I totally agree. It would be good though to have some WMF sponsored swag on hand for minor prizes that the chapters could give out for unusual contributions that pop up at local edit-a-thons though. I am not sure you would need to track it heavily on the financial side - I was thinking along the lines of some "real life barnstars" that could be sent from the head office, decorated with various jargon-like "Wikipedia haiku"s that might appeal to the hard-core Wikipedian.
On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 12:57 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 19 March 2015 at 00:52, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Therefore, I propose that someone try some editathons where half the tickets are auctioned, the other half are raffled, and the Foundation
pays
to support them if and only if the auction fails to pay all of the
expenses
in advance, and then only the difference. This will allow them to become more exclusive, but not completely exclusive, (...)
I'm a bit lost here. At the moment, editathons are (almost?) always free to attend, though some are tacked onto a paying event (eg a conference); when "ticketed", this is usually to control numbers when space is limited. This model works pretty well and makes them popular events; indeed, they're one of our most visible public activities.
I don't see where the benefit would come from selling - or raffling, auctioning, etc- tickets. It would invariably deter attendees and reduce uptake; why would making them more exclusive be a *good* thing? We want as many people as possible to attend, and most do not run at absolute capacity.
This looks like a problem rather than a solution, even assuming we need a solution at all. Yes, it would be nice if they were cost-neutral - but the cost of running editathons is, in my experience, not high. There are probably easier savings to be made by WMF.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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