[Foundation-l] Where we are headed

Sat Jun 3 23:36:03 UTC 2006

On Sat, 3 Jun 2006, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> I'm trying to think of a major thing that I can suggest, rather than
> nitpicking minor details.  Overall, wikimediafoundation.org is very
> outdated.  Even just looking at the front page the quarterly reports
> contain nothing from the current year (5 months into it), the projects
> section starts with a red link, the second feature talks about the
> Quarto which is a project which was abandoned over a year ago.

I just removed some older links.  New reports are definitely overdue. 
It is true the content of the wmf wiki needs tending and updating; and 
description pages should be rewritten so that the datable content is 
easier to catch and update as numbers and statistics change.  Perhaps the 
communications committee can help keep the site better updated now that it 
has been tasked with keeping up with requests for accounts to edit the 
site.

> One of the higher pageranked pages is
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings, which contains no
> information about meetings in 2006.  One of the meetings I stubled
> across, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/October_22%2C_2004,
> talks about changing membership from opt-out to opt-in.  This doesn't

Tracking the current status of various foundation initiatives, including 
bylaws and membership updates, is a good idea and not a nitpick.  There 
are some significant projects that get very little mention on the wmf 
site.

[[Our projects]] focuses on statistics and links, and does not include 
much of the well-written text in the Wikipedia articles about the 
projects; each project is perhaps central enough to the foundation's 
work to have its own page on the foundation site.  Ditto for major 
subprojects such as Wikijunior.

The effort to produce a board manual (on meta) was a good start at 
organizing other useful content that could be on the foundation site.

> (Interestingly, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/About_Wikimedia
> points to *both* versions.)

The [[w:Wikimedia]], [[meta:Wikimedia]] and [[foundation:About 
Wikimedia]] pages should share much more content than they currently do.

> nitpicky.  But I do think it's pretty important that people know a)
> whether or not they're actually a member of Wikimedia and b) what the
> bylaws of the foundation are.

Right.  The former requires some definition of terms that I'm not sure yet 
exists.  Setting up opt-in membership would be a fine idea, and could be 
done without requiring payment for same..

SJ