[Foundation-l] Policy governance ends

[Brianna Laugher]

What an interesting question and how glad I feel to be asked it. :)
Glad that Wikimedia is the way it is.

I don't know if I have five things, but a few come to mind.

The first thing I would like to see (long term) is major expansion of
MediaWiki development. The starting of mediawiki.org has been a great
move for this.
I am not totally sure this kind of goal is appropriate for WMF, or if
large healthy open source development communities have to happen by
themselves, but I suspect a bit of benevolent dictator-like prodding
doesn't go astray.

The second (also long term) is I believe WMF should lobby and
publicise for "copyleft", "share alike" and "open content" movements,
so that governments, organisations and individuals have a better
understanding (or at the moment, even an inkling) of what they mean
and imply. (Our libraries, custodians of a lot of knowledge, have some
way to go.)
"Free" (shareware) is not good enough. NC and ND especially is not
good enough. WMF, with Wikipedia behind it, is in the most powerful
position to explain to the world why.

The third, another long term, is that WMF should keep searching for
innovative ways to provide information to people worldwide *in their
own language*. Whether that be pushing for more stable internet access
in some parts of the world, or negotiating with governments who block
our content, or getting involved with printed material, or working on
improving access by phone[1], or ...  whatever the next technology
turns out to be.

I would be pushing it to think of any more. Looking forward to reading
some more responses :)

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

----
[1] According to
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/04/13/1175971346787.html
"Between 2000 and 2006, the proportion of Japanese 20-year-olds using
home PCs to access the internet plummeted from 23.6 per cent to 11.9
per cent..." ... I wonder how most Japanese users access ja.wp?


On 16/04/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What I would like to ask you help on, is to define more ends, which
> describe what you think the WMF is about. The two ends I mentionned
> above a "long term" ends, they would be listed this year, and then next
> year and probably the year after. Not all ends are this way. We could
> also have an end valid only one year, or only 3 months.
> Let us say we want a BIG technical meeting around Mediawiki to occur in
> the next 6 months, it would be one END.
> Or we want to produce a DVD of the english high quality content, it
> could be another END.
> Actually, hiring an ED could also be an end :-)
>
> Now, before you tell me "eh, we elected you guys to think of that for
> us", my answer will be "no, you elected us to represent your dreams
> about WMF, and to make sure your dreams happen".
> So, what I am currently asking you is
>
> "What do you want Wikimedia Foundation to focus its attention on in the
> next few months, few years or more".
>
> Whether you are members on the "paper" (bylaws) or not, morally, you are
> the owners of the organization. I do not think the editors represent the
> only owners, but the editors definitly are part of the owners. So, I ask
> you your opinion as owners.
>
> What do you think we should achieve ? If you had 5 points to list, what
> would they be ?
>
>
> ant
>
>
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