[Foundation-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

[Delirium]

Mike Godwin wrote:
> What makes this more complicated, though, is the question of whether  
> Wikimedia should gear its strategies in response to what the  
> "community" (however defined) wants, as distinct from what the world  
> needs.  We articulate our primary mission in terms of the world rather  
> than in terms of the community.  It is not inconceivable that what the  
> world wants or needs is not entirely the same as what the community  
> wants. If so, then what?
> 
> My own view, as I think is we should serve the world as a whole, of  
> which the community is an outspoken, well-informed, but still  
> relatively small subset.

This can only be pushed to a certain point, though. Wikimedia cannot do 
*anything* without a supportive community, since its service to the 
world at large consists entirely of providing community-produced content 
under a free license. Of course, perhaps slightly annoying the 
content-producing community if it produces significant benefits is worth 
it. But doing something that the community dislikes so much that a 
significant part of it leaves is not going to help Wikimedia serve the 
world at large, unless it has a good strategy for recruiting 
replacements, or is going to get so much money that it can hire paid 
staff to write articles. It seems like an unwise sort of brinksmanship 
in general.

-Mark