On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that chaps in SF have not concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative approach. Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful here as we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and exploring the new world that smartphones and 3g open out to them.

These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about.

Fair enough. And that might have been more of my point that this might not be the stage to boast about yet, along with de-prioritize social media for actual ground-level community work.

Second, the metrics- acquisition cost and time spent as Gautam suggested are indeed more critical here. The metrics aren't hard to analyze, they were in the original email itself, instead of looking at retweets, number of likes or members, look at how many people edit, how many actually stick around. That was, what I went by at an acquisition/conversion rate of 8%.

Third, as Ravishankar asks - if it is working why not try it? - it has been tried now, and it's not working so well, was my point. The entire result of the exercise could be imitated in a single workshop or mid-size meetup in 1 day. I am not saying it is not something to keep trying, but something not focusing on as a priority. This might be something to do in addition to regular activities, but not spend already limited resources on. The priorities might need to be re-aligned. That was more or less, my motivation.

Regards
Theo