The Wikimedia Foundation is developing a strategic plan for the Foundation for the next three to five years. The process was announced in a Foundation Board resolution, and was then elaborated in messages posted to the Foundation-l mailing list. The process will officially kick off in July, and will involve a series of open working groups.
To support the strategic planning process, the Foundation intends to hire three new paid positions on short-term contracts: a Project Manager, a Research Analyst, and a Facilitator. These are all one-year contract positions, from July 2009 to July 2010, and they have now been posted on the Wikimedia Foundation site.
The Society for Neuroscience, a professional organization for neuroscientists, has launched a Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative and is calling on its members to contribute. The society released a 10-page contributor guide that summarizes how Wikipedia works and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of important neuroscience articles. The society is also trying to recruit content facilitators to lead the editing efforts in 12 different topic areas within neuroscience, based on the Neuroscience#Major branches section of the neuroscience article.
The Project Overview describes two phases of the initiative. In the now-active first phase, the society is recruiting contributors and will also "collaborate with the Neuroscience Information Framework, an NIH-funded initiative that developed NeuroLex". The second phase, scheduled to begin in the fall of 2009, will bring Wikipedia work into graduate and undergraduate neuroscience courses.
The monthly summary of Wikipedia policy and guideline updates is available for April. These include:
Discuss this story