Talk:Vision/Unstable

A good vision abstracts many best cases, helps identify and avoid threats to the project, and helps those who are trying to avoid worst cases. Visions may also contain some useful ideas.

December 2006

I support M7's addition. "Imagine ...(period)" seems to me to lose something. Eh, people need no activities external out of their brains, if they would like only to imagine something. And that is not what we are doing, we are engaging. The proposed version at Vision seems to me too much to incline to vita contemplativa, and a charitable mission is rather active. In truth, we are comtemplating the world expected and committed to realize it. I would love to see to have some phrase mentioning to our real engagement to the world, so in my humble opinion we are better to retain "that 's we are doing" like part (phrasing may be altered though).

If you are not happy to have "that's we are doing", I propose to omit the verb "Imagine". It sounds for me that our vision is to have a vision of a certain world, to imagine something. It sounds too metaphysic, manyfold and not realistic. "Our vision is ... (to create) so-and-so a world" sounds less dreamers than "Our vision is imagin .... so-and-so" in my impression. --Aphaia 10:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I also don't like the "Imagine". Our vision is not to imagine. Our vision is to do it. Hence:

Vision: "A world where .... knowledge." (anon)

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.10.88.139 (talk) 10:15, 26 January 2007‎

It's summer 2007, and I saw the Vision, in a few languages. It reads well in German and in Italian, and as far as I can make out, in "lt" also. But in English and in French it reads bancal and boiteux, like a strict translation. Let us rewrite it as if we had the right to say things the way people really spoke. Imagine everyone having access to all the knowledge there is. We're getting there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.203.146.168 (talk) 04:16, 9 July 2007‎

Note

there was extensive discussion about the vision rewrite on the Foundation-L email list in November 2006. -Pete F (talk) 02:03, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand what this all means. Contact with the WC3 and get hub about the internet of things and help with understanding bitcoin would be helpful. Also Mozilla's 5.1 Debian And Google play and my connection to I heart media and Zendesk would all be very helpful my name is James Whiteside and you can get in touch at jamesw4205@gmail.com or 12817405406 in Pasadena Tx 3602 Burke Rd Apt. 17 Zip- 77504 Mickey4205 (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

October 2009

Where to add in a translation?—Bencmq 10:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

"Commitment"

Not sure if this is the proper place to propose changes to the current vision, as this seems to be an outdated version (with the old, ludicrously false "that's what we're doing"). But I'm sort of finding it difficult to come to terms with even the more tame "that's our commitment". "Commitment" implies we're promising to do this (give every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all knowledge)... when it's simply an impossible goal. The sum of all knowledge would be some sort of omniscient compendium of all knowledge that cannot actually exist. Anyway, I would propose something like "vision" or "dream" instead of "commitment". To me, "commitment" comes across as an arrogant, unattainable promise. "Vision", however, retains the feeling that we are working for and aspiring to something idealistic and great, without making impossible promises. Basically, I propose:

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our vision.

-kotra 01:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that "commitment" is not a good word. But I think the best word is just "goal". It doesn't matter that it's virtually impossible to achieve - in fact, it wouldn't be much of a vision otherwise. GreenReaper 14:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Bias

I removed the blatant xenophobia and anti-furry bias. I'm sure if we meet non-humans from other planets that we'd take their knowledge, and share it with them, too . . . though their language might have to wait on an ISO-639 code. "In their own language" is implied by "free access" - if you can't read it, you don't have access. I used more concise language, and removed words like "single" that I felt redundant; translators should consider the original phrase when deciding between multiple possible meanings. "That's what we're doing" is more appropriate for our mission statement; this is our ultimate goal (which may never be fully achieved). Similarly, our vision is that they have information, not that we give it to them. GreenReaper 13:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the redaction of "human" might be a bit oversensitive; most self-identified furries use the word in the sense of "furry fan" or "furry lifestyler", not as an actual non-human being. Yes, I acknowledge that there exist furries that truly identify, entirely seriously, as not human, as do otherkin, but when considering the vast body of contributors and potential contributors, these people are a nearly insignificant minority. Besides, what "furry knowledge", as in, knowledge exclusive to those who identify as non-human furries, do we include or strive to include? Even in WikiFur, I am not aware of any such knowledge. I have seen knowledge only known to furry fans, certainly, but knowledge only known to those who identify as non-humans? If we do not include exclusively non-human knowledge, then there is no need to redact "human".

I believe the motivation for using the phrase "human knowledge" is to acknowledge that knowledge is not solely the domain of humans, and to make no pretension as to our capability to compile and present all knowledge (of all creatures everywhere in the universe). "Human knowledge" is a useful phrase which keeps our vision within somewhat more comprehensible (if still somewhat ludicrous) bounds. Godlike omniscience is not what WMF's vision is, I'm pretty sure; it's one of the few true impossibilities in the universe.

If, however, meaningful, mutually understandable contact is made with extraterrestrials, non-human animals, or other knowledgeable entities, and we find ourselves wanting to include their knowledge we do not comprehend (comprehension would make it human knowledge), then certainly some sort of change should be made. But until then, "human" serves a useful purpose and I don't find the arguments for contemporary non-human-identified people convincing... but I invite alternate viewpoints. -kotra 00:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I admit to having my tongue in cheek a bit with the "anti-furry bias", though therians or otherkin might be more concerned. :-)

The most important reason to remove "human" is that it is likely to be implied by the reader, and is thus redundant. But it also needlessly restricts our vision.

Even today, some computer-assisted proofs are beyond the practical ability of humans to understand. Facts may be generated dynamically; consider systems for automatically identifying species, or algorithmic summaries of news patterns. Wikipedia is not generally in the business of generating facts, but other Wikimedia projects might. If they are not known by any human until requested, can they really be called human knowledge? (If so, "human" becomes even more redundant, since any knowledge we provide automatically becomes "human knowledge", unless we provide it to another species.) GreenReaper 03:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

That's --> That is

I changed the contraction so that the statement would sound more professional. Does anyone have any objections? Aero-Plex 01:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure professionalism is what we're looking for. A vision is something you talk about, and I would use "that's" in that situation. GreenReaper 02:21, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

October 2012

html:head:

i dontunderstand what mean your vision. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 189.200.90.99 (talk) 19:25, 4 October 2012

Shorter statement

Does the vision still need the word "Imagine"? It was true in the early years but is it still necessary to imagine it, given the expansion of Wikimedia over almost fifteen years? Also, why does it need to say "every single human being" when the word "everyone" conveys the same meaning? I propose a slight shortening from:

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.

to:

A world in which everyone can freely share the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.

Green Giant (talk) 19:59, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

@Green Giant: Agree on brevity. Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words. - LeoRomero (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC) (taking credit from White, on Strunk)

I did this as well as removing the limit of the "world", while adding "discuss" and "enhance"; much development has gone into these goals over the years, which implies that they're important. It's not much good sharing established knowledge if you can't challenge/debate or improve it! I considered taking out "the sum of [all]" as well, but it has poetic value, and goes with the idea of enhancing = which can be interpreted as both "increasing" and "improving" in other ways. A bigger article (or wiki) isn't necessarily better; nor is a shorter or non-existent one. I also ignored the request not to edit the notice, but tried to keep its meaning. GreenReaper (talk) 01:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I then changed "everyone could" to "we could all" because not only is it shorter, a vision is only useful when communicated to someone, and we want them to feel like they're a part of the team. ("We could" by itself would be limiting; the "all" is necessary to include those who are not yet aware of our vision.) GreenReaper (talk) 01:32, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Vision accomplished. Now what? Imagine a new vision statement.

Now that Wikimedians have changed the world, such that every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, we should probably start describing bigger dreams, hopes and ambitions. What's our most radical conception of our organization and community — 20, 50, 100 years from today?

Some first thoughts, based on the current vision:

1. Our work benefits the entire planet - maybe the whole multiverse - not just humans.
2. We don't just share knowledge.
3. We practice what others only preach - freedom, responsibility, duty, service, compassion - better than any other country-size organization, anywhere, ever.
4. We are building a new transnational, transracial, transpolitial, transreligical, transeverything world, and we don't even know it.
5. Let's not use cliches like "imagine a world"

LeoRomero (talk) 19:41, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Cross-posted from Jimbotalk on enwiki:

We'll be working on our original vision for centuries. Surely you don't think we have anything close to the sum of all human knowledge in Wikipedia? Consider one example. There are about 65,000 named streams in Pennsylvania, but only about 800 articles on Pennsylvania streams. The situation is worse with hills, lakes, swamps, protected areas, and features in other states. Hundreds of thousands or millions of chemicals, asteroids, species, and settlements do not have articles yet. At least a hundred thousand historical figures are probably missing from Wikipedia. See this, which estimates that 104,000,000 articles are needed to cover the sum of all human knowledge. We are only 5% of the way there. In fact, I think that the page I linked to is conservative: I would estimate 150-200,000,000. And the number of notable topics grows every day. So, yeah, no need to worry about a new vision for decades, if not centuries. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 12:52, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

--Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 22:15, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks @Jakec: Surely, I don't think, it hurts when I think. You've earned good WikiCred, you did your homework, so I'm just gonna trust you on everything that you said. I'll only note that our Vision doesn't envision a future where all knowledge is in The Projects (WP etc) - if that's your vision, I'm all for it. WMF is a lot less ambitious. Our current dream is only that "every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge". That actually was a crazy idea 10 years ago, before everyone and their cats had Wikipedia in their pockets. Today, everyone can, in fact, freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Vision Accomplished. Why they don't freely share is another matter. Hairballs on keyboards, prolly. But we digress. What do you think of my 5 points above? - Kindest; LeoRomero (talk) 01:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we need a new, bigger vision, WMF is full of hybris already. For the "sum of all knowledge" vision, see:

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-08-20/Op-ed: "A new metric for Wikimedia" By Denny Vrandečić and
  • Research talk:Measuring mission success and Research:Measuring mission success

What we really need is not more slogans, but strategies that keep Wikipedia healthy and longterm viable, that save Wikipedia from deteriorating, overstretching, failing. --Atlasowa (talk) 14:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC) (Cross-posted from Jimbotalk on enwiki) --Atlasowa (talk) 14:34, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

And see also User:Yurik/I_Dream_of_Content and Implementation: User:Yurik/From_Dream_to_Reality. --Atlasowa (talk) 14:34, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Information of my yahoo applaction is luck Fren47 (talk) 15:45, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

New Vision

Live forever in a universe where everybody live forever with love and share in the sum of all our knowledge forever too.

--Javier José Moreno Tovar18 (talk) 11:15, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The spark of doubt...

Be honest, don't you think its time for this vision:

Imagine a world in which all knowledge is notable but some knowledge is more notable than other. That's our commitment.

No, I don't want to see bs at Wikimedia! That's not the point. The point is: Someone is celebrating, that wikibooks lost 1200 entries[[1],sadly I wasn't able to check the original sources]. And prior to that noone had the idea to launch let's say Wiki-Walkthrouh? And thus all books about computer games are deleted, that doesn't seem to be a wiki I want to be part of.

But actually I have far more fun, writing stuff... It just takes a while, until I calm down, coming back, writing stuff again. Because that's a thing I can do... Tilting at windmills... Someday will come a time, when it gets better. Regards Axel--134.169.116.137 12:53, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

committment

Commitments are illegal in law finals got schedules as the word commitment means to conuse its procedure is not alowed in law please refarian from further procedures in all matters of its alikednes its a form of stealing. I refuse commitals. 1 paycheck center, is a final on all cases see yourself a new shoe that provides thruth. Wendy dawn chadick gordy iruock (talk) 19:07, 7 March 2017 (UTC)