[Licom-l] outreach to other wikis

Fri Mar 27 06:11:11 UTC 2009

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Ryan Kaldari <kaldari at gmail.com> wrote:
> It just occurred to me that it would probably be a good idea for us to
> form an outreach committee, to make sure that other important wikis
> like medpedia follow the license migration as well (before August!),
> so that they remain mutually compatible with Wikipedia (without
> introducing licensing restrictions to our content). Unfortunately, it
> doesn't really make sense for us to do this outreach until we
> ourselves have approved migration. I'm worried this is only going to
> give us a very brief window, so we should go ahead and make
> preparations for it. If others agree that this is important, I would
> like to suggest that we do the following:
>
> 1. Form an outreach committee
> 2. Create a priority list of other wikis we want to remain compatible with
> 3. Establish a game plan for lobbying those wikis in an organized and
> helpful fashion
> 4. Ask the Foundation to craft a letter than can be mailed or emailed
> to those wikis as a sort of "official" endorsement

Many important wiki communities already know about the migration
clause (e.g. Wikia).  I don't know anything about their specific
plans, but I suspect many are waiting to see what Wikipedia will do.
We've also had people from external wikis show up and ask about our
plans.

Assuming the transition goes through, the WMF could be very helpful
getting the word out with a nice press release (perhaps jointly
promoted by CC and FSF as well).

I'm not sure how one would go about forming a priority outreach list,
though it doesn't sound like a bad idea.  To some degree one could see
that as an extension of licom's work to communicate with our own
communities, since we will have already been engaged in outreach
within WMF to get various documents and references fixed up (assuming
the migration is approved).

-Robert Rohde