On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 12:25 PM, billinghurst <billinghurstwiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Beyond the population of the report, what is it that
you think that is
needed for the Wikisource CUG itself? From your experience of this in
the last year, and with you and Micru unable to do what you did this
year, what needs to you see need filling? What commitment would be
needed?
If we can identify specific needs, we can put these back to individual
communities, and we can especially give a shove to the enWS community
which can be solely focused on its own needs as it has some people
resource, though less so in the developer space. So I suppose it
would be useful to get your insights onto that page as the leader of
the inaugural group, and what you see that it needs to go forward for
the group, and we can use that same information back to our
communities.
Thank you for the question.
As you are aware of, two years ago, when we decided to create the WCUG, me
and Micru we granted by the IEG.
It was not a ridiculous amount of money (the contrary) but it was enough
for us to take this as a true commitment, and spend hours per day
*thinking* and *doing* (global) Wikisource related stuff.
So, my first answer (as I always say in Wikimedia Italia) is
**proactivity**: if you feel committed, think, write, discuss, stay on
topic and follow a project.
It can be literally anything: but you should feel responsible for that, and
follow it to the end.
Another thing is: if you do it, say it.
It's a common burden in communities like ours: we do stuff but we
can't/forget to/don't want to communicate it.
I think that en.WS, specifically, could do much better.
It is a bit unfortunate that the more vocal group in the WS community is
made by members of non -English speaking countries (with wonderful
exceptions, of course :-)
EnWS members could teach us a lot, with their big community,
with their technological advancement, and also with the simple fact that
for them is much *easier* to write
messages in English :D
The same, but different, can be said about de.WS and fr.WS. These are big
communities and big projects and we could learn so much.
We need people.
We need more involvement, and the rest will follow.
I deeply believe that we have, right now, all the competences, the
experience, the technological expertise to make Wikisource scale globally.
But we can do that only if we are together, and the best of us teach the
rest when they can.
This is important because complex problem (like, Structured Metadata, or
Wikidata integration)
*need* to have different minds and competences to be coped with.
Few scattered people won't solve them.
We probably need to feel more like a community. I think we are, or at least
I think that we can be it :-)
These are broad principles.
I can think of more concrete and specific things too, but I wanted to give
you my main insight as well :-)
Aubrey