I think it would be fascinating to discover what would happen if we had a
Foundation interested in enforcing Wikipedia's copyleft rather than
subverting it.

On Sat, Jul 4, 2026, 7:07 AM Gerard Meijssen via Wikimedia-l <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Hoi,
> When we are to grow our exposure, there are many approaches possible but
> the issue is first and foremost about exposure. Exposure means eyeballs. I
> have been thinking about this and given that I am more and more frustrated
> with the search results of google, my suggestion is to provide a search
> engine based on our references. For now I call it WikiFind.
>
> I blogged about it several times.. you can find more here.
> <https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/search/label/WikiFind>
> Thanks,
>       Gerard Meijssen
>
>
>
> On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 21:23, Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I love this discussion, thank you all for speaking up. :)
>>
>> One note on "the community can just do it," I do think it's the right
>> direction, so please read the next couple of paragraphs as a friendly
>> amendment (just to make sure everyone's on the same page) rather than a
>> pushback.
>>
>> "The community can just do it," feels very appealing right now: because
>> we are missing ownership and leadership, self-organizing is kinda the only
>> option with that vacuum. It probably is the best tool we have to
>> rebuild/respark the ownership we are missing.
>>
>> That being said, a couple of comments:
>>
>> 1. Community means staff too, to me. Many of the people the movement pays
>> are also among its most committed contributors, so let us not run this as
>> volunteers versus the Foundation/paid staff. I know it sometimes reads
>> simplistic, but we're all in the same boat, or at least we should be.
>>
>> 2. At this scale the work will need people with dedicated time on it.
>> Because the Foundation is not taking leadership doesn't mean it doesn't
>> have a responsibility. The Foundation owns most of the resources in the
>> movement, and if we, as a movement, are to change/evolve, we need those
>> resources. It can't rely only on volunteers. However, I'm not saying we
>> need X, Y or Z, just that we will need people with dedicated time at some
>> point.
>>
>> Brooke, to your comment on the Foundation being a service organisation, I
>> would agree if the Foundation was being supportive. But it's neither
>> leading the change nor being supportive on that topic, in my opinion. And
>> don't anyone get me wrong, I do know how hard it is first hand to do either
>> (or both), but I also know it can happen. And I hope they'll take the first
>> opportunity to join in the discussion.
>>
>> Speaking of opportunities, I've started a second thread with an
>> invitation to meet next week. It's a bit of last minute notice, but I'd
>> love to keep the momentum :)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christophe
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 00:10, Samuel Klein via Wikimedia-l <
>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Nada, excellent framing.  It is entirely in our control to fix
>>> outreach, build welcoming and forgiving environments, make strides with
>>> less-resource languages and communities.
>>>
>>> Christophe, thanks again for persisting in this thread (and planning a
>>> range of activities around Wikimania!)  I see many people engaged with
>>> these topics who don't want to engage in discussion about angst over
>>> current problems, but are deeply enthusiastic about, and actively engaged
>>> in, building new things / working on new possibilities.
>>>
>>> Brooke writes:
>>> > Wikimedia is a participatory system... We have to put in the work
>>> ourselves.
>>>
>>> Absolutely.  The civilized netizen's first duty is to be always
>>> prepared to rewrite <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco> anything
>>> truly important from scratch.
>>>
>>> Galder writes:
>>>
>>>> One correction: I'm not a trustee!
>>>>
>>>
>>> But we surely trust you, including to make the world's best Txikipedia.
>>>
>>> We have many good ideas and talented people in the community.  We do
>>> need persistent spaces to discuss and make plans, in part because in
>>> the last growth spurt we fragmented communication channels across hundreds
>>> of pages, sites, lists, and apps.  Recombining many of those streams would
>>> be good for coherence and continuity.
>>>
>>> But our wikis are better suited to experimenting, reverting, and
>>> iterating than distilling large-scale consensus. Quick decisions by
>>> ~sortition (or by the first few people to turn up) help polish the roughest
>>> edges. Having spaces that push back against the iron law
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy> of oligarchy and
>>> preserve freedom to experiment is essential, even when simultaneously
>>> waiting for delayed consensus.
>>>
>>> Our strongest shared identity is as people committed to building
>>> freely-licensed knowledge together, in every language, accessible to the
>>> entire world. More people care about this today than ever before. We simply
>>> have to make space for it again.
>>>
>>> 𝐖♡, SJ
>>>
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