Today, together, the Wikimedia community did a really powerful thing. We raised an incredible amount of awareness about an issue critical to achieving our vision.
More importantly, we demonstrated once again the power of our community model. The thousands of you who participated in the community RfC. The volunteer administrators who helped crystallize our consensus. The incredible design, engineering and operations teams which implemented massive changes to world’s #5 web site less than 30 hours after the community’s decision. The editors who honed messaging. The lawyers who helped navigate so many tricky issues. The communications teams globally who spoke and wrote hundreds of times in support of our goals today and of our broader mission.
I have never been more proud to be a part of our community. Today we came together. Staff, volunteer, it didn’t matter. We all did it together. We are all the community.
Our work isn’t done. The principles (and money) behind SOPA/PIPA won’t just go away. Politics doesn’t work like that. And we have a few other challenges. Getting free knowledge to more people (500 million people a month is nice, but it’s just a start). Getting and keeping more new editors. Seeding Wikimedia communities in places they haven’t developed on their own. And many more.
But those are for tomorrow.
Today, let’s celebrate the fact that, eleven years after the birth of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement is stronger than ever.
-s
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Stuart West
Proud Wikimedia Board Member
stu<at>wikimedia.org
stu.blog 