Criticizing Wikimedia and Wikipedia

Here we go again. Another year over. The Wikimedia community is evolving steady, but slowly in my opinion. Too many “nayers” (read people, who say “no”). They spoil everything. You come with an idea, due to consensus-based decision process – nothing happens, because within 10 people you always find someone who says “no”. Did you experience it too? This is a way to hell.

Wikimedia Foundation staff does not seem to be helpful a lot. From my point of view, they are watching everything from above, but one can not really see concrete results behing them apart from few software improovements that are desparately needed since ages.

The Strategic planning project was quite a funny experience. It was a big halo when launched and it did collect great ton of ideas (god thanks for them!). After the ideas were collected, “Call for action” came. Few central notices on main wikis. Some traffic. Strategic plan for 2010-15 was compiled from the content. The document is ok, makes common sence and officialy outlined a way for next years. But I still miss that “action” to come.

Here we go. I decided to publish outside Wikimedia, because I think this will hopefully bring more than when a brilliant idea is lost in all the wiki garbage. In my opinion the main problem is that Wikimedia is an extremely diverse environment, where you barely solve a thing unless you do it yourself. And doing stuff on your own is not always an easy task – no, it is mostly a ridiculously difficult task, because you need an extreme intellectual property in your head. Simply put, you need to be a half-god to do what you actually would like to.

My last bigger part besides regular editing of articles was the involvement in the Strategy planning project. This project aimed to create a 5-year “business plan” on where all the Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikinews etc.) should go. Unfortunately, the strategy website was yet another regular MediaWiki software, with which thousands of new users struggle at Wikipedia. Despite this hard interface to work with, quite a few (1000+) proposals for changes and new projects were posted to the site. I admire all the brave people who fought themselves through the wiki and left a piece of text behind…

I am editing Wikimedia projects since about 2006. I have been long enough around to see the projects grow and stagnate. I still struggle with my participation, it is simply quite hard for me to find my way through. Through my participation on the Strategy project I was invited to Wikimedia 2010 in Gdaňsk (Poland). I did not go, because I did not think it would help me much.