[Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation

[effe iets anders]

Wow. That was a long read. Some very interesting points, I hope you will
forgive me if I ignore most.

I do want to stress a few things. There is a difference between the Free
Content Movement, the Group of People who Use Wiki's and the Wikimedia
Movement. Within the Free Content Movement, which is indeed very old,
Wikimedia is a leader. The Wikimedia movement is much more narrow.

I would love to see some ideas to define the free content movement a bit
better - I guess that is more or less what you were working to. I would not
like us to confuse people even further by mixing up names (Wikipedia,
Wikimedia, MediaWiki), so lets make that Wiki- and media-neutral. I think
there are already works in that direction (I think something like Free
Culture Defined), and it would probably make most sense to work in that
direction - with them, dont re-invent the wheel.

When it comes to Wiki's being used for good goals, I don't see Wiki's as
special, sorry. Wiki's are a tool, not determining anything. I would be
totally fine if Wikiversity would decide next month to start using Moodle
instead of MediaWiki, and still be Wikimedia project. Maybe collaborative
authoring is a shared thing, but not even that is something that is the same
everywhere in Wikimedia, let alone in Free Culture/Content. I don't see much
use for defining a movement along that criterium.

Then finally, there is the very important question of how to stimulate
innovation. I have been bothered by this as well the past few years, and I
have as well been wondering why we are so extremely conservative. Why dont
we like new and fresh ideas, why do we want to keep everything the same? Not
only with software improvements, but also with new projects. Yes, I do agree
here and I would love to see the incubator expand in a way - and also allow
totally new content types to experiment. There is one disadvantage though:
companies have developed around that already (like Wikia) and we don't
currently have the infrastructure and support they can offer to new
projects. We dont have the staff to help new communities form. Maybe we
should, maybe we should leave it with those commercial parties. In any case
the current way is bad for our movement in the long term. And I mean our
movement in the narrow sense of the word.

Best regards,
Lodewijk

Am 14. Juli 2011 19:06:47 UTC+2 schrieb Thomas Morton <
morton.thomas op googlemail.com>:

> Good :) I'm glad I am reading your ideas right.
>
>
> > As for the name-- this looks like a job for....     experts.
>
>
> Perhaps - though with that said when I am programming it is often my
> only-slightly-technically minded work colleages who come up with ideas for
> the most effective solution.
>
> We could at least brainstorm some ideas?
>
> Tom
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