The Wikimedia Foundation (parent organization of Wikipedia) has shared a five-year strategic plan that outlines the group's key priorities and intended milestones. The plan was developed through a collaborative effort that began in 2009 and involved more than 1,000 participants worldwide.
The group's main objectives through 2015 are to stabilize Wikimedia's technical, financial and organizational infrastructure, increase the number of users and editors, improve the quality of articles and encourage innovation. More specifically, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking to:
- Increase the total number of people served to 1 billion
- Increase the amount of information we offer to 50 million Wikipedia articles
- Ensure information is high quality by increasing the percentage of material reviewed to be of high or very high quality by 25 percent
- Encourage readers to become contributors by increasing the number of total editors per month who made >5 edits to 200,000
- Support healthy diversity in the editing community by doubling the percentage of female editors to 25 percent and increasing the number of Global South editors to 37 percent
That's an ambitious roadmap when you look at Wikipedia's current stats. The site serves between 400 and 500 million unique users per month and has 18 million articles between all supported languages. As of December, the site had some 80,000 "active editors" – those who make five or more edits a month.