Howdy Wikitechnorati,

(And thank you for patience with me cross-posting if you're on other lists.)

I'm writing to invite your input on the following Phabricator task ahead of next week's Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 [1] session.

Knowledge as a Service

The purpose [2] of the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 sessions is to provide guidance for Phase 2 of the Movement Strategic Direction [3] on buildout of technology capabilities. We'd really love your thoughts to help set context for our session next week, as Knowledge as a Service is a primary consideration in the Movement Strategic Direction.

What is Knowledge as a Service? Its essence is about information architecture approaches and the necessary software that will ultimately allow content consumption and creation to radiate to new and different types of interfaces and devices in addition to browser-based approaches. As you review position papers from attendees [4] you'll notice that the way they (myself included) think about best solving this is through a heavy emphasis on technology that makes it easier to better structure information and its metadata for re-use, remixing, and querying.

What might this mean? Does it mean we should build Wikimedia software in an API- and metadata-first manner following industry standards compatible with content structuration? Does it mean weaving our existing structured and semi-structured data technologies together? How do we build technology that can ensure successful collaboration between communities on increasingly structured and interdependent information sources? And how can we ensure the tech will bolster growth of multilingual and multimedia content creation and consumption?

I've copied some of the essential material from the Movement Strategic Direction concerning Knowledge as a Service so you have it here. We would appreciate your input and hope you will subscribe to the Phabricator task to contribute and follow along as we explore this topic.

The following content is copied from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction :

Knowledge as a service: To serve our users, we will become a platform that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities. We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia. Our infrastructure will enable us and others to collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge.

...

As technology spreads through every aspect of our lives, Wikimedia's infrastructure needs to be able to communicate easily with other connected systems.

...

As a platform, we need to transform our structures to support new formats, new interfaces, and new types of knowledge. We have a strategic opportunity to go further and offer this platform as a service to other institutions, beyond Wikimedia. In a world that is becoming more and more connected, building the infrastructure for knowledge gives others a vested interest in our success. It is how we ensure our place in the larger network of knowledge, and become an essential part of it. As a service to users, we need to build the platform for knowledge or, in jargon, provide knowledge as a service.

...

Knowledge as a service: A platform that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities

Our openness will ensure that our decisions are fair, that we are accountable to one another, and that we act in the public interest. Our systems will follow the evolution of technology. We will transform our platform to work across digital formats, devices, and interfaces. The distributed structure of our network will help us adapt to local contexts.

...

We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia.

We will continue to build the infrastructure for free knowledge for our communities. We will go further by offering it as a service to others in the network of knowledge. We will continue to build the partnerships that enable us to develop knowledge we can't create ourselves.

...

Our infrastructure will enable us and others to collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge.

We will build the technical infrastructures that enable us to collect free knowledge in all forms and languages. We will use our position as a leader in the ecosystem of knowledge to advance our ideals of freedom and fairness. We will build the technical structures and the social agreements that enable us to trust the new knowledge we compile. We will focus on highly structured information to facilitate its exchange and reuse in multiple contexts.

Thank you.

-Adam

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2018

[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2018/Purpose_and_Results

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction

[4] https://wikifarm.wmflabs.org/devsummit/index.php/Session:10