Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Preparing a proofreading contest for Wikisource's 10th aniversary - Wikimediauk-l

21 Nov 2013

Several replies here:-

On 20 November 2013 10:37:44, Richard Nevell <richard.nevell at
wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:

...
  I like your idea of the e-reader - a Kobo seems a good
choice - and perhaps
...
  preferable to Amazon vouchers. If we scale down from
an ereader for the
 overall winner, smaller prizes for the best of the week sounds like a nice
 idea. I'm not sure what thiese could be though, assuming that is a category
...
  which goes ahead. 
I've reduced the whole period to a fortnight (partly because I am not going
to have time for this closer to Christmas) so that's only two weeks.  If we
exempt the overall winner from winning the vouchers, that will mean two
runner-up prizes of vouchers: one for the first week and one for the
second.  I'm not sure what value of voucher would be best but, say, £10
each?

Can I go ahead and announce that WMUK will provide a Kobo and two Amazon
vouchers? (About £70 worth of prizes in total.)

There's only a few days left now.  If we do this again, I will sort this
out properly with much more notice.

On 20 November 2013 11:37:32, Craig Franklin <cfranklin at wikimedia.org.au>
wrote:

...
  But, I'm still not seeing any strategy for
promoting this to the wider
 community.  As it is, as far as I can tell the only entrants will be
 Wikisource regulars and maybe curious people poached from other WM
 projects.  If there was a strategy for pitching this to the general public
 as a recruitment drive I could see a link to movement goals which might
 justify spending money, but I don't see that this is a focus.  The
 excitement of the tenth anniversary shouldn't lead to us spending money
 without first having a good business plan and justification. 
I would like it to draw in new people, and I've tried to find texts that
should be easy to proofread over a range of different types and subjects to
facilitate that at one end.

The contest will also be a useful learning experience.  I don't know about
anything similar on Wikisource.  The English subdomain 10th anniversary is
in 2015 and a Welsh contest might be practical in the near future too.

Of course, people can't take part if they don't know about it.  I don't
have many ways to promote this outside Wikisource but...

On 20 November 2013 12:51:42, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at
ntlworld.com> wrote:

...
  > As far as drawing people in is concerned, a
central notice for Wiki Loves
...
  > Monuments worked well and involved a lot of
people who had never uploaded
...
   photos before.
Would that be worth considering here? 
 Yes: given the "I would never have considered looking on Wikisource"
 comment which is fairly standard, on other sister projects, it would make
 sense. 
I agree, this would help a lot.

I believe the instigators of this contest are going to try to advertise
this as well.  I will do what I can.

- Adam