Strategy

The original Wikipedia strategy may have been little more than 'produce 1000 Nupedia drafts in a year', but it has developed significantly over time.

Background

The Wikimedia Foundation was formed in 2003, when it became clear that Wikipedia was becoming an important online project, too big to reside on Bomis' servers. Previous to this, most "strategic planning" discussions revolved around the evolving Wikis; many decisions (additional languages, additional projects, core policies) that helped shape future organizational development were boldly made by community members and leaders through the wiki process. Most "Foundation-level" work was done by volunteers, from financial planning to technical scaling. The Foundation was a convenient organizational structure for the projects, not envisioned as an end in itself.

When the first elected community member Trustees took their seats on the Board, there were a variety of discussions about where the Foundation should set its sights.

• Early discussions: mailing list threads from Anthere and Angela from late 2004 were often about related topics
• Strategic goals: a few open meetings about goals, and some discussions on the wiki (1), ensued

The Mission and Vision statements were revisited in 2006/2007 to help lay uniform foundations for future work. The idea was for this to happen at least once a year, though we seem to have skipped 2008 – hence our 2009 strategy planning.

In late 2006 there was also an internal discussion of strategy with facilitated meetings of Board members and others, resulting in a few one-year planning documents. These do not seem to be public, though many resulting conversations are.

Most discussions about project and Foundation-wide planning have been held on mailing lists (first wikipedia-l, then foundation-l); or on Meta.

Strategic planning

eventually, this could use a visual timeline

Timeline

2004 : the Board holds its first elections. There was strategic planning before and after

one-year plan, three-year_plan, Five-year_plan

a few open meetings were held to discuss the needs of the Projects with the Board.

2006 : reflection and review; Angela and Anthere had been on the board since the beginning.

There were committees formed

A Board retreat and SWOT analysis was undertaken

A special projects committee was formed and shared some brainstorming ideas related to the above

Note the various resolutions passed by the SPC.

2009

A formal year-long project, Strategic planning 2009, was announced in May and planned for the coming year. Threads about how to proceed were floated on foundation-l, and three one-year contracts to facilitate the process were posted.

Note: Wikimedia strategy doesn't necessarily coincide with Wikipedia strategy.

2010-2015 plan

Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan (PDF)

The strategic planning process ran from 2009-2010, and focused on finding actionable strategies for the Wikimedia Foundation/Movement, covering for instance how effectively the foundation is reaching and empowering new people around the world, how effectively it is enriching their lives educationally.

A five-year strategy was developed, for the 2010-2015 timeframe. A summary of the priorities and ideas built into that plan, and links to more detailed discussions about each, can be found in the Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan Summary. This was originally developed on a separate strategy wiki, and is now being migrated back to Meta. Some key Questions about our strategy were also developed.

High level planning

Mission and Vision

The mission (editable version) and vision (editable version) attempt to formalize the shared goals of the projects. However, they are wordy in places and leave out goals in others.

In 2006 they were rewritten once, and there was a Board/Chapters/Other meeting at which they were discussed along with a general discussion of where the projects should be heading. The idea then was that they would be regularly revised and revisited -- but this has not happened since.

What are our Projects?

The New project proposals list isn't always given the attention it deserves, considering that how we view ourselves as a collection of sister projects is determined in part by what Projects we support. Newcomers will be drawn to the projects by the promise of one or the other environment to work; and expect to find a functioning local society and receptive soil for planting new ideas.

Major projects that have been considered but not accepted so far include : Wikikids, Wikifamily, and Wikicite; other major friendly projects include AboutUs.org.

Proposals and related discussions

• OWPP
• Planning for the future
• Suggestions and proposals
• Strategic plan/2009

Board candidate statements throughout the years:

• Board elections/2004/Candidates
• Board elections/2005/Candidates
• Board elections/2006/Candidates
• Board elections/2007/Candidates
• Board elections/2008/Candidates
• Board elections/2009/Candidates
• Board elections/2011/Candidates

Project pages

There have been many projects over the years related to the topics likely to be addressed in stategic planning efforts. These are some of their current and future pages. Please help build this out.

initiatives

• the mother of meta-project pages.

outreach

• a (beautiful!) page for public outreach

distribution, offline content

• static content

partnerships

languages, translation

tech, scaling

quality, content

chapters, events

new projects

Wikipedia strategic planning efforts

See related discussions on Wikipedia itself, from WP:1.0 to w:WP:WikiProject Council (for quality and participation)...

• Many of the big discussions across Wikipedia (BLPs, Civility, language editions) relate ultimately to what Wikipedia is and what we want it to be.