[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Internal-l] Edit Wikipedia Week: call for participation

[Sean Whitton]

Hello all,

The following was posted to internal-l by Sue regarding a possible
'Edit Wikipedia Week' to be held in December as part of a way of
keeping the momentum of the fundraiser going. All are invited to
participate in the planning for this event at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edit_Wikipedia_Week>.

Thanks,

Sean

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
Date: Nov 5, 2007 4:09 PM
Subject: [Internal-l] Edit Wikipedia Week: call for participation
To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed
subscription)" <internal-l at lists.wikimedia.org>


Hi folks,

I'm writing to invite you –chapters, individuals, everyone- to help
stage a bunch of "Edit Wikipedia Week" events in December. The idea is
to pick a date, probably the week of December 3, and stage outreach
events around the world designed to encourage people to participate in
the projects.

The events could be practically anything – big or small. You could
speak about the projects at a local school; get yourself booked on TV;
talk to a local photography club about contributing to Commons;
organize a marathon weekend of translations; recruit new people to
help you launch a WikiProject, or even just teach your mom how to
edit. Anything that you think will improve the projects: the purpose
is to reach out to people who don't edit, and encourage them to make a
contribution.

This is intended to be an experiment. The premise is that anyone can
organize an event under this umbrella idea, and it can take whatever
form makes sense to them. Nobody needs permission: feel free to just
participate.

Why now? As you know we're in the middle of the annual fundraiser,
which this year runs from October 22 to December 23. Because it's so
long, we want to stage events at various points, designed to keep the
media and the public paying attention. We've got some Wikipedia
Academies coming up in South Africa
http://internal.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Academies on November 10
and 11, with Jimmy, Frank Schulenburg and Ndesanjo Macha. Edit
Wikipedia Week would be the next big event after that.

This would be focused on Wikipedia, because it's our biggest and best
known project, and therefore most likely to generate interest among
the media and general public. That doesn't mean we couldn't hold
similar events for Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikisource, or any other WMF
project. Implementation-wise, I'm thinking of having us set up
edit.wikipedia.org, which would redirect to pages in the local
Wikipedias. Each of those pages would also refer back to the ongoing
fundraiser with a little info-box (something along the lines of "There
are different ways to help Wikipedia..").

I'm also going to ask Cary to make a page for this on meta, where we
can discuss it, and people can post events. I would ask you please to
translate and share this note with whoever you like. I know that not
everyone can afford to make a financial contribution to the
fundraiser: I am hoping some people will choose to support it (us) by
helping with Edit Wikipedia Week instead.

The first thing we'll need to do is finalize a date. I think December
3 would probably work best, but please let me know if/why you think
another week would be better.

And lastly .. I am thinking this could become an annual event. In that
spirit, this year may be a little wonky and haphazard, which would be
okay. If it goes well, we'll learn some good lessons, and next year
will be better :-)

Thanks,
Sue




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