(GLOW) resources
Resources for an intervention program consist of internal and external resources.
In this case resources are both potentially beneficial or destructive – the benefit could both become strength, potential strength, potential threat, or even weakness.
How to identify internal and external resources
editBefore deciding to "jump in" and design a program in a certain location or language project, a designer must be able to identify this resources and weigh carefully the potential gain or loss considering the resources.
Internal resources
editBelow are step by step process needed to identify the internal resources:
- To identify resources a designer or a team of project designers must be able to read statistics within the Wikimedia projects.
- This particular intervention guide focus is Wikimedia largest project: Wikipedia.
- Wikimedia project statistics are mainly arrange according to language, total there are 265 Wikimedia projects. Some specific languages reflect locations (i.e. German language Wikipedia reflect resources in Germany as geographic area), others don't (i.e. English language Wikipedia did not reflect resources in specific geographic area, the span of resources although worldwide, could be narrowed down to certain geographic area like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and maybe, India).
- The designer or the team then must calculate the resources necessary to do an intervention project vs possible loss considering if the project fails to reach result intended.
| Statistic | Project rank by language and readership | Number of articles and very active contributors | Top article statistic | Manually combined them to a specific location | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sample on how to identify internal/ external resources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal resources (benefit/ strength) | Internal resources (weakness/ threat) | ||||
| English Wikipedia (EN WP) have around 3,600 very active volunteer contributors guarding 3,5 million articles. | Indonesian Wikipedia (ID WP) have around 32 very active volunteer contributors guarding around 150 thousand articles | ||||
| An offline intervention effort in English Wikipedia with an independent team could use a selected volunteers exist in the community although it is highly likely it's hard to pin point their location (didn't exist in the same city or in U.S.). | Intervention in Indonesian Wikipedia already difficult in forming an independent team picking from (the may changing composition) of people out of 32 very active users. Member of the team needed to be trained just to make an intervention possible. | ||||
| External resources (benefit/ strength) | External resources (weakness/ threat) | ||||
| Indonesian government policy and telecommunication are pushing forward a cheap access and infrastructure for internet. Indonesian culture are very adaptive to technology specially cell phone. The effect of all this as a top four biggest population in the world ID WP readership have a huge potential to tap to. As a top four biggest population there's a huge potential for volunteer and contributor given the right marketing strategy. Just stand still, waste no cent/ refuse to invest and wait until everyone contribute without doing anything (i.e. relies on google) proves to be ineffective given the statistical history of stagnant very active contributor. |
Chinese government policy are protective about outside culture coming in and turning into something that can not be control. Although China is very potential, the politics prevent effective intervention to succeed, since everything must be done carefully. The Chinese also developing two Wikipedia competitor sites.
A lot of Indonesian people are poor, information/ internet connectivity and infrastructure although cheap are still considered expensive to most of the people. Most importantly, they didn't see the benefit of it. Introducing a new culture and mindset could take a long time or maybe an expensive marketing cost. | ||||