[Foundation-l] A chapters-related question

[Mike.lifeguard]

On Sun, 2009-07-05 at 21:54 -0700, Michael Snow wrote:

> One example is interest groups 
> that aren't tied to geography, the way the chapters are. I always cite 
> the idea of an Association of Blind Wikipedians, who might wish to 
> organize to promote work on accessibility issues.


Actually, that sounds like a good idea. I wonder if there's interest
among people involved with accessibility (whether blind or not - for
example I'd potentially be interested in helping).

More concretely, there has been (for a while) talk of a Wikibooks
"chapter"... it obviously wouldn't be based on geography, but could
promote Wikibooks and Wikibooks-related issues, and develop programs and
software for that project. Many of the sister projects may feel a
similar need - other than Commons, I don't know of any major projects to
promote growth or reach for the non-Wikipedia projects. Disappointingly,
the usability initiative is explicitly about improving usability on
Wikipedia, and not other projects. While there may be concomittant
improvements, there's nothing specific for us, while everything is
specific for Wikipedia. Luckily that will be addressed for Commons with
this latest grant.

However, beyond technical issues, there is a lot the Wikibooks community
could do in terms of promotion and outreach that isn't being done by the
community or the Foundation currently. There's only so much volunteers
can do from the bottom up without some organization and support, and the
Foundation can only do so much from the top down. An organized
chapter-like body would fill a gap between the two that could
potentially have an enormous impact on the project since it smaller.

Thanks,
-Mike