[Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions

[Sj]

On 5/26/05, Anthere <anthere9 at 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 growth
and 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.

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