Strategic Planning/WMF Strategic Plan: Fit to WMAU

No edit summary
Line 1: Line 1:
Below are the line items from the WMF Strategic Plan as a bunch of headings. Add your thoughts as to whether there is potential for WMAU to do something in this area.
Below are the line items from the WMF Strategic Plan. Add your thoughts as to whether there is potential for WMAU to do something in this area. At this stage, don't worry about resourcing, risk or priorities - they can come after we've fleshed out the total spectrum of what's possible.


==Stabilise Infrastructure==
==Stabilise Infrastructure==

Revision as of 21:30, 7 May 2011

Below are the line items from the WMF Strategic Plan. Add your thoughts as to whether there is potential for WMAU to do something in this area. At this stage, don't worry about resourcing, risk or priorities - they can come after we've fleshed out the total spectrum of what's possible.

Stabilise Infrastructure

Make technology investments to guarantee the permanence of projects and support ongoing growth.

  • Build new data centers with automatic failover features to reduce the likelihood of outages and ensure the continued operations of the site in the case of catastrophic events. 


No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Deploy additional caching centers in key locations to serve growing audiences in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.


WMAU could provide a a caching centre or lobby for an Australian org (e.g. major GLAM, university) to provide a caching centre - Kerry Raymond 06:12, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Improve stability and security by resourcing to eliminate single points of failure, apply critical upgrades, and implement disaster recovery plans.

WMAU might have a role in providing mirrors or backups, but need to know more of WMF's plans before WMAU role could be formulated - Kerry Raymond 06:12, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Manage the MediaWiki release cycle to ensure it meets the evolving needs of readers and editors.


No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Develop clear documentation and APIs to enable developers to create applications that work easily with MediaWiki. 


WMAU could provide tools and/or advice on interchange between MediaWiki and Australian resources (e.g. Trove) - Kerry Raymond 06:14, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Expand public awareness and support for the Wikimedia movement.

  • Spread information about Wikimedia’s mission, vision, values and practices. Help people better understand our work, and motivate them to help us do it.

WMAU could run public seminars - Kerry Raymond 06:19, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Grow the number of Wikimedia donors, to ensure steady, robust support.

WMAU could reinforce the importance of donations in public seminars. - Kerry Raymond 06:19, 8 May 2011 (EST) WMAU could approach major Australian organisations which might use WMF services or share values with WMF to provide large donations. - Kerry Raymond 06:19, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Increase capacity to safeguard the movement's reputation and support the advancement of legal conditions that enable unimpeded access to information online, worldwide.

WMAU could provide documentation on how WMF's licensing and practices relates to Australia's copyright, privacy & other legislation. - Kerry Raymond 06:19, 8 May 2011 (EST) WMAU could provide a FAQ for Australians wishing to create WMF content in relation to Austrlaian legislation, policies & practices. - Kerry Raymond 06:19, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Build internal capacity to better support the movement and achieve its strategic goals.

  • Increase capacity by adding new staff to catalyze, support and partner with community members. 



(Reinterpreting this with WMAU members instead of WMF staff) WMAU could recruit more WMAU members through its public seminars. - Kerry Raymond 06:21, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Increase Participation

Encourage the health and growth of Wikimedia communities and the projects they sustain.

  • Develop new features and tools, such as a rich-text editor, enhanced navigation, and social functionality, to make editing easier and more fun.


WMAU could provide features and tools that integrated with Australian-based tools (an existing example of this is the Australian Digitised Newspapers having Wikipedia citations as one of their citation formats). - Kerry Raymond 06:30, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Support the recruitment and acculturation of newer contributors by encouraging a welcoming environment on the Wikimedia projects, as well as supporting community leaders who are eager to serve as recruiters, guides and mentors for newer volunteers.


WMAU could have a mailing list for Aussie editors. - Kerry Raymond 06:30, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Encourage diversity by conducting outreach among groups that have the potential to bring new expertise to the projects, as well as by supporting leaders from underrepresented groups in their efforts to cultivate new members from within their communities.


WMAU could conduct a survey to identify underrepresented groups in the Australian community and provide seminars and support through "peak bodies" in those groups. - Kerry Raymond 06:30, 8 May 2011 (EST)


  • Support offline and social events to increase community cohesion and commitment to the projects.


WMAU could host an annual Australian Wikimedia conference/gathering. - Kerry Raymond 06:30, 8 May 2011 (EST) WMAU could host smaller more frequent gatherings in major cities. - Kerry Raymond 06:30, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Create products and services that support affiliation and excellence among Wikimedians.


WMAU could have some system of Aussie rewards, possibly including funding travel to Australian Wikimedian events. - Kerry Raymond 06:30, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Expand Wikimedia’s global footprint through catalytic investments and chapter support.

  • Design and deploy catalyst teams to pilot activities spurring growth in readership and editing in the high-priority areas of India, Brazil, and the Arabic-speaking areas of the Middle East and North Africa.


WMAU probably cannot contribute directly to this, but could target international students in Australia from these regions to develop them as potential leaders on their return to their home countries. - Kerry Raymond 06:41, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Support Wikimedia chapters with financial or other assistance to enable them to serve their local Wikimedia communities effectively, and contribute to the health and growth of the overall movement. A priority will be pursuing outreach to expand and increase diversity in the contributor base. 


WMAU could support (financially or otherwise) activities in nearby nations without their own Wikimedia Chapter, e.g. Pacific Islands. - Kerry Raymond 06:41, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Facilitate community efforts to create organizational models and structures that support the Wikimedia projects.

WMAU could try to encourage Australian organisations to take some reponsibility for the quality and currency of articles in Wikipedia relevant to them, e.g. schools on articles about their local community. And WMAU send them a periodic reminder of the need to update these articles along with a WMAU newsletter. - Kerry Raymond 06:41, 8 May 2011 (EST) Encourage a Wikipedia Editor role in relevant Australian organisations (e.g. GLAMs, historical societies) to apply edits requested by less-edit-capable members. - Kerry Raymond 06:41, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Support volunteer initiatives that fuel the growth of communities and projects around the world, including meet-ups, public outreach activities and other volunteer innovations.


WMAU could run such events in Australia and provide guidelines and advice for others planning such things - 06:41, 8 May 2011 (EST) WMAU could explore public liability insurance to cover volunteer initiatives relating to WMF activities. - 06:41, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Improve Quality

Support our volunteer community through technology improvements to article assessment, by community members, readers and experts.

  • Develop improved tools for near real-time assessment of information additions and changes by experienced Wikimedia community members.

No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:11, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Systematically collect input from readers and subject-matter experts to perform both surface and depth reviews of the largest possible number of articles.


WMAU could identify or develop lists of Australian experts or key Australian resources, especially with regard to Australian content. - Kerry Raymond 06:44, 8 May 2011 (EST)

WMAU could prepare checklists/templates for Australian content on various kinds, e.g. cities, animals, to try to ensure that all articles of that kind cover off all key aspects (e.g. population data for cities, method of reproduction of animals). Checklists could include links to key Australian resources where such information might be found (e.g. ABS for population data) - Kerry Raymond 06:58, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Provide support to the Wikimedia movement in the development of institutional partnerships and alliances.

  • Provide project funding for efforts to connect Wikimedia projects with the work of institutions of culture and learning.

WMAU provides funding to support Wikipedian-in-Residence in major Australia GLAMs and universities. - Kerry Raymond 06:50, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Give global visibility to these efforts through our communication channels. 


WMAU promotes these relationships through its newsletter. - Kerry Raymond 06:50, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Develop and maintain documentation of best practices, blueprints, standards, and metrics associated with institutional partnerships.

WMAU gather documentation on the motivations, policies and practices of various types of Australian institution to identify areas where they are or are not likely to be willing to work with WMAU (or WMF) and how best to structure the relationship. E.g. most major GLAMs will want "branding", most local historical societies will be concerned about loss of income - Kerry Raymond 06:50, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Provide excellent service to our audience through clear quality labeling and the development of highly effective response systems.

  • Develop clear and concise quality labeling to support readers.

Not sure I understand what this is talking about. - Kerry Raymond 06:54, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Support development of first-responder systems that empower community volunteers to consistently and effectively address hot-button issues.

WMAU could develop some kind of trigger system to alert relevant Asutralian experts and "curators" in response to significant events reported on news feeds to ensure Wikipedia articles are rapidly updated, e.g. feed off ABC news (might get support of ABC Innovation Team for this). - Kerry Raymond 06:54, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Increase Reach

Enhance the quality of the core user experience regardless of geography.

  • Build additional caching centers in key locations to manage increased traffic from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, as well as to ensure reasonable and consistent load times no matter where a reader is located.

WMAU could provide a a caching centre or lobby for an Australian org (e.g. major GLAM, university) to provide a caching centre - Kerry Raymond 06:59, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Invest in mobile products to broaden the movement’s reach to connected populations.

  • Develop partnerships with mobile providers and entrepreneurs that offer users who do not own expensive smartphones wide access to Wikimedia’s mobile products.


Australians will have access to Wikimedia via NBN, so low-end mobile solutions might not be so necessary in Australia? - Kerry Raymond 07:05, 8 May 2011 (EST) Encourage Australian ISPs to offer Wikimedia as unmetered content. Could be linked into local cache/mirror? - Kerry Raymond 07:05, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Invest in technology improvements that enhance mobile features, functionality and access.

No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:12, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Invest in offline products to broaden the movement’s reach to populations who will remain disconnected from the Internet.

  • Create new offline products and partnerships with the capacity to distribute versions of Wikimedia’s projects to large numbers of readers with limited connectivity at low or no cost.

Australians will have access to Wikimedia via NBN, so lobby ISPs to make Wikimedia unmetered content. - Kerry Raymond 07:06, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Encourage Innovation

Increase access to information that drives community, decision-making and action.

  • Implement a web analytics tool to provide mission-critical information to the Foundation and the movement as a whole. 


No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Provide better information about the movement to enable everyone to better support it, by developing and publishing diverse measures of the health and growth of Wikimedia communities and projects. 


WMAU to contribute to reporting against these measures on its activities. - Kerry Raymond 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Foster a healthy community of researchers interested in analyzing Wikimedia, provide access to relevant data, and highlight important questions to be addressed.

WMAU could host a research conference in conjunction with a university. - 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Conduct regular reader and editor surveys in order to take the pulse of the community and identify pressing issues or concerns.

WMAU could conduct surveys from the non-engaged Australia community to identify reasons for non-engagement. - Kerry Raymond 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Develop standards for the development of staged experiments and A/B tests.

No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:10, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Support the infrastructure of networked innovation and research.

  • Develop clear documentation and APIs so that developers can create applications that work easily with our platforms.

WMAU could provide tools and/or advice on interchange between MediaWiki and Australian resources (e.g. Trove) - Kerry Raymond

  • Ensure access to computing resources and data for interested researchers and developers, including downloadable copies of all public data.

No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this. - Kerry Raymond 07:13, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Continually improve social and technical systems for volunteer development of core software, extensions, gadgets and other technical improvements.

No obvious way WMAU can contribute to this, beyond circulating the need for Australian volunteers to contribute to the international effort. - Kerry Raymond 07:13, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Promote the adoption of great ideas.

  • Develop clear processes for code review, acceptance and deployment so that volunteer development does not linger in limbo.

No obvious role for WMAU - Kerry Raymond 07:18, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Organize meetings and events bringing together developers and researchers who are focused on Wikimedia-related projects with experienced Wikimedia volunteers and staff.

WMAU could host a local event, perhaps in conjunction with a research/developers conference. - Kerry Raymond 07:18, 8 May 2011 (EST) WMAU could fund Australian developers/researchers to attend international WMF events. - Kerry Raymond 07:18, 8 May 2011 (EST)

  • Showcase and recognize the greatest innovations of the Wikimedia movement, and create community spaces dedicated to the exploration of new ideas.

WMAU could promote these within Australia. - Kerry Raymond 07:18, 8 May 2011 (EST)

Discuss this page