[Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite

[David Goodman]

We are not competing with any other web site, or organization, and
there is no reason for us to think of it that way. We are part of the
capitalist world only in the sense that our physical operations  must
exist within it.

We are trying to build a particular project for a common purpose--not
to rank among the best or most widely used sites on the web, but to
provide the best free encyclopedia that our method of working can
provide. Other online encyclopedias are not our competitors: they are
rather synergistic.   Citizendium is perhaps most valuable for having
showed us a path we should not follow--elaborate bureaucracy and
expert editing--but  in a more positive sense did highlight the need
for us to improve article quality. That Baidu is more widely used by
its target audience is to some extent due to political and censorship
considerations, but is also due to its greater size , and  shows the
importance of having very wide-ranging content of importance to the
users.

There is however a sense in which our very wide use is beneficial, and
our rank among web sites is important for morale: we want to know that
our work is being used. But whether we are 5th or 10th does not
matter. It does not affect our usefulness or our value. it might to
some extent cause some public interest, and thus attract users--but
they will remain users if they find what they want, not because of our
relative position.

The only sense in which we compete is that our project competes for
the pool of available and interested volunteer workers.  We will grow
better by increasing the total pool, by showing the success of such
efforts and styles of operation as ours. The more such projects, the
more people will be interested in them overall. Even in the commercial
world, the success of automobile or computer companies lay primarily
in increasing the demand for automobiles or computers, and only
secondarily by competing against each other.

The basic reason why doing things by staff rather than volunteers is
wrong is that it decreases one of the motivations for
volunteering--the knowledge that one can participate significantly in
not just the work but the decisions, and become influential in
whatever activity within the project that one chooses.


On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Who is WMF competing with?
>>
>> User attention.
>
> Sorry, misread "who" with "what".
>
> Presently, with top ~20 sites for user attention.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG