Addressing Wikimedia’s strategic direction

For the first time, Wikimedia sees itself as a social movement and wants to have an effect on society beyond just the encyclopaedia: We want to become the essential infrastructure for the Free Knowledge ecosystem. Anyone who shares our vision can join us. We place particular focus on the idea of “knowledge as a service” and “knowledge equity”.

Knowledge as a service: We will become a platform providing the entire world with interfaces and communities for accessing Free Knowledge. The goal remains to collect different types of Free Knowledge and make it available to as many organisations, people and machines as possible.

Knowledge equity means that we put more effort into addressing people and knowledge that were previously excluded due to power structures and privilege as well as political and social hurdles.

This strategic direction was supported by an overwhelming majority of Wikimedia organisations, including the full support of Wikimedia Deutschland. The task of all those involved in the Wikimedia Movement is now to find a way, together with our partners, of integrating this new direction into our daily work. Change is afoot, and Wikimedia Deutschland wants to play an active role in the international debate during the next phase of the process.