User:Sj/Community projects

See also the list of Board projects that only the Trustees can see through.

Core projects and Initiatives that the community must take on (though they are sometimes imagined to be the role of Trustees):

Widely localized community news

• Improving localization and outreach of core messages about the foundation, the meta community projects and the like. This includes supporting better localziation of wikimania events, perhaps after the fact : subtitles through dotsub of the videos? encouraging the language/translation working group that aphaia started to define priorities and push for improvements in communication in core languages
• Some publication like the Quarto should be a part of the community spirit. Anthere and I disagree about why this didn't last; I found the first edition to be quite light work, made by many hands and enthusiasm, and the last edition to be heavy largely by the lack of cohesion, not because there was a change in how interested community members were. A well-organized plan, perhaps for something shorter and more regular, should provide a standard multilingual window into the weekly and daily community affairs.

Improved outreach

• about interest in project coordination & foundation affairs: A few people have suggested that most comunity members don't care about foundation affairs or global policy. The great number of people who care about local policy affairs (and the large # who care about global charitable and shared culture projects) suggests this is not true, but that there is a barrier to getting involved or seeing the importance or action of these larger project.

• Ask for input. Ongoing discussions should /engage/ the community members about policy, what matters to them, and what would help them work with more new groups or build the projects mor effectively. Most of the questions from the recent Board Elections should not have been asked of the condidates, but of the 10,000 most active community members.
• Reach out to newbies automatically, before they need to ask for help. Cory Ondrejka makes a fine point of this in a recent blog post.

Better tech prioritization

Smaller projects or new projects often complain about being left in the dust when it comes to prioritizing tech features. In some cases this has happened; but I have just as often seen people start to develop a clear description of a feature they want, not get an immediate response, and decide that they are being permanently ignored.

• Organize a community forum for prioritizing and focusing attention on wanted features. If there is a clear list each week of the ten most important features for each project, then there can be clear, brief discussion by mediawiki devs, inside and outside of Wikimedia, about what the right solution is and how/when to test integration with major wikis.
• Coordinate these needs and interests with other major mediawiki groups, not just Wikimedia. MediaWiki is one of the world's most popular website platforms; Wikitravel, Wikia, and AboutUs have their own devteams and supporting groups... and there are many more.

Better outreach to new audiences

Whether it is experts, youth, or other new audiences, there is a regular demand for better outreach to new potential contributors, reviewers, and users of the Projects.

• Organize focused outreach through universities, libraries, and local user groups.
• Organize chapter and usergroup support in your area, even when you don't have enough interest to incorporate and form an official Chapter.
• Coordinate a group for speakers and Wikipedia-roadshow presenters. Organize a team around making swag, posters, and other media
• Expand the wiki research group to include researchers doing cool stuff from outside the projects. Some of them know entire microcosms that haven't cross-pollinated with wikidom.
• Time-tested: Marry other wikifans and have many, many children.