Hi Katherine,
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Katherine Maher <[email protected]> wrote: > 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller <[email protected]>: > > > > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's > > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you > > at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the > > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the > > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components > > maintained by different groups). > > There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would be > controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but > advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is "a > world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all > knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or > ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the > impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've made > great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory". > Indeed, Wikipedia has become more influential than anyone thought likely ten years ago. > For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the direction, > there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this > ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world > something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer matter-of-fact, > sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for NPOV > content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The > drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier > versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire > movement actors and external partners. I understand the psychology of stretch goals, but I'd still say that some goals are not worth aspiring towards. It's in the nature of the human mind to be vulnerable to ambitions for world domination. That vulnerability is well encapsulated in the jocular saying "Power corrupts, but absolute power is kinda cool." Ultimately, whenever idealists have achieved such absolute domination, the systems they established were eventually used to some ends that were anything but cool. Checks and balances are key to a healthy system. Best, Andreas _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
