There is a lot to be learned from their process, I agree.
Should we be charging membership fees? Here is an argument in favour of a nominal membership fee: it requires the member to give buy-in on a psychological level, and will also promote a sense of ownership.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!
From: Mohau Monaledi <monaledi@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 05:54:48 +0200
To: David Richfield<davidrichfield@gmail.com>
Cc: wikimediaza<wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Membership of Wikimedia South Africa
Hi David,
I agree we need to get the process in place regarding membership, here
is an example of what India did,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India
Regards
Mohau
On 5/20/12, David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Now that we're incorporated, we need to grow our membership so as to
> achieve critical mass.
>
> According to the consititution, "Any person who makes a written
> application to become a member of the company and whose application is
> accepted by the directors shall be and become a member of the
> company."
>
> Dumisani has expressed interest and been welcomed on the email lists,
> but I'd like to get confirmation that he has been formally accepted as
> a member. I support his membership.
>
> Maarten has asked how he can become a member, which I take to be a
> written request, and I also support his membership.
>
> I am sure that if we ask Douglas whether he wants to be a member,
> he'll join, and I'd like to ask pre-emptively whether anyone has an
> objection to his membership.
>
> I'd also like us to agree on a membership process. One reasonable way
> to approach this would be to require a prospective member to contact a
> board member or post directly to the WMZA list. A director can then
> approve his or her membership tenatively with a posting to the board
> list - with no objections within two weeks, or with all directors'
> agreement, that director should then be allowed to approve the
> membership request formally. Please give me your feedback on this
> proposal.
>
> In terms of getting new members, we urgently need to get more
> Wikimedia project people into the organisation. We can do this by
> advertising on the wikis.
>
> Wikiproject South Africa:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_South_Africa The
> Wikiproject South Africa is quite active, and I think we should all
> join it, and announce any meetups on the project page.
>
> We should try to get banners on South African language Wikis ASAP:
>
> The only really active one is Afrikaans: http://af.wikipedia.org . We
> have none of the more active af-wiki editors in our membership, which
> is a shame. I'm sure we can fix this soon by simply approaching them
> and letting them know who we are and what we're doing.
>
> Registered but less active:
>
> http://nso.wikipedia.org - Sepedi Wikipedia has 568 pages, but not
> very many active editors. I see Mohau has been editing a bit there.
> http://zu.wikipedia.org - isiZulu Wikipedia has 543 pages, and a
> relatively similar state to Sepedi.
> http://tn.wikipedia.org - Setswana Wikipedia has 491 pages, but not
> very much seems to be going on there since the Google challenge
> finished.
> http://ss.wikipedia.org - siSwati Wikipedia has 361 pages, slightly
> less active than Sepedi and isiZulu
> http://ts.wikipedia.org - Xitsonga Wikipedia only has 193 pages, but
> seems to have more activity recently, and has a nicer-looking front
> page than many similar-sized minor language Wikipedias. I see
> Dumisani (Thuvack) has been active there, maybe he can help connect
> with the community.
> http://ve.wikipedia.org - tshiVenda Wikipedia has 190 pages, but
> doesn't seem active at all at the moment.
> http://st.wikipedia.org - Sesotho Wikipedia has 145 pages, but doesn't
> seem very active.
> http://xh.wikipedia.org - isiXhosa Wikipedia has 136 pages, but is not
> active lately.
>
> If we can manage to connect to active users in these Wikipedias, we
> might be able to get them to write a note on the front page asking
> users to connect with us, to build community connections.
>
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nr/Main_Page - Southern Ndebele
> has one article, about the National Language Service, so I doubt
> there's a community to work with.
>
> I think we should also ask for a geolocated banner ad: this way anyone
> who uses Wikipedia in South Africa can be alerted to our existence,
> and hopefully we'll get some traction.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> David
>
> --
> David Richfield
> [[:en:User:Slashme]]
> +27718539985
>
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