[Foundation-l] Five-year WMF targets exclude non-Wikipedia projects

[Michael Peel]

On 10 Oct 2010, at 11:33, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Despite repeated assurances at Wikimania, on lists and on strategywiki, 
> that the strategic plan was going to consider all Wikimedia projects as 
> important, now at 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Five-year_targets the 
> second target, «Increase the amount of information we offer» considers 
> only the number of Wikipedia articles.
> «We're aware of the challenges around bot-created articles, articles of 
> low quality, etc., and the limited focus on Wikipedia, so this metric 
> shouldn't be seen in isolation, but is an important indicator.» Yes, but 
> a wrong one.
> 
> I'm, very, very disappointed: I have to conclude that all the words on 
> community participation etc. were only empty rhetoric.

It's a shame that the number of Wikipedia articles is the only entry under that heading, but this appears to be a vastly simplified document that is very black and white - every single objective only has one unit of measure, whereas there should be several for every one of them. I would hope that the Foundation's board recognised this (either officially or unofficially) during their consideration of it, and that the extrapolation of saying that community participation was only empty rhetoric is not a good extrapolation (I sincerely doubt it is - that reassurance will have been based in reality).

In any case, I think one of the major benefits of the strategy exercise was to get Wikimedians considering where Wikimedia should be in 5 years and setting their individual aims accordingly. Getting the WMF Board to recognise those aims is only a secondary consideration, really, as it's the community that drives Wikimedia's success and breadth/depth/etc. of content.

Mike Peel