Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2013/Questions/4
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How do we go from being an encyclopedia to being a whole library? How do we become "cutting edge" again?
[edit]How do we go from being an encyclopedia to being a whole library? How do we become "cutting edge" again?
I firmly believe Wikipedia is the first step, not the last.
We have about a dozen wikis-- while our for-profit counterparts (eg Wikia) have hundreds of thousands of wikis. This year, we celebrate finally getting our act together enough to create a new project, WikiVoyage. This is progress, I admit-- but progress at a snail's pace.
I can't help but think of all the knowledge that still has no home here at WMF. I notice the Wikimedia family still bars the doors to local wikis, fan wikis, genealogy wikis, oral history wikis-- really, we turn away any kind of knowledge that doesn't neatly fit into a reference book motif.
At the same time, I notice the critical problem that is facing WMF is not skyrocketing "data hosting costs"-- our problem is a plummeting level of active editors among a dying community.
We used to be revolutionaries, working on a project so big that it scared us. How do we get that back? HectorMoffet (talk) 06:39, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
I am not convinced the answer is hosting many different kinds of non-reference wikis; see my answer to the question about local wikis, above, as to why.
I want to reflect on some of the phrases you use, though. This project is so big it scares me; we are even more revolutionary than we can currently see without the benefit of history; and I do not see the community as dying (rather I see a rate of attrition we need to reverse; there are still many enthusiastic editors, and their community is far from dead).
I handled a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica today (there's one in my library); I was curious to compare an article I was working on to their treatment of the subject. It made me reflect again -- as I do almost every day -- how far we've come and still how far we have to go. I feel like for the biggest projects we are just now entering "phase 2", of expansion and improving quality -- the big Wikipedias may appear complete, but I think we're just getting started.The process for recognizing good ideas and incubating them with their own wiki should be much simpler. The new project proposals process takes too much energy up front before one can start gathering and curating knowledge, and the process of getting an existing (successful!) project adopted takes weeks and hundreds of supporters. Both should be possible in more incremental stages.
And we must dare more things.
At some point we stopped being scared of the amazing impossible scope of our projects (as you put it) and started to be scared of failure, without that sense of awe. This concern has made it harder to be bold. On each Project, and in creating new Projects, we need to rediscover that sense of joy in attempting something new, somewhat unknowable, possibly impossible. I think Wikidata is the way forward, as well as Wikivoyage: both point towards a future when we encompass the entire library, and things beyond traditional libraries.