Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/en

Language

It seems to me that improving effectiveness of existing projects, improving educational impact, and improving the empowerment of everyone in the world to collaborate in this work, are all hidden in the langugae used to define these strategic priorities.

For instance a catch-all for 'education' seems to be a subset of 'expanding knowledge'; effectiveness of existing projects isn't really covered directly yet, and empowerment isn't addressed directly (though increasing participation is... but you can participate as an individual sporadically engaging a faceless project, without much ownership in the process or end result) Sj 15:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Individual Wikimedians

"independent volunteers" as a term seems too much like a dismissive catchall to me. I'm trying to avoid this language and talk about individual Wikimedians instead. See that page for a longer discussion. Sj 15:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I am totally comfortable using "individual Wikimedians" :-) Sue Gardner 22:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Likewise, I have no issues with the use of that term. I'll do a seek and replace on the old language unless anyone raises major issues... -- Philippe 23:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

As I wrote on the talk page of the article referenced, the two are not the same.. Staff is included in one group, not in the other. GerardM 12:48, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't disagree. I was the person who made up the phrase "independent volunteers," which I did purely to have a label for people who are not on the staff, not involved in a chapter, not on the Board, not an independent contractor or consultant, etc. The goal was to have a label that _was_ a catchall; that literally meant "everyone else" -- everybody who is part of the movement, but had not already been captured by whatever labels had already been invoked. I also used to use the phrase "unaffiliated volunteers," which made me laugh because it sounds so ridiculous. I think part of what SJ is responding to, is that both phrases seem to marginalize that very large and central group of people, because the phrases position them as "other," and therefore presumably "non-central." I understand that, and personally I think that if "individual Wikimedians" is less obnoxious and still adequately understandable, I am okay with it. Sue Gardner 00:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Multilingual support anyone ??

I do not find a place in these emerging strategic priorities where multilingual support for our environment can be placed. There are plenty of issues that we do not deal with. Thanks, GerardM 12:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Gerard: I'm not too clear on your point - can you give me more details? Are you refering to editing tools? Thanks, Serita 19:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Two out of the seven emerging priorities are specifically about language. There is also a subsection (under Web 2.0) specifically on technology. Multilingual support clearly falls in those categories. If you think this can be made more explicit, please feel free to do so! --Eekim 22:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Signing up for ESP4

ESP4 is the theme that is most closely aligned to my proposal, so I'd like to sign up to be part of the task force looking into that area. --Bodnotbod 14:21, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I've just found the page telling me that applications for task force membership don't open until Sept 14th. I'll put my name down then. That's good, because I still have a ton of proposals I haven't read. --Bodnotbod 15:36, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Bidirectional links between ESP and Call for proposal categories

The headline in the article reads: "Based on the developing [...] proposals receiveds [...] everal strategic priorities for Wikimedia are emerging". Just curious, I would like to see explicit links between ESP and broad category of proposals received, and a links between broad category of proposals received and ESP. On Call for proposals the following broad categories of proposals can be seen, each containing multiple entries:

• Foundation structure and function ESP task force 5
• Improving content - not covered by a task force

• Now covered in ESP 3.1 Laura231 16:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• Extending coverage - not covered by a task force

• Now covered in ESP 3.2 Laura231 16:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• Improving usability ESP task force 6.1
• Volunteer support ESP task forces 4.3 and 4.4
• Outreach nearly all proposals in this category do *not* fit in ESP 1 or ESP 2
• Enable existing features - not covered by a task force
• New features - not covered by a task force
• Proposals by existing project (navigational category ...)
• New projects - not covered by a task force

• Now covered in ESP 3.2 Laura231 16:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• Existing features - not covered by a task force

Covered by ESP 6 under technology - not clear, will clarify Serita 18:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• Uncategorized - not covered by a task force
• Requiring attention - not covered by a task force
• Strategy wiki navigation - not covered by a task force

Covered by ESP 6 under technology - not clear, will clarify Serita 18:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Which ESP or which task force from the following list:

1. Growing reach and participation in large languages and regions no specific proposals to support this ESP
   1. Chinese no specific proposals to support this ESP
   2. South Asian languages no specific proposals to support this ESP
   3. Arabic no specific proposals to support this ESP
2. Expanding reach and participation across smaller languages, smaller regions and offline usage no specific proposals to support this ESP
   1. Smaller, but widely used languages in - Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, Eastern Europe no specific proposals to support this ESP
   2. Connecting Wikimedia to those without/with limited Internet access (Wikimedia "offline") some proposals in category outreach support this ESP
3. Expanding sum of all knowledge no specific proposals to support this ESP
   1. Localized interests (citizen journalism, news/current events/people) no specific proposals to support this ESP
   2. Reference (beyond encyclopedia)/primary research no specific proposals to support this ESP
   3. Education (including Wiki Offline) proposals in subcategory schools
4. Strengthening and adding diversity to the Community
   1. Converting readers to contributors (e.g. pathways and roles for contribution)
   2. Increasing diversity (e.g., gender, age, race)
   3. Strengthening the culture and community health, including social infrastructure
   4. Strengthening specific community groups (e.g. developer, projects)
5. Optimizing Wikimedia's operational structure
6. Maximizing web 2.0 opportunities and minimizing risks
   1. Technology (core platform evolution, new platforms, usability, multilingual support and development tools) proposals in category improving usability
   2. Alliances and partnerships proposals in category content partnerships
   3. Policy agenda

will cover the proposals received in each category in the first list? Or, what do you intend to do with broad categories of proposals received but not covered by an ESP or Task Force? Dedalus 08:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Not "you," but "we." :-) Making these links explicit is an excellent idea; I'd encourage folks to start with that. I don't think we have to link every proposal with strategic priorities, because some proposals have nothing to do with strategy. --Eekim 15:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't suggest to link individual proposals, i didn't suggest to link categories of proposals, i did suggest to link broad categories of proposals, those are the 14 top level categories in bold and underlined headings on the page call for proposals. More direct: Based on what information did Serita compile the list of ESP? I'm ok with having say sixteen task forces. It is totally unclear to me based on what the different subjects were chosen. Shouting emerging, shouting strategic shouting for the third time priority does suggest however that it is totally clear why some subjects were choosen to be discussed by a task force. So please tell. The feedback - by hundreds of proposals received - do suggest a complete other list of priorities. Dedalus 08:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey Dedalus, no one is shouting so sorry if it appears that way - please feel free to change the titles. I called them that for no better reason than I'd been noodling on what the big themes were continuously coming up not only from the Call for Proposals, but from Wikimania, Key Questions, Foundation-L, interviews with people both within and outside the Community, and from the fact bases. So in terms of terminology - feel free to edit - I was trying to capture the collective strategic themes/issues that keep popping up. In terms of sources, like I mentioned, the Call for Proposals is just one source. While growth in China may not have a proposal (although there are proposals on issues China does face like censorship), the facts show (and were shown by Jimmy at Wikimania) that Wikimedia is under-penetrated with Internet users in both China and India - this is a big gap. Understanding the reasons why and what the opportunity is a strategic issue echoed by both people inside and outside the Community. Whether this is where the Community wants to spend its time is up to the Community, but tackling the root cause and understanding how the gap can be closed might be a worthwhile Task Force to have. What is a little disappointing from my point of view is that while the facts show China and India are under-penetrated, we don't have many proposals on this... Do you (Dedalus and anyone else reading this) have any ideas why? .... Finally, as I've been prosing far too much, I hear you about the sourcing of things and how these might on the surface seem to have come from the ether - to be honest, these were put out to spur conversation and to hopefully have people refer back to the Call for Proposals and the Fact Bases and agree or disagree - so thank you for doing that. It would be interesting to get your thoughts on what is missing based on the Call for Proposals and Fact Bases. Unfortunately, we have yet to post the interview notes for your review as we are still getting approval from the interviewees, so stay tuned for those.... In addition, the Project Team is working on an article which will hopefully tie-in and align task forces to their sources: Fact Bases, Call for Proposals, interviews, etc.... Hope this is a helpful explanation and please continue to engage: ask questions, edit, and send me your thoughts Serita 18:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I must agree with Dedalus and thank him for the two-way table he's presenting us here. I agree that much in the Call for proposals doesn't show up in the ESP list, at least not directly. I also understand that the Task Force Selection Committee has its own job to do. They are listening to more than just the Call for proposals page. However, this needs a little clarification, otherwise a lot of contributors would feel that their proposals got lost in a sand storm.

My proposal would be:

• Let the Selection Committee explain their choice for ESP Task Forces a bit more before application date;
• Make the Call for proposals entries a part of the documentation for every Task Force to explore and choose from. Put more clearly: every Task Force will research those proposals as they seem fit under their own mandate, as part of their job analysis. That should do, I presume. - Art Unbound 18:57, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Missing Questions / Topics

Here are some gaps thus far:

• Quality. None of these priorities explicitly address improving the quality of existing content.
• Scope. Perhaps this falls under the "Partnership" category, although it seems much more horizontal. What should Wikimedia be doing? All of these priorities seem to presuppose existing projects. Should Wikimedia be supporting all of these? Are there other projects Wikimedia needs to support? What's the essence of a Wikimedia project (values, tech, etc.)?
• Philosophical framework. There's no conceptual framework that ties in all of these challenges. There's quite a lot of good thinking/knowledge around movement-building that we could bring into this discussion, especially around the relationship between top-down/bottom-up.
• Governance. Related to philosophical frameworks. Governance models should reflect the principles of this movement. Do they currently? They should also be effective. Are they? Have we defined "effectiveness"?

Eekim 15:15, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Other suggested changes / comments:

• Merge technology and partnerships as a component into virtually all discussions (means vs. end), rather than having them be a dedicated ESP
  • There are probably overarching strategic issues that could merit a task force in ESP5
• Do content restrictions / filtering / censorship merit a higher-level task force instead of being discussed in the context of specific geographic regions only?
• What are the connecting points between the Wikimedia movement and public policy decision-making processes around the world? Should there be a Public Policy taskforce in ESP5?

--Eloquence 06:52, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! This makes a lot of sense. We did have public policy under ESP6, but I don't think it was clear. Will add Serita 18:34, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

And some from me, too (some overlapping whith points above):

• The reorganisation of ESP3 makes my first point obsolete: nothing about quality
• Opening new sources
  • The GLAM-sector issues
  • ethical background of content liberation (will wikimedia cooperate with every partner for every content)
  • understanding of the own role (is wikimedia partner, teacher, convincer, do-gooder)
• Usability
  • although the usability-team is working now, a further look at usability-items, not only belonging to the wikis we know now, could be useful
  • perhaps it is covered with ESP 2 (on this page)

And one question: Is the List the "working space" or that on Task forces? They are not equal. For the latter I would suggest to delete the list on task forces and to add a link there to this page. It's confusing now. --Lyzzy 15:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I believe I have merged the content onto this page. :) -- Philippe 10:41, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

That's the better way to solve it, thx. --Lyzzy 11:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I would go with the former speakers, in that there's not an overall view built in yet that covers quality content, participation, technical capacity and worldwide reach. However I think that's very difficult to resolve from above, so I would like to ask all users who are going to respond, to include their view on how their proposals/applications are going to promote an overall improvement of Wikipedia over the next five years. - Art Unbound 21:16, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

This section and the former seem to cover much the same problems, so I'd suggest to take them as a whole. - Art Unbound 20:33, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Added back the technology task force. In a range of discussions with advisory board members (including folks with deep technology expertise), the question of the effectiveness of the core platform and the approaches by which it is maintained and upgraded were raised. The issues were both a question of useability and a question of underlying reliability and capacity to support new media (e.g., video). The task force should wrestle with the issues of whether the approach to technology will continue to serve the community well looking forward. BarryN 16:36, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Strategy Task Force

Because the Strategy Task Force is gone, the page Task_forces#Strategy_Task_Force is no longer current. --Goldzahn 00:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out Serita 23:11, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The whole page has been redirected. ;) -- Philippe 23:17, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Take a deeper dive

As much as I approve of this effort and am doing my best to support it, I think this initiative needs a deeper dive. For a five year strategic debate, it's too hasty and needs to be supported far more widely to become successful.

1. The ESPs need to be crystal clear and spread out through the world wide community. They are not yet. The priorities lined out here and the Call for proposals page are not smoothed out enough. Too little contributors will be able to synthesize everything that has been said in the Village Pump Key Questions, Fact Base and Call for Proposals pages to really know what the strategy discussion is up to. They have to be better instructed. The final results need to be translated before asking candidates to apply. If we are forming task forces about Indian and Chinese and Arabic languages, we need participants from those languages in the Task Forces. All of them, in fact all of the candidates, need to know exactly what the questions are and what the problems are about. Don't risk a sand storm, don't hazard this opportunity now.
2. We are facing some very big problems and I know we can't linger to solve them, but we are also building a future - for the next five years to begin with. The contribution to our projects is dwindling. We have to cope with the inevitable diversification. We have to face all kinds of new media, distracting from our goal of collecting knowledge. Many contributors feel, that whatever they want to tell has already been told, so we have to convince them that there's more to tell. We need to set priorities to get it all done.

So, I'm sorry, but this project is not yet ready to launch. This is not ready to start October 1 and finish before Christmas 2009. Clear it out, get your documentation done, get your translations ready and spread it out among all of the active Wikipedia projects before end of 2009, then start applications and get the project finished around March or April 2010, would be my guess for a timeline. Thank you and good luck, - Art Unbound 21:31, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Art! Absolutely agree. The Project Team is currently working on the supporting, smoothed-out documentation that weaved together the Fact Bases, Interviews, and Call for Proposals into a series of articles to support and clarify each emerging strategic priority. Please visit Strategic Planning Guiding Summary to read, comment on, and edit the emerging articles. Your input would be greatly appreciated! Serita 19:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you too Serita, that summary link looks a whole lot better. For the first step, yes, some kind of urgency did help to get the project going. The Snow/Wales letter also speaks of a year's project, which looks much more realistic to me. Now let's help the community step in, understand what's going on, educate them and make them feel they're part of the process. Wikimedia 1 is over, Wikimedia 2 is definitely in. That's my focus for now. I will be part of the process and be helpful wherever I can. Let's go for it! - Art Unbound 20:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Art - It's never been intended that this project would be any less than one year, much less finished by Christmas of 2009. That would be nearly impossible, as you suggest. Serita and her team are working hard on getting out to the far reaches of the projects, and we'll do everything we can to build interest and awareness, but the best ambassadors to the projects are people like yourself who have an interest. Philippe Beaudette, Facilitator, Strategic Plan -- Philippe

Thanks Serita, Philippe. The strategy project as a whole is smoothing out as it goes, the letter by Wales/Snow is out now and I think the idea is gradually finding its way throughout the community. What I'm doing now is exactly what you're suggesting, explaining the project in my region and responding to questions how to participate. My expectation is that the whole idea will take 3 - 6 months to simmer down to a broader level that will be needed to bear the changes and maybe a year before the bulk of our users will be getting used to a new way of working. However, changes can only be brought about by an avant-garde, which is what we are seeking now. As for me, I like the project and I feel that I'm at the right time for change. - Art Unbound 19:55, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The word "Diversity"

Does the word "diversity" translate well to languages and cultures outside of English/Anglo-centric? For instance, we use the word to represent a breadth and depth of knowledge and experience as well as a series of measures based on external factors, like nationality or gender. Is there a way to say it that's better? -- Philippe 23:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

If you read Italian dictionaries (e.g. this), diversità is a negative word (it can also euphemistically mean homosexuality, which is obviously a terrible condition of damnation :-/), although some left-whing parties are using it as a positive one. Maybe biodiversity, as a scientific term, can be used more broadly in a figurative manner. But I suppose that the most comprehensible and correct word to describe what you say in Italian would be pluralità or pluralismo (both translated with pluralism in English, despite the different meaning). --Nemo 12:22, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It translates well in French "diversité". Delphine (notafish) 09:09, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Into German too "Vielfalt" --Goldzahn 19:19, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Expansion and Consolidations of Task Forces

Expanded Community culture and health into two Task Forces, one focused on recognition, retention, and being more friendly. The other Task Force will focus on wiki-lawyering, policy proliferation.

Consolidate other types of contribution task force previously under Community ESP4 into roles under ESP5 Serita 23:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Funding has to be a high priority, not third order

Under Strategic Planning Guiding Summary, Important challenges, we find the statment

"The question of financial sustainability and organizational models sit along side the technology challenge with a significant concern regarding the lack of a renewable and reliable revenue source to support operations and investments over time as well as questions about how the movement should organize itself into different roles."

WikiMedia Foundation seems to depend on begging (OK, some like to call it donations). Is this adequate funding for the future of Wikipedia, with some very grand ideas needing financing.

Without a Strategy for Funding, the other talk is really just that - talk, pipe dreams. In any other organisation, Funding is one of the key questions. Be they small business, NGO, major corporate, government, even the UN. Why would the WikiMedia Foundation team think that Funding Strategy is not a top issue ?--Richardb 03:11, 25 September 2009 (UTC) See Funding ideas

Thanks Richardb! Yes, funding is of major strategic importance. It has now been called out as its own task force and the link you provided is great input for this task force. I'll make sure the link is copied on the this task force's page Thanks, Serita 00:16, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Please provide a link to "This Task Force". Under Emerging strategic priorities it is still buried low down.--211.30.212.125 16:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Read "Creating a World without Poverty"

Charity and Foundations automatically and inherently put the recipient organisation into "begging" mode. You don't have to like this fact, but it's a simple, straightforward, undeniable fact.

It would be an extremely good idea for the members of the Wikipedia Foundation's Steering Committee to read Mohammed Yunus' book "Creating a World without Poverty", cover to cover, and then, after doing so, set up a series of what Yunus calls "Social Businesses" which are indefinite-zero-interest-rate-loaned funds from the Wikipedia Foundation "pot". to understand the massively important implications of this statement, it is imperative to read Yunus' book, first. The concept he proposes is simple enough but is too easily confused with all the alternatives (such as for-profit business, NGOs, etc.) 19 of which he carefully lists and compares one by one against the "Social Business" system and associated lending system, listing the disadvantages of each when compared to "Social Business", along with examples and experience of the successes and failures of each, and the hard-nosed lessons of having created a lending system from scratch, based around enablement, empowerment and trust.

A lending system which has taken the Grameen Microloans bank to a whopping 6 billion dollars of loans over twenty five years, with an unprecendented 98.5% repayment rate (normal banks have an 85% failure or default rate, on loans). Lkcl 12:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Emerging Strategic Priorities (ESPs) so far

OK, we've gone some steps further, let's evaluate some of the ESP's as they stand now. I've seen that there are discussion pages about Key Questions for each ESP, but I'm not ready yet for the specialist level so I'll put it here.

ESP 1: Within large, well-connected populations.

What I observe here, is that we have the English-spoken Wikipedia, along with a few world language wikipedias (German, French, Spanish) that are strong enough to outlive the newest hypes on the Internet. These hypes seem to promote the "reality" type of content, that's concerned less with knowledge than with real life communication. Where have your schoolfriends gone, what is your pet like, do you wanna date with me and what have you eaten yesterday. Once you've got a large stream of readers going that way, you're not gonna get them back. Once they know what a ferret looks like, they're not going back to Wikipedia to know all there is new about ferrets. They're going to ask their neighbours: "Have you ever had a ferret as a pet? How's that?" "I don't have a ferret, but I know a guy who kept one". "Can you give me his tel.no. please?" At that point they don't need Wikipedia any more, but they need a Facebook-like communication site.

1. As we don't want to give that kind of information, we're not interested in that kind of reader, as simple as that. That means, that myriads of readers are not interested in us any more, as simple as that. We have done our job and they're gonne look for another diversion. We shouldn't be too shy to recognize that, our job is to keep giving the information that is our job to give.
2. Now let's scrutinize some of the key questions on the matter here. They're mainly about reach. How do we reach mobile phone users? My observation is that they are very fast consumers and they won't stand still on a crossroads to find out all about an archeological pit in Limburg (The Netherlands). Rather, they're looking for the next pizza hut and I don't have to ask you if they'll find that on any of our Wikimedia projects, do I?
3. I'm going to give this a very large kick right through the middle. The Western-based projects don't need any more support than they've already got. If they're not up to the newest hypes, well, they've still got the strength to maintain as they are. The only thing they have to do is, to go on doing what they did. Many of them have their own chapter. From a global point of view, let them wash their own laundry.

ESP 2: Within mid-sized connected and under-connected populations

Sorry to say, I don't have knowledge about these projects (wikipedia or other). I have no concrete suggestions to help here. But I'm gonna give it a kick right through the middle again: for the next five years, concentrate on the emerging wikimedias and help them organize and find their way to their public. Arabian countries, Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, that's where our future lies, not speaking of Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia and the like.

These populations - let alone the very underdeveloped like the rest of Africa, some of South East Asia and the Pacific (some Mid-American countries at least have the advantage to be part of a world language region) - still have the dearth of knowledge that the western countries have already lessened. This part would look much more challenging to me.

So far for today, - Art Unbound 19:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Issue and Assumptions of ESP 2

I have a problem with ESP 2 stating that Opportunity MUST be defined as "educated people with internet access". it's perfectly technically feasible to design and leverage "offline" protocols (such as git's SMTP transfer mechanism) and to take advantage of the massively increasing capacity and shrinking size of Solid-State Flash Drives. in outlying areas where internet access is patchy, inadequately low bandwidth and prohibitively expensive to deploy, physical transfer of data _far_ exceeds the transfer rate of real-time access, and the comparatively extreme high latency (days, weeks) of round-trips is perfectly acceptable.

These assumptions irritate me because they risk indicating that the strategy proposals are not in fact strategy proposals at all, but have been (potentially inadvertently) pre-determined in advance, by limitations in the thinking of the people who initiated this process, and then slapped the word "strategy" on top of it. I trust that that's not the case, and that it was just an inadvertent mistake. Lkcl 09:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Lkcl: I don't read the section as you do. The header states (a.o.): "Investigate the opportunity for reaching large geographic regions with large and medium language populations of people with limited or no access to the Internet". The proposed Task Force is supposed to concentrate on offline possibilities. I've had nothing to do with formulating any of the emerging priorities, but I'd like to bring to mind that out-of-the-box thinking is extremely difficult precisely because it's out-of-the-box. For an example, a few weeks ago a business in South Africa experimented with post pigeons transporting USB sticks instead of using ADSL connection and the pigeons won it by many days. Well, this might be a solution that you could bring to attention of the Selection Committee. Thank you, - Art Unbound 20:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

PS, some technical solutions are also worked out in the technical proposal section, esp. here (note that this proposal might be merged). While I'm not technically educated, I can see that some of your worries are adressed there. - Art Unbound 20:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

art, thanks for responding. the first paragraph reads "Determine how to significantly increase usage and participation in large geographic regions with medium-size language populations (5M to 30M speakers), where the Wikimedia projects are currently under-performing relative to the opportunity. (Opportunity = number of literate, educated, internet-connected people). ". it's this last bit which i have a problem with. it reads, "ESP 2 is _specifically_ targetted at _excluding_ literate, educated _non_-internet-connected people." which looks like it's just an unintentional mistake, but it's a mistake nonetheless. Lkcl 11:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

art: don't worry - i've made specific mention of the USB-sticks-by-Carrier-Pigeon thing in the Proposal:Distributed_Wikipedia submission. i trust that that's enough to get it picked up by the S.C. Lkcl 11:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Thinking outside of the box

I'm disappointed so far in the process, explicitly including the "emerging strategic priorities". That is because pretty much everything is about the existing wikis, their quality, their editors, their outreach. All of that is inside the box of what we - the volunteers and the WMF - are already doing. It is of course important to maintain quality, improve the accessibility and reach new editors. But a strategy process should in my eyes be about how to grow as organization and open up into new activities. If the result is "we continue doing what we've always done - just better" I consider the effort to be wasted.

i've seen at least two comments by people that indicate that they seek to (subconsciously) limit the strategy process by saying things that boil down to "i don't think that ideas like that should be part of the strategy process right now: let's wait until..." which is exactly the kind of thinking that can be defined as "in-box". the only thing i can suggest is: if you see evidence of such, anywhere, highlight it.

secondly, it turns out that there is a requirement of the wikipedia foundation that, before "data" can be handed over to an individual, they are required by the foundation to provide proof of physical identity, in the form of faxing copy of passport or driver's license to the foundation's office! such requirements could, potentially, completely jeapordise any endeavours to turn wikipedia into a peer-to-peer distributed system, if taken strictly and taken seriously. so - yeah, there's definitely evidence of "boxing in" which has to go. Lkcl 11:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there a page where proposals and even ideas that have not yet grown into a formal proposal can be collected, the are visionary and go way beyond the wikis? If there is no such page yet, please create one and promote it on the village pump and elsewhere. 87.174.168.135 12:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC) (User:H-stt, not logged in because of an insecure network)

H-stt, there are a huge number of proposals - some for existing features and wikis and some radically out of the box. They can be viewed at Call for proposals. -- Philippe 13:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This is good news. But is there any kind of index that allows easy access to the proposals, beyond the very broad categories? Is it possible to sort all proposals by the impact value, give in the evaluation process? I believe proposals "outside of the box" will have a higher impact rating than those covering thee existing projects. 87.174.159.169 09:47, 6 October 2009 (UTC) (User:H-stt, still traveling)

Hi H-stt, Special:RatedPages could be what you are looking for. --Lyzzy 13:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It is, thanks for pointing me there. 87.174.168.202 13:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Where are we?

In the section on Procedures, you say that the Task Force Selection Process will take two steps and you hope that both steps will be done by Oct 5th. It is already Oct 15th. Where is the announcement? Will there be any reply to the 2100 minus 200 applicants that did not get selected?

I see some teams in the subpages of Task Force but most of them don't have any members? For example, look at Task force/China Task Force versus Task force/Local Language Task Force. Will the Selection Committee add the members or should we just put down our names on any teams we're interested in? Also, is this all the task forces or are more still being added?

In my opinion, there should be some central place (Village Pump? Main Page?) that does NOT use Liquid Threads and that lists all of the new topics and what they contain. I just happened to stumble across Task force by accident. Or maybe I just don't understand your linkages. Is there any documentation? And, by the way, who decided that Liquid Threads would be our method of communicating with each other? And where is the documentation for it? --RoyGoldsmith 18:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the selection process is taking longer than expected because of the volume of applications. There will absolutely be communication to everyone one way or the other.

The only task force that is formed and working so far is the China Task force. The others are not yet formed. You're welcome to indicate your interest in any that interest you - just put your name there. The Selection Committee will (most likely through me) add the names of the people that it selects when they are notified.

At this point, that's all of the task forces, but anyone is welcome to add any task force that they think is needed - we ask that you work transparently (preferably on this wiki) and will support you to the extent that our limited staff resources can do so.

Documentation on LiquidThreads is coming - Werdna is writing it now. The progress so far is at [1].

It's no secret that the navigation on this wiki needs a refresh - that's what I'm actively working on right now. Hopefully the linkages will make more sense when we're done with that. -- Philippe 18:52, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary choices

At this moment China and India have been singled out for special attention. At the same time other Asian languages are doing really well and would equally deserve attention... Indonesian, Korean, Farsi, Vietnamese, Turkish, Thai, Ukranian ... are doing extremely well other languages have potential as well.

When the point is that Chinese and the Indian languages have each particular issues then maybe.. This would leave Sinhala, Bengali, Nepali .. out because they are not Indian, but that is ok.. These languages can also be considered in the third working group. It would be good when this is more explicit. GerardM 15:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)