OPEN

It is hard to believe that less than a decade ago, Wikipedia didn’t exist. Now, 330 million people use Wikipedia every month, making it the world’s most frequently used online knowledge resource. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have built and maintained the different Wikimedia projects in the last eight years.

Although we have accomplished a lot, we still have far to go to achieve our vision of a world in which every single person can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge. How can we build on our success to overcome the challenges that lie ahead? Less than a fifth of the world’s population has access to the Internet. While hundreds of thousands of volunteers have contributed to Wikimedia projects today, they are not fully representative of the diversity of the world. Many choices lie ahead as we work to build a world wide movement to create and share free knowledge.

We are starting a year-long process to develop a strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement. Specifically, we are trying to understand:

• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be in five years?
• How do we get from here to there?

Help us find the answers to these questions. Explore them, break them down, reflect on what they mean for our vision and our values. Here are five ways you can help:

• Join a task force. We are organizing task forces that will explore different topics and produce a set of recommendations related to them. Apply to participate, or form your own ad-hoc groups.
• Let us know how you can help. If you are an expert in one of the subjects we are dealing with, add yourself to our expert database. This will allow task forces and other volunteers to reach you with questions, and you can respond when you have time.
• Publish your ideas. Write a proposal on the strategy wiki, and help organize and improve the proposals that are already there. Post ideas on your blog, on mailing lists, and on social networks like Identi.ca, Twitter, and Facebook. Tag those posts with #wikimedia or link to them on the strategy wiki so that others can see them.
• Host conversations about strategy. In order to develop good plans, we need broad participation. There is no way that the task forces can talk to everyone who has ideas about Wikimedia’s future. This is where you can help: host your own conversations about strategy, in person or online, and publish the results on the strategy wiki. There are templates and tools for hosting strategy sessions on the strategy wiki.
• Talk to us. Give feedback to the strategy team. Tell us your ideas, your hopes, your fears, your goals for the projects. Add feedback to the strategy wiki, or send an email to strategy@wikimedia.org.

If you cannot participate, will you consider making a donation to support Wikimedia? A donation will directly support our global free knowledge programs. We also need volunteers to contribute to our projects, improve our technology, and support our work in other ways.

This century has presented us with an amazing opportunity to transform our civilization, and to create equal opportunities for all human beings. We hope you can join us in our work of sharing knowledge with every person on the planet.

Yours,
Michael Snow
Chair, Wikimedia Foundation
Jimmy Wales
Founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation

Volunteer Now »

Yep – just sharing this in its entirety.

Take a step back and think for a moment about Wikipedia is, what free information at the point of need means and can mean for our future as a species.

I think it is something I want to be a part of. How about you?