Hi, everyone.
To my mind, the way forward is to find a project at least some of you are excited about, rather than make progress on the formalities. That project can be anything at all -- organizing a regular meetup or edit-a-thon, a photowalk, finishing the school curriculum update project so we can produce a new offline Wikipedia file relevant for Kenya, etc.
It seems to me that there is no substitute for a core of _active editors_, on either English[1] or Swahili Wikipedia[1]. That core would be the basis for most of the other activities. For example, it's difficult to have effective mass outreach if we can't connect newbies to _local_ editors with at least some experience and interest in tutoring and supporting them on their first steps, especially on the English Wikipedia which has very high standards that are challenging and confusing to newbies.
So of the activities above, I would recommend thinking about ways to get _you_, the core volunteers, more motivated about, or more _comfortable_ with, actual editing. A first step would be to identify what is the main obstacle -- know-how, interesting topics to contribute on, access to source material, etc., and then we can all think about how to remove that obstacle.
Another fun thing to try, if you can have meetups somewhere with reasonable bandwidth (on campus? at the iHub?), you can schedule a Skype/Hangout with different communities/chapters around to world to exchange experience and learn about exciting ideas from other groups. In my experience, it's a fun and interesting way to get [re-]motivated, and I'm sure a number of our international colleagues would be happy to be the teleconferenced guests at those meetings.
Just my two cents. :)
Asaf
[1] English Wikipedia has about 35 active editors (5 edits a month or more) in Kenya. That's a good number to work with, but it seems to me (do correct me if I'm wrong) that most of those regular editors are outside this mailing list. If we could actually be reasonable certain we have some of those active editors interested in supporting additional editor recruitment, we'd be in good shape. Source: http://global-dev.wmflabs.org/graphs/enwp_ke_active (very slow load, sorry) [2] Swahil Wikipedia has about 3-4 active editors (5 edits a month or more) in Kenya, and about the same number in Tanzania. Source: http://global-dev.wmflabs.org/graphs/swwp_active (again, very slow)
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 5:48 AM, Limoke Oscar oslimoke@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Bence,
Thanks for your efforts and conecrns about the Chapter. Indeed we have heard some concerted efforts to resuscitate the chapter and although not much has come out of the meetings, we all are commited to saving the face and rescuing of the once vibrant Chapter.
We are still trying to figure out the best way . Perhaps restarting the whole membership thing has been mooted but nothing has come out yet. Would be best if we reassign new roles and ownershipsamongs ourselves to restart it.
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
Hi guys,
Sorry to bring up again, but it would be useful to know what others (e.g. Alex, Limoke, etc) think about the future of the chapter?
Best regards, Bence
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.comwrote:
Hi Abbas,
Thanks for responding. For the record, Limoke also responded quite quickly (apparently my letter ended up in the spam folder of many).
I was just about to reply Limoke that we would not want the efforts extended so far to go to waste, but we could only recommend the extension of recognition to Sue if there was some effort or plan in place to get the chapter together and back on track both in terms of the bureaucratic process of founding and as far as possible in having a strong, active community again.
Best regards, Bence
On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Abbas Mahmood abbasjnr@hotmail.comwrote:
Dear Bence,
(Sorry for the very delayed response: I had hoped that a more appropriate person would have made an ''official'' response.)
WRT the Chapter founding, I recently (last week, I think) connected Alex with the lawyer, to resume the legal process, which was halted after the misappropriation saga.
I don't expect Alex (and Alex can correct me if I'm wrong) to have made any progress thus far, as things are still moving sluggishly after the (organizational) hiatus.
Thanks, Abbas.
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-- Regards, Limoke Oscar, Dream.Believe.Become....a world of endless opportunities
"I will open the book. Its pages are blank. I am going to put words on them myself. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is the dawn of every New Day."
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