Barry Newstead wrote:
As I have mentioned in the past, we have a lot of
momentum in India but we
have a long way to go to achieve our full potential as a movement. Indians
represent 4% of the world¹s Internet users today (and this share is
growing), yet they only represent 1.5% of page edits on Wikipedia. We should
be able to rapidly increase this share - across all projects - and expand
readership in a corresponding fashion.
To what end? What's the virtue of going after India?
Hisham¹s title will be Consultant, India National
Programs. He will report
to me. His role will be to design and implement specific pilot programs
that encourage many more Indians to become contributors to our projects in
Indic languages as well as English.
Is this position a staffer or a contractor?
As a newcomer to the Wikimedia movement, Hisham¹s
first task will be to
deepen his understanding of us: our history, goals, values, culture and
mission. To that end, he will be spending the coming weeks (not months!) in
learning mode: Hisham and I will be meeting with community members in
Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore on Feb 23-25 and then Hisham will join community
meetings across the country as they occur. Hisham will also spend time in
San Francisco with the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as with
other like-minded individuals and organizations and he will attend the
chapter conference in Berlin.
So Hisham has never edited a Wikimedia wiki? I'm curious how much of a
factor "having a familiarity with Wikimedia" was in choosing an individual
for this role. Can you elaborate?
Hisham will be creating a workspace on strategy wiki
where he will share
what he is learning and develop the core elements of the action plan going
forward. We encourage active community engagement on this wiki. We aim to
move to action quickly and welcome input and guidance from across the
community.
The strategy wiki was intended to be used to create a five-year strategic
plan for Wikimedia. He should be using Meta-Wiki for cross-project
coordination, right?
MZMcBride