Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Cycle 2/Wikimedia Deutschland (Board & ED)
Information
editWhat group or community is this source coming from?
| name of group | Wikimedia Deutschland Board & Executive Director |
| virtual location (page-link) or physical location (city/state/country) | Frankfurt am Main, Germany |
| Location type (e.g. local wiki, Facebook, in-person discussion, telephone conference) | in-person discussion |
| # of participants in this discussion (a rough count) | 8 |
Summary
edit- Theme key
- Healthy, inclusive communities
- The augmented age
- A truly global movement
- The most trusted source of knowledge
- Engaging in the knowledge ecosystem
- Questions key
- What impact would we have on the world if we follow this theme?
- How important is this theme relative to the other 4 themes? Why?
- Focus requires tradeoffs. If we increase our effort in this area in the next 15 years, is there anything we’re doing today that we would need to stop doing?
- What else is important to add to this theme to make it stronger?
- Who else will be working in this area and how might we partner with them?
| Line | Theme (refer to key) | Question (refer to key) | Summary Statement | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A | 1 | Being a role model for digital societies and their challenges. | role model, digital societies |
| 2 | A | 2 | Without communities, there will be no Wikimedia. | community |
| 3 | A | 2 | If we don't take care of our community our projects will be spammed and become insignificant. | community |
| 4 | A | 4 | The theme description needs a stronger link to the movement (e.g. what does "we will welcome new volunteers to our movement" mean?). | movement |
| 5 | A | 4 | Do we need "community management"? Do we need to actively take more care of our community? | community management |
| 6 | A | 4 | Too many sub themes, the theme needs more focus. Suggestions – health, engagement, support. | health, engagement, support |
| 7 | A | 4 | Become clearer on the actual meaning of words – “health” for example. | specifications |
| 8 | A | 4 | Different future scenarios might need different communities as we have at the moment. | composition of communities |
| 9 | A | 4 | If we invest in innovations, it might be possible to produce more content with less people. So it's not clear that we need a bigger community. | knowledge, community growth |
| 10 | A | 4 | Social changes can also be prompted by technological improvements (link to augmented age) or through the terms of use (one example is the global ban). | social changes, technology |
| 11 | A | 4 | One way to improve community health could be to recruit a significant number of new contributors. | new contributors, recruitment |
| 12 | A | 4 | If improving community health in our existing projects turns out to be unattainable it might be more promising to focus on constructing new projects with healthier environments for new communities ("build it right and the right people will come"). | community health, new projects, new communities |
| 13 | A | 4 | Tear down the wall between readers and authors. Turn readers into (co)authors. | readers, editors |
| 14 | B | 1 | Potential for high impact and a great chance on a global scale for all knowledge cultures. | knowledge, cultures |
| 15 | B | 1 | Wikidata is a core asset that we can use to play a role in the augmented age. | wikidata |
| 16 | B | 2 | If we’re not part of the augmented age, we’ll vanish. | adapting to the augmented age |
| 17 | B | 2 | The internet is changing with new technologies and platforms emerging (mobile trends, Siri etc). Wikipedia as a "conventional website" has to change if we want to survive. | technology, shift |
| 18 | B | 2 | We have to adapt to technological changes (e.g. voice) or people will stop to access the knowledge we provide. | adapting to new technologies |
| 19 | B | 4 | We shouldn't look at technological aspects exclusively through a technical lense, it's important that we take a user-centric approach (e.g. deep search, individual learning environments). | user-centric |
| 20 | B | 4 | Technological changes are not only a challenge to the consumption of the knowledge Wikimedia provides, but also to the creation of knowledge. We have to make sure that participating and editing remain important and visible while technologies are changing. | editing, creation of knowledge |
| 21 | B | 4 | It's not a sure thing that text-based knowledge will be outdated and other forms are superior. It's about the visibility of knowledge, different formats suit different contexts (or different regions of the world). | different formats for accessing knowledge |
| 22 | B | 4 | Expanding to other media is most important and should have a more prominent position. | other media |
| 23 | B | 4 | The theme can benefit from focusing it on "truly global reach" rather than the movement. | reach |
| 24 | C | 1 | Ideas for leveraging global reach could be
- establishing projects that have a global reach with a wider audience and new readers - creating technological solutions to overcome the struggles of establishing small language communities / content in different languages. |
audience, readers, language |
| 25 | C | 1 | In some regions, people don't access online platforms in their local/regional language but in the former "colonial language". Whether this is a problem or not should be evaluated by the affected people themselves. | colonial language |
| 26 | C | 2 | The importance of this theme directly arises from our vision: A world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. | entrenched in our vision |
| 27 | C | 2 | This theme has the biggest potential impact on the world. | biggest impact |
| 28 | C | 2 | The fact that we have been trying to reach out to new regions with little success casts doubt on the assumption that we can have substantial leverage in this field in the next 10-15 years. | growth, limited impact |
| 29 | C | 4 | We think the theme can benefit from focusing it around reach rather than the movement. In its current form the theme appears to be heavily community-centred, readers are very important too and should be stressed. | focus, reach, readers |
| 30 | C | 4 | To become a truly global movement we have to find ways to listen also to the quiet voices. | inclusivity, engagement |
| 31 | D | 1 | Current social and political situations around the world show us that knowledge and information itself are under attack. Wikimedia is a product that supports and strengthens reason and independent knowledge. | free knowledge, reason |
| 32 | D | 1 | This is our biggest challenge, with huge urgency and of utmost importance for the movement. | challenge, urgency, importance |
| 33 | D | 2 | For millions of people Wikipedia is the first and most important source of knowledge.This creates a special responsibility and we have to act on this responsibility. | first and most important source of knowledge |
| 34 | D | 4 | We should continue to focus on freeing knowledge (not only on the content). How can we make new sources of knowledge accessible in a smart way? | new sources of knowledge, freeing knowledge |
| 35 | D | 4 | Two possibilities for further focusing the theme: while maintaining the parts about sources, there should either be an emphasis on quantity/reach (the "most used source of knowledge" because people think it is the best) or the quality of knowledge ("quality as the new big challenge after the encylopedia is almost completed). If it is focused on reach it might better fit into theme C. | quality, reach |
| 36 | D | 4 | Drop/replace "most respected"
- respect is gained, will be achieved implicitly by providing quality content - add thoughts on how to make new sources of knowledge accessible. |
wording, most respected |
| 37 | D | 4 | Change the title to “Becoming the most respected source of knowledge” in order to stress that this constitutes our goal (which is not already achieved). | wording, most respected |
| 38 | D | 4 | "Reliability" is not a criterion we can set, it has to be judged/awarded by the people who use our platforms.However, we can establish the framework (infrastructure, rule-setting) for securing reliability. | reliability |
| 39 | D | 4 | On a more critical note we feel that this theme is too generic in its current form. It works more as an umbrella for a wide array of topics and opinions. While it’s an important theme as such, it also has an air of self-praise about it. | self-praise |
| 40 | E | 1 | Free(ing) knowledge needs collaboration with other institutions. | collaboration |
| 41 | E | 1 | Wikimedia is one of the last resorts of non-commercial knowledge. This is a unique position that we have to defend. | non-commercial |
| 42 | E | 4 | The theme seems to focus on GLAM institutions / the text is not clear enough. For the most impact we should aim at a variety of collaborations ranging from politics to tech to big player companies, including tech giants. Reach will only be possible in the long run if you don’t exclude those. | reach, impact, collaboration, companies |
| 43 | E | 4 | By working with institutions we can make new content available and free knowledge. If we focus on this aspect the theme could be made a part of the theme "The most respected source of knowledge". | freeing knowledge, merge with theme D |
| 44 | E | 4 | The important political work Wikimedia is doing can be added to this theme. | political work |
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
We prioritized the themes (based on their current wording and focus) as follows:
- The augmented age & Healthy, inclusive communities.
- The most respected source of knowledge & A truly global movement.
- Engaging in the knowledge ecosystem.
For the next step it is important to inquire how the themes mutually affect each other:
The decision to focus on one theme (or special aspects within a theme) will have an effect on the question where we should focus in another, connected theme. To give just two examples: If we center our efforts around technological innovation and on new tools for editors, we might not have to invest in community growth because less people get more done. If we prioritize “Global Reach”, this affects the decision on what aspects we should concentrate on within the themes “Augmented Age” and “Communities”.
Similarly, related themes can be grouped into coalitions (blocks) where the impact of the themes is not isolated from each other but builds on the interdependencies and cross-cutting effects. In order to discuss and assess the importance / impact of the themes it is important to clarify their meaning and focus.
Detailed notes (Optional)
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