Concrete priorities

Why doesn't Wikimedia have some absolute priorities written down somewhere? There are some groups of priorities that I have assumed are pretty universal throughout Wikimedia, but aren't really discussed anywhere. My views, which I think (hope) are held by other people too:

1. Top priority: The goal. "A world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." Nothing changes the goal. No amount of anything is allowed to change or modify the goal, no matter what the reason. The goal is the final point, the top of everything, the grand purpose.
2. Content. Nothing is an acceptable reason to harm the content, other than possible harm to the goal. We don't take out helpful additions to content no matter how many people the content will anger, no matter how much damage it will cause, no matter what happens. We abide by Neutral Point Of View, and all other policies, and keep the content as informative and helpful as possible, period (barring possible harm to the goal, of course). The content is a means to the goal, and that's all that matters.
3. Community/Contributors. Nothing excuses harm our community, except for risk of direct damage to content or the goal. No amount of contributor damage may allow harm the content at all. (I think everyone agrees that a huge number of users saying "we're leaving unless this article conforms to our viewpoint" is not an acceptable reason for damaging content.) The contributors, in their helping the project content, are more important than anything else. The contributors are a means to building the content, this makes them more important than anything lower.
4. Wikimedia (Foundation, chapters, PR and related stuff). This is more important than anything other than the goal, content, and contributors. This is also always less important than the higher priorities. We don't harm content no matter how bad it will make Wikimedia look; no matter how much money the Foundation stands to make if it does harm the goal is slightly changed, we don't change it; no matter what would happen to the supporting areas of the movement if it doesn't remove a contributor or otherwise harm the community (damaging their ability to contribute some way or another), we don't do it. (We make an exception for legal issues, as going against the law would be pointless, but there are no other exceptions.) The WMF exists entirely to support the contributors ability to help, and thus it supports the content, and thus it helps achieve the goal. This makes it more important than anything other than its purpose.
5. Everything else in the world. (I can entirely see the reason not to write this down officially anywhere, just adding it here to complete the list.) As far as Wikimedia is concerned, everything outside is irrelevant, other than its ability to support the foundation and enlarge the community. We can never use the off-wiki world as an excuse to harm the goal, the content, the community, or the Foundation. If you're editing, you leave your views behind. If you're reading, we only care how much you're actively being informed.

Each priority is always higher than lower priorities. Trying to judge long term affects doesn't work (i.e. no saying that damaging content to help build the community is fine because bigger community means better content on the long term, no saying helping the foundation by damaging the community is fine because the foundation will help the community become more effective on the long term). I think the servers/website fit somewhere into this scheme, I just can't remember where.

I have no idea who other than me agrees with this set of priorities. I've assumed for a long time that this whole thing was an "unwritten rule", but recently I've run into some comments and actions that seem to indicate that either this is under quiet dispute, or nobody other than me actually held these views and I was imagining it the whole time, or that some people just never caught on. Perhaps a discussion here might lead to something helpful.

Something in line with the following?

Strategic_Plan/What_do_we_believe?-Principles_of_the_Wikimedia_movement

Not at all as strongly worded as your priorities, and not exactly the same content either. But is it in line with your thoughts?

I'm very circumspect when we mention contents without saying that the content should be relevant to an encyclopedia of quality.

When people write the the sum of all knowledge they forgot that this knowledge should be pertinent & intelligible for the readers.

Too much informations just lower it to the rank of noise.

Yeah, the good news is most of these things are written down at Strategic Plan/What do we believe?-Principles of the Wikimedia movement. Otherwise, to nitpick, I'm always a little wishy washy when I see statements like "We don't take out helpful additions to content no matter how many people the content will anger, no matter how much damage it will cause, no matter what happens." I mean, if it's a helpful contribution, then why is it causing damage? Let alone, what's the bar for measuring if something is helpful?

I tend to agree with KrebMarkt that quality has to be a goal as well, especially when it comes to things that could create potential legal issues or otherwise threaten the reliability of the encyclopedia. I wouldn't say quality trumps adding content, but then I wouldn't say adding content trumps quality either. It's a difficult balance.

Actually, I was referring to additions that are helpful to the content as a whole, those which increase the usefulness and usability of the entire project. The content itself is a priority, and everything I said about protecting a useful addition also goes for proceeding with a productive deletion. If a deletion is a helpful change for the project, then it has to come before everything else. (The quality/quantity balancing act is an entirely different issue.) A chance to benefit to the community or the Foundation being lost is not an excuse for keeping harmful/useless content, or deleting helpful content.

Strategic Plan/What do we believe?-Principles of the Wikimedia movement seems rather vague, with no real firm points made, but it does give a very good outline of our past and current methods, as well as summarizing the Wikimedia movement. There are a lot of major prioritization issues left undecided and undiscussed, though.

You know, i'm an awful Unbeliever and a first rate Skeptic Editor ;)

I think that too many contributors reflect currents consumerist societies with the prescribed idea that "More the better" declined into "More informations the better" and "More articles the better".

What is flawed it while it does give some quantitative feel good sense, it nevertheless results that too many subjects are covered in a superficial way as some editors sole answer on how to improve the coverage of a subject in Wikipedia is "More spin-out articles".

A year ago i heard a criticism of Wikipedia giving only an "Horizontal form of Knowledge" failing to be a more in-depth "Vertical form of Knowledge".

KrebMarkt raises some good points about how more isn't necessarily better. Seems like the random ranting person would agree. This is one of those tough issues to articulate. To me, it would be great just to be able to say "there is a balance between quality and quantity", or that "we have to balance our goal of summarizing all human knowledge with the goal of appearing reliable". But vision tends to operate at a high level, and can be vague. It's stuff like "let's go to China" but not "let's fly at a mid-price on a weekend and stay for only 2 weeks".

That said, if somebody wanted to take a stab at adding something to the Strategic Plan/What do we believe?-Principles of the Wikimedia movement, I'd gladly work with them to make it right.

My comment above is completely reflect by fanboy/fangirl editing practice in Fiction articles.

Instead to improve the main article they spin-out article covering individual fictional characters. When they run out of fictional characters they continue on spin out with the fictional universe, terminology, technology. That done they can write spin-out on the related media of the main article, soundtracks, novels, video games and so on.

Bottom line we can and with a plethora of low quality & superficial articles yet they are informative & helpful.

How about adding a short section (to clarify a few points that may otherwise be taken out of context)? Example:

=== Corollaries ===

A number of corollaries exist to make the above useful. These include:

• Knowledge is not necessarily the same as data - making available "the sum of all knowledge" has traditionally co-existed with recognizing the need for a degree of selectivity in the knowledge covered.

If we were going to add such a note, either as a short section or footnote, anything else important that would need saying?

No, that should be enough cause everything else is already mentioned (eg. quality)... so feel free to add it

I know we're getting into "what Wikipedia is not", which is a legitimate conversation with pretty widespread agreement. But I'd like to think we can frame quality and scope in more positive terms. I'm stumped though. If no one can come up with anything better, I think FT2 has offered a solid starting point.