Since January, Wikipedia's traffic has more than doubled, and the pressure on the people behind it has grown accordingly. As a result, the Wikimedia Foundation is now at a turning point: it must go from a small group of people to a lasting organization. I am running to represent the community in this transition and to make sure we live up to our core values:
Collaboration. Our problems can't be solved by giving power to the right people, companies, or countries; instead, we will need everyone's contribution. Readers should be encouraged to become editors, editors should be encouraged to be policy people, policy people should be encouraged to help set the agenda for the Board. As a Board member, my job is representing the community: publishing details of what the Board is actually doing and soliciting the community's opinion about what it should be doing.
Innovation. Software isn't neutral; its design shapes how you use it. Until now, we've been busy just keeping the software running. We must also work on improving it: getting more people involved, adding features the community wants, and making it easy for everyone to fully use. Since, in a very real way, the software controls the site, whoever controls the software has tremendous power. We must make sure the community, not private companies or individual people, decides how it develops.
Growth. Alexa reports that 5% of all Web surfers visit Wikipedia. On the one hand, that's pretty impressive. On the other, that means 95% do not. That's a lot of people to bring on board. But even of those who read Wikipedia, few really understand that they can write it, let alone do any of its other tasks. At the same time, though, what we've done is now a model to the world. Leaders in every field hope to apply Wikipedia's magic to their own tasks. Such jobs may require new organizations, new software, or new structures, but our grand goal remains the same: radical collaboration to give everyone unrestricted access to all the world's knowledge.
About me: Over six years ago, I built my first web application. I called it theinfo.org, but it was basically the same idea as Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, it didn't take off, but I never stopped thinking about the problem. Since then, I co-authored the RSS 1.0 spec, worked on the specifications for the Semantic Web, and was an early employee at Creative Commons. Most recently, I co-founded Reddit, which, after one year, is already in the top 1500 sites on the Internet (according to Alexa).
