[Foundation-l] Proposal: Wikimedia Outreach

[David Strauss]

I'd love to turn what's currently FundCORE into an interactive portal
for coordinating community relations. It could provide the kind of
services and information for Wikimedians that don't fit well into a
wiki-based system like meta.wikimedia.org.

FundCORE is runs on Drupal, and Drupal has many community-engaging
modules to do things like managing community calendars, Wikimeets, etc.
SpreadFirefox is also Drupal-based.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> I'd like to propose the setup of a central, multilingual portal at
> outreach.wikimedia.org. Similar to efforts like spreadfirefox.com, the
> purpose of this portal would be to allow Wikimedians to come together
> and discuss ways to
> - inform the general public about Wikimedia projects
> - pursue more specific outreach efforts, such as schools, libraries and academia
> - maintain a list of speakers about Wikimedia-related topics
> - address concerns and questions
> - generally think of clever ideas for marketing and promotion.
> 
> This portal, like spreadfirefox.com, would emphatically _not_ be aimed
> at the general public, but at Wikimedians eager to help raise
> awareness and spread ideas. We would make a whitelist of actions that
> can be performed without permission (such as offering to visit a
> school or university to talk about Wikipedia), and a process for
> requesting permissions when needed (such as broader use of the logo or
> trademarks).
> 
> Requests for permissions would generally go to the ED for now, but
> we'd probably want to delegate this to the Marketing subcommittee if
> we deem it sufficiently functional. The chapters, in the long run,
> could perhaps also give permission for certain uses.
> 
> I see a very strong role of the chapters when it comes to coordinating
> speakers for events, and other regional actions. While
> outreach.wikimedia.org would be a public database of such speakers
> where anyone can offer to talk, the chapters would maintain their own
> private database of speakers they trust. The interface for third
> parties to request a speaker would be, first and foremost, with the
> chapters, not with outreach.wikimedia.org.
> 
> The advantage of this approach is that we get a large number of
> volunteers, but at the same time each chapter can come up with its own
> strategy to identify trusted individuals. Insofar as private databases
> are maintained for this, sharing code and data across chapters should
> of course be encouraged.
> 
> Time for some Q&A:
> 
> Q: What's a typical outreach effort exactly?
> 
> One of the most important feats we must accomplish is getting
> traditional institutions of education to understand how our projects
> work, and how they can make responsible use of them. Visiting a school
> and giving a workshop about Wikipedia is an example.
> 
> Q: Why not just use meta.wikimedia.org?
> 
> A: Like we don't just use one wiki for educational content, I don't
> think it makes sense to have only one wiki for Wikimedia-related
> activities and information. Having a dedicated wiki allows us to
> promote this effort independently, to structure it in a more
> user-friendly way, to monitor changes more systematically, and so on.
> It makes it more likely that a dedicated community will arise
> specifically for Wikimedia Outreach.
> 
> Q: Won't this just encourage random people to abuse our trademarks and
> do things in Wikimedia's name?
> 
> A: Actually, hopefully it will accomplish the opposite: the
> development of a standard framework of pages and policies for people
> to pursue activities that are clearly beneficial to us. Things might
> be a bit chaotic initially, which is why we should make it clear
> (perhaps even in the sitenotice) that everything requires explicit
> permission from the ED for now.
> 
> Q: What would be the relation between the marketing committee and this effort?
> 
> A: In my view, committees are given explicit organizational authority
> to act with in their given scope. They are the source of "official"
> activities from the Foundation, and as such, they are highly
> restricted in terms of membership. But unless and until an effort is
> official, there is really no need for it to be limited to a committee.
> 
> Q: I still don't see why we should open this up to the chaotic wiki
> process -- an organization is not a wiki!
> 
> A: There are literally thousands of groups we want to work with in our
> global strategy to spread free knowledge. This cannot be handled by a
> small committee or the staff of a chapter; it needs the support of a
> global community of volunteers. If these volunteers are restrained
> clearly in their actions, and must pursue proper processes of
> authorization for certain projects, then hopefully, the activities
> that result from this will be well coordinated with chapters and the
> Foundation.
> 

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