Strategic Plan/Background and Context/de

Kontext für die strategische Planung von Wikimedia

Im Jahr 2001 wurde Wikipedia gegründet, um, in den Worten von Jimmy Wales, "eine freie Enzyklopädie von höchstmöglicher Qualität zu schaffen und sie jeder einzelnen Person auf dem Planeten zugänglich zu machen".

Acht Jahre später ist Wikipedia mit 330 Millionen Besucher pro Monat zur weltweit fünft meist besuchten Internet-Seite und zum meist genutzten Nachschlagewerk der Welt geworden. Wikimedia hat 735 Projekte hervorgebracht, die Inhalte von populärer Kultur bis zu Lehrbüchern abdecken. Durch massive Zusammenarbeit einer Gemeinschaft von fast 100.000 aktiven Freiwilligen wurde im Internet ein neues Zeitalter der Sozialen Netzwerke eingeleitet.

Wikimedias Vision,

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.

die im Jahr 2007 angenommen wurde, zeigt eine Bewegung, die sich nicht auf ihren Lorbeeren ausruhen will. Das ist einfach das Ende des Anfangs von Wikimedia.

In den kommenden Monaten wird es die Gelegenheit geben in einigen wichtigen strategischen Fragen zu reflektieren, analysieren, beraten, diskutieren und entscheiden. Jimmy Wales beförderte die Diskussion mit seiner Grundsatzrede auf der letzten Wikimania in dem er einige wichtige Fragen stellte und viele Community-Mitglieder sind dem Aufruf für Vorschläge gefolgt und haben ihre Prioritäten genannt.

The Bridgespan Group führte eine Reihe von Analysen durch und stellte die Ergebnisse anderer Untersuchungen zusammen. Diese Informationen sind auf dem Strategie-wiki als Faktensammlung verfügbar. Das Team von Bridgespan hat ebenfalls Interviews des Wikimedia Foundation's Advisory Board, des Board of Trustees, der Angestellten und externer Experten gemacht, um unterschiedliche Perspektiven zusätzlich zu erhalten. Die Aufzeichnungen der Interviews sind auf der Seite Interviews verlinkt.

Opportunities abound

As we collectively consider the way forward toward achieving Wikimedia's vision, the movement continues to have huge opportunities to connect to most of the world’s population and broaden as well as deepen the knowledge resources of the encyclopedia and other projects. Four priority opportunity areas have come to the fore in the work to date:

  1. China and India represent 40% of the world's population. While the majority of their population remains unconnected to the Internet, there are nonetheless ~370 million Internet users combined in these two countries. [1] However, only a small percentage of them are connected to Wikimedia, less than 1% for China and between 8% and a high of 20% for India if Internet cafe usage is not included.[2] Developing approaches to creating a Wikimedia footprint in these countries presents a massive growth opportunity, though this is not without challenges of community building, competition, censorship, a multitude of languages in the case of India among other challenges. However, success in China and India would help to realize the vision of every single human being.
  2. There are 78 languages that are used daily by a population over 10 million in the world.[3] While there are 271 Wikimedia languages in use, most of these do not yet have sufficient articles and contributors at a level where Wikimedia is a critical resource (as it is in English, German, Spanish, French, Portugese, and others). Achieving a core level of knowledge in a wide enough array of languages is important to the accessibility of Wikimedia as the opportunity to benefit from Wikimedia only exists once the knowledge is understandable. The strategic question is how to catalyze healthy growth across these many languages recognizing potential barriers faced in languages where most speakers may not be on-line today, where Internet access might be a barrier, where knowledge sources may not be available in the language or written form, and where a second language may dominate (e.g., English, French, Portugese in Sub-Saharan Africa).
  3. Beyond the approximately 1.7 billion people in the world who have Internet access are approximately 5 billion people who are unconnected and may represent populations for whom even basic knowledge access would have a huge impact.[4] Wikimedia community members have experimented with a range of off-line ideas and products and as one considers the strategic direction, the question of the five billion people who aren't connected warrants deliberation.
  4. The other side of the vision is the freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Wikimedia has achieved a lot in eight years and there is a massive amount of knowledge available in a freely sharable format. Looking forward, there is exponentially more knowledge to make available both in terms of the type of content (e.g., encyclopedic, reference, news, educational curriculum), the field (e.g., sciences, arts, popular culture, health) and the format (e.g., text, audio, video, photographs). Wikimedia needs to consider which content types fit with the wiki platform (or where wikimedia might consider new tools?) and fit with the interests, passions and capabilities of the contributor community.

Important challenges

The movement also faces barriers to future success. As we’ve engaged community members, outside advisors, staff members and conducted data analysis, several barriers have emerged that warrant attention. Three in particular have come to the fore:

  1. There is rising concern surrounding the health of the contributor community within the Wikimedia movement.[5] Between 20 and 30 percent of readers are active contributors[6] and contributions have begun to plateau in some languages.[7] Data shows that the contributor community is homogenous and there is strong anecdotal evidence that both insiders and outsiders experience both technical and bureaucratic barriers to contribution as well as cultural norms of communication that appear to inhibit diversity of contributors and may also create cross-cultural/language barriers to growth of Wikimedia in some cultures/regions.
  2. The perceptions and realities of “quality” have been and continue to be a major barrier to address. Wikimedia is now a vital source of information for millions of people a day around the world. To the extent to which it is understood, the quality of the content appears to be very high. However, actual quality is not well measured (aside from the fact that people use Wikimedia extensively) and popular perception appears to hinder usage, particularly in educational and other institutional environments. See Jimmy's recent blog on Huffington Post [8] on this question
  3. A wide range of interviewees raised significant concerns about the sustainability of Wikimedia over the long term. Interviewees discussed the challenges of ensuring the technological platform can both support Wikimedia at one billion users per month and serve the needs of much more diverse (and much less tech savvy) contributor base. 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.

From opportunities and challenges to emerging strategic priorities

We have grouped the opportunities and challenges described above into emerging strategic priorities and identified task forces with narrow mandates under each of these. For a more in-depth description of each emerging strategic priority and associated task forces, please click on the links below:

Expand reach within large, well-connected populations

Expand reach within midsize and under-connected populations

Improve quality content

Strengthen the community

Optimize Wikimedia's operations

References

  1. International Telecommunication Union 2008 http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/WTI/InformationTechnologyPublic&RP_intYear=2008&RP_intLanguageID=1
  2. Reach/Wikimedia_users#Wikimedia_penetration_by_country
  3. Ethnologue 2009 http://www.ethnologue.com/
  4. Internet Usage Stats 2009 http://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm/
  5. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924492,00.html
  6. Participation/Participants_of_Wikimedia_projects#Contributors as a percentage of all visitors
  7. Wikistats. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikistats
  8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jimmy-wales/what-the-msm-gets-wrong-a_b_292809.html

Navigation zwischen verwandten wichtigen Dokumenten

Wo Hilfe benötigt wird:

  Diskutiere über empfehlenswerte Arbeitsgruppen (en).
  Sammle Tatsachen und analysiere sie bei Wikimedia-pedia.
  Informiere andere über dieses Projekt und lade sie zur Mithilfe ein (en).

Die besten Wikimedia-pedia-Seiten:

  Neuigkeiten:
Strategy Memo to the Board (en)
  Forschung:
Regional Analysis (en)
  Vorschläge:

A "be bold" campaign

  Wie kann ich mitmachen?

Bisher haben wir Vorschläge und Fragen gesammelt - jetzt ist es an der Zeit, über sie zu diskutieren und sie in unsere Vision einzubauen. Hier eine Liste von Seiten, die dabei interessant sein könnten.

Auf Zu beantwortende Fragen kannst du eine Diskussion beginnen.

»  Wo soll Wikimedia hin?
»  Aufruf für Vorschläge
»  Was sind die Arbeitsgemeinschaften? (en)
»  Wie du mitmachen kannst
»  Wie kann ich dieses Wiki unterstützen? (en)

  Wie funktioniert dieser Vorgang?