Advisory Board/Meeting August 2007/Notes

Understanding and Sharing

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and Advisory Board Meeting

Taipei, August 2007

Values

Access to production / collaboration
Commitment to diversity
Community
Diversity
Freedom
Friendliness
Inclusiveness
Objectivity (strive to)
Openness
Participating
Pioneering
Quality (factual, relevant, valuable)
Respect for the editing community
Right to knowledge (knowledge without borders)
Transparency
Trust

Goals

Enhance perceptions and reality of quality
Scaling the organization - planned control and growth.
Fundraising/stable fundraising/grant writing
Build awareness in the media and in developing countries
Build capacity
Use the Advisory Board to its full capacity
Increase use in all contexts
Increase diversity
Relationships with other groups
Increase ratio of editing to reading
Increase the participation of certain groups
Increase usability
Technical innovations
Get better at ending failed experiments
Measurement-driven metrics (sampling)
Quantify where the problems are

Get people to recognize what we are - not just an encyclopedia

What we stand for - user-generated content, free content

Why? To encourage people to contribute and donate, to promote our ideology

Invest in technology ecosystem
Differentiate goals - vision & operational
4 goal topics for discussion were media awareness, quality, developing countries, organization and growth & fundraising

SWOT

Strengths

Ideology (free culture)
"nerds"
Community
Goodwill - of volunteers, donors, and press
Independence
Non-commercial
Language diversity
Participatory (democracy)

Weaknesses

Too many opportunities
Unfocused
Bureaucracy (not easy to use, rules for rules sake)
Preserving status quo
Communication
Quality assurance for educational purposes
Credibility
User interface
New user needs
Western / geek perspectives

Opportunities

iCommons to work with Wikimedia communities. Especially useful for smaller countries to work with similar groups.
Why isn't it happening? Capacity, organizational structure
Creative Commons
OSI
Expansion of use
Non-Internet based
Discover the real purpose of community content
Reliable sources (quality)
Showcase of free culture

Threats

Decreased search rankings /not reaching people
Competitors (therefore: free culture value is important)
Lack of innovation allowing others to launch our projects in a "better" way
Limited infrastructure preventing expansion of use
Reluctance to innovate
Stagnation and tunnel vision
Decreased good will (PR crises)
Conflict between focus and tunnel vision
Legal issues - enforcing licenses versus helping people to use the content correctly

Priorities

Evolving the Organization

Need to be able to access deals and handle business development in a more structured way
Could learn from groups like Ubuntu. Ubuntu has 100 teams - alternative to chapters. Based around locality, but mostly around subject areas (art, documentation, etc). Mako is very involved in this. Tasks teams can do include building relationships with entitles through meetings and events. Annual creation of work groups with campaign for volunteers to join and a guide to such groups. Groups can apply for a one-off logo use license. HQ sends merchandise to the teams - like conference supplies.
Group coordinator.

Outreach Need an entrepreneurs' guide to Wikipedia.

One idea was to encourage grant-givers to add a Wikipedia clause (grantees have to add info to Wikipedia related to their research being funded). Would need a pilot to show it works, and information on how it works.

Offline version creation outreach - a pilot to show people how to do that.

Communications - need a newsletter.

Quality

Everyone's a Wikipedian... they just don't know it yet -- Ward Cunningham

Encourage media literacy and critical thinking skills (instead?)(makes quality not such a problem).

"Edit Wikipedia Day"

give people info on how and where to edit (no writing about yourself)

admins would need to be prepared (and friendlier)

see also the German Wikipedia Academy < http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy>

could be sponsored (fundraising opportunity)

global, or on different special days locally.

Participation - need more cross-project integration (Wikipedia hardly links to Wikinews let alone the other projects).

Speaker database

Erik's notes on this session are at Advisory Board/Volunteerism.

Developing countries

Advisory Board needs to be more diverse

Find people to help launch a version in their local language. Local organizations can help that person. They would attract users, not just write the whole thing themselves.

Libraries in developing countries could tie in with "Edit Wikipedia Day"

Mission and function of the Advisory Board

How to advise Wikimedia more generally. Filter communication and staff requests through Sue and Angela.

Get information to the board in a shorter way rather than through participation on too many mailing lists.

Comment on documents - useful to point out internal discussions.

Involvement in communications

Current communication methods include

Advisory Board mailing list

Advisory board wiki at advisory.wikimedia.org

Board mailing list

initialSurname@wikimedia.org for staff and Board of Trustees

planet.wikimedia.org - add your blog!

Related mailing lists like wiki-research

An informal manual with these details is needed on the wiki along with roles and expectations.

A process is needed for the addition and removal of members.

Groups need to be enabled to continue their discussions after this meeting.Need to avoid micromanagement. Not involved in operational issues.

In person meetings are worthwhile, especially in conjunction with Wikimania, to learn about the organization.

Concern is that people won't have time to carry out what they're suggesting.

Need recommendations for more diverse members.

Need a list of area people can be contacted on.

With working groups around those areas.

Need for more legal (esp making international chapters) & tech expertise on the Advisory Board.