[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[Erik Moeller]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:26 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> My point is that without specific focus, these
> other sites languish and slowly die. A software package that was built for
> an encyclopedia can't work for a dictionary. It doesn't work for a
> dictionary. It also can't and doesn't work for a number of other concepts.

Of course, up to this point we all agree. That said, far from a myopic
focus on English Wikipedia, strategies to support specialized needs
and exploration of new ideas have long been very much a high priority
for WMF. It's an issue that's very clearly articulated in the
"Encourage Innovation" section of the strategic plan:

[begin quote]
  Support the infrastructure of networked innovation and research.
  - Develop clear documentation and APIs so that developers can create
applications that work easily with our platforms.
  - Ensure access to computing resources and data for interested
researchers and developers, including downloadable copies of all
public data.
  - Continually improve social and technical systems for volunteer
development of core software, extensions, gadgets and other technical
improvements.

  Promote the adoption of great ideas.
  - Develop clear processes for code review, acceptance and deployment
so that volunteer development does not linger in limbo.
  - Organize meetings and events bringing together developers and
researchers who are focused on Wikimedia-related projects with
experienced Wikimedia volunteers and staff.
  - Showcase and recognize the greatest innovations of the Wikimedia
movement, and create community spaces dedicated to the exploration of
new ideas.
[end quote]

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary/Encourage_Innovation

That strategy is very much reflected in our actions and our budgeting,
as is evident from consulting recent activity reports.

One can legitimately criticize that this helps achieve incremental
improvements across the board, but leaves a gap of "large, focused
investment to meet specialized needs" (e.g. build new software to
support a wiki-based dictionary). But it doesn't necessarily have to
do so.

IMO, the question that's worth asking is: What's the constraint that's
keeping more people from launching successful initiatives under the
Wikimedia umbrella?  There are clearly both technical and social
constraints. One technical constraint is the fact that taking an
initiative from scratch to a successful launch requires considerable
WMF support along the way. How can we reduce the need for WMF
organizational support?

The Wikimedia Labs project (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Labs ) is designed to push
that boundary. In the "Test Dev Labs" environment, the goal is to make
it possible to test and develop software under conditions that are
very close to the WMF production environment. This means that,
provided you're willing to invest sufficient resources, you should be
able to get a project much closer to "WMF readiness" than you are
today with far less WMF help. Indeed, it is designed to not become an
on-ramp for new volunteers not just in development, but also site
operations.

That's of course a risky project and it may not live up to our
expectations. But it's IMO a smarter bet to make than just picking
(with an unavoidable element of arbitrariness) one of the many
specialized areas in which we currently aren't succeeding and throwing
$ and developers at it. Because it could enable us to approach far
more organizations and individuals to invest time and money in complex
free knowledge problems without having to pass through the WMF
bottleneck.

There are literally thousands of mission-driven organizations that
would love to find ways to help solve problems in the free knowledge
spaces we're occupying. Yet, even Wikimedia's own chapter
organizations are still only a relatively small part of the ecosystem
of technical innovation (which is no discredit to the many things they
have done, including some great technical work).

Having organizations take on challenges either because they are
inherently suited to do so, or simply because they have the
organizational bandwidth, seems like a fairly rational path to
increase our ability to get things done. If that's the world we want
to live in, it also seems entirely rational to me that WMF should
focus on general high impact improvements while continually investing
a considerable amount of its capacity in helping more people to build
great things.

In addition to technical support systems, forks can be a very good and
healthy part of that development (to break out of social constraints),
as can be the development of new organizations.  A Wikinews
Foundation, or a Wiki Journalism Foundation, or some other such
construct may make a lot of sense in the long run, specifically when
it comes to the problem of citizen journalism.

-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate