August 2010
I'm writing you on behalf of everyone associated with the Wikimedia movement: the volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and staff, our donors and readers. On behalf of everyone in the Wikimedia movement, I want to thank you for helping create the new Wikimedia strategic plan.
What the strategy participants have accomplished together over the past year is amazing. Strategy is normally developed behind closed doors, by a small group of specialists. Before our project, nobody had ever tried to create a strategic plan in public, on a wiki. It was a risky thing to do: it could easily have failed. But it didn't: amazingly, it worked. Since July 2009, more than a thousand people have helped to create the plan. And the result is terrific.
I want to thank you. There's an old joke, that Wikipedia could never work in theory; it only works in practice. And really, the Wikimedia projects are successful because of people like you. Your contribution matters, and I'm grateful for it.
Over the next five years, I'm confident that the Wikimedia movement is going to benefit greatly from the work done in the strategy project. It's going to help us get closer to our final goal: a world in whih every human being has access to the sum total of all human knowledge. That's an enduring legacy, and you've helped to make it happen.
Thank you.
Sue Gardener
Executive Director
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