I've been thinking some about community-building in Wikibooks - I think it's among one of the more important tasks we need to face. To get the ball rolling somewhat, Whiteknight and I were tossing around some ideas earlier - one that we agreed on was that having a meeting to get wider input and brainstorming on issues of community-building would be beneficial for Wikibooks. I had suggested either setting up a Skype conference, or we could just organize a time to get people together in #wikibooks on irc.freenode.net. We'd set up a roster of topics to cover and just fire around ideas for a while. I'd like to invite anyone interested in particpating to do so - including people from outside Wikibooks: if you're involved with a like-minded organization, or if you're involved with community-building within Wikimedia or related projects, or if you're just interested in listening, it'd be great to have you join us. If you're interested, please reply with any comments, but in particular include: * Whether you'd prefer to have the meeting via Skype or in IRC * What timezone & availability you have (I'm thinking next Friday or Saturday, probably) * Any further ideas you have for community-building in Wikibooks
To get us started, Whiteknight and I were discussing reaching out to universities and other charities for book donations on specific topics (such as a book on cancer from an organization which deals with breast cancer) as well as recruiting editors from their volunteer pools. Suggestions for similar topics to discuss would of course be welcome. I hope to hear back from some Wikibooks regulars, but also people from the wider Wikimedia community. I've sent this to both textbook-l and foundation-l and (I hope) I've set reply-to to textbook-l. Thanks, -Mike.lifeguard ---- Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm
Thanks for the email Mike, I was planning to send out something similar but you beat me to it. I definitely would like to have a meeting of Wikibookians and other well-wishers, and I would like to make it a regular thing. Even if we only met monthly or bimonthly for 30 minutes, that would be enough to get some dedicated communication going. Of course, I would like longer meetings more frequently then that, but I'd be happy with anything we could get.
Getting more participants is paramount, I think. Of course, there is a symbiotic relationship between books and contributors. More of one will lead to more of the other, which leads to more of the first, etc. My strategy has been to try and solicit book donations, which will generate press and enthusiasm among participants. There has been only mild success in this area, I think we're limited by a lack of advertising: Not enough people know about our accomplishments, and we need to get more proactive about things if we want to start turning a "profit" of contributors.
Working up partnerships with other charitable organizations would be great. We could get groups to donate books to us, or get their volunteers to write books on our website, etc. If we could tie it in to a relevant event, that would just generate more press. One of my ideas would be getting a book about breast cancer going during "National Breast Cancer Month" or something like that. You could repeat this with any other group that has a "...awareness day" or "...awareness month" and information worth sharing.
Anyway, I would like to schedule some kind of online meeting. IRC is preferred by me, but Skype works also. If we can't find a single time when many people can attend, we could just schedule multiple meetings and expect partial turnout for each. We just need a way to discuss ideas for growth, concerns about current on-wiki events, etc.
I'd love to hear what other people think about this.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm wrote:
I've been thinking some about community-building in Wikibooks - I think it's among one of the more important tasks we need to face. To get the ball rolling somewhat, Whiteknight and I were tossing around some ideas earlier - one that we agreed on was that having a meeting to get wider input and brainstorming on issues of community-building would be beneficial for Wikibooks. I had suggested either setting up a Skype conference, or we could just organize a time to get people together in #wikibooks on irc.freenode.net. We'd set up a roster of topics to cover and just fire around ideas for a while. I'd like to invite anyone interested in particpating to do so - including people from outside Wikibooks: if you're involved with a like-minded organization, or if you're involved with community-building within Wikimedia or related projects, or if you're just interested in listening, it'd be great to have you join us. If you're interested, please reply with any comments, but in particular include:
- Whether you'd prefer to have the meeting via Skype or in IRC
- What timezone & availability you have (I'm thinking next Friday or Saturday, probably)
- Any further ideas you have for community-building in Wikibooks
To get us started, Whiteknight and I were discussing reaching out to universities and other charities for book donations on specific topics (such as a book on cancer from an organization which deals with breast cancer) as well as recruiting editors from their volunteer pools. Suggestions for similar topics to discuss would of course be welcome. I hope to hear back from some Wikibooks regulars, but also people from the wider Wikimedia community. I've sent this to both textbook-l and foundation-l and (I hope) I've set reply-to to textbook-l. Thanks,
-Mike.lifeguard
Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
Andrew Whitworth wrote: [snip]
Anyway, I would like to schedule some kind of online meeting. IRC is preferred by me, but Skype works also. If we can't find a single time when many people can attend, we could just schedule multiple meetings and expect partial turnout for each. We just need a way to discuss ideas for growth, concerns about current on-wiki events, etc.
I'd love to hear what other people think about this.
I'd prefer IRC to Skype for a couple of stupid reasons.
First, Skype is a pain to set up on Linux. It is incredibly difficult to get it to take input from a microphone.
Second, I don't like to run Skype at home because we use it extensively at work (chat mode), and whenever I "go online" I get a barrage of work-related messages.
IRC is much better for me as well... I've yet to actually use skype.
-johnny.
________________________________ From: j.w. thomas jthomas@bittware.com To: Wikimedia textbook discussion textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 8:36:02 PM Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks community-building meeting
Andrew Whitworth wrote: [snip]
Anyway, I would like to schedule some kind of online meeting. IRC is preferred by me, but Skype works also. If we can't find a single time when many people can attend, we could just schedule multiple meetings and expect partial turnout for each. We just need a way to discuss ideas for growth, concerns about current on-wiki events, etc.
I'd love to hear what other people think about this.
I'd prefer IRC to Skype for a couple of stupid reasons.
First, Skype is a pain to set up on Linux. It is incredibly difficult to get it to take input from a microphone.
Second, I don't like to run Skype at home because we use it extensively at work (chat mode), and whenever I "go online" I get a barrage of work-related messages.
Hi! :)
I'd like to attend, too, via IRC please.
German Wikibooks has the same problems I think. Just yesterday a new user asked me about activity and wondered how German Wikibooks could be on rank 2 of the Wikibooks projects with that little activity. ^^
-- heuler06
PS: I have central European time (CET = UTC + 1). But if the meeting is not around 2 or 3 am CET I will be there. ;)
OK, it looks like we're using IRC for this meeting. Being selfish, I'm going to set a time that I'm not away on vacation (epic skiing begins Saturday!)... how does Friday, February 20, 2009 at 20:00:00 UTC sound? A couple of timezones for those who don't live in Greenwich: *3PM for PA, US *9PM for Berlin, Germany *8PM for London, UK *7AM for Sydney, AUS
I've set up [[Wikibooks/Community-building]] (on Meta) for some organizational stuff, like what we plan to discuss. For the first one, we should try to keep things open-ended & do more detailed planning for later sessions if we need to. If you want to claim some time to talk about a particular idea, that'd be the place to do it.
I hope that works for everyone, or at least most people.
Go team! -Mike ---- Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm
20 UTC is fine for me, or earlier otherwise. Any later and other events from my afternoon (commute, dinner, etc) start to interfere. 7AM seems pretty lousy for the Australians, but there's no way for us to make everybody happy with an event like this. The next meeting can be rotated so other people can have the better hours (if anybody from that side of the world is interested in attending at all).
--Andrew Whitworth
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 6:40 PM, Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm wrote:
OK, it looks like we're using IRC for this meeting. Being selfish, I'm going to set a time that I'm not away on vacation (epic skiing begins Saturday!)... how does Friday, February 20, 2009 at 20:00:00 UTC sound? A couple of timezones for those who don't live in Greenwich: *3PM for PA, US *9PM for Berlin, Germany *8PM for London, UK *7AM for Sydney, AUS
I've set up [[Wikibooks/Community-building]] (on Meta) for some organizational stuff, like what we plan to discuss. For the first one, we should try to keep things open-ended & do more detailed planning for later sessions if we need to. If you want to claim some time to talk about a particular idea, that'd be the place to do it.
I hope that works for everyone, or at least most people.
Go team!
-Mike
Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard@fastmail.fm
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
Mike.lifeguard wrote:
OK, it looks like we're using IRC for this meeting. Being selfish, I'm going to set a time that I'm not away on vacation (epic skiing begins Saturday!)... how does Friday, February 20, 2009 at 20:00:00 UTC sound? A couple of timezones for those who don't live in Greenwich: *3PM for PA, US *9PM for Berlin, Germany *8PM for London, UK *7AM for Sydney, AUS
Fridays and Saturdays are bad for me. I wasn't going to say anything, but then reasoned that if I were the only one silently bowing out, it would not be a good thing. So... I will politely bow out, but not in silence.
On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 9:42 AM, j.w. thomas jthomas@bittware.com wrote:
Mike.lifeguard wrote:
OK, it looks like we're using IRC for this meeting. Being selfish, I'm going to set a time that I'm not away on vacation (epic skiing begins Saturday!)... how does Friday, February 20, 2009 at 20:00:00 UTC sound? A couple of timezones for those who don't live in Greenwich: *3PM for PA, US *9PM for Berlin, Germany *8PM for London, UK *7AM for Sydney, AUS
Fridays and Saturdays are bad for me. I wasn't going to say anything, but then reasoned that if I were the only one silently bowing out, it would not be a good thing. So... I will politely bow out, but not in silence.
It's definitely good that you speak up, we do want to schedule things so that the most people can possibly attend. Plus, if we have lots of people who can't attend on one day/time, we want to either reschedule the meeting or make sure the next meeting is at a different time when a different group of people can attend.
If anybody else can't make it on Friday, please say something so we can gauge what attendance will be like and maybe move the meeting to a more accessible time.
I don't want to move the timeframe up too far, because then we're going to be losing people because of too little notice. However, Thursday at 20UTC should probably be enough time if more people would prefer that date. I have a suspicion that weekends are going to be universally bad, but I may be wrong about that.
--Andrew Whitworth
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org