Hi Ingo,
Speaking as one of the initiators of WikiIndaba, I just wanted to clarify the choice of delegates.
You are right, many people that were invited had little to no understanding of editing Wikipedia. Because of the lamentable nature of the editing community across Africa, it was felt that in countries where little to no editing occurred but aligned activity (Creative Commons, open street map, etc.) was active, we needed to invite people who had already proven their commitment to the open movement and were part of an open community within their country. In some cases it has helped to galvanize a fledgling wikimedia community. In others, it wasn't so successful.
But it was early days, and we needed to start somewhere. Since WikiIndaba, wikimedia usergroup Tunisia has hosted WikiArabia, which has been very successful and has helped to galvanize the communities in North Africa and ME.
Warmest Isla
Excuse the brevity, sent from my iPhone.
On 15 Apr 2015, at 07:04, Ingo Koll ikoll@gmx.de wrote:
RE: African-Wikimedians Digest, Vol 7, Issue 60, Participation in WIkiindaba
I found it interesting to read the discussion linked in Asafs short post. As the Indaba was my first WMF-event ever I wondered about the several people I met who obviously never or only very rarely had ever done edits or written articles (one of my small-talk questions was: What do you write about?). Of course it is extremely impolite on such occasions to question the value of the presence of others with whom you share a desk or a meal so I just kept my thoughts to myself... But yeah, questions came..
From the reply I do not yet quite understand how everybody came about (a "country representative" whose en:account showed not 1 edit, as far as I remember...). Was there a certain number of edits to show, or edits over a certain period of time?
OK, interesting discussion
Cheers - Kipala
- Re: Wiki Indaba? (Asaf Bartov)
Another piece of context is the short discussion WMF and WMZA had over the grant report about the Indaba. It is available here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:PEG/WM_ZA/Wiki-Indaba-2014/Repor...
the report itself is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:PEG/WM_ZA/Wiki-Indaba-2014
Cheers,
A.
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