Question of the day 2009-11-14

From Strategic Planning

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What goal(s) would you like to see Wikimedia achieve by 2015?

  • I'd like to see every single "vital article" on the English Wikipedia raised to good or featured status. That's less than 200 articles per year. I'd like to be working on the next 1000 vitals, with momentum on specific subject areas for their own vitals. I'd like to see momentum on other Wikipedias for their vital articles. Randomran 01:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I ditto that goal. :) Bejinhan 04:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I would like to see English Wikipedia get its 6,000,000th article and for every comic strip of Motley's Crew ever made (from its humble beginnings in 1976 to its end on January 1, 2000) to be archived on the English Wikipedia article about the defunct newspaper comic strip Motley's Crew. GVnayR 03:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Hasn't that first part already happened?... 69.68.196.79 03:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
      • English Wikipedia only has approximately 3,000,000 articles. You're probably thinking about all the articles from the different languages of Wikipedia combined. GVnayR 03:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Another goal I would like to see Wikimedia acheive is to work together with schools and teachers from Kindergarten to Grade 12 so that they are better prepared for the jobs of the Nanotech Age as opposed to lagging behind when it comes to the needed education to maintain robot truck drivers or robot laborers. GVnayR 04:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Good point. Prepare them to leave the pre-universal mentoring age. (Probably something like the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A from the perspective of the post-information society). --Fasten 09:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I agree. Specifically, I'd like to see:
      • Application of "spare" educational resources. For example, the city of New York maintains a so-called "rubber room" where around 75 teachers accused of various offenses, mostly not very severe, can be relegated to do knitting while waiting months for a hearing - I'd love to see them redirected toward the editing of core articles on Wikipedia. (Unfortunately, such political conflicts where tenured faculty are underused are not extraordinarily rare, even at the university level)
        • That's a good idea. Make the bad teachers edit Wikipedia articles. Not only it would serve as their rehabilitation, they could also inform students from beyond the "rubber room" as well. GVnayR 03:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Integration with teaching. I think that assigning small groups of students to create appropriate Wikipedia articles could be a very productive exercise in writing, collaboration and teamwork, producing a detailed record of each student's efforts and leaving them all with some sense of accomplishment. For this it is important for the community to develop standard procedures, for example to protect student privacy and safety, to avoid drawing students into outside disputes, to provide appropriate volunteer help and support from the community at large without disrupting the exercise, and to assess the effectiveness of lesson plans using the technique.
      • Development of certified reviewed versions. I've mentioned this elsewhere as a path toward academic legitimacy. The goal here would be to have revisions among the article history which have been certified by educators as factual, understandable to a specific grade level, not unnecessarily offensive to students, and not subject to vandalism. Mike Serfas 10:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
        • Interesting idea Mike, does anyone know how we might encourage universities or colleges to award academic credit points for students contributing to Wikipedia? Payo 17:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
          • If that could happen, my cousin could contribute to Wikipedia with information for nursing articles. That way, she could get a part of her needed credits for graduating merely participating in the free encyclopedia that her peers can view for free. GVnayR 04:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
            • I think this idea is worth making into some sort of proposal. Where should it go? Schools? Outreach? Improving Content? Payo 10:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I would like to see Wikimedia having a Wikipedia in every language of the world with more than 1,000,000 speakers. --Holder 08:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Endorse and add with at least 10,000 articles. after Wikipedia. WereSpielChequers 22:45, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I would like to see Wikimedia pedal back from the fragmentation of the brand. Rather than having wikinews for instance, let's have a news namespace. Unsigned IP (on purpose).
    • I would like to see Wikimedia never pedal back from the fragmentation of the brand. Wikinews. --ƒajro @ 08:06, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Wikinews could continue to exist - and be more effective and reach more people - if it were incorporated into the Wikipedia brand. It would drive up viewership and allow for more usage. What's the problem with that? Unsigned IP (on purpose).
      • I too agree with Unsigned IP. However, I think namespaces are way too extreme. Subdomains like name.wikimedia.org are far more usable while preserving the banding of Wikimedia.Kozuch 10:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think namespaces for other projects within Wikipedia is not necessary for such huge projects like English Wikinews, French Wiktionary, or German Wikisource but this could be a chance for small projects with low activity. Have a look here: Proposal:Merging inactive wikiprojects of small languages. --Holder 05:18, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think this is ridiculous. The Wikimedia projects have no reason to be under the same domain. The projects all have unique cultures, policies and communities and have no reason to be unified. The Wikipedia, which is certainly not the project with the largest scope, should definitely not be a base for the projects. --99.238.31.18 04:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
      • You are probably confusing Wikipedia for Wikimedia, which are two different things. Kozuch 07:06, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I would like to see Commons get rid of all the hacks and use software that is better suited to the requirements of an image repository than MediaWiki. -- JovanCormac 11:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
You might be interested in Paris, which was all about that. ;) -- Philippe 04:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I'd like to see Wikipedia as one of the most relevant and open knowledge source not only in English but also the South Asian Languages like Nepali,Hindi, Maithili,Gujarati,Punjabi,Chinese,Bhojpuri,Telugu,Bengali,Gujarati,Malayalam,Tamil,Kannada,Sanskrit. Which make up one of the largest Community (ie India,China,Bangladesh and Nepal).This region is still out of touch from the rest of the world. I'd also like to see Wikimedia as one of the self reliant organization from economical point of view. --सरोज कुमार ढकाल 09:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I'd like to see an increasingly large portion of our resources going towards nurturing and adding to the number of articles in other Wikipedias besides the English-language one (which is bloated with Anglophone-pop-culture garbage and planetary fancruft), with a goal of at least doubling the number of articles in each of the top forty Wikipedias. --Orangemike 15:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • A professionally funded organisation, not dependent on constant "fundraising", or begging. A wide range of sources, including, but not exclusively, advertising. Richardb 02:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • The Wikimedia Foundation board discussed this question at its meeting today. Results at Meetups/WMF Board Meeting (November 14, 2009). --Eekim 21:33, 14 November 2009 (UTC)