[Foundation-l] Thematic weeks in ru.wp

[Harel Cain]

Indeed, this wonderful project has many variants in many wikipedias.
The Hebrew wikipedia followed the German wikipedia and called these
concentrated efforts quality offensives. Ours were three weeks long,
and they were run back to back, without any pause in between
(usually).

The main lessons we learned from the quality offensives could be
summed up as follows:

1. Enthusiasm is very important. Once the idea starts to bore the
editors, there's no point in trying to push it further. You have to
give it very good publicity in central place and "official" status. It
mustn't be just a private initiative. This is easier in smaller wikis.
2. The choice of topics is very important, they have to be accessible
and with something to offer to everyone. If they become too narrow or
specialized or they cover topics that are already well-covered, it
just isn't as succesful.
3. For every "offensive" we had one or two wikipedians in the role of
managers or leaders. They organized that specific offensive, planned
it ahead, allocated tasks etc. and it was a wonderful way to let
promising wikipedians prove themselves.
4. The scheduling of the upcoming offensives has to be easy and smooth
and not involve too much politics and voting. Best if you can find
some good-willed dictator to own this whole issue and decide which of
a few existing "proposals for offensive" will be carried out when.
5. I think three weeks per offensive is quite good, but some pause in
between is necessary.
6. Expect the whole idea to lose its shine after about a dozen offensives.


Cheers,
Harel


On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Nemo_bis <nemowiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yaroslav M. Blanter:
>> It might be that some of the
>>bigger projects have smth like this or discussed smth similar at some
>>point
>
> We call it "Festival della qualita" (Quality festival): http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Festival_della_qualit%C3%A0.
> I'm adding some interwiki.
>
> Nemo
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