[Foundation-l] Commons Aims & goals as a project

[Brianna Laugher]

Hello,

What do you consider the aims of Commons to be?

What kinds of things should we be trying to do? How will we know when
they're done?

I have written up some thoughts about this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Aims_and_goals

Explicitly, I think our aims are these:
   1. Support the Wikimedia Foundation project websites by striving to
assist editors, in their native languages, in providing, finding and
using free content media
   2. Collect and provide free content media for all possible
educational* purposes
   3. Manage and evaluate said content by volunteer community
   4. Encourage and communicate the ideas of copyleft and "free
content", and highlight the alternatives to the current "All rights
reserved" over-copyrighted culture

note that "educational" refers to the intention of the media, not any
restrictions on use of the media. Any of our media may be used for any
purpose, educational or not. But on the other hand, some content will
never be appropriate here, regardless of how free the license terms
are.

note that "multilingual" and "wiki are not ends in themselves, but
just means we use to achieve these aims.

maybe some people will think 1 does not belong, and maybe some people
will think 4 does not belong. in fact some people may think 2 is the
single only purpose. Well, I consider in the volunteer-driven projects
of WMF, "content" (2) and "community" (3) and two sides of the same
coin. For me 4 is important because we want people to use our work,
not just gather a nice dusty unknown archive. And 1 is a pragmatic
statement of our situation today. No other WMF project is as
integrated with all the others as Commons is. And the more that use
increases, the more obvious it makes our usefulness to the whole
world.

On the page linked above, I wrote some examples of explicit goals we
could set towards each of these aims.

Many of the goals I set are almost purely technological. There is
simply a lot of functionality that we need, and don't have, at the
moment, and there is basically no way to replace it. I have come to
the conclusion that several core MW functionalities need to be majorly
adapted for Commons, ie not an easy toolserver-based fix.

Perhaps if we can present such united aims to the Foundation with
solid community support, we can get a promise of more developer
support from them in turn. Perhaps. :)

Comments on wiki or mailing list are always welcome.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise