objectives. Of importance is that we
are
true to our principles in what we do. When we completely share the same values and objectives, we should certainly partner and maybe even
consider
merging.
Out of curiosity; which organisations do you feel we completely share the same values and objectives with, or which you think we should examine if we do share the same values and objectives with?
That is, did you have specific organisations in mind when you wrote the above?
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l