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

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.