[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules.

Mon Aug 29 19:25:03 UTC 2005

Hello.

> *Board and management

Board includes Jimbo, 4 people representing the community, 3
representing the local chapters. Serving for 2 or 3 years, and trying
hard to achieve consensus when deciding.

They meet regularly, they are not paid but have their expenses covered
so they don't need to pay themselves if they don't want to (including
non paid holidays to go to meetings, for instance).

Board and community communicate sufficiently to not have any big
misunderstanding or clouded issue.

> *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)

I don't have anything against having people paid, or at least see their
fees reimbursed.
Apart that, joker :)

> *Budget

Most of our hardware needs are met by subventions from big organisations
and partnerships. We got enough proposals to be neutral (able to switch
whenever we feel too much pressure).
Budget is clear enough to figure by non technical people, and yet really
detailed.

> *Fundraising scheme

We get enough money to cover all our internal spendings, and part of our
hardware.
Donators can tell where there money should be spent.

> *Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed

We have partnerships with editors, both on paper and DVDs, to publish
our content. Also we have agreements with NGO to distribute it to areas
that needs it.

> *Projects

Wikibook is greatly improved by teachers from all around the world
creating great schoolbooks, and also students who make them funnier to
use :) They are regularly used in schools. Also some textbooks editors
publish them because printed books are better than computer ones sometimes.

Wikipedia is still the higher project in articles count, with edit wars
raging every other day. Still, most people just contribute without any
fuss. The inclusion rules are more relaxed, and only a handful of
articles are removed every day.

Wikinews is often used as a primary information source, based on many
reports from direct witnesses of events. It does not feature editorials
or too oriented contents, as per NPOV policy. It features radio and
video feeds. Radio is articles being read, video from local witnesses.

Wiktionary contains some millions entries. With the software, it's easy
to see definition of a word in any language, with all translations in
other languages.

> *Content objectives

We had many partnerships with public and private organisations to get
their content integrated in our projects. WMF acts as a gateway between
those partners and the community (which has its own relations with other
organizations, WMF isn't required to be the middleman all the time!).
Due to our lobbying (or not), many organizations free their contents and
still work fine :)

> *Software objectives

We have WYSIWYG edition, metadata separated from articles contents,
single login.
Also it's easy to select articles, following category relationships, and
export them to PDF or any handy format for later redistribution.

> *Relationship between chapters and parent organisation

We have a decentralized structure. The Board oversees the grand schema
of things, but does not micromanage. Local chapters have much autonomy,
report regularly to the Board, but are trusted enough to do important
things without (not against, in the spirit of!) Board approval when needed.

> *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)

We cooperate with some governments, who provide legal advice when
needed, and help us with local tax issues.
The press often links to our content, and uses it to complement or
illustrate articles.
We are attacked sometimes, but globally have a not too bad image in the
world. We are also one really successful example of community project.

Nicolas