Just wanted to draw an attention to a series of actions we started on ru.wp which are known as "Thematic weeks", [[:ru:Википедия:Проект:Тематическая неделя]]. It might be that some of the bigger projects have smth like this or discussed smth similar at some point, but at least the feedback I have got so far was encouraging and I believe it could be interesting for some of you to know what it is about.

The idea is to suggest a broad topic which can be of interest to a broad class of editors, and within roughly a week's time (last time we have taken two weekends and a week in between) to create new articles, improve stub articles and possibly bring some selected articles to the featured level. We had two "weeks" so far, Swedish week (organized spontaneously when we have taken over sv.wp in terms of the number of articles) and Bulgarian week, since we previously added a large number of bot-generated stubs on Bulgarian towns which caused some negative response, and we wanted to improve those stubs). We are currently planning Austrian week sometime in July. It turned out that an event attracts many editors with very different interests and background. Some write articles on history, some on sport, some on industry, some on music, and so on. It also creates cohesion and enthusiastic collective work. During both Swedish and Bulgarian weeks we created a number of articles which are better than corresponding articles in Swedish and Bulgarian Wikipedias, and a few which are currently the best in all projects. The event also attracts interest to the culture of the corresponding country or topic or whatever.

We are still looking for the optimal way to stage the event, but it looks like the best interval between the "weeks" is about a month (with possible exceptions of summer months). This month is spent for preparation of the next week, i.e. finding the list of articles to create/to improve. In both Swedish and Bulgarian topics we received a considerable help from corresponding Wikipedias. In particular, Lars Aronsson has not only made a lot of suggestions, but also helped actually edit articles, and without him we would probably never come to the idea of organizing regular events. Also it is good of course to have people able to read the corresponding language at least a bit, and to advertise the event in a proper way.

We have created about 200 new articles during the Swedish week and about 150 during the Bulgarian week, and we also try to accent the quality as much as possible, improving existing articles.

I was in particular rather sceptical in the beginning, thinking this was a one-time splash of enthusiasm impossible to reproduce, but so far the feedback from the participants was very positive, and they contribute much in the planning. I think if we do not overdo, the event will go on for quite some time.

Cheers Yaroslav