---

From: George Watson <george.watson@wikinewsie.org>
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, 12 September 2011, 18:44
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Suggestions for Merchandise



> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Richard Symonds <chasemewiki@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That said, we can worry about the specific legalities later - I don't want
> > to get bogged down in them now.
>
> The idea that there may even be any sort of legal dimension hadn't
> occurred in even the most over-active and alert synapses of my fevered
> brain! So, I don't know how I managed to plant that seed...
>
> No, I was just trying to picture the merchandise, so whether it was
> going to have a UK mention on it or just be plain Wikimedia was about
> picturing it.
>
> > I'm hoping for some blue-sky ideas. If you
> > could hand something to someone in the street - one thing - that would make
> > them edit Wikipedia, what would you like it to be? Something that makes the
> > person go "hmmm..." or "ooh!"...
>
> WereSpiel's ideas of mousemats and mugs are tried and tested but I
> think none the worse for that. If it were within our abilities to
> revolutionise merchandising I suspect we'd be typing our emails on
> solid gold keyboards.
>
> But, OK, blue-sky and would really "make me edit"?
>
> I think the one thing that would most make me want to edit would be to
> see something wrong or that I disagreed with. So it could be a typo.
> You'd have a badge saying "this is a badje [edit]" or "this is a
> quayring [edit]" or "this is a mugg [edit]".
>
> Or, more provocatvely, "Margaret Thatcher was the world's most
> compassionate woman. [edit]" or "Wayne Rooney deserves every penny he
> gets. [edit]". The trick with those, though, is identifying people who
> are likely to disagree.
>
> Some places do promotional USB drives now. I'm trying to think what
> one could pre-load them with, but I'm coming up blank. Maybe it could
> have all of Wikipedia's unusual articles on as seen here...?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WEIRD
>
> Bod
>
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> wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
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> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>

The biggest problem with that is NPOV - something like that implies that
WMUK supports the opposite position (i.e., Thatcher lacked compassion,
Rooney doesn't deserve his money). That perhaps isn't what we want.

It might also be a good idea to look at producing merchandise for other
projects as well - they could do with the exposure more than enWP, I'm
sure.

--
Regards,

George Watson
<http://dendodge.me>


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