Grants:IEG/Build an effective method of publicity in PRChina

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eligibility and selection criteria

project:

Build an effective method of publicity in PRChina

project contact:

addiswang94gmail.com

participants:

AddisWang, Yhz1221, 燃玉

summary:

build an effective method of publicity in unique Chinese social environment

engagement target:

ZH Wikipedia

strategic priority:

Increasing Reach

total amount requested:

350 USD

2013 round 1

Project idea

As we all know, there is a verified Wikipedia official account on Twitter. However, in P.R.China, the country which has the largest population in the world, totally bans any visit to Twitter or Facebook. But fortunately, Chinese have created a socializing website similar to Twitter called weibo(微博). Due to some well-known reasons, we failed to build a Wikimedia chapter or local organization in China. However, It's an important job to introduce this one of the world's biggest websites, Wikipedia, to Chinese people.(Alexa.com shows Wikipedia only be ranked as 108th) So Weibo is a profitable and effective platform on which we can do our work in this situation. We have already set up a team as well as an account. We continue our efforts in increasing Chinese Wikipedia's exposure in Sina Weibo, we hope that we can be supported for holding activities on Weibo.com which will be more effectively to spread the idea if Wikimedia and attract people to get to know Wikipedia.

Learn more about Chinese online encyclopaedia - Baidu_Baike, which commented by Jimmy Wales at The Colbert Report as "They basically copy everything from Wikipedia and call it Baidu's pedia".

Project goals

Our project goal is building an effective method (by Weibo.com) to let more people know about Wikipedia, keep in touch with Wikipedia and even join Wikipedia. To help Wikipedia become popular in this 1.4 billion-people country.

Project plan

Scope:

Scope and activities

Our team spend nearly two hours everyday for maintaining the Wikipedia Weibo account working. Furthermore, we will keep going. Our Weibo account has already let thousands of people know about Wikipedia. There is no especial measurement of our project. If we really need one, I hope our account can influence more than a 60 thousand people in 6 mouths.

Tools, technologies, and techniques

The original content about "How to apply verify in Sina Weibo" is hidden for the reason at the top of the page.
Beyond posting abstract from articles of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Blog, we can use the popular method called "Prize for repost" which is introduced in #Budget breakdown to attract people effectively. Meanwhile, we plan to launch an activity called "sharing by postcard" which means people can ask us for sending postcard with photos and abstract of Wikipedia articles.

Budget:

Total amount requested

350 USD

Budget breakdown

• Percentage
  1. 200 USD will be used for merchandise as the prize and following shipment. (300 buttons, 10 key chains and packs of Wikipedia stickers will be provided directly by WMF.)

     There is a popular way in Weibo called Prize for repost, which means reward random selected several users who repost the our post. And there is a specific APP works for that! A lot of famous companies such as China Merchants Bank and Amazon.com used this method for attract more followers and enlarge the influence.

  2. 75 USD will cover the custom postcards and postage for thanks people's contribution or help.
  3. 25 USD will be used for maintenance fee such as the fee for using APP for "Prize for repost" which mentioned in last paragraph.
  4. 50 USD will be used for supporting meetups, like the poster, free soda and Wikimedia merchandise for participants giveaways

• Advantages

  Cheap. Without using thousands of dollars, our plan only cost 200 dollars per year which can cover hundreds and thousands people in China. It will improve the health of the community and help Chinese Wikipedia as well as other Wikipedia projects such as Cantonese, Tibetic, Uyghur and Zhuang Wikipedia, etc.

Intended impact:

Target audience

all the user of Weibo

According to the record claimed by Sina, Sina Weibo has 0.3 billion accounts and 60% are active. In May, 2012, nearly 0.1 billion post for each day and average online time is 60 minutes.Sina News

Fit with strategy

Increasing Reach, Increasing Participation, Increasing popularity

Sustainability

We don't expect The Foundation provide funds in the many years. But the support at the beginning is important. After verified and with the grow of account, we can figure out the funding problem by ourselves just like we solve the funding problem in local meetups or workshops.

Measures of success

The account of Baidu Baike in Sina Weibo has 860 thousand followers, I think if we can get half of that level in less than six months, that will be a great success.

Since WMF might not allow to verify, it that, the measurement of success might have to decrease from 860 thousand to 60 thousand followers. Without funding, we might can only get lower than 10 thousand followers.

Participant(s)

• zh:User:AddisWang: Admin of Chinese Wikipedia, joined Wikipedia in 2008. Organized 5 seasonal meetings (up to 50 attends) and more than 10 biweekly meetups. Focusing on development of local Community, established Shanghai Community which keep holding biweekly meetups even Addis is no longer live in Shanghai. Helping to build Dalian Community and first university group in Shanghai Jiaotong University (plan).
• zh:User:Yhz1221: Admin of Chinese Wikipedia, member of both Shanghai Community and Dalian Community, joined Wikipedia in 2009. Editor in chief of Chinese online monthly magazine Wikipedians.
• zh:User:燃玉: Joined Wikipedia in 2010, active organizer of Dalian Community, he also is an admin of Wikpedia Group of Guokr.com.

Discussion

Community Notification

Please paste a link to where the relevant communities have been notified of this proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions, here.

Community Notification

Endorsements:

Do you think this project should be selected for an Individual Engagement Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

• Endorse: Two admins and another active user on zh.wiki are asking for USD 200 to try out a publicity concept that, if it succeeds, could reach a very large number of Chinese internet users. Why not?--Ragesoss (talk) 03:51, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse: Do not skimp $ 200. It will be in exchange for tens of thousands of users.--乌拉跨氪 (talk) 12:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse: ...And more contribution for Wikipedia.--广雅 范★ 12:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse: Sounds like this would reach a fair number of Chinese speakers, not a large expense. Djembayz (talk) 21:23, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse: Seems like there have much voice. captainhua (talk) 22:56, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse: Reaching out to a number of chinese speakers for a low expense. Great.--Snaevar (talk) 01:34, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
• Objection: Community can't supervise the fund. And the applicant can't represent the Community of Chinese--Legolas1024 (talk) 15:24, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse: Why not? It's nice to see more Wikipedians and readers from China! I agree that it's difficult to supervise the fund, per Legolas1024, but I'm pretty sure we can find a way to solve this. Meanwhile, we can spread the word in major Chinese social networks like Weibo (微博), RenRen (人人), WeChat (微信). Zhaofeng Li (talk) 08:41, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
• Community member: add your name and rationale here.