[Foundation-l] [EWW] Edit Wikipedia Week

[Brian McNeil]

I was also somewhat annoyed by the email geni was responding to. Yes, the
response was disproportionate, but not wholly unwarranted.

(i)	"Edit Wikipedia Week". Not the only project. [And the second time
	today	I've had a desire to rant. Erik's "we'll just mention other
	projects by name" ticked me off too. My suggested solution was given

	support.]
(ii)	Not one suggestion was given in the email. It was a plea for help
with
	no details on how to help.

Like many people who would like such a campaign to succeed I simply don't
have the resources to do a lot. I intend to discuss with one of the other
Wikinews people the text for a poster to put on a few of KUL's (Catholic
University of Leuven) notice boards. It'd be A4 in size as that's all I have
print facilities for. The objective? To try and get the uni's student
community to take over nl.wikinews.org which is currently in a "Terry
Schavio" (sp?) state.

I'd also be happy to put up a few English and Nederlands posters for WP too.
So, on that note can we move on to other actual things that people can
realistically do? If you wanted to organise an evening workshop or something
as ambitious as that you'd pretty much need to be staff or senior student
and able to commandeer a computer lab. Although, a similar thing could be
held in a cybercafé and this would mean each participant just had to pay a
small amount.

We don't need pleas for help would be my closing message, we need ideas like
postering your local area saying "Invade Starbucks on 42nd street on
December 3rd through 8th and discover how you can contribute to Wikipedia".
If you and a couple of other wiki people can go along in shifts wearing your
cafepress WMF attire you can also try and persuade the management to put up
posters. Just don't drink too much coffee.



Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gray
Sent: 20 November 2007 16:33
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [EWW] Edit Wikipedia Week

On 20/11/2007, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/11/2007, Christophe Henner <christophe.henner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear community,
> >
> > Few days ago a pretty neat idea was proposed, an idea which could
> > involves all of the community members, all of you: the "Edit Wikipedia
> > Week". That week will take place from December 3 to 8, 2007 and the
> > concept is pretty simple: you, as a community member, will have the
> > chance to spread the word about how to edit Wikipedia or learn how to
> > work on one of the other sister projects.
>
> Yeah you might want to think about your wording there. We built this
> wiki and yet only now do we have the chance to tell other people how
> to edit? What do you think we have been doing for the last few years?

Wow. Have you ever seen any attempt to do things differently that you
didn't complain about?

> There are many ways to motivate the community. Sugar coated
> condescension isn't one of them.

Yes, because whining vaguely about misphrased English and complaining
about someone encouraging people to do things is in no way
condescending or unproductive.

This may or may not be a useful project. We lose nothing by doing it,
and it certainly isn't "condescending" or "insulting" to try it.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

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