In our own exercise, we identified one problem that manifests itself across different indicators is our core system's lack of optimization for emerging platforms, experiences, and communities.
What does that even mean?
What's an emerging platform? Hardware platform (e.g. Do you mean mobile? But Its debatable whether mobile is emerging or has already emerged. Apple watch? Google glass? VR systems?)? Software platforms? Some other sort of platform?
What's an emerging experience? (I don't even have a guess as to what this means)
What's an emerging community? Emerging internally (e.g. WikiProjects)? Emerging externally (e.g. Whatever tommorow's version of reddit will be)? Sister projects? Something else?
I feel like this "problem" is so vague, it might as well be "Our software does not fully meet the needs of all our users".
I'm also unclear which of issues from step 1 fit this theme. There are some, but it seems like its less then other potential themes. Any particular reason why this theme was chosen? Is it because its the only theme that can be fixed by straight up development work, rather then mushy social issues?
--- My take away from the issues brainstormed at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Strategy/Strategy_Process#Step_1:_IDE... would be a unifying theme of misunderstanding.
We don't seem to have a good grasp on what our users (editors or readers) actually need. We don't have a great working relationship with our user communities, and other partners within the Wikimedia movement. According to that wikipage, internally there is fractionalism within WMF.
No group can make big changes alone. We need to understand other groups inside the Wikimedia movement better, and they need to understand "us" better. I simply do not believe we will succeed at solving our other problems until this problem is solved.
Obviously this is larger than just the reading group.
-- -bawolff
p.s. Please keep in mind, that the goal is to create "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", not necessarily to drive traffic to Wikimedia web properties. Users accessing content through third parties, is not a bad thing, but actually a sign of success.