Strategic Plan 2010-2015/Foundation won't do

From Strategic Planning

What the Foundation won't do

  • Increase investment in the People's Republic of China. The Wikimedia Foundation wants the people of China to benefit from access to Wikimedia projects. However, the government of the People's Republic of China heavily intervenes in the development of the Internet for both political and economic reasons. In spite of these difficulties, Chinese editors are doing effective work building the Chinese Wikipedia: we believe that work offers Wikipedia's best hope for growth in the People's Republic of China, and there is little the Wikimedia Foundation could do to more effectively support them.
  • Invest in an on-the-ground presence in more than three high-priority test regions. Having on-the-ground teams is a pilot, and before expanding it, the Wikimedia Foundation will need to experiment and evaluate. Once the pilots are evaluated, we will determine whether to expand on-the-ground teams to include other geographies.
  • Invest directly in staging public outreach events or developing content partnerships (e.g., with galleries, libraries, museums, archives, etc.). Generally, the Wikimedia Foundation will invest in capacity-building and support activities for local communities, rather than doing the work ourselves. There are two significant exceptions: 1) To bootstrap work in priority geographies, and 2) To conduct systematic experimentation with the purpose of deriving and disseminating best practices in volunteer-driven activities.
  • Invest in direct editorial interventions to increase quality, e.g. paying people for developing content or policies. The Wikimedia Foundation may occasionally invest in quality improvement projects, but only for the purposes of experimentation and the development of best practices. Wikimedia's editorial content and policies are maintained by its editors, and in general, editors should drive quality improvement initiatives.
  • Create an advocacy agenda or allocate resources to engage forcefully in public policy development. The Wikimedia Foundation will continue to support the principles that underlie our work and use our voice judiciously in public discourse. We will also continue to be supportive of like-minded organizations, such as Creative Commons and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  • Make investments dedicated to project-specific work that is unlikely to achieve significant impact. Many of the Wikimedia Foundation's investments will support all Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedia Foundation will prioritize targeted investments in areas that we believe will create maximum net progress towards our goals, helping Wikimedia achieve a greater global impact.