[Foundation-l] 10th birthday edit drive?

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Stuart West <stuwest at gmail.com> wrote:
> At a meetup in San Francisco today I was thinking about next January's 10th
> Birthday for Wikipedia and recent strategic planning discussions around
> participation.  What about celebrating Wikipedia Day with an edit drive?  We
> could aim for some stretch target (e.g. 1 million edits across all projects
> over 24 hours on 15 Jan 2011, or 25 million edits during the month of
> January) and use the project and geo-targeted sitenotice technology from the
> fundraisers.
>
> Seems like it could be a great way to celebrate and also get the word out
> about the "anyone can edit" spirit of our projects.

yes, what a fantastic event to do some concentrated outreach around! I
really like the edit drive, welcoming back editors, and usability
launch ideas. Some more ideas:

* Worldwide meetups -- next year, January 15 is a Saturday :) which
makes planning convenient. We should encourage every chapter and
meetup group, large and small, to have some sort of meetup or event on
Wikipedia Day. How many wikipedians can we have partying at once
around the world?! Or larger groups might put on bigger "wikipedia
day" events where the public is invited, talks are given, etc. Some
sharing of best practices from groups who have already done this to
groups who haven't would probably be helpful.

* make it a "month of Wikipedia" and provide materials, kits and ideas
to outside groups and newbie editors who want to participate. Other
groups do this, e.g. with the International Year of Astronomy. Ideas:
** outreach to teachers for classroom projects -- not just classroom
editing but also learning about wikipedia, using wikimedia materials
in lessons, etc.
** article referencing drive :) something I've wanted to do for a long
time -- outreach to librarians (and others) to help add references to
articles
** editing drives -- especially editing drives on smaller projects?
Maybe Google and others would considering partnering again, as they
just did for the Swahili contest.
** photography drives ("the world <3 wikipedia")

* Along with outreach to the world, this should also be a chance to
remember and celebrate the community internally, as Ziko mentions.
Maybe creating a Wikipedia timeline... bringing back old-timers to
speak... exchanging greetings from group to group... finally tracking
down willy on wheels....
(Every time I do the "this week in history" section for the Signpost I
get nostalgic -- this week, in 2005, we protected the main page of the
english wikipedia!) We should try and collectively celebrate our
amazing past as a community, too.

Does this need a planning page on meta? :)
-- phoebe