Hallo,
I was just looking at meta, and while the page on the South African
chapter has a list of names of people who are interested in the chapter,
my feeling is that it is incomplete. For instance, many of our
colleagues who attended the chapter meeting in August in Joburg are not
on that list. In other cases, I went to look at Northern Sotho Wikipedia
after Ian brought it up - or any number of other South African language
Wikipedias, and there are several users listed there (many of who appear
to reside in South Africa) who are similarly not reflected.
Under the circumstances, would it be a good idea to carry out some mild
online outreach in parallel to chapter startup efforts?
- For community members in the free software/ free knowledge space who
are not yet registered Wikipedians, could someone volunteer to help
start this up, so that they are signed on, hopefully to continue
editing, and so that their interest in the chapter is reflected on meta?
- For community members who are active Wikipedians but are not yet
signed on to the chapter effort, would it make sense to compile a
longlist and put it up on meta? (As potentially interested in the
chapter). And for someone to contact these Wikipedians, to see what the
chapter can do to interest them?
The reason I suggest this is that, given the Indian experience, three
things seem to happen that are worth taking into account: (1) Not all
Wikipedians are automatically interested in or aware of chapter efforts,
(2) Not all Wikipedians or potential Wikipedians get to know about
organised chapter efforts, and (3) For free software/ free culture
allies, often all it takes is just some help to complete the first step
of registering in order to become more familiar with the process of
editing and for participating in the process generally.
Some kind of outreach would seem in order, and this might be the ideal
time to do it.
Enjoy the summer! (As Bangalore becomes more grey and cold, progressing
towards winter)
Achal