All constituents of the Wikimedia movement (affiliates, groups, Wikimedia Foundation and individual contributors) are invited to express their support and commitment to the direction that is an outcome from phase 1 of the strategy process, or share their dissenting views.

Signatories in support of the direction commit to participating in the next phase of this discussion in good faith and to define, by Wikimania 2018, how to come to an agreement on roles, responsibilities, and organizational strategies that enable us to implement that future.

They pledge to consider the needs of the Wikimedia movement above their own, and to find the structures, processes, and resources for our movement that enable us to best move towards our common direction. Conversations in phase 2 will get more concrete than in phase 1 and will lead to decision making about the aforementioned issues.

The endorsement concludes phase 1 of the process, and we are currently drafting the next steps. The main goal of phase 2 will be to answer the question "How do we implement the strategic direction", which means identifying the resources needed for execution, and the activities it involves.

Please note that the strategic direction will not be renegotiated, but will serve as the agreed upon groundwork for phase 2 conversations. In short, the endorsement means: “This is the right way for us all to move forward together. Let’s go!”

What it does not mean: Endorsing the strategic direction does not mean that the signing groups or individuals endorse all the steps that follow and the decisions that are being made in phase 2. How organizations and individuals use the outcomes of these conversations is up to them. Some may use it to inform programmatic or organizational strategy. Others may see it as a way to connect with the broader movement and invite others to contribute to Wikimedia. Some may not use it at all – and that’s okay!

How to endorse [ edit ]

Please sign the endorsement page with your username (make sure to be logged in), either on the section for organized groups or for individual contributors. To avoid edit conflicts, please edit your respective section and not the whole page.

You are endorsing the original English version of the strategic direction and the “What comes next” paragraph. The translations are used as a support to understand the context and meanings.

Use #wikimedia2030 on social media to celebrate and share your support with the world.

How to oppose and provide feedback [ edit ]

You can express concisely your opinion regarding the endorsement call by voting in the relevant subsection of the #Individual contributors section below.

For more elaborate statements, a dedicated page was created.

Our strategic direction: Service and Equity [ edit ]

By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.

We, the Wikimedia contributors, communities and organizations, will advance our world by collecting knowledge that fully represents human diversity, and by building the services and structures that enable others to do the same.

We will carry on our mission of developing content as we have done in the past, and we will go further.

Knowledge as a service: To serve our users, we will become a platform that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities. We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia. Our infrastructure will enable us and others to collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge.

Knowledge equity: As a social movement, we will focus our efforts on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege. We will welcome people from every background to build strong and diverse communities. We will break down the social, political, and technical barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge.

Endorsements [ edit ]

Organized groups [ edit ]

This is the section for all Wikimedia affiliates, organizations, committees and other groups that support the Wikimedia movement. As representative(s) of each group, please copy the following format and use it for your endorsement. To avoid edit conflicts, please edit your respective section ("Organized groups" or "Individual contributors") and not the whole page.



*Name of your group (incl. link to meta page/website); country and/or project that your group is most active in, if applicable; optionally, you can add a sentence of support in the language of preference. --~~~~ (signature)

By endorsing this strategic direction, we declare our intent to work together towards this future. We commit to participating in the next phase of this discussion in good faith and to define, by Wikimania 2018, how to come to an agreement, on roles, responsibilities, and organizational strategies that enable us to implement that future.

We pledge to consider the needs of our movement above our own, and to find the structures, processes, and resources for our movement that enable us to best move towards our common direction.





Individual contributors [ edit ]

This section is for individual contributors such as editors, curators, photographers and volunteer developers, across different languages and Wikimedia projects. Please copy the following format and use it for your endorsement. To avoid edit conflicts, please edit your respective section ("Organized groups" or "Individual contributors")



*--~~~~ (signature) (optionally: project, country or region that you are most active in, if applicable; short comment in your language of preference)

By endorsing this strategic direction, we declare our intent to work together towards this future. We commit to participating in the next phase of this discussion in good faith and to define, by Wikimania 2018, how to come to an agreement, on roles, responsibilities, and organizational strategies that enable us to implement that future.

We pledge to consider the needs of our movement above our own, and to find the structures, processes, and resources for our movement that enable us to best move towards our common direction.

Support [ edit ]

Neutral [ edit ]

Neutral too much bla (as in most vision and mission statements), too wide focus, too vague goals, and a bit too little modesty --Ghilt (talk) 23:57, 26 October 2017 (UTC) Neutral really want to endorse the statement, in fact I whole heartedly agree it but here I am concerned that Please note that the strategic direction will not be renegotiated, .. “This is the right way for us all to move forward together. Let’s go!”... sounds more like w:The Emperor's New Clothes I'm not convinced I'm seeing some magical new cloth. Gnangarra (talk) 12:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC) Neutral Since there are positive elements addressing access disparities I cannot oppose. Because there is nothing addressing the urgent need for self-critical humility and decisive action concerning open abuse of the "technology of manufacturing consensus" on very visible parts of the WMF projects (WM France, en.wiki), I cannot support this document as written. "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories." (Amilcar Cabral) SashiRolls (talk) 15:51, 29 October 2017 (UTC) Neutral I've read the proposal and found no great reason to disagree. The problem is that I don't see great reasons to agree either. In my humble opinion, we are trying to collect all knowledge and make it available to all the people. My greatest problem by far when editing is the lack of a definition of all the knowledge. Language communities can be very parochial: a local singer is more easily relevant than one from the other side of the river, not to say from another continent. And what is considered a proof of relevance in one place can be inexistent in another place (then, many things/people from there are irrelevant by default). Having seen that happen, I expected some general proposal of definitions and rules, and also of enforcement of such rules. None of that seems evident in the text. So I'm not willing to endorse it. B25es (talk) 15:56, 29 October 2017 (UTC) (Changed from Oppose to Support to here. --George Ho (talk) 22:28, 2 November 2017 (UTC)) Sure, the direction may appear vague, "knowledge equity" is more human-centric and narrow, "knowledge as a service" is... I don't know what other words to put it, and the direction might not last very long. However, the direction did not say that it should last forever or something like that. Going to this direction can lead to better things, like newer tools and inclusion of other groups, such as authentic experts. ( See newer comments below. ) I'm uncertain whether the movement would concentrate on solely Wikipedia, but that is not what the movement should be about. Otherwise, why the movement as Wikipedia has advanced very far enough? --George Ho (talk) 17:15, 30 October 2017 (UTC) Later further note, being one of the few non-WMF editors who (somewhat) endorse this direction is the sad part. As noted in the talk page, most of the endorsers are WMF staff (and WMF-affiliated volunteers), making others wary and suspicious about this process and the WMF itself. Attempts by WMF to move concerns to the subpage were IMHO poorly done and put a further divide between WMF and the non-WMF. I was close to switching back to "oppose" due to the votes done by the WMF members and concerns on the document raised, but I also noticed that most of the "oppose" side who proficiently write English well also edited either German, Ukrainian, or Russian Wikipedia. This may reinforce my earlier views that the whole Direction document is US-centric and would leave other non-English communities out. However, I would not switch sides yet as I've not seen yet more non-WMF editors from all communities voting on the Direction. The whole document speaks improvement and diversity, yet complaints about the document are inevitable. --George Ho (talk) 08:25, 2 November 2017 (UTC) Moving to Neutral. Right now, I'm no longer sure whether the direction will lead to better things. I now remember that I discussed word "knowledge" in the Drafting cycle, which I think has been the movement's theme. I'm now also convinced that "knowledge" is vague at best. I'm also convinced that the vagueness of this direction would allow openness of abuse. Also, "projects" is used twice, but the "Strategic direction" section doesn't say it. I also noticed that "beyond Wikimedia" was changed from "beyond Wikipedia". Therefore, I'm becoming more worried that the movement would become more Wikipedia-centric, which I have raised concerns about, regardless of what "beyond Wikimedia" means. Is this direction intended for mostly the encyclopedia project? Will this direction affect all communities? Will this direction be ineffective? How would this direction affect all non-encyclopedia projects whose purposes are different from Wikipedia's? Will more projects be created without the help and efforts of the movement? --George Ho (talk) 22:28, 2 November 2017 (UTC) Reading Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2017-2018/Final (which was finalized this summer), maybe I slowly begin to understand what "knowledge" means in the terms of the seasonal annual plan. --George Ho (talk) 06:04, 12 December 2017 (UTC) Neutral ~ Cybularny Speak? 22:04, 23 November 2017 (UTC) Template:Revise I agree for most of our Direction, but It lacks of some of the important points. Therefore, I want to it be revised again. - Ellif (talk) 07:28, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Oppose [ edit ]

Abstention [ edit ]

Abstention I don't think this strategy will last for the years predicted and we will face a new one before 2020 is over. Why this hassle with top-heavy administration activities? The Foundation may produce texts without bothering the community. There's so much to do at the base. All in all, too much fuss about a simple PR text. Go on, but I will only benevolently watch ;-) --Sargoth (talk) 14:06, 27 October 2017 (UTC) Abstention, I too, find I cannot endorse this strategy, as I find it too vague and potentially open to abuse. It is like the horse designed by a committee which ended up a camel. I accept that it was apparently done in good faith, and it is not blatantly bad, so I do not oppose as much as abstain from support. It leaves me with an uneasy feeling that something is not right, without being able to pin down exactly what it is. The process of endorsement was also deeply flawed. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:19, 30 October 2017 (UTC) Peter (Southwood), and others: Note that declining to respond results in in being BANNED from participating in further discussions. Quote: necessary step in order to participate in phase 2 discussions . Alsee (talk) 19:07, 26 October 2017 (UTC) To be honest, I consider Phase I sufficiently broken to have no incentive to participate in Phase II. I do not foresee any potential development of the situation which could lead me to endorse the outcome of Phase II.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:17, 26 October 2017 (UTC) And that actually identifies what I find most objectionable about the whole warped process. I refuse on principle to be coerced like this. Does anyone know who made this decision? I wonder when and where the principle of consensus was swept under the carpet as inconvenient. Thank you for pointing this out, I now know what it is that was bothering me about the process. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:52, 26 October 2017 (UTC) The WMF budgeted $2.5 million[3] for consultants and contractors etc for this strategy process. Rather than utilizing community members with experience in processing responses into a consensus summary, they took a conventional authoritarian-top-down approach. Items were cherry-picked to support the WMF's internal agendas, while more widely supported things were tossed in the trash. Alsee (talk) 20:39, 26 October 2017 (UTC) I don't know whether your analysis is correct, but it does agree with the impression I am getting of the process. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:14, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Comment A link to this page should be made available on the Endorsement page. I have a concern with the wording, "We pledge to consider the needs of our movement above our own" and have made comment elsewhere, but will restate here, as more appropriate. While an altruistic notion, why does the ENDORSEMENT of a strategy necessitate considering "the needs of [a] movement above [one's] own"? Altruism is selfless concern for others, yet is an INDIVIDUAL act born out of love & freedom. It is sacrifice FOR a cause, not TO a cause. Merely <thinking out loud> about wording. Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:26, 26 October 2017 (UTC) Two quotes come to mind: "A mass-movement always places the 'cause' above the individual person, and sacrifices the person to the interests of the movement. Thus it empties the person of all that is his own, takes him out of himself, casts him in a mold which endows him with the ideas and aspirations of the group rather than his own...." —Thomas Merton on mass-movements in Disputed Questions (1953) and the [albeit out of context] idea that "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:24, 4 November 2017 (UTC) When we develop a vision for the future of WP, I would wish that it would not be an ecosystem ( I hate that word, it is so hip) for free information, but , as the first social media, a safe environment, in which people cooperate with dignity and respect towards the other, to make WP a better place. And if they don’t posess this capacity, maybe the organisation can provice lessons to be learned. Furtheron the draft text speaks about lowering the threshold in order to give people that live in remote places, with not to much education, a possiblity to join Wikipedia. This also is in harsh contrast with my experience with Wikipedia. You have to go through so much, detailed and complicated information about sources, copyright, linking etc.etc. that you need an university degree to be a proper Wikipedian. My plea would be to create a Wikipedia for dummies. Best regards.Hamnico (talk) 13:31, 31 October 2017 (UTC) Alternative proposal The community should propose an alternative, so that instead of simply asking for endorsements, the two can be compared. For example, instead of knowledge as a service, we could offer project improvement as a service, Education Program improvement recommendations as a service, and backlog sorting as a service. We can offer concrete recommendations for attracting new editors such as replacing or supplementing the pencil icon on the mobile view with the word "edit" in square brackets, autosave in javascript, a more sophisticated diff algorithm and wikitext delimiter pseudosectioning for reducing edit conflicts, and proposals for securing the permanent rights to edits via sliding-scale extrinsic rewards, as a service. 185.13.106.227 21:36, 12 November 2017 (UTC) SupportThe community should propose an alternative, so that instead of simply asking for endorsements, the two can be compared. For example, instead of knowledge as a service, we could offer project improvement as a service, Education Program improvement recommendations as a service, and backlog sorting as a service. We can offer concrete recommendations for attracting new editors such as replacing or supplementing the pencil icon on the mobile view with the word "edit" in square brackets, autosave in javascript, a more sophisticated diff algorithm and wikitext delimiter pseudosectioning for reducing edit conflicts, and proposals for securing the 荣智浩 (talk) 02:24, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Declining request for endorsement (concerns)

I have been thinking about the request for endorsement of this draft for some time.

I am troubled by the first words of the lead sentence, which currently read "Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge..." I think that for Wikimedia to be "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" (emphasis added) would be both unhealthy and unwise. Diversity fosters opportunities and resilience. Also, both WMF and the Wikimedia community have histories of organizational problems, shortcomings, and all-too-human frailties which lead me to question the wisdom of entrusting WMF and the Wikimedia community to be "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge." To me the draft has a tone of boldlness to the point of selfishness and vanity. I think that a measure of humility in regards to ourselves, and a measure of respect and generosity toward others' infrastructure, would be beneficial.

I also would suggest that, while "infrastructure" may be a good word to describe a high-profile function of WMF and contributors of many kinds, "infrastructure" probably is not the first word that crosses into the minds of content creators and content consumers when thinking about the nature of Wikimedia. I think that "Infrastructure" may be a word that is better suited for a place that, while high-profile, is elsewhere in the document.

I am troubled by the process of the request for endorsement, which in my opinion should instead be a request for comment requiring a community consensus or at least a simple majority in favor.

I would need to spend multiple hours to review the draft in detail, but the above problems are sufficient for me to decline to endorse both the document and the ratification process in their current form.

Regretfully,

-- Pine ✉ 06:41, 25 October 2017 (UTC) And how do we encourage people to withdraw their endorsements on the finalized direction, Pine? --George Ho (talk) 08:05, 25 October 2017 (UTC) George Ho, I'm not planning to campaign against the document, so I'm not going to reach out to people to encourage them to withdraw their endorsements. I think that the strategy process started with good intentions, I understand the desire to articulate a strategy, and I'm glad that WMF made some meaningful efforts to have a bottom-up process. However, as I wrote above, I personally disagree with the document in its current form, and with the choice to request endorsements instead of submitting the document to an RfC or some kind of democratic process. My dissatisfaction is unlikely to make any difference to those people who are responsible for the draft and for the ratification process (who, I would point out, are WMF appointees rather than community-elected representatives) and who have made clear that they are firm in their support of the current draft regardless of what anyone else thinks, so the situation is what it is. Unless someone wants to actively campaign against the document or the process, I think that those of us who are dissatisfied with the situation should register our dissatisfaction but continue to put one foot in front of the other, moving forward as we think best in consultation with others. From my perspective it is disappointing that the good intentions of the process became weighed down with the problems that I mentioned. My guess is that if I walk through the document in detail that I will find elements that I like, but at this point no positive aspects could persuade me to endorse the document or ratification process as a whole. Regretfully, -- Pine ✉ 07:28, 26 October 2017 (UTC) Me too. I fully agree with what you said. I will not endorse the statement, as I explained on a multiple previous occasions.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:31, 26 October 2017 (UTC) I share Pine's concerns. The future information landscape needs more diversity than that implied here, especially given Wikimedia projects' proven susceptibility to various forms of manipulation. I also share his concerns about the endorsement process: anyone developing a strategy on behalf of the movement should have confidence enough in their work to believe that the result will be accepted by community consensus in a free democratic process. If instead you only ask for Yes votes, this is liable to create the impression that, rather than speaking for the movement, you have your own agenda and are afraid the movement might disagree with it. --Andreas JN 466 16:47, 27 October 2017 (UTC) I join concerns raised here, so most likely I will individually vote against the endorsement. As Pine, I praise the effort of the foundation to create emulation around strategy discussion within the movement. Also, for what I was able to participate in the process, that was interesting, informative, sometimes frustrating, more often joyful. Now for the global result endorsement, while as some stated in more details above, this is more a party politics stuff. So I would advice to make your decision to (not) respond with political considerations in mind. As far as I'm concerned, I will encourage any user group in which I am active to endorse the proposal, for pure promotional purposes, especially under-represented user groups. --Psychoslave (talk) 10:57, 27 October 2017 (UTC) Comment I've read the proposal and found no great reason to disagree. The problem is that I don't see great reasons to agree either. In my humble opinion, we are trying to collect all knowledge and make it available to all the people. My greatest problem by far when editing is the lack of a definition of all the knowledge. Language communities can be very parochial: a local singer is more easily relevant than one from the other side of the river, not to say from another continent. And what is considered a proof of relevance in one place can be inexistent in another place (then, many things/people from there are irrelevant by default). Having seen that happen, I expected some general proposal of definitions and rules, and also of enforcement of such rules. None of that seems evident in the text. So I'm not willing to endorse it. B25es (talk) 17:18, 27 October 2017 (UTC) I can’t say that I can endorse it because it seems to be the epitome of a non-Neutral Point-Of-View, particularly the bit where they say that an overrepresentation of male 🚹 contributors distort the knowledgebase or makes it less reliable for females, I don’t think 🤔 that knowledge has a gender gender, nor can 🥫 I find any real concrete strategies to add female 🚺 representation so the plans seem more like empty buzzwords than anything else, which brings to the more important question, how would it benefit the community? Although on paper 📰 the Wikimedia “communities” are based on the best arguments winning 🥇 and that the argument and not the person making the argument is important in reality most of the time “consensus” is used outside of Wikimedia Commons (where copyright © laws do prevails over the “vote”-based system) it is essentially a vote-based system but that’s probably an issue in the community and not the Foundation, what is an issue with the Foundation is that they see knowledge as being “gendered”, well as someone from Viet-Nam I also write ✍🏻 about Japanese subjects like w:nl:Japanse mon (munteenheid) or Korean subjects like w:nl:Koreaanse mun, does that mean that my knowledge on the subject is inherently less valuable than someone of their ethnicities, how about Okinawan subjects like w:nl:Riukiuaanse mon? Because that is essentially the door 🚪 the Wikimedia Foundation would be opening by saying that “female knowledge” is different from “male knowledge”, because I know that these strategic directions don’t really affect any real Wikimedia projects in any tangible way I won’t oppose it, and honestly as long as the Foundation won’t perma-ban people by bot because they accidentally used a link 🔗 that’s considered “spam” I don’t really take much issue with strategic directions and honestly just hope that they’ll invest more in things like Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons, and upgrade the Mediawiki software. I personally don't see 🙈 the merits in differentiating between male and female contributors. 🚻 = Equal.

How about investing some of those millions in making mobile editing more convenient? As someone who exclusively owns a wireless telephone 📞 to edit and upload with a mobile version of the Wikimedia Commons UploadWizard would be swell, or the ability to select “edit the whole page” from clicking on the pencil “✏” on top, the Wikimedia Foundation needs to respect mobile-users, and recognise that cell.-phones aren’t just tools for viewing. When signed out talk pages aren’t visible at the bottom of a page, when signed in it is still hardly accessible, editing Wikimedia Commons files with the mobile browser is next to impossible (half the data won't show up, so you're forced to use the desktop-browser to edit categories, Etc.) and I can name a hundred 💯 complaints more, but from what I’ve learned on the IRC actually naming any issues with mobile-editing will get you banned. Guess that us mobile-users will forever be underrepresented second-class citizens.

Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) (My global lock 😒🌏🔒) (My global unlock 😄🌏🔓) 10:15, 31 October 2017 (UTC)



