[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Good idea] - Summary of good ideas for WMNL from the Chapters meeting

Tue Jun 24 12:07:50 UTC 2008

Dear all,

below a rough translation of an email to be sent to the Dutch
community / the members. It includes some good ideas, and I hope
everybody will post more of them! I will try very hard to implement
some of these in Wikimedia Nederland if there is animo. Please give
some feedback! I forward this to foundation-l as well after the
request to do so by some people.

BR, Lodewijk

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Dear all,

A while ago, there was a chapters meetup in Nijmegen, initiated by
Wikimedia Nederland, as a conclusion of the meetup in january with a
group of our members. During this meeting, there were many subjects
for discussion, amongst which an evaluation of the current
organisation, a talk about the selection of the chapter selected seats
in the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, improvement of
business development, improvement of the online fundraising and an
improvement of the communicatio between the several chapters and the
Foundation.
I experienced these talks, both on the program and off the program as
extremely positive and constructive, and I am glad we took this
initative. Soon more (English) information will be published about the
exact topics and discussions, but I would like to give a head start.
Besides the formal program, a lot of other topics were informally
discussed, such as how other chapters organise certain actvities,
which is to me personally very interesting. I will give a summary
below of some activities initiated by other chapters, which I found
the most relevant and interesting to our chapter. This also means that
there is already some experience out there on these areas, which can
be used positively. Of course every extra activity also means that
more work has to be done by volunteers, so without extra votunteers
nothing will get done! I sincerely hope that volunteers who feel good
about these ideas, will also initiate, and help out!

Grant system – Both Wikimedia PL as Wikimedia IT have a system where
small reimbursements can be given for all kinds of small expenses
which improve the quality of the community of the content on the
Wikimedia projects. Think about train tickets, photo cameras and
access tickets for instance. The nice thing about this project is that
all kinds of small projects can be covered by this, and the
inventivity of the projects can be used fully.

Proactive Press Approach – In France, Wikimedia receives a lot of bad
press attention. Wikipedia is mainly bad approached, which lead to the
attitude to correct the press constantly when errors are being made.
Also in Israel the press is approached actively for interviews and
news articles. Here the press contact plays an important role, as he
approached the journalists both by phone and writing. This has lead to
successes several times, including television appearences.
Wikimedia has warm connections with the press in Germany, which is
partially caused by the fact that Wikimedia Deutschland has some staff
available (1,5 FTE). The main reason seems to be though that Wikimedia
DE is just calling the press (and mainly tv press) with the question
what they might find attractive and useful to know about with respect
to news items. This way the wishes and interests of the press are used
to their full potential.

OTRS Seminar – The German chapter is of the opinion that contacts with
the outer world are important. Not only because it is good PR and
brings goodwill, but also because a good and effective point of
contact, can prevent/dissolve many legal issues. This can save costs
for lawyers etc for both parties. This is the reason that Wikimedia DE
organized an OTRS seminar, where the on OTRS active Wikipedians were
being instructed and trained how to handle certain issues. Of course
this is also very usable to exchange experience and knowledge.

In Sweden it has been attempted to cooperate with like minded
organisations, and tried to let the members of those also to become
member in Wikimedia Sweden. This was very effective, taking their high
membership number into account (118) in such a short time of
existence. Even though there is certainly a cultural difference, on
average one new member per day is very much.

Librarian Project – In this project in Sweden the librarians are
instructed and taught on how to help their members/visitors with the
use of Wikipedia, and how to edit Wikipedia. This results hopefully in
a higher activity amongst librarians (which does not seem bad to me,
taking their knowledge and thoroughness into consideration), but it
also results in the fact that the librarian will advise on the use of
Wikipedia, which means that it will be used more often in a correct
way.

Wikipedia Academy – I talked about this mainly with Jan (Sweden) and
Frank (DE, WMF). The Foundation is willing to cooperate on this area,
and help out a bit if required. Both with experience as with for
instance contacts. Seems very interesting to me to get in touch with
for instance the older academics, or to persuade the scientists to
edit Wikipedia. It is attempted in Sweden currently to copy this
originally German system, which has successfully be done before in
South Africa as well. Ideally I would like to try to get this running
as well in the Nederlands (not so much me myself, but I would love to
see it happening!) because Wikipedia Academy is targeted to scientists
and there is always a need on many expertises for this. Thus it could
result in an improvement of the quality of free content, and the
acceptance of it.

Association Retreat I – In Poland there is twice a year some type of
three day Wikicamp being organised. This includes lectures and
activities, helping the community to cooperate more closely, which
will undoubtly have a positive impact on the projects. It is doubted
that this will fit well in the Dutch attitude and way of life.

Association Retreat II – In Switzerland there is also an attempt to
get the members actively involved, but somewhat less "extreme" as in
Poland. There are plans for a two day meeting on the strategy for the
coming years of Wikimedia CH. The exact details are still under
construction.

Political activities – Both in Sweden as in France there are active
attempts to influence the political situation for matters with
relevance to the Wikimedia projects, such as copyright, free licenses,
the by the government used license, the possibilities the musea have
to forbid photo's, limitations of citizen journalism etc. I think that
there is a need for this as well in the Netherlands, especially since
there are ongoing activities and attemps in this direction. It might
be interesting to contact the involved board members of these chapters
for advice.

I sincerely hope that this includes some interesting talking points
for members. I realize that these are mainly large projects, which
require a lot of time and enthusiasm, but none the less I hope this
gives inspiration, maybe for a thoroughly revised version. Not
everything will be workable, and not everything will be in line of
what we want and can do. I am looking forward to positive responses!
(on the mainling list or on the wiki:
http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Overleg:Activiteiten )

With kind regards,

Lodewijk