Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 2:29 PM Rebecca O'Neill 
wrote:

> I agree Galder!
>
> I would like to respond to Phoebe's comment on not wanting to draw people
> to the *Wikimedia* movement is not true of the Irish experience. We have
> some idea of an editing community that aren't interested in getting
> involved in our user group (and probably never will be), so we are very
> keen to draw people to volunteering as Wikimedians not just as editors.
> Presenting our group as something more than people who are experienced
> Wikipedia editors is very important to us, and anything that makes that
> message easier would be of huge benefit to us.
>

Dear Rebecca,
Thanks for this. Let me try to explain my thinking a bit more...
I too want people to join Wikimedia New England, which is the group I'm
currently running. And in general, I want a thriving and healthy ecosystem
of affiliates. But I want that to be true because the work that chapters,
affiliates and the Foundation itself does is meant to be enabling for the
larger goal of making free knowledge available, and specifically for
improving and sustaining Wikipedia and her sister projects.

Everything that the groups do - from building the technical/legal
infrastructure side, to training new editors, to providing a friendly
geographic or topical face to Wikipedia, to doing outreach, to supporting
existing editors - is a means to an end. It is not the end itself. We do
this multivarious work because we recognize that there are many, many
effective ways to contribute in a project as complex as ours, and that
participants can sometimes best find a home in ways that are not directly
editing. But equally: there are of course other means to this end of
building free knowledge that have nothing to do with the Wikimedia group/
structure, most notably the thousands of independent volunteers who work
largely alone to maintain and build the projects, and upon whose work we
all depend. Groups, and the Foundation, are important! But they are not, in
themselves, the end goal.

So where does this leave us with rebranding? I admit I haven't read all of
the comments/analysis. But, to my mind, there's a cost to rebranding: the
several hundred person-hours that have already been put into this
discussion, if nothing else. For the benefit to outweigh the cost, we need
to imagine what will happen to increase participation in building free
knowledge as a result. If we are "Wikipedia New England" or "Wikipedia
Ireland" et al, will our groups be more effective -- for instance, with an
easier to understand name, will new people join our trainings, perhaps
becoming Wikipedia editors? Will more cultural institutions reach out, and
be more amenable to releasing images? If the Foundation is the Wikipedia
Foundation, then how does this improve the infrastructure that the
Foundation provides, exactly?

If the answer is that this change will definitely increase participation in
the projects and free knowledge generally, through the mechanism of the
various groups being more recognizable and thus reaching a bigger audience,
then the proposal is worth seriously considering. But if it is hard to
imagine - and I admit I do find it hard to imagine that the name of the
Foundation is the thing standing in our way to wider Wikipedia
participation - then it doesn't seem worth the cost.

-- Phoebe
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Anders Wennersten]

In our community (Swedish) we embrace Wikidata wholeheartedly and we 
have found solution to take care of vandalism. Literialist, show changes 
on Wikidata on Wikipedia etc.


I believe it is more an attitude issue then a technical one.

I agree with earlier comments that English Wikipedia is not everything 
and regarding use of Wikidata it  is not a leader


Anders


Den 2019-04-13 kl. 21:01, skrev Yaroslav Blanter:

To be honest, Wikidata does have serious vandalism issues which have not
yet been solved. It is unlikely the English Wikipedia will have a more
close integration with Wikidata until they have been solved. For the
record, I am administrator on both projects.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 8:31 PM Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:


Hoi,
When I worked on Ottoman history in Wikidata (I will get back to it again)
Catalan was one of the best resources. Thank you :) If you want me to I can
share my work/your work on your wikipedia.
Thanks,
 GerardM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GerardM#Ottoman_Turkey

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 20:21, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:


Well, that Wikidata problem happens on English Wikipedia. Some Wikipedias
(Basque, Catalan, even French) are embracing Wikidata extensively.

And there's the branding issue. Maybe Wikipedia is not THE future.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Yaroslav Blanter]

To be honest, Wikidata does have serious vandalism issues which have not
yet been solved. It is unlikely the English Wikipedia will have a more
close integration with Wikidata until they have been solved. For the
record, I am administrator on both projects.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 8:31 PM Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> When I worked on Ottoman history in Wikidata (I will get back to it again)
> Catalan was one of the best resources. Thank you :) If you want me to I can
> share my work/your work on your wikipedia.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GerardM#Ottoman_Turkey
>
> On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 20:21, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
> galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Well, that Wikidata problem happens on English Wikipedia. Some Wikipedias
> > (Basque, Catalan, even French) are embracing Wikidata extensively.
> >
> > And there's the branding issue. Maybe Wikipedia is not THE future.
> > ___
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> > 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
When I worked on Ottoman history in Wikidata (I will get back to it again)
Catalan was one of the best resources. Thank you :) If you want me to I can
share my work/your work on your wikipedia.
Thanks,
GerardM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GerardM#Ottoman_Turkey

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 20:21, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Well, that Wikidata problem happens on English Wikipedia. Some Wikipedias
> (Basque, Catalan, even French) are embracing Wikidata extensively.
>
> And there's the branding issue. Maybe Wikipedia is not THE future.
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Rebecca O'Neill]

I agree Galder!

I would like to respond to Phoebe's comment on not wanting to draw people
to the *Wikimedia* movement is not true of the Irish experience. We have
some idea of an editing community that aren't interested in getting
involved in our user group (and probably never will be), so we are very
keen to draw people to volunteering as Wikimedians not just as editors.
Presenting our group as something more than people who are experienced
Wikipedia editors is very important to us, and anything that makes that
message easier would be of huge benefit to us.

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 19:21, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Well, that Wikidata problem happens on English Wikipedia. Some Wikipedias
> (Basque, Catalan, even French) are embracing Wikidata extensively.
>
> And there's the branding issue. Maybe Wikipedia is not THE future.
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 



-- 
PhD in Digital Media
Project Coordinator Wikimedia Community Ireland 

Blogs rebecca-oneill.com and The Restless Curator

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga]

Well, that Wikidata problem happens on English Wikipedia. Some Wikipedias 
(Basque, Catalan, even French) are embracing Wikidata extensively.

And there's the branding issue. Maybe Wikipedia is not THE future.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The basic assumption of Wikipedia is the article. When we are truly to
reach out and take a next step, it has to be more than Wikipedia, more than
obsessing with articles. People are not looking for articles, they are
looking for information on subjects. Information on subjects may be
delivered in the format of articles but it may also be delivered in the
format of books data presentations and images.

This obsession of Wikipedia being the objective of all of that we do, the
format that is to apply to everything we do is holding us back. A few
examples; we do not officially present the data of Wikidata in a format
that is useful to humans. Such formats have existed for years in the format
of Reasonator and recently in the format of Scholia. Compare that to the
bickering about including Wikidata in Wikipedia and it is obvious how
Wikipedia is holding us back. Several volunteers used data from many
sources and created a wealth of Wikipedia articles that would otherwise
have hardly any at all. The verdict: it is not by a community and
consequently it cannot be maintained. No research has been done, no
outreach happened. It is a success story that does not fit the mold and is
ignored. Within the movement there is a general agreement that the gender
gap affects us all. It is why we celebrate the success of the diminishment
of this gap and rightfully so as it is pervasive and recognisable in all of
our projects. It is however not our biggest bias. Our biggest bias is the
AngloAmerican bias.

The only way out of it I see is in a change of outlook. Our outlook needs
to be less Wikipedia and its articles and more about what DO we have on a
subject and expose them in any form we have. Expose them together with all
the organisations that have a compatible outlook. When we actively engage
people who seek information by asking them to expand on what they seek, we
will slowly but surely  increase the amount of information we hold and have
this information in all of our languages.

This different approach can happily coexist with our Wikipedia bias. It
does not take much to get it of the ground. What it does take is the
realisation that Wikimedia is NOT Wikipedia. This is necessary for this
experiment to start..
Thanks,
  GerardM

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 17:56, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> On Sat., Apr. 13, 2019, 2:27 a.m. Gerard Meijssen, <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Wikipedia is indeed clearly the core global brand. The notion that
> > Wikidata will "never match Wikipedia whatever its future success" is a
> sad
> > argument.
> >
>
> You misunderstand me. I do not mean in importance: Wikidata will surely be
> equally important to knowledge sharing, and more pervasive, though the two
> are hard to compare and not independent.
>
> I mean purely in the memetics and brand sense: the history of humanity will
> keep a mention of Wikipedia for centuries, should we persist that long.
> Its success, elegance, and defiance of previous assumptions remains in many
> places the dominant shorthand for crowdsourcing, period; for editable
> websites;  the standard visual template for reference works.
>
> Other projects that follow in those footsteps, even if they become much
> more influential or pervasive, will not surpass the deep and broad appeal
> of the original.
>
> 
>
> That said !
>
> Aside from recognizing confusion around 'Wikimedia' that we can reduce, I
> reckon a central
>  branding focus should be making our messaging and core interactions
> (including Wikidata and Commons meta pages) truly interlingual.  This takes
> a combination of software, translators, and brand focus.  It is the obvious
> way to meaningfully amplify reach and participation in underrepresented
> regions: literally underrepresented because the projects don't seem to
> speak to or to know how to hear from them; and because of iterative network
> effects of those on projects inviting their friends, enemies, and
> colleagues.
>
> Rather than the somewhat zero sum efforts to change branding in a way that
> shifts around community expectations (and may not attract any more
> contributors), a branding effort that enhances cross language connection
> and reminds people of the global bounty of the projects, would be an
> updraft for all.
>
> Run translation drives every month, posting banners in other languages on
> each project inviting participation. ;). Revel in the experimental
> brokenness of multilingual-talk-page tools and invite pan-language web
> designers to.come play + iterate with us, w a bit UN and translator-network
> campaign.
>
> We don't have to keep repainting the sign on our house, we can now
> relandscape the entire neighborhood.
>
> SJ
>
> p.s. if Commons hates 'Wikicommons' we can vid up and return to its
> original name, MultimediaWiki.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Nathan]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 12:42 PM phoebe ayers  wrote:

>
>
> Dear all,
> I haven't weighed in before. But it seems to me there's a simple question
> underlying all of this: do we actually want, or need, to increase public
> awareness of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters/affiliates (as
> opposed to the projects themselves)?
>
> Having Wikimedia be a more recognizable entity or brand does not seem to me
> like it would help us in our core goals, of recruiting editors and content
> to the *projects*. We do not typically use the Wikimedia name to do
> outreach, or to talk about the projects; the handful of us that are
> insiders and give presentations about the WMF is small, relative to the
> number of educators and librarians and editors talking about Wikipedia. (I
> give many trainings on editing Wikipedia every year; talking about
> Wikimedia is irrelevant for this purpose). Perhaps a rebrand would make
> fundraising easier -- but we already use the project brand for that, as
> most fundraising is directly off the projects, and the fundraising that
> isn't (grants and large donations) has a lot of communication around it. So
> I'm not sure how a rebrand would help here either.
>
> The premise of this whole exercise is that people knowing about Wikimedia
> as an entity will somehow help us. But we are not trying to recruit
> contributors to the Foundation, or to the chapters; we are trying to
> recruit them to the projects, and if the infrastructure of our network is
> invisible, I am fine with that. I think to increase the centrality of the
> *organization* is a distraction that misses the point of both our mission
> and the role of the organization, which is to provide infrastructure. We're
> not selling shoes here; more brand awareness of the Foundation does not
> translate into a direct furthering of our mission, and more focus on the
> organization is at best a distraction for overworked volunteers.
>
> Like Andrew, I might have been excited about naming it the Wikipedia
> Foundation ten or fifteen years ago. But now, I think there is a wide world
> of free knowledge that we want to imagine -- including a future of our
> projects remixed into something new, beyond Wikipedia. So for that reason
> too, I am skeptical.
>
> regards,
> Phoebe
> (former WMF trustee)


This is the most persuasive perspective I've read so far, thank you Phoebe.

I also wonder why it makes sense to pursue a WMF rebranding project (which
is expensive in terms of time, money, volunteer effort and in other ways)
at the same time as the strategy process is questioning  whether the WMF
(or chapters, UGs, etc.) are the right vehicles for the movement goals. If
the strategy process is honestly holding open the possibility that the WMF
might not be the right organization to lead, then rebranding before the
process is complete is a strange decision.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 10:14 PM Zack McCune  wrote:

> :: Apologies for cross-posting to multiple mailing lists. We want to ensure
> we spread the word about this opportunity to as many people as possible. ::
>
> Hi all,
>
> We are writing today to invite you to be a part of a community review on
> Wikimedia brand research and strategy.
>
> Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation set out to better understand how the
> world sees Wikimedia and Wikimedia projects as brands.[1] We wanted to get
> a sense of the general visibility of our different projects, and evaluate
> public support of our mission to spread free knowledge.
>

Dear all,
I haven't weighed in before. But it seems to me there's a simple question
underlying all of this: do we actually want, or need, to increase public
awareness of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters/affiliates (as
opposed to the projects themselves)?

Having Wikimedia be a more recognizable entity or brand does not seem to me
like it would help us in our core goals, of recruiting editors and content
to the *projects*. We do not typically use the Wikimedia name to do
outreach, or to talk about the projects; the handful of us that are
insiders and give presentations about the WMF is small, relative to the
number of educators and librarians and editors talking about Wikipedia. (I
give many trainings on editing Wikipedia every year; talking about
Wikimedia is irrelevant for this purpose). Perhaps a rebrand would make
fundraising easier -- but we already use the project brand for that, as
most fundraising is directly off the projects, and the fundraising that
isn't (grants and large donations) has a lot of communication around it. So
I'm not sure how a rebrand would help here either.

The premise of this whole exercise is that people knowing about Wikimedia
as an entity will somehow help us. But we are not trying to recruit
contributors to the Foundation, or to the chapters; we are trying to
recruit them to the projects, and if the infrastructure of our network is
invisible, I am fine with that. I think to increase the centrality of the
*organization* is a distraction that misses the point of both our mission
and the role of the organization, which is to provide infrastructure. We're
not selling shoes here; more brand awareness of the Foundation does not
translate into a direct furthering of our mission, and more focus on the
organization is at best a distraction for overworked volunteers.

Like Andrew, I might have been excited about naming it the Wikipedia
Foundation ten or fifteen years ago. But now, I think there is a wide world
of free knowledge that we want to imagine -- including a future of our
projects remixed into something new, beyond Wikipedia. So for that reason
too, I am skeptical.

regards,
Phoebe
(former WMF trustee)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Samuel Klein]

On Sat., Apr. 13, 2019, 2:27 a.m. Gerard Meijssen, <
gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Wikipedia is indeed clearly the core global brand. The notion that
> Wikidata will "never match Wikipedia whatever its future success" is a sad
> argument.
>

You misunderstand me. I do not mean in importance: Wikidata will surely be
equally important to knowledge sharing, and more pervasive, though the two
are hard to compare and not independent.

I mean purely in the memetics and brand sense: the history of humanity will
keep a mention of Wikipedia for centuries, should we persist that long.
Its success, elegance, and defiance of previous assumptions remains in many
places the dominant shorthand for crowdsourcing, period; for editable
websites;  the standard visual template for reference works.

Other projects that follow in those footsteps, even if they become much
more influential or pervasive, will not surpass the deep and broad appeal
of the original.



That said !

Aside from recognizing confusion around 'Wikimedia' that we can reduce, I
reckon a central
 branding focus should be making our messaging and core interactions
(including Wikidata and Commons meta pages) truly interlingual.  This takes
a combination of software, translators, and brand focus.  It is the obvious
way to meaningfully amplify reach and participation in underrepresented
regions: literally underrepresented because the projects don't seem to
speak to or to know how to hear from them; and because of iterative network
effects of those on projects inviting their friends, enemies, and
colleagues.

Rather than the somewhat zero sum efforts to change branding in a way that
shifts around community expectations (and may not attract any more
contributors), a branding effort that enhances cross language connection
and reminds people of the global bounty of the projects, would be an
updraft for all.

Run translation drives every month, posting banners in other languages on
each project inviting participation. ;). Revel in the experimental
brokenness of multilingual-talk-page tools and invite pan-language web
designers to.come play + iterate with us, w a bit UN and translator-network
campaign.

We don't have to keep repainting the sign on our house, we can now
relandscape the entire neighborhood.

SJ

p.s. if Commons hates 'Wikicommons' we can vid up and return to its
original name, MultimediaWiki.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Thank you for your well argued point of view. I followed the statistics as
provided by Erik Zachte for a long time and the trend was slowly but surely
where based on the statistics of Wikipedia alone English Wikipedia traffic
moved slowly but surely from over fifty to under fifty percent. Then there
is traffic from everything else..

As to accounting for the spending of the Wikimedia Foundation itself,
MediaWiki is developed for Wikipedia. Development of Wikidata is done by
the German chapter.  So spending of over 50% for English Wikipedia is
better than plausible. When new features are introduced, they fit English
Wikipedia perfectly. There is no indication whatsoever that features are
developed specifically for the small Wikipedias. It is easy enough to argue
that many of the "must have" Wikipedia features are an impediment for the
development of the small Wikipedias and as  Research is focused on English
as well, there is not much to say otherwise.

Now, please move on and consider the other points I made.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 10:55, Joseph Seddon  wrote:

> > We know our statistics and English Wikipedia is not 50% of our traffic.
> It
> > is where over 50% of our resources are spend.
> >
>
> Do we?
>
> Based on what?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Fæ]

Seeing this "brand" discussion eat up all the limited available unpaid
volunteer oxygen on wikimedia-l makes me sad.

If the WMF's biggest strategy topic this year is to enter into navel
gazing about its brand, then the WMF looks like it has a problem with
setting meaningful work for its senior management, or maybe just its
team from Wolff Olins; anyone seen a budget line for this consultancy,
I'm assuming this advice is not free, or cheap?

If volunteers want to chew over something that is more meaningful how
about /transparency/, a target that by all practical measures has got
visibly worse over the last five years and appears to have been
deliberately dropped from every top level strategy document:
* Should the WMF cap CEO personal expenses to under $1,000,000 a year,
and publicly report on all individual senior management total expenses
over $50,000 a year AND report on these within a year of the spend?
* Should Wikimedia project volunteers be able to request and view the
reports that the WMF holds about them, in the same way as is legally
required under European law?
* Should the WMF publish flight travel expenses, and set targets for
decreasing year on year flight travel as part of actively doing
anything at all to decrease the WMF's contribution to climate change?

Ps, it is worth looking at some of the links in the original email, it
is revealing that WMF senior management appears to believe that it is
a competitor with the commercial worlds of social media, YouTube and
internet search engines. If this is how strategy and targets are
created, then the "sum of human knowledge" goals are horribly watered
down between ideology and delivery through the eyes of management
consultants.

Thanks,
Fae


On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 at 03:14, Zack McCune  wrote:
>
> :: Apologies for cross-posting to multiple mailing lists. We want to ensure
> we spread the word about this opportunity to as many people as possible. ::
>
> Hi all,
>
> We are writing today to invite you to be a part of a community review on
> Wikimedia brand research and strategy.
>
> Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation set out to better understand how the
> world sees Wikimedia and Wikimedia projects as brands.[1] We wanted to get
> a sense of the general visibility of our different projects, and evaluate
> public support of our mission to spread free knowledge.
>
> We launched a global brand study to research these questions, as part of
> our planning toward our 2030 strategic goals.[2] The study was commissioned
> by the Board, carried out by the brand consultancy Wolff Olins, and
> directed by the Foundation’s Communications team.[3][4] It collected
> perspectives from the internet users of seven countries (India, China,
> Nigeria, Egypt, Germany, Mexico and the US) on Wikimedia projects and
> values.
>
> The study revealed some interesting trends:
>
> - Awareness of Wikipedia is above 80% in Western Europe and North America.
>
> - Awareness of Wikipedia averages above 40% in emerging markets,[5] and is
> fast growing.
>
> - There is awareness of other projects, but was significantly lower. For
> example, awareness of Wikisource was at 30%, Wiktionary at 25%, Wikidata at
> 20%, and Wikivoyage at 8%.
>
> - There was significant confusion around the name Wikimedia. Respondents
> reported they had either not heard of it, or extrapolated its relationship
> to Wikipedia.
>
> - In spite of lack of awareness about Wikimedia, respondents showed a high
> level of support for our mission.
>
> Following from these research insights, the Wolff Olins team also made a
> strategic suggestion to refine the Wikimedia brand system.[6] The
> suggestions include:
>
> - Use Wikipedia as the central movement brand rather than Wikimedia.
>
> - Provide clearer connections to the Movement projects from Wikipedia to
> drive increased awareness, usage and contributions to smaller projects.
>
> - Retain Wikimedia project names, with the exception of Wikimedia Commons
> which is recommended to be shortened to Wikicommons to be consistent with
> other projects.
>
> - Explore new naming conventions for the Foundation and affiliate groups
> that use Wikipedia rather than Wikimedia.
>
> - Consider expository taglines and other naming conventions to reassert the
> connections between projects (e.g. “__ - A Wikipedia project”).
>
> This is not a new idea.[7][8]
>
> By definition, Wikimedia brands are shared among the communities who give
> them meaning. So in considering this change, the Wikimedia Foundation is
> collecting feedback from across our communities. Our goal is to speak with
> more than 80% of affiliates and as many individual contributors as possible
> before May 2019, when we will offer the Board of Trustees a summary of
> community response.
>
> We invite you to look at a project summary [9], the brand research [10],
> and the brand strategy suggestion [11] Wolff Olins prepared working with us.
>
> For feedback, please add comments on the Community Review talk page 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Joseph Seddon]

> We know our statistics and English Wikipedia is not 50% of our traffic. It
> is where over 50% of our resources are spend.
>

Do we?

Based on what?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Wikipedia is indeed clearly the core global brand. The notion that Wikidata
will "never match Wikipedia whatever its future success" is a sad argument.
Use some hindsight and compare Wikipedia and its impact with Wikidata at
the same age, do the same for Commons. It is also a useless argument
because success comes in different shapes and forms and we should foster
success and value where we find it. The biggest issue is not to be
overwhelmed with the complacency that comes with what is mistaken as the
success of English Wikipedia. Complacency because English Wikipedia could
be much better.

We know our statistics and English Wikipedia is not 50% of our traffic. It
is where over 50% of our resources are spend. It is maintained by a bias
for everything related to what we do in English. We promote Wikipedia as a
tool for university students and its focus is the USA. The reality is that
we need high school students to write articles in most of our other
languages. Oh and do not rely on research; Wikipedia research is biased
because it is almost exclusively English Wikipedia what is studied. Even
when it is not, it relies on studies with the same bias.

When we truly want to be more international, we should focus on raising
money outside of the AngloSaxon countries. The money is there, just
consider known statistics. Spend everything that is raised "elsewhere",
elsewhere and add significant bias where we have the best 'return on
investment'. NB it is my business to know fundraising and we under perform
in the Netherlands by a large margin. There is no "need" to change our
really successful fundraising except when we use it as an instrument to
attract attention for our brands.

Both Wikidata and Commons are English. It is not that there are no projects
that use other languages within these projects but it is dominantly English
in the same way Wikipedia is dominantly English. Giving examples of these
projects is mistaking exceptions for the rule. Case in point; show me all
the Wikidata editors and show me those editors that do not communicate in
English.. show me their success.

When this notion that Wikimedia is English is to be countered, consider how
we can share our resources. For me the best example how we miss the boat is
found in Wikidata; we were promised an official replacement of Listeria.
Listeria is great but not good enough. The promise has not been kept, we
are still pissing in the wind and manually updating lists in the Wikipedias.

Please let us have a hard look at the efficiency at which we "share the sum
of all knowledge". Once the giddiness has left the house, let us work in
earnest and expand the 50% percent of our traffic and serve the underserved.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 06:38, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Wikipedia is clearly the core global brand.
> It also has a prominence in the history of the Web and internetworked
> society that Wikidata, whatever its future success, will never match.
>
> Internally, as all have noted, the dilemma is that it is associated with
> the focus  and policies of one project.  So if we shift towards calling
> things "Wikipedia Foo" instead of "Wikimedia Foo", we will have to go out
> of our way to expand its connotations.  That takes an internal campaign: w
> thoughtful & responsive answers to common questions /concerns.
>
> SJ
>
> P.S. Personally, while these recs encourage keeping the old project names,
> I think Wikipictionary, Wikipews, Wikipedanta and Wikiperversity have a
> chance of becoming even more popular with new readers & contributors.
>
> --
>
> On Fri., Apr. 12, 2019, 11:33 p.m. Andrew Lih, 
> wrote:
>
> > Responses below:
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:07 PM Strainu  wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I would argue that, on the contrary, for the outside word we were less
> > > Wikipedia 10 years ago. Around that time there was still hope that
> > > Wikibooks or Wikinews could still be successful, at least in some
> > > languages. New language versions of other projects than Wikipedia were
> > > created relatively regularly and many people who started with
> > > Wikipedia moved on to maintain and develop other projects. Today the
> > > Foundation has all but given up on all other projects except the 3 you
> > > mention below (and, to some extent, Wikisource), Google is taking data
> > > from Wikipedia (but prefers other dictionaries instead of Wikt) and
> > > people barely hide a polite yawn when you talk about the other
> > > projects.
> > >
> >
> > For the record, I was one of the earliest skeptics of Wikinews and was
> one
> > of the first accredited Wikinewsies in 2005. I believed the best way to
> > critically understand its flaws was to actually immerse myself in it. I
> > quickly saw it was not viable, and memorialized my thoughts about it for
> > Harvard Nieman Lab (below). I say this not to brag, but simply to say
> that
> > the "hope" of that era may be overhyped. :)
> >
> >
> >
>