I think questioning the strategy for sustaining the movement's projects is
worthwhile, particularly as part of the strategy discussion. I'm not sure
if sniping on this list is as fruitful.
I considered Fae's question as well; not just the mechanical "do we need an
archive site" that seemed implicit, but the fundamental question of whether
new action needs to be taken to ensure the Wikimedia projects can be
preserved. I hadn't considered that the strategy process would abrogate the
core promise of these projects, that worthwhile content would be largely
preserved to make that worth perpetually available to others.
If that's truly in question I find it hard to imagine what else the
strategy discussion could find as a substitute. I haven't engaged in the
strategy discussion for lots of reasons, but one is that I long ago
acquired a deep skepticism of movement bureaucracy, whether within the
projects or without. The entire edifice seems to have adopted the worst
attributes of bureaucracy - lethargy, indecision, internal strife, and an
abiding commitment to self-enrichment and constant bureaucratic growth.
All that rescues the movement is the persistent desire of its contributors
to add, improve and conserve and the simple demand that the bureaucracy -
if it does nothing else - keep the lights on and stay out of the way. If
that changes, then perhaps we will need the Internet Archive to step in
after all.
PS: Thanks, Seddon, for your thoughtful reconsideration of your earlier
post. To muddle the words of Michelle Obama, always go high. You can't go
wrong.
On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 7:49 PM Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Well, I think perhaps Fae's question may be
considered more generally. Fae
is knowledgeable about the structure of the Wikimedia movement as well as
the WMF, and I think it might be best to work from the assumption that
their core question is probably more along the lines of whether (and how)
the current long-term strategy development process will, in fact, make
recommendations that are in line with ensuring that there will be (at
minimum) a publicly accessible archive of the Wikimedia projects.
The movement strategy process is very broad, and contains a lot of diverse
ideas about how the movement/WMF/chapters/other entities/projects can be
improved, maintained, developed and supported. I'm pretty deep in the
strategy stuff, and as far as I know, at this point there's no clear path
to maintaining (or dissolving) any of the existing structures; more to the
point, there's no guarantee that the final summary recommendations of the
combined strategy groups will continue to support the current WMF mission
statement - that is, the part that says " [t]he [Wikimedia] Foundation will
make and keep useful information from its projects available on the
internet free of charge, in perpetuity."
I don't think that's really a bad question to ask - in fact, it may be one
of the more important ones. I hope I am not presuming too much, but I
think Fae is saying that this is something that is really important and
valuable, and that continuity/perpetuation of that particular aspect of the
mission statement should be a recommendation that gets included in the
final reports - regardless of which entity assumes responsibility for it or
who pays for it.
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 14 May 2019 at 18:03, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The Internet Archive, incidentally, already seems
to maintain copies of
Wikimedia projects. I don't know to what degree of fidelity.
Additionally,
the WMF's core deliverable is already to
provide and sustain access to
its
projects. It has an endowment for that purpose
already. Other websites
and
media that might have ephemeral access due to
their nature as short-term
tools need the IA to be preserved, but the WMF's projects seem to occupy
a
different space. It's sort of like asking if
the Library of Congress
needs
to invest in some external project to preserve
and organize its
collections. No, that is its actual raison d'etre.
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