Andrew,
- The intern result was sad - uni students are given free access to all sorts of things by the university such as Factiva and academic journals in a range of subjects, as well as hard copy stuff in the university library, and they're a goldmine of information which I have found extremely useful in my own writing. (And US$40 per week for writing articles is pretty good!)
On the contrary my dear, I find the intern result was not sad. I find that they are not as interested when offered money than they are when being offered incentive of recognition and competition. I forgot to mentioned the comparison on the previous email.
Paid USD 165/months * 3 interns = result 6 stubs/ complete article/ month Competition name recognition + Europe trip * 87 participants = result 1,386 articles both fix, complete, stub or made new in 72 days (+ around 150+ articles did not met competition quality and contestant dropped off)
Don't take my word for it for yourself: http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Kategori:Kontribusi_Peserta_BP2010 (only 17 participants made it until the end, and this 17 participant have a good stomach, because they can handle me. Believe me if I said I can raise hell).
- The community is strange. Articles can get bogged down over trivial details e.g. fighting over one word or one line, to the extent that people are getting blocked and the article is protected. Also, over time, bureaucracies and strange rules have evolved which apparently serve no purpose and make no sense even to many established editors, let alone the new people who fall foul of them. Some new people also believe (I did too when I was new) that if an admin makes a change then you are not allowed to disagree - some admins do not help this by acting like they own the place. I imagine this would be even more of an issue when deference to authority is a cultural norm in the wider society.
- The community resist newcomers I think because of two things - firstly, newcomers think "this is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit" and fail to learn about the culture or the rules; secondly, newcomers challenge past compromises or ideas which may not stand up to common sense but are there because that is the way it "has always been". (This is exactly the same as in many other organisations)
Ah, That is how the competition is different, the new comers flooding in already "knowing" the rules. This apparently scared the shit out of the already established ones, because non of their power can be implemented to the new comers except "delete" (because the new comer have me <-- project director, I told the participants you will be swimming with the shark, in the end of the day let see how many of you survive and keep editing).
Worse of, the new comers (participants) edit in the speed of light, in better quality for some people that is already there for several years who at times all talks and no action.
- Interesting comments re more people = less power per person. If the chance to win is reduced then the incentive to compete is lower?
I'm sorry I didn't get this.
A few ideas, just thinking aloud:
* Maybe have someone in the chapter who is respected on WP who can watch from a distance, provide advice to new editors, and try to smooth things over if they get into unintentional conflict with the community.
This is done in the competition, the participants were monitored closely by comittee + me, erwin, gombang, panji (4 very active wikipedians) and all participants questions directed to one sysop only: tmoel.
- Find topics which are no longer maintained, or are not well covered. These are unlikely to have silly unwritten rules because there's no-one there at all. Find topics where only a few editors work, and engage directly with them (helps if you know them already) so the newcomers get a "soft landing" and can be given some idea of where their assistance would be useful.
This might work in EN WP, but remember ID WP only have 130 thousands plus articles. Our aim is to create new articles or fix old nonsense ones with references. Plus the danger of already decided topic is you limit participants interest to write subject that they like and you don't. For example, one participant actually only wrote singers and international models, which I think a complete crap, but I am there only making sure that the reference code are correct and interwiki etc, and restrain myself not meddling over content.