[Foundation-l] and what if...

[Thomas Dalton]

> Hmmm, at best, a very simplified scenario planning version for the
> budget, with short time "best case" and "worse case". Usually, scenario
> planning is rather on the 5-10 years scale.

Things move far too fast in our world to plan much on that kind of
timescale. For example, current models suggest the English Wikipedia's
growth will pretty much stop within the next 5 years [1]. Who knows
what effect that will have on things? At current growth rates, the WMF
will be enormous in 5 years time, who knows what effect *that* will
have on things (I'm not sure how long such growth is sustainable, but
even if it does start to level off by then, it will still level off at
a point significantly larger than it is now)? Stable versions are just
starting to be implemented across various projects, DVD/USB
stick/print versions of projects are starting to take off, chapters
are starting to come into their own, who knows what effect any of
those things will have?

I don't know about you, but I have absolutely no idea what Wikimedia
is going to be like in 5 years time. You can't plan for scenarios
without conceiving of them first, and I think whatever happens over
the next 5 years, it will be inconceivable. Some scenario planning for
the next 1-2 years, maybe 3, wouldn't hurt, but more than that is
probably a waste of time because the scenarios most likely won't
happen.

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Modelling_Wikipedia%27s_growth