Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Finally, I think there is the matter of the "language compactness". And
> this to me is most persuasive. For the most part, non-English languages
> are more "compact" than English. For an extreme example, consider
> Dutch: virtually all Dutch speakers can make it to anywhere in Holland
> within 2-3 hours by train. This means that when a meetup happens,
> everyone who is anyone is likely to be there.
Fun fact: the geographical catchment area for even the "local" SF Bay
Area meetups is not much smaller than the entire Netherlands. So
logistically, organizing even a local meetup in the hypothetical case of
people all working on SF-specific subjects is about on the same level of
difficulty as organizing a Netherlands-wide meetup. Never mind even
organizing a meeting of something as geographically gigantic, yet
content-wise still pretty specific, as Wikiproject California...
[Numbers: People come to SF meetups from about an 80-mile radius in all
directions, vaguely delimited by Sacramento in the northeast and
Monterey/Hollister in the south, forming a half-circle of about 10,000
sq miles---the Netherlands is about 16,000 sq miles, and has a lot more
trains within that area.]
So, yeah, I think that's a big part of it. If I think of the top 20
people I've interacted with on the English Wikipedia and wouldn't mind
meeting with in person, they're on three different continents, and even
the ones in North America range from Los Angeles to Montreal. So I tend
to treat local meetups as just a social opportunity only marginally
connected with what I "really" do on the wikis.
-Mark