More on content expansion

Yeah, "sum of human knowledge" is a powerful visionary statement. But it's not a great goal. Google wants to organize the world's data. Microsoft wants a computer in every household. But that doesn't mean they're doing anything and everything they feel like. They realize they're good at some things, and competitors are good at other things.

I think news is one example where Wikimedia does a worse job than everyone else. I agree news is knowledge, and I agree news should be free. But subscribing to a bunch of AP articles is very accessible, and I'm not sure what value we add by aggregating a bunch of different journalistic quotes together. The Wiki process is good for historical information, but has a harder time with current stuff. The Wiki process is decent for social/personal spin too, but social networks do a good job of summing up and editorializing the news. So what are we really doing making WikiNews?

Right now we focus a lot on "does it fit with the mission", but we haven't really asked "does it fit with the strategy", because there is no strategy. It's just a bunch of things that people feel like doing. Nobody ever stops and asks if we're diluting our efforts, or duplicating the efforts of more effective organizations. Strategy is not just about what you do, but what you deliberately choose not to do.

Did you see that the Foundation has a strategy - Wikimedia Foundation/Feb 2010 Letter to the Board. As far as I know the german chapter has a strategy too (I´m german, but not a chapter member), maybe there are more chapters with a strategy. Another point is that we have got some million dollar donations and that the foundation is working together with some companies which influence the strategy too.

My point is that apart from the foundation and the chapters there are more Wikimedia stakeholders but I don´t know if they are able to participate in this strategy discussion. For example, there are some participants from India maybe Wikipedia editors. Do they have any influence? Is there a discussion between the foundation and the editors from India? I don´t know. At least there is a India task force and some recommendations at the discussion page.

Things that we have decided to shut down:

• Nupedia (shut down because Wikipedia was doing the same job better)
• Esperanza (I'm not sure why that was shut down)
• Unreferenced BLPs.
• Klingon Wikipedia

What projects have the new projects committee refused? (can anyone help me with this one?)

Is there a pattern here? Does it help us draft a strategy.

I would point out that these aren't all projects... unrefernced BLPs are basically a content issue. Esperanza was a community health issue. Nupedia was a project, arguably, as was the Klingon Wikipedia.

We've also shut down the Simple English Wikiquote, which was a project...

I added these projects to Content scope.