Hi,
Are there any activities that could have a meaningful
impact if we ask
donors for such amount of seed money? Are there reasons to do so?
In many areas we lack good secondary sources. Some times we don't even
have any secondary sources. I did some work at the National Manufacture
of Ceramics of Sèvres in France[1]. They have knowledge there that is
not in any book. It is transmitted directly from master to student...
My idea would be to create a publishing company that would hire
specialists to write monographs on subjects where we lack good secondary
sources. The compagny would regularly ask the wikimedians about which
subjects they need sources.
Those works would be published under a Free Licence but independantly
from the Wikipedias so there would be no risk for the Wikimedia
Foundation to be seen as doing paid editing.
Wikipedians would then be free to use those sources to improve the
Wikipedias.
Regards.
[1]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacture_nationale_de_S%C3%A8vres
--
Lionel Allorge
Wikimedia France :
http://wikimedia.fr