[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the Wikimedia Foundation

[Brianna Laugher]

Keeping this in mind --

On 15/11/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> We also developed a mission statement from scratch. What's the point?
> Aside from uniting behind a set of key goals, it helps us to decide
> which activities fall within our scope and which ones don't --
> something that is not always easy, given the diversity of our existing
> projects and communities. Should we launch a WikiFoo project, or is
> Foo not part of our mission? Both the vision and mission statement
> will be frequently cited in future discussions of this kind, so they
> are relevant, and not just organizational fluff.

> == Vision Statement ==
>
> '''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
> in the sum of all knowledge.'''
>
> Comment:
>
> One version from the Retreat contained the phrase "in their own
> language" at the end, but we removed that later--I made the argument
> that there are different ways to address language barriers, e.g. by
> teaching another language like English and then giving access to
> learning resources in that language. IMHO we should not explicitly
> endorse or reject any particular _strategy_ of knowledge dissemination
> in our vision statement. Rather, I suggested we could add a phrase
> such as "unimpeded by language barriers, socioeconomic status, or
> government censorship". This was seen as too negative. In any case, I
> feel that the simple adjective "freely" may be sufficient in order to
> convey the idea that we seek to make knowledge as widely available as
> possible.

I think some statement of the importance of multilinguality is needed here.

The suggestion that teaching everyone English and offering them
English works is equivalent to offering them works in their own
language is... really appalling. We may as well shut down all the
other languages and just offer Wikibooks "learn English" in x trillion
languages, right? I don't think so...


> == Mission Statement ==
>
> '''The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
> people around the world to collect and develop knowledge under a free
> license, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.'''
>
> '''In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation
> provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework
> for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and
> other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation is committed
> to making and keeping all information from its projects available on
> the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.'''

This just seems like an expanded version of the above. And it doesn't
seem like this:  "A vision statement articulates the future of an
organization. The statement should be a rich, meaningful, detailed
description of what an organization hopes to become."

Wouldn't this be a good time to expand on specific visions for each of
the projects? If not here, then where? Nowhere? Or each community can
come up with its own?

Seems like MediaWiki software development would be worth mentioning as
well, considering how important it is to the projects...

Also seems to be some mention of project communities vitally missing
here. "People around the world" are not collecting and developing
knowledge in isolation. They are, first, getting welcomed by other
users (ok, or maybe bots :)). They are getting guidance, help and
warnings from more experienced users. They are being invited to help
out with collaborative projects, and being invited to edit in a
consensus-driven way. They are evaluating the quality of material
collectively. They are running for positions of various power and
status, and they are voting on such candidates. Perhaps all this is
implied in the use of the word "wiki"... or perhaps not.

Anyway my main complaint is that I don't see how either of these
statements would prevent "wikistalk" being successfully proposed, or
how they explain why video game guides are inappropriate for
Wikibooks. Or why people shouldn't upload ten photos of their friends
and dog at Commons. Or why they shouldn't write about their school
teacher.
Needs some adjective somewhere like EDUCATIONAL.