Tshirts are good, but you do have to get every size, and invariably there’ll be loads of “extra extra” sizes left over. Something that’d encourage people to upload to commons would be good though – I did get a WM Commons Christmas card last year from Mr Forrester! Postcards would be cheap, easy to make, and we’ve got some wonderful pictures. But would they be good at getting people to upload?

PS – I’m loving these ideas. Flip-flops especially!

From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Harry Mitchell
Sent: 12 September 2011 19:03
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Suggestions for Merchandise

How about t-shirts or something that encourage people to upload their images to Commons? I've long thought that more people *would* if they knew about it.

Harry

---

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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> 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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