On 11/2/12 6:43 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:
If you live outside of Washington, D.C. and New York
City vicinities,
the Wikipedia world in the US is a VERY lonely place. Perhaps not for
everyone, but for many more than you'd think. I meet Wikipedians in
the US who have no clue there is a grant program. Like some countries
in global south - I know Wikipedians in Chicago who attend meet-up's
with 2 people on a regular basis. I mean Chicago? Really? Yup.
True to some extent, but I think a lot of U.S. Wikipedians are active,
just in a more decentralized, "movement-lite" manner where they stick to
editing and ignore the meta-stuff. Heck, I've been editing en.wiki for
~10 years, and have made >40,000 edits, so am "active" in a sense, but I
didn't know there was a grant program either. And I've been to maybe 3
meetups ever! I'm even more "meta-active" than most Wikipedians I know,
having gone to *any* meetups, and being subscribed to a mailing list.
The other Wikipedia-editing folks I know tend to just see themselves as
people who edit Wikipedia in an area they're interested in (mostly math,
cs, or history), but don't want the commitment of joining a Movement or
organization or social scene. It's sort of a different approach to being
a "Wikipedian" I guess: a lightweight commitment where it's just a thing
you can do, if you have some spare time on a weekend and find an
interesting subject to improve.
Now as for whether that's more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere,
and/or why that'd be, I have no idea.
-Mark