On 3/17/2011 6:43 AM, elisabeth bauer wrote:
2011/3/17 Carol Moore in DCcontactme@carolmoore.net:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap/outreach_letters My first draft of any outreach email letter - which I sent an earlier version of to a bunch of women with no positive feedback.
What do you mean by this? Did you get any feedback at all?
**If I remember correctly, the response was two "Good idea, but I'm too busy" messages. Like all forms of advertising, it is necessary to repeat the message before people pay attention.
So actually there need to be a series of messages for such group lists over a period of a month or so. Whether they are all people you know personally, partially know (as in case of two different lists I sent to) or not know at all. Say, one introductory and explicit one like the draft I put up. Two short, wow, look at this article I worked on on wikipedia (in their area of interest) with general encouragement to edit. (I.e., obviously not as canvassing to get support on a disputed article). Maybe mixed into some discussion on some topic. And then another one that again encourages them in a short friendly way. Plus drop in links to various articles on topics discussed from time to time after that. Maybe even put it in one's tag line "I edit wikipedia! Can you guess my handle?" or whatever.
So waiting for others to comment or come up with different approaches before sending out such outreach emails more widely
I don't think outreach letters, however well formulated, will motivate many people to try editing Wikipedia. If you know the women you sent your letter to, why not rather invite them to an edit wikipedia party?
Great idea! Is there a link to show how to do that? I can imagine a few of us getting together and, after running through the basics, having TOO much fun with some article, meat puppeting away. (Especially if someone brings booze.) So good to have clear guidelines on how to do that as a party - but not party too hard! :-)
greetings, elian