China and Africa

1) "Areas the Wikimedia Foundation will not prioritize" Better would be "less prioritize", because negative words are not good.

"Below are areas in which the Wikimedia Foundation has considered increasing investment, but will not." I would delete this and the following sentence. Better would be something like: the foundation will assist other actors (...) where necessary.

2) You miss India

3 a) In my view the main results of the strategic planning are not the recommendations, they are "business as usual", but the Call for proposals and the knowledge-base. You will find a lot of valuable information there.

3 b) I read "Investing in" a lot. I hope, the foundation will assist the community - specifically the en:Wikipedia community in the US, which has no national chapter - with community projects. Remember that in Africa and India English is frequently spoken. I don´t know what the foundations Volunteer Coordinator has done so far, but it would be his/her job to assist the community (in my view).

I think we also have missed South America, their is even no reach and regional analysis for South America. If there is any places where on-the-ground precense should be considered I think that is in South America and India.

There is significant analysis for South America at Wikimedia market analysis. Brazil is listed as one of the possible large markets with a high possibility for growth.

Thanks! Seems like I havn't kept pace with the newly added material.

No problem; there's no question there's a ton of it here. That's what I think is so cool about this project, and the Wikimedia-pedia; it's a wealth of information. :)

At "Wikimedia market analysis" you will find sentences like "Supports community efforts to improve" and "Invest to accelerate growth". That match with the sentences in this letter: "We therefore plan to establish a temporary presence in priority countries" That could mean in my view South Korea (5%-7% of Internet users use Wikipedia, 50 Mio inhabitants, 125.000 articles). I suppose a good collaboration with other chapters in the region (Wikimedia Indonesia and Wikimedia Hong Kong) will help much.

In South Korea there are companies like Samsung (second-largest mobile phone maker) and LG (third-largest producer of mobile phones). I read that in South Korea the local phone makers are struggling because the iPhone is so strong. Maybe South Korea could be a test market for our mobile-strategy too? It is easier to transform a 100.000 article wikipedia into a one that looks good at a smartphone than the en:WP. And, if the creation of a new chapter fails, at least we would have more experience with mobile applications.

Goldzahn, what do you mean by "you miss India"?

At "Areas the Wikimedia Foundation will not prioritize" you will find something about China and Africa, but we also have a task force India. So far they didn´t write a recommendation, but there is a lot of analyses and data (India). A summary in this letter would be a good thing.

I think it's fair to say that the reason it was not specifically listed as an area where the Foundation will not prioritize, is because the Foundation is considering it a possible area of prioritization. My read of the numbers (take this with a grain of salt because it's personal opinion and doesn't represent the view of the Foundation) would seem to indicate that India could be a rather large lift for a fairly reasonable financial allocation. There are, of course, issues with resourcing a country that large and the cultural competence to do it well, but those are things that the Foundation would consider when selecting where to place potential field offices. I know there have been discussions in the past about some quirky financial rules in India that make it a challenge for the Foundation as well.

There's a new draft of the letter that will go up this week that will, I hope, clean up some of the verbiage based on the fantastic input from this group on this thread, and also hopefully spell out some of the countries that the Foundation will consider for these potential field organizations.