>> We could start with a small budget in the
$10-20K range, spent
>> mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical
>> measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a
>> full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of
>> the advertising.
The same conditions exist in many developing countries
-- the rich
people have Internet access and English skills, and the poor people
don't have either. Those rich people might be moved to write in their
native language if we can convince them that they will be doing a great
service to the non-English speakers in their country, and that we will
be able to distribute the content to at least some of that audience.
Spend over 10000 US$ on advertising Wikipedia to the rich, in the hope
they will be moved to write articles for the poor. This might work in
India, but in Africa, that seems a total waste of money to me. I might
be stating this a bit too harsh, but... First of all, where are you
going to advertise? Second, I think many rich (the ones who can afford
internet at home) in Africa don't give a frack about African languages,
they speak French or English and they think it's ridiculous to educate
children in their native language. Third, Africa people are not used to
work for free if it's not for someone within their extended family.
I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas
under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up
contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every
article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000
articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much
more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it
will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more
effective than when there is nothing...