[Foundation-l] Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3)

[SJ]

(thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)

The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
projects... but also those who care enough to donate money or critical
rants or expert advice, readers who would not dare contribute to an
encyclopedia but have relevant experiences in other areas of life to
add to planning discussions, and the friends and colleagues and family
of the above, interested enough to participate in such discussions if
they knew about them but not yet aware they exist.[2]

Questions: what are the most important goals over the next few years
  a) for Wikipedia,
  b) for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Commons and any further media
repository, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikiversity
[I would forward to the other lists but for some of them it might
double their annual list traffic]
  c) for Wikipedia and its sister projects in their secondary
capacities of language preservation, debate facilitation, education,
archiving
  d) for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a supportive entity and as an organization
  e) for each of us individually as community members

[forgive me for lumping together all of the smaller projects; and all
languages, large, small, living, and dead]

Let us seed a longer discussion about planning for the future.   To
begin with, it would be helpful to gather together the many places
where related discussions have already been held.

For instance, here is a new page on the subject:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/strategic_goals
And an older page:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Three-year_plan
And a series of essays:
 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads

There are similar pages on individual projects and mailing lists, and
in many languages other than English.  Perhaps you have run across one
before.  I've started an Yet Another MetaMeta page on meta.  Please
contribute links to it and translate it:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning_for_the_future

++SJ


[1] Perhaps a very long time.
http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html

[2] For those who feel broad-based discussions are criminal, or wastes
of time: the process of discussing plans for the future helps
strengthen shared purpose and naturally passes on the message of the
projects.  And we don't have enough people talking about these ideas
now; even excellent suggestions for investigation and research are
allowed to lie fallow.  We are very far from having too many voices
offering their pearls of wisdom.