@Wikipedia; the dread that is one identity that binds us all

On Twitter Janeen Uzzell praised a blogpost that is the Wikimedia Foundation All Hands: 2020 Sketchbook and indeed it informs about current thinking, most of it is great and still, I find it absolutely terrifying.

There are several great sketches in there. Katherine Maher gave an asperational talk, I love it for Wikimedia to be seen as infrastructural, inclusive and even that that what we do does not have to be in our projects. Important is that she mentions "support systems" because they provide the input for much of our processes.

Important is the page on security and risk. All the important concepts are mentioned among them; likelihood, relative impact and management preparedness but also "plan for and mitigate risks".

What truly makes me uneasy is when it is said that we aim to clarify who we are in the world in one brand, Wikipedia. The idea is that when we are all branded as Wikipedia, things are likely to become easier. When you check out the website brandingwikipedia.org there is no argument; Wikipedia is free knowledge. When you check out what it is to do

• project and improve our reputation
• support our movement/growth
• be opt-in

In the abstract Wikipedia IS wonderful, in reality the concept of what Wikipedia is, is largely determined by the English Wikipedia. It it is fiercely independent, it is hardly inclusive and it has largely determined the maneuvering space the Wikimedia Foundation has. In order to "plan for and mitigate risks", I will mention several reasons why I am anxious because of this branding initiative.

• In the Commons OTRS they use English Wikipedia notions to determine if pictures can stay or are to be removed. Commons provides a service to all Wikimedia projects
• The query functionality for Commons is maintained by people from the Foundation. For more than half a year it puts a strain on the growth and usefulness of Wikidata. Tools have become glacially slow and often malfunction because an edit is not available when needed in further processing. It is not known what the position of the WMF director is in this. 
• This is about marketing and we have never done much marketing for any of our projects. What we have done was reactive and has been all about the English Wikipedia. Now consider this:
• Wikisource, we do not know what is available at what quality, it is all about editing and not about having people read the finished article, consequently we do not value Wikisource and fulfill its potential.
• So far Commons has always been English only. With the support of the "depicts" functionality, there is room to enable and market  a multilingual search engine. In the spirit of "it is a Wiki", it serves as an open invite to add labels in any and all of our languages and open up what Commons has to offer. It is how to market free content the Wiki way.
• In Wikidata we know many more concepts than what we know in any individual Wikipedias. We could use our data and inform as we have done for years in multilingual tools like Reasonator. This is an example in English Russian Chinese and Kannada. NB it takes additional labels to improve results and consequently this is the inclusive approach.
• When Wikipedians were willing to reflect on their own performance, we could help them solve their false friends issues.

One sketch in the sketchbook is a presentation by Jess Wade. It says that even Academia is biased. As the Wikimedia community we do not need to be subservient to any bias and most certainly not the bias that Wikipedia has brought us.