What impact do you think you can have on the world?

What impact do you think you can have on the world?

I'd like to take a step back for a moment and hear some personal stories. Why do you care about Wikimedia? What brought you to these projects, and what keeps you here? What impact do you think we're having on the world, and what impact would you like to have?

Eekim15:40, 4 February 2010

Why I care? I don't know, I really couldn't put it in so many words :). What brought me? "Curiosity". What keeps me here? The conviction that we can change certain rules, that knowledge can be free for all. What impact? A tremendous responsibility about the way knowledge, education of another kind are brought to people. What impact I would like Wikimedia to have? I hope that Wikimedia manages to change the rules about "freedom" and "dsitribution of knowledge" while respecting differences and cultures (may they be national corporate, social, personal...).

Delphine (notafish)15:59, 4 February 2010
 

Well, I am not sure whether it is of any interest, but I am a professor in one of the world-leading universities (physics/nanoscience). I am mostly interested in Wikimedia projects since I can write articles about some stuff others do not know so much (it is mostly my side-interests, not so much my research interest) and since I apparently can be useful in resolving conflicts and creating strategy at least fro Russian Wikipedia. Frankly speaking, I believe that currently the Wikimedia projects are badly-structured mess (though without any doubts much better than even a couple years ago), and I expect that they become less messy and more structured. The major possible impact on the world would be that people stop using rumors instead of the information, and start digesting information.

Yaroslav Blanter16:49, 4 February 2010
 
  • Why do you care about Wikimedia?

For me, that has changed over time. At first I just found it a moderately useful reference and often I would turn to it with the thought "I wonder if they have an article on...?" I rarely think that any more. Now, when I'm using Wikipedia as a reference, I assume there will be an article and just wonder if I'm going to find the specific fact I have in mind either confirmed or denied (and what the quality of the citation addressing it is).

Often I'm not using Wikipedia as a reference, though, I'm actively working on it. A big part of the reason I do this is that - due to health reasons - I am limited in what I can do in terms of how much time I can spend outdoors and things that involve working with people face-to-face. As such, Wikimedia projects give me a way of volunteering in a community in a way that fits in with my limitations. My early days of working on WP were simply bits here and there that I knew something about and thought I could add something (citations were not deemed essential back then, so I could just edit based on personal knowledge). For the most part I no longer add paragraphs of content to WP any more; I patrol changes to my watchlist, get involved in discussions and now I have "gone meta" by being involved here and am due to contribute to the Bookshelf Project over on the Outreach wiki.

I seem to have gone off on a tangent...

I care for several reasons:

1. Education is important.

2. Even if it wasn't important, I'm a heavy reader anyway and WP is often a good (and free!) read.

3. I'm impressed that something that should never have worked is now a top 5 website. I guess I have great affection for Wikipedia because it should really have been an underdog. I like helping it along.

4. I agree with its mission statement and, in general, I like the direction of movement.

5. I like instant feedback; it's gratifying to be able to press submit and see my words right there.

6. There is a social aspect. This could be much improved. But it is there and I enjoy that.

7. There's an overall sense of being part of something good and doing valuable work.

  • What brought you to these projects, and what keeps you here.

There's a bit of push and pull. As I say, I am limited in what I can do in my life so to that extent I am pushed towards something internet-based. But I am pulled in by the core mission. I guess I keep coming back because things seem to always be improving or there is at least something novel going on that sustains my interest. I have gone through long periods of my life where I couldn't honestly say I was contributing much to anything; I like being able to tell people I'm involved with this and talking about it. I don't think everyone is convinced this is a worthwhile way to spend my time but I'm convinced and I can cope with other people's disregard because I'm confident I'm right and that they just don't know much about the projects.

  • What impact do you think we're having on the world, and what impact would you like to have?

I wouldn't want to try and quantify what impact we're having on the world. Other people have done some research along those lines and would be able to provide some data. For me, being a top ten website is one metric that I dote on and I would feel gutted if we fall out of that chart.

It would be great if the projects eventually gained massive penetration in third world countries and had a tangible effect on deprivation, productivity and incomes. But I recognise that the projects can't do that alone; it will require an expanded base of technology and access.

I'm not sure whether you're asking - in the final clause of your questions - what impact I, personally, would like to have (on the world!) or whether you mean what impact would I like to see the projects have. I guess I've answered the latter. In terms of my own influence, I tend to just take it one edit at a time, although I have suggested - in some detail - social innovations which would have quite some impact on Wikipedia if implemented. But mostly I just keep looking at my watchlist and recent changes and chipping in; either I have an idea in relation to something someone's said, or I need clarification to know what someone's getting at and try to find out more before chiming in. I see my impact as being mostly a janitor on en:wp. With regards to Strategy, I'm not sure what I am...

Bodnotbod17:44, 4 February 2010
 

My contact with Wikimedia up until the planning process started was only as a user of Wikipedia. I had therefore no intentions to join as a Task Force member to begin with, but only to follow the process to see how things worked. As one of the Task Forces I cared most for, the Local Language projects, didn't take of I was however drawn into this process.

  • What brought you to these projects, and what keeps you here?

I have for a long time used internet and in the latest years, to a high degree, Wikipedia as a source of information. I have through this usage realized the enormous power this can bring to my thought process. Especially Wikipedias in-text hyperlinking between articles is very useful, because it allows my mind to flow as free as it wants to do. Therefore I often find Wikipedia even better than much literature on the subject. Not because the quality of a single article necessarily is better than other literature, but because Wikipedia provides background information on every concept I don't understand, by a single click on the mouse. I do use Wikipedia mostly in my education, and I have realized that fifteen years ago I would have had to go to the library to search for additional information whenever my course literature didn't give me an explanation I understood. Today I can look up an alternative explanation in seconds and then move on, back then it could have taken me a couple of days before I actually visited the library. So for me Wikipedia is education at the speed of thought!

  • Why do you care about Wikimedia?
  • What impact do you think we're having on the world, and what impact would you like to have?

I think that not only Wikipedia and internet, but technology in general has greatly enhanced my life experience to this day. Not because I am especially interested in gadgets and the like, but because I have learned from early on how to use it to simplify my everyday life. To me technology is a friend.

I do also see that the development of society and technology follow each other hand in hand. At the same time as technology drives changes in the society, society requires new technological development to sustain the transformed society. In a long perspective technology is the reason that the human race has been able to grow so plentiful, but this plentifulness has created an enormous need to address environmental issues, handle political conflicts, carefully plan food production and so on. Whether the development is good or bad in general can be discussed, but even if one takes the later viewpoint it is impossible to stop development. What one can do is to try to make development happen in those areas that one hopes has positive effects.

One problem I see in the evolving society is that those who are well equiped, have access to knowledge, and so on, has an enormous advantage. If you where the one who knew how to operate a computer twenty years ago, you could replace a vast amount of other personal in any bussiness, leaving you with a high salary, and the others unemploymed. A mining company in a western country can use modern equipment while in a developing country a hoe might be used. In the later case you either stop mining, or accept a lower payment which in turn makes you even less able to catch up with the developed world. I think that technology at the same time as it increases the overall welfare, it also increases these kinds of gaps. Here I do believe that Wikimedia, and other developments alike, can play an essential role in forming a more equal world. Because the difference between being able to adapt to an evolving society is largely dependent on the ability to access the information that drives the change.

I am not able to judge what impact the Wikimedia movement alone can and will have, but I am convinced that it is a step in the right direction!

Dafer4519:46, 4 February 2010

This is a really powerful statement....

~Philippe (WMF)20:01, 4 February 2010
 

I'm a bit of an idealist who believes that Wikipedia can shine the light on untruths, and settle long-standing disputes or misinformation. Not that Wikipedia can resolve every dispute, but that one-by-one certain disputes come to stabilize, where all reasonable viewpoints are represented on their own merits.

And the collaboration process is a key part of that. "This article is not neutral" tells me that someone believes that a viewpoint has not been represented fairly (or maybe not represented at all). "This article is unreferenced" tells me that the article might be just one person's personal observations, while "this article needs references from third-party sources" tells me that the article might just be a soapbox with no independent oversight. That's why it's really great when an article gets that little star beside it. Not because it shows that the article is the God-given truth, but because it shows me that the article a fair enough representation of the topic that readers will be able to make up their own minds. And making up your mind doesn't stop at the edges of the article. You follow those wikilinks, to cross-reference the topic... and yeah, you might find another article that's in dispute, which tells you what the real point of disagreement is. That gives you a better understanding of what people are really disagreeing about.

And those disputes are also a huge opportunity for contributions. My first edits as an IP were because I saw articles tagged as non-neutral, and I tried to clean them up. As you get more involved, you realize these disputes are resolved through collaboration, not unilateral changes.

So yeah, I think there is huge value in Wikipedia. It's a ridiculous goal, but I think Wikipedia can strive to settle disputes for readers, by bringing together different volunteers to hash out those disputes edit-by-edit. I think Wikipedia can be an authoritative source that is sometimes better than reading a scholarly essay, because it exposes you to all dimensions of the debate -- not just a single idea.

Randomran22:15, 4 February 2010
 

All three questions (Why do you care about Wikimedia? What brought you to these projects, and what keeps you here? What impact do you think we're having on the world, and what impact would you like to have?) seem to me like one and answers to one are answers to other questions as well...

Our impact is very significant.
The history from WWII to our days will be summarized in the next list: Cold War, Green Revolution, space exploration, Internet, Wikipedia. There will be some important achievements in the near future, but this is the list up to the present day. For a couple of years Wikipedia is already having enormous cultural impact to the world. If everything is going regularly, significance of Wikimedia movement will be soon comparable with significance of major international movements and organizations.
In other words, our impact to humanity is already significant and it will be just more and more significant. The main reason why do I think that our impact will raise is strategic planning itself. Before SP, we had just a lot of potentials, but we didn't work on them in organized way.
I am content with the current processes.
In comparison with previous years, I am very happy with current processes. The question before us is not are we willing to have some kind of impact, but are we willing to work in organized way. If we are working in organized way, our impact will be raising. If we are not working in organized way, Wikimedia community will collapse. We are far from the equilibrium. We have zillions of projects at the waiting list and we "just" need to articulate them. And we are doing it now.
We are close to encircling the knowledge-building processes.
Some future analysis of the Wikimedia movement will note for sure that we are now, in 2009-2010, inside of the final stage of the "phase 0". Our primary structural goal is to encircle knowledge-building processes and we are very close to it. (The number of the phase is 0 because it is our primary goal. Without this, there is no any kind of Wikipedia or Wikimedia.)
By "encircling the knowledge-building processes" I mean that we have almost all significant tools for active work on enlarging knowledge corpus, as well as almost all significant tools for active work on the knowledge-building processes themselves. We already know how to build collaborative encyclopedia and other collaborative forms of knowledge. Many of non-encyclopedic areas are in the early stages, but we are able to see how to manage their development.
We already had encircled those processes for Wikipedia in ~2006. From 2006 to 2009 our gliding was inertial and we didn't work actively on encircling other projects in organized way, as well as we didn't articulated our thoughts in relation to the future of Wikimedia. (To be more precise, it is already obvious that the most important point in the Wikimedia's contemporary times -- is employing Sue as ED.) Strategic planning process (in conjunction with some particular initiatives: GLAM, WM DE projects) addressed those issues.
Our job is far from finished.
"Phase 0" in the narrow sense will never finish. We will always work on enlarging knowledge, as well as we have to always work on analyzing and improving our knowledge-building processes. However, structurally, "phase 0" is around to be finished. At the time when we have clear clue how those processes are working, we will be able to say that [structurally] nothing need to be add there.
The next phase, "phase 1", is related to building our movement. The first decade of Wikimedia passed in the knowledge managing and the second will pass in the community building. It is well addressed inside of the task forces structure: 10 of 14 task forces are almost strictly related to the community building.
However, it should be noted that the "phase 1" didn't start with Strategy planning. It didn't start even with creation of chapters or WMF. It started at the first day of Wikipedia. Community is building Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and thoughts about Wikip/media community existed from the first days, for sure.
Thinking about the impact
The next phase is about "how do we want to impact the world". Just with solved two previous phases, we would be able to work on our ideas about the future of the humankind. It, of course, doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about it. Actually, we need and we have to think about it now. But, we need to be realistic about strength. While the impact to the world by Wikimedia projects is very significant and mature, our movement is weak and in the early childhood.
Presently, our impact to the world is designed by what do we do. After the "phase 2", our impact will be designed by what do we want. When our impact becomes significantly designed by what do we want, it will be the time when Wikimedia movement will become one of the major leading forces of humankind.
As with the start of the "phase 1", the "phase 2" started during the first days of Wikipedia. "What is our goal?" -- is the question which probably all Wikipedians and Wikimedians asked themselves at some point of time.
Because of all of the previous related to the "phase 2", the question -- "What impact would you like to have?" -- is the question for the whole community for the next years. During the next years we will be building our movement. And we should add into agenda of every Wikimedian group to ask its members to constantly think about the answers to this question.
Advocacy
Advocacy task force is the only one which purpose is clearly related to the "phase 2". And it is normally that our advocacy goals are closely related to our needs and to some big present questions. However, I think that this part of our strategic planning should be opened for extensions more than any other.
Out of our needs (for example, public domain and net neutrality issues; maybe some other which are not mentioned), articulation of what do we want should be a task which should be done by much more Wikimedians. Analysis of what do Wikimedians want according to their on-project work should be also added to the constant process of the issues which should be advocated.
Probably, it would be a good idea to ask chapters and communities around the projects to try to articulate their wishlist of Wikimedia impacts to the world.
Why I am here
After two years of knowing for Wikipedia, but without precise clue of its characteristics, I finally realized what it is during the first half of 2004. Building knowledge corpus collaboratively is really inspiring for me.
The first goal was to show that we are able to build important source of knowledge. We reached it quickly. The second was to show that we are able to build the largest source of knowledge in the history. We reached it quickly, too.
Then, it was about our impact to the world. Wikipedia became the tool of the contemporary enlightenment. Articles on Wikipedia don't have good style often; they are often too poor in comparison to the articles in other major encyclopedias, but English Wikipedia has around 50 times more articles than Britannica. Major areas are covered in Wikipedia (not just the English one) much better than in any other encyclopedia. Wikipedia's nominal standards are much higher than standards of any other encyclopedia... It is safe to say that we reached our primary goals in 2006.
But, what next? Wikipedia and Wikimedia showed that our main product is not the knowledge corpus which we are building, but us, the community which is building that corpus. It is the first time in the history that so many humans are constructively working on the same project, for the same goal. From 2006 the main example of the epochal project built by large amount of humans are not Egyptian pyramids, but Wikipedia. We are still not quite conscious about the dimensions of what has we built and what we are building.
Changing the world by what do we do is inspiring. It is comparable with the forces of nature. They are doing something and they are changing the world. But, we decided not to stop there. This is why I am still here.
Millosh08:07, 5 February 2010
 

I've always enjoyed encyclopedias and learning information, no matter the subject. As a kid my sister and I had a study hour. I'd do my homework early to read the encyclopedia.

When I got to college and a T1 internet in 2000, there was nothing as a central point of reference for random stuff I wanted to look up. Considering I thought having instant high speed internet would bring me answers at my fingertips, it was disappointing. Snopes worked okay, as well as the Straight Dope Message Boards. Around late 2002~2003, Wikipedia started showing up as a reference to questions asked on that message board. I read casually based on the links, but I'm computer dumb and navigation-while so simple-eluded me. Once MediaWiki was updated in 2004 with .css I figured out how to edit to fix minor things and poke around in articles. I had no idea about any project space other than namespace.

In October of 2005, I noticed an issue with the Main Page Featured article, History of Alaska. I figured I should have an account to complain on the talk page out of courtesy. I received a quick reply and the article was corrected. This impressed me to the responsiveness of other editors. By March of 2006 I had learned how to contact other users and start to work on the quality of content, whether it be vandalism or talk page discussions about inclusion. I passed my Request for Adminship in August of 2006, and wandered around the wiki. I took most of 2008 off because of offline circumstances, and a bit of a lack of desire to edit. I still read articles for hours every day, as well as following noticeboards.

When I started to care is when I noticed the substantial increase in Wikipedia's popularity. I don't think we intended it to be this way, but we had to adapt to it. It is a fantastic reference for a website. Why I started to care is because of both internal and external misinterpretations of the goal of the Wikimedia projects. The outside made it seem as though it was controlled by an editorial board that ignored ill-willed contributions. Internally, we had a crop of core contributors that had insulated the editing community. This part, I think, has been rectified to a reasonable extent.

That concept is what captured my focus, it's a website that anyone can edit. It's a household name. There should be an understanding of the natural difference between Wikimedia projects and the rest of the web, even blogs. Its holistic approach to defining what knowledge entails is fascinating to me, as well as the societal structure that individual projects set up. I have found and always find this extremely compelling, and it fuels my desire to read more than just articles, but the talk pages that shape the articles. The noticeboards that discuss content and contributors. The email that we receive about our content or structure. Quite fascinating, really.

The other part is the altruistic notion of free knowledge, software, and content to aid these means. There is a big difference between theory and practice, but the theory of a collaborative effort to provide knowledge is an admirable thing, and one that should be fostered. In theory we can change the world. In practice, we might or might not. Or halfway. Who knows. The principle doesn't change, and neither does the desire to use volunteer time amidst a full time job to find a rewarding experience as a whole. There's a thing about it that you either get or you don't, it can't be adequately explained.

Keegan04:44, 17 March 2010