OK, this might be a crazy idea, but mav, Danny and I thought, after all that was said in the past few weeks on this list, that we should try and drain everybody's brain to see where we are going.
This is a bit of a game, serious, but still a game. Your ideas will help shape the future of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are not saying that all should be implemented, or will see the light, but it is sort of a giant brainstorming to see where everybody thinks the Wikimedia Foundation should be in 5 years from now.
The rules are simple:
You will find below a grid of what we think needs to be included in a five year plan for the Wikimedia Foundation. You may fill all parts, or just some, as suits you. You may also give details on how to get there, or not. You're free to say anything that goes through your head. Your ideas should go on this list.
However, THIS IS NOT TO BE DEBATED. Each of those willing to participate may give their personal opinion, but no-one is allowed to criticize/comment on other people's 5-year plan on this list. In a few days, we will put everything on meta so that can be worked on to shape a collaborative five year plan. PLEASE DO REFRAIN from hitting the reply button and commenting other people's ideas.
here is the grid:
==WMF in 5 years== *Board and management *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not) *Budget *Fundraising scheme *Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed *Projects *Content objectives *Software objectives *Relationship between chapters and parent organisation *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.) *Other (anything we did not think of)
Thank you.
Danny, Delphine, Mav
It is pretty cool when those guys are bubbling with energy like this :-)
Thanks to you 3.
Anthere
Delphine Ménard wrote:
OK, this might be a crazy idea, but mav, Danny and I thought, after all that was said in the past few weeks on this list, that we should try and drain everybody's brain to see where we are going.
This is a bit of a game, serious, but still a game. Your ideas will help shape the future of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are not saying that all should be implemented, or will see the light, but it is sort of a giant brainstorming to see where everybody thinks the Wikimedia Foundation should be in 5 years from now.
The rules are simple:
You will find below a grid of what we think needs to be included in a five year plan for the Wikimedia Foundation. You may fill all parts, or just some, as suits you. You may also give details on how to get there, or not. You're free to say anything that goes through your head. Your ideas should go on this list.
However, THIS IS NOT TO BE DEBATED. Each of those willing to participate may give their personal opinion, but no-one is allowed to criticize/comment on other people's 5-year plan on this list. In a few days, we will put everything on meta so that can be worked on to shape a collaborative five year plan. PLEASE DO REFRAIN from hitting the reply button and commenting other people's ideas.
here is the grid:
==WMF in 5 years== *Board and management *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not) *Budget *Fundraising scheme *Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed *Projects *Content objectives *Software objectives *Relationship between chapters and parent organisation *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.) *Other (anything we did not think of)
Thank you.
Danny, Delphine, Mav
Delphine Ménard wrote:
[...] it is sort of a giant brainstorming to see where everybody thinks the Wikimedia Foundation should be in 5 years from now.
...
You're free to say anything that goes through your head. Your ideas should go on this list.
...
However, THIS IS NOT TO BE DEBATED.
...
==WMF in 5 years==
Well, instead of going to bed I brainstormed a bit so apologiye if some of the ideas are not that perfect. Some are better WMF in 10 years.
*Board and management *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
There is first a supervisory board consisting of voted representatives of the projects, local chapters, and a president and second the management. The supervisory board only makes fundamental decisions and controls the management. Regularly all actions (finance, hardware, relations...) are done by the management. It is adviced to act as transparent and to delegate as much as possible to volunteers and local chapters. The management is paid (at least partly) and can hire other people for specific tasks.
*Budget *Fundraising scheme
The Foundation coordinates fundraising schemes and grants but most of the money is collected by the chapters who pay the foundaten if needed (and vice versa). We'll have a lot of money ;-)
*Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed *Projects *Content objectives
Beside central server issues most projects are driven by local chapters. There are several local projects with other content providers and redistributors of content produced in Wikimedia projects. First campaigns against lack of literacy have been started. Lobbying against exaggerated copyright and patenting keeps going on. There are several projects collecting free knowledge but we decided not to collect free art of any kind (this is done by Ourmedia).
*Software objectives
Times when everything had to be wiki only are over. MediaWiki finnaly split up into a modularized set of components for collaboratively editing text ("old school wiki"), editing media, managing structured data and archiving non-mutable objects.
Servers are still regularly getting slow because of growing usage but as there are multiple server farms not every project is affected in the same way.
*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
Local chapters are independent organisations that have a contract with the Foundation. Most of the projects and partnerships are organised by local chapters (almost 30 of them in 5 years) that regularly meet. The Foundation gives general guidelines what kind of projects and partnerships are welcome and which are not. Only partnerships with special organisations are directly with the Foundation - for instance:
* Internet Archive * Creative Commons Initiative * United Nations
Beside a loose cooperation with United Nations there is no partnership with any gouvermental or mainly political organisation.
*Other (anything we did not think of)
* Wikimania organisers don't know who to invite as keynote speaker because we already had Lawrence Lessing, Tim-Berners-Lee, Dalai Lama... * WMF has already beed nominated for Nobel Peace Prize but will only get it in one of the next years because there are still wars at too many places and ecocide goes on, so there are also other problems but free knowledge - sad but true but we do our best.
Greetings, Jakob
NOTE: this is a fictional view of the foundation in 5 years.
Delphine Ménard wrote:
==WMF in 5 years==
WMF is no more. Instead it's a new division of the UNESCO. Some people are now working full time under the organisation be it for development, articles reviewing, promotion. Some are external consultants.
Wikibooks is 20 times bigger than Wikipedia.
Budget: several milions of dollars.
Wikipedia.org is also available under: encyclopedia.unesco.org
Users keep asking brion: "When will mediawiki 4.0 will be released ?".
I can join IRC with 'hashar@unesco/wikipedia' hostmask and finally make a living with something that really interest me 8-)
==WMF in 5 years==
*Board and management
The board has at least 7 members. One of them is Jimbo, 2 are appointed by the pre-existing board, 2 are elected by the projects community, 2 are elected by the chapters. None of them are paid.
*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
A full office with the following positions, all of them paid (those are in no particular order, **means those people work under the one above *) *chief executive officer **sales manager (selling services to for profit companies) **secretaries to answer the phone and deal with daily stuff *grants manager *fundraising and sponsor officer *chief financial officer **accountant *chief technical officer **developpers and technical team *philantropic activities and lobbying officer *press/PR officer **outside press agency (just to write the press releases, translate them, send them out etc. not to talk to the press) *chapter coordinator *legal officer **outside legal company (lawyer firm, à la Ally Mc Beal) *translation coordinator **outside translation company
The point in having external companies is simple, if they're not good, we change, and we've got a good chance that those will work with WMF for little money, since WMF will be so big and known.
(for roles, see more below)
*Budget
I don't know how much the budget is, but it's huge, and twice a year WMF issues a budget update (past expenses, previsional budget for next half year). The past expenses budget is very detailled (every single cable is accounted for, or almost), the previsional leaves room for unexpected things. The budget consists of an overall wmf budget and chapter budgets, those are coordinated towards the greater goal of sustaining the projects. There's one *overall buget* and sub-budgets for specific projects (not Wikimedia projects, more like "Hardware project" or "Print project"...)
*Fundraising scheme
2 fundraising drives a year aimed at individuals. Each of these fundraising drives is based on specific budget needs, possibly the little projects described above.
The rest of the money (and the bigger part of it) comes from grants and big sponsors, and from selling services.
Fundraising is closely coordinated with chapters.
*Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
The philantropic activities/lobbying officer acts with governments/organisations both to make sure content is available (see content below) and stays free, and to make sure it reaches the right people. I see this as one of the main things to develop to reach WMF's goal of "make it available to the greater numbers". In the long run, we will not just be sustaining our projects, but many other projects designed to bring our content to the greater numbers.
*Projects
Projects live their own life, the foundation is here to make sure no legal, technical etc. threats endanger them.
*Content objectives
The WMF will then be strong enough, and have enough political power and weight to ensure the collaboration of world wide organisations and governements to give content to the projects. Talking to the national libraries, international organisations (ESA, UNESCO, EU etc.) to make their content available, maybe buy content to make it free, in short, make sure that content that should be free is free, and content that is already free stays free.
*Software objectives
I have no clue, but basically, the developping team makes sure the software scales and the projects can continue growing.
*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation
the WMF acts as an umbrella organisation for all chapters. Major deals with international companies and institutions are made by the WMF and are brought to the local level through the chapters. Chapters take care of local deals with local institutions and local companies. Information flows both ways.
*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
Press and PR will be a large part of how the rest of the staff/team is seen and what image the Foundation and the Wikimedia projects give to the outside world. Partnerships are chosen so they can help the WMF reach a larger audience, both in readers and sponsors. I imagine advertising for fundraising drives in major newspapers, grand press conferences etc.
*Other (anything we did not think of)
Well, we did not think of it, so I don't know :-).
Delphine
Hello.
*Board and management
Board includes Jimbo, 4 people representing the community, 3 representing the local chapters. Serving for 2 or 3 years, and trying hard to achieve consensus when deciding.
They meet regularly, they are not paid but have their expenses covered so they don't need to pay themselves if they don't want to (including non paid holidays to go to meetings, for instance).
Board and community communicate sufficiently to not have any big misunderstanding or clouded issue.
*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
I don't have anything against having people paid, or at least see their fees reimbursed. Apart that, joker :)
*Budget
Most of our hardware needs are met by subventions from big organisations and partnerships. We got enough proposals to be neutral (able to switch whenever we feel too much pressure). Budget is clear enough to figure by non technical people, and yet really detailed.
*Fundraising scheme
We get enough money to cover all our internal spendings, and part of our hardware. Donators can tell where there money should be spent.
*Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
We have partnerships with editors, both on paper and DVDs, to publish our content. Also we have agreements with NGO to distribute it to areas that needs it.
*Projects
Wikibook is greatly improved by teachers from all around the world creating great schoolbooks, and also students who make them funnier to use :) They are regularly used in schools. Also some textbooks editors publish them because printed books are better than computer ones sometimes.
Wikipedia is still the higher project in articles count, with edit wars raging every other day. Still, most people just contribute without any fuss. The inclusion rules are more relaxed, and only a handful of articles are removed every day.
Wikinews is often used as a primary information source, based on many reports from direct witnesses of events. It does not feature editorials or too oriented contents, as per NPOV policy. It features radio and video feeds. Radio is articles being read, video from local witnesses.
Wiktionary contains some millions entries. With the software, it's easy to see definition of a word in any language, with all translations in other languages.
*Content objectives
We had many partnerships with public and private organisations to get their content integrated in our projects. WMF acts as a gateway between those partners and the community (which has its own relations with other organizations, WMF isn't required to be the middleman all the time!). Due to our lobbying (or not), many organizations free their contents and still work fine :)
*Software objectives
We have WYSIWYG edition, metadata separated from articles contents, single login. Also it's easy to select articles, following category relationships, and export them to PDF or any handy format for later redistribution.
*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation
We have a decentralized structure. The Board oversees the grand schema of things, but does not micromanage. Local chapters have much autonomy, report regularly to the Board, but are trusted enough to do important things without (not against, in the spirit of!) Board approval when needed.
*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
We cooperate with some governments, who provide legal advice when needed, and help us with local tax issues. The press often links to our content, and uses it to complement or illustrate articles. We are attacked sometimes, but globally have a not too bad image in the world. We are also one really successful example of community project.
Nicolas
There's a large tendency within the community to maintain the status quo, so I don't think any radical changes are going to occur over the next five years. I think the innovation will come with the uses people make of our content rather than with the projects or organsation themselves. Improvements will most likely be in areas we are already thinking about, such as communication within the organsaition, and validation of the content, rather than in completely new areas.
==Wikimedia 2010== *Board and management
The Board has delegated much of their work to people in paid positions or voluntary "official positions". This has left them with more time for making higher level decisions including overall strategies and partnerships with external parties. They are responsible for hiring new staff, and for communicating the ethos of the Foundation to all Wikimedia members and to the outside world. The majority of the Board of Trustees are elected members of the community. They are supported by a Board of Advisors, made up of people from relevant fields.
The Board keeps a proper minute book, with corporate resolutions. The bylaws have been legally approved and are easy to find. All legal paperwork is in order.
*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
Positions include the following (whether they're paid, appointed volunteers, or positions decided by the relevant Special Interest Groups is something I'm not ready to predict).
CEO Technical officer Financial officer Accountant Print publishing co-ordinator Secretaries Grants co-ordinator Lawyers Communication team (including translation) Business manager R&D PR Advertising and promotion Chapter co-ordinator
*Budget
The budget is 25 times larger than it was in 2005. Much of the expenditure is handled by local chapters. Donated hardware from a large range of sources all over the world has allowed us to keep costs down. The primary costs on the budget are now special projects, such as the global distribution of our content in various forms, and the cost of staff. Hardware costs are still included in the budget, though these increasingly refer to the cost of managing distributed hardware that has been donated rather than buying our own hardware. Local chapter reps liaise with paid technicians in their own area who are responsible for maintaining the servers in those countries. Financial records have been improved and are regularly audited.
*Fundraising scheme
Much of our funding comes from public donations, though these are now smaller than the income we get from grants. We are still finding new ways to raise money without the need to resort to advertising on the site. Fundraising occurs not only on our own projects, but as part of a huge effort across the internet as thousands of other sites advertise our fundraising drives. Local chapters handle fundraising efforts at a local level, allowing more and more people to donate tax-free within their own country. Individual donors have more of a say in how their donations are spent and are presented with a number of options during each fund raising drive for what the bulk of their money will be spent on.
*Philanthropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
As the first real efforts to distribute our content to those without internet access are showing signs of success, the focus moves towards considering how to get content from those people rather than just distributing it to them. New methods of contribution are being explored, with the aim of allowing every person on the planet to be a Wikimedian and not just a reader (or listener - as audio versions become as popular as the text versions were 5 years ago).
Through partnerships with various publishing companies, the content from all projects is regularly being printed, or made available in audio versions. Books are being sold and given away all over the world, bringing in revenue that allows us to keep expanding our publishing projects and other philanthropic activities. The first braille versions are being prepared.
*Projects
Teaching communities are beginning to develop to pass on the skills of using MediaWiki and of encyclopedic writing. These are led by groups all over the world who organise training and outreach days to bring even more people into the Wikimedia community. Universities start to incorporate this into their courses. Easier methods of inputting content into the projects are being researched, which is expected to decrease the need to teach people to use the software.
The projects appear less separated than they once did as automatic links appear between them and single login allows users to edit across them more easily. At the same time, users can choose to view only sections of the projects. Those wanting to focus only on science articles can view only those, with their own recent changes and own discussion areas, preventing the problems of the projects becoming too large to cope with.
*Content objectives
The content is all available under a free license, and simplifications to the GFDL have made it much easier for people to reuse the content without violating the license.
Wikimedia is by far the largest content provider in many languages. Traditional content providers are looking for new models and moving into niche markets rather than trying to compete with us.
The majority of content is still produced by volunteers, but some is now donated as a result of deals with external parties, and as a result of people being paid, though not directly by the Foundation, for producing content, particularly in weak areas and small languages.
Different modes of viewing the content are available. Users can select from options such as "show only validated versions", "show only articles with cited sources", "show only articles approved by company xyz". Some of these options are only available on external sites, as co-branded versions by companies who want to add their own methods of validation to the content. The possibility to view validated versions has increased the credibility of the projects, which are now accepted sources at all levels.
*Software objectives
All software used by all projects is open source.
The developers have finally given up telling people MediaWiki is not a CMS. It is now a CMS, and a blog, and a database, and whatever else people want it to be. :) The version used on Wikimedia's own projects begins to be unrecognizable from the versions now being used elsewhere, both as a result of better Wikimedia branding which makes our own projects stand out, and as a result of the software being tailored to each project rather than incorporating all of the features now available in MediaWiki.
Work into making MediaWiki work better across distributed systems is ongoing. The interface is fully internationalized in 200 languages.
A consortium of companies using MediaWiki internally and on their own websites sponsor a team of security reviewers who work alongside the MediaWiki developers to ensure no stable versions of the code are released with security flaws. Many other companies using MediaWiki, or with an interest in the content produced on it, regularly contribute code, and this is checked by paid staff, leaving volunteers to focus on the more popular aspects of development.
Efforts to standardise the markup are ongoing, and there is increasing interoperability between different wiki engines.
*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation
Local chapters are heavily involved in promotion and the formation of local partnerships. They have increasing independence, and the Board relies on contracts and mutually-agreed guidelines to ensure the chapters maintain the goals of the Foundation rather than attempting to closely monitor their every move. Efforts to improve inter-chapter communications are still being made, and though better than five years ago, are still an area the Board is trying to improve upon.
*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
Universities are participating to the projects through content creation and software development. Regular promotional activities happen at universities across the world. A range of partnerships have been created, including global ones with the Foundation, and local ones with local chapters. Informal partnerships are being made regularly by users of all projects.
*Other (anything we did not think of)
Foundation policies and bureaucracy have continued to expand. These now cover everything from privacy policies to NDAs to trademark use.
DMCAs are now a regular occurrence. Lawsuits are becoming more frequent, but the legal team has handled these with no major issues so far.
That's all for now. I'm off to buy edition 25 of Quarto, Wikimedia's 128 page magazine. ;)
Cofion cynnes,
Angela.
I decided to understand this as "what do you want Wikimedia to be in 5 years", so no "there are much legal threats against Wikimedia" here...
==WMF in 5 years== *Board and management
The Board is elected by the community. Jimbo is regularily re-elected as president. The Board has the people it needs to work...
*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
What is needed... Preferably voluntaries, since they are more involved, but why not paid ? (see next point)
*Budget
As much as possible...
*Fundraising scheme
Donations by patrons (enterprises, private people, fundations...), without counterpart, subsidy from UN, UNESCO and States, merchandising. No publicity on the projects, no fees to access them.
*Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
The celebrity of Wikimedia make it possible to militate against patents and copyright, and the whole world has understand the need of a free internet access, even in a lost recess in jungle, so everybody can access to our content. I'm not sure a paper version of Wikipedia is really a good idea, since it will be a "under-Wikipedia", without links and so. Web-links is the only structure of Wikipedia, so a paper version will need to practicaly rewrite the whole thing.
*Projects
I have no idea of serious new projects. Wikicookbook ? :-)
The Sept-11 Memorial has been removed, like the Klingon Wikipedia, but after everybody has accept it.
*Content objectives
Wikibooks has grown much bigger than Wikipedia. All in 2005 existing Wikipedias have grown over 100,000 articles. Wikispecies is again a part of Wikipedia... Wiktionaries are complete (since it's possible, contrary to Wikipedia)
*Software objectives
SVG make pictures freely editable, like text, with a specific MediaWiki syntax (no need to know SVG). In all projects, each word can be opened in a Wiktionary window
*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation
WMF and local chapters are interdependent. Transparency and regular reporting of activities at a central and freely accessible place is the rule. Local chapters negociate with content sources (e.g. museums) for access.
*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
WMF already got the Nobel prize for Peace in 2008...
*Other (anything we did not think of)
A corpus of irremovable laws, like a constitution has been written. These rules garantee that the spirit of Wikipedia and of the other projects will stay the same for the 1000 next years.
Traroth
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