Submissions/Allow, Invite, Encourage: Growing Wikimedia in the World

From Wikimania 2010 • Gdańsk, Poland • July 9-11, 2010


Information

This is an open submission for Wikimania 2010.


Title of the submission

Allow, Invite, Encourage: Growing Wikimedia in the World

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Panel

Author of the submission

Achal Prabhala, Erik Möller, Delphine Ménard, Lodewijk Gelauff, Phoebe Ayers, Arne Klempert, Milos Rancic

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

aprabhala/ aprabhala at gmail dot com

Country of origin

India (+ Europe/ USA)

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Participants on the panel are involved with the Wikimedia Foundation, the chapters process, and the community at large - in various different capacities.

Personal homepage or blog

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30-word contribution & benefits statement

This session is about the future of chapters and affiliation. We will analyse where things stand, and discuss concrete plans for growing Wikimedia projects by contributions from around the world.

Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)

This panel is intended as a discussion on the future of chapters and affiliation. Three central themes will be explored:

1) Examining the chapter process: There is a big difference between allowing, inviting and encouraging people to form chapters. As Wikimedia projects have evolved, they have moved from a position of merely allowing to actually inviting people from outside the centre (loosely defined). However, it is not clear if we are encouraging people who are currently at the periphery from joining the fold – and if this so, it is important for us to know what we can do, as this has strategic implications for our future.

b) Encouraging chapters: Are chapters a ‘plus’? Is it possible to make the creation of chapters a programme, while yet ensuring they are organic? Some ways to think about this (along the lines of the Grants programme recently initiated at the Foundation: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index) include a ‘Chapters Prize’ - start-up awards of financial support, given out annually to teams of people from countries in which there isn't yet a chapter, and administered with principles borrowed from the Wikimania jury.

c) Thinking beyond chapters: Currently, chapters are the only possible means of official affiliation with the Wikimedia Foundation. Is there a need to think of other frameworks of affiliation? Can the trust/liability framework that the chapter process and contract create be replicated in another framework? One possible means of affiliation is a one time, event-based or activity-based licensing system (the TEDx agreement is a relevant model - http://www.ted.com/tedx). Yet, it’s worth considering whether official affiliation for an event or activity could de-legitimise some of the many unaffiliated events that occur within and around our community.


Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)

People and Community

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)
  • This discussion is one that has busied many people for the past two years at least, it should probably be allowed at least an hour, as we'd really like to engage in discussions with the audience. Maybe even more. Thank you for considering :)
  • A discussion paper outlining the ideas abstracted above is forthcoming (upon panel acceptance decision).
  • NOTE: In order to get all foreseen participants to this panel for sure in the same room at the same time, it is essential that this session be planned on the first day of Wikimania, or morning of the second day at the latest. Thanks for your understanding.


Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

  1. Nevinho 04:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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  20. --Bellayet 04:40, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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  25. --Ivanmartinez 22:13, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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