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Michael Peel | 2 Jul 2011 11:24

Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out where the best place to do the online organisation of wikimeets is. I can think of
four different places, each with pros and cons, which I'd appreciate others' views on.

1) English Wikipedia

Pros: visibility, 'standard place', likely to be a wiki that most wikimeet attendees will use to some
degree, can add to list of upcoming meetups and be encouraged by meetup plans in other countries.

Cons: English Wikipedia-specific, whereas wikimeets are much more general.

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Manchester_8

2) Meta

Pros: Neutral ground for all different Wikimedia projects. Not associated with a specific real-life organisation.

Cons: Few other meetups are organised here. No connections to other activities. May be a new wiki for some
people when signing up

Example: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/47

3) Wikimedia UK wiki

Pros: Encourages involvement in different types of activities happening in the UK. Wikimeets would be
listed amongst other UK-events more easily.

Cons: Makes it more difficult to find out about other wikimeets. May make it harder for UK people to find
wikimeets in other countries when abroad. May make it seem like WMUK 'owns' the wikimeets, which may
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James Forrester | 2 Jul 2011 11:31
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?

On 2 July 2011 10:24, Michael Peel <email <at> mikepeel.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to figure out where the best place to do the online organisation of
> wikimeets is. I can think of four different places, each with pros and cons,
> which I'd appreciate others' views on.

[Snip]

> 3) Wikimedia UK wiki
>
> Pros: Encourages involvement in different types of activities happening in
> the UK. Wikimeets would be listed amongst other UK-events more easily.
>
> Cons: Makes it more difficult to find out about other wikimeets. May make
> it harder for UK people to find wikimeets in other countries when abroad. May
> make it seem like WMUK 'owns' the wikimeets, which may discourage
> people to organise them.

You missed out that it will only be seen by people that already know
that the wikimeets exist, or that Wikimedia UK does. We very
frequently get new people at the London meetups who had no idea that
the meetups existed, and certainly no idea that WMUK (or any chapters)
do. I think it would be a mistake to ghettoise the meetups into a
non-community wiki. however much we happen to love WMUK.

> I'm leaning towards using the WMUK wiki for organising the Manchester
> wikimeets (and in a bit of a different format from the standard - keeping
> a single wiki page rather than creating a new one each time), but I'm less
> sure about how this would be received. Input/comments would be very
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Tom Morris | 2 Jul 2011 11:39
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 10:31, James Forrester <james <at> jdforrester.org> wrote:
> I think meta is a good place (but then, I did move the London ones
> there after a complaint from a non-enwiki-er, so I'm biased ;-)). I
> also think the real value now we have SUL is not in the home but in
> the advertising for them.
>

For most WMUK events I try and list them on Lanyrd which is used by
the tech crowd. It'd be good if we could list them on Facebook as
well. A multi-pronged strategy works best.

It'd be good if we could try hard to work with local geek event
communities as well: for the last Manchester meetup, I told my friend
Ian Forrester ( <at> cubicgarden on Twitter) and he promoted it to the geek
community in Manchester and got it on the Twitter account of some kind
of social media thing in Manchester. Let's do more of this.

We should be getting more non-Wikipedia people involved and attending
events: because in-breeding isn't healthy.

--

-- 
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>

Please don't print this e-mail out unless you want a hard copy of
it. If you do, go ahead. I won't stop you. Nor will I waste your
ink/toner with 300+ lines of completely pointless and legally
unenforceable cargo cult blather about corporate confidentiality.

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Michael Peel | 2 Jul 2011 11:54
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?


On 2 Jul 2011, at 10:31, James Forrester wrote:

> You missed out that it will only be seen by people that already know
> that the wikimeets exist, or that Wikimedia UK does. We very
> frequently get new people at the London meetups who had no idea that
> the meetups existed, and certainly no idea that WMUK (or any chapters)
> do. I think it would be a mistake to ghettoise the meetups into a
> non-community wiki. however much we happen to love WMUK.
> 
> I think meta is a good place (but then, I did move the London ones
> there after a complaint from a non-enwiki-er, so I'm biased ;-)). I
> also think the real value now we have SUL is not in the home but in
> the advertising for them.

I think you're right that the real value is the advertising - which can be done in the same way regardless of
where the meetup pages are (e.g. point the geonotices to a different URL, add links into
en:Wikipedia:Meetup/Calendar, :meta:Meetup/UK/Footer_list etc.). As Tom points out, doing more
social networking to encourage people from different backgrounds to come along would be good.

Part of what I'm trying to figure out is the incidental benefits/drawbacks of having the pages on specific
wikis - does it potentially help the community to have them on meta, or would it help more if they were on the
WMUK wiki due to the links with other events?

Thanks,
Mike

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steve | 2 Jul 2011 12:11
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?


Tom is absolutely spot on. 

For instance 'girl geek dinners' is a nationally franchised group with meet ups in most cities. 

It ought to be easy to include them. 

Most cities have 5 or 6 recognisable 'tech groups'.  My own has brrissm social media. Bristol wireless,
bristol cooperative, pervasive media studios.  

If we had a 'key person' in a city they should be reaching out to these groups every time. 

So multi-faceted outreach is more important than 'which wiki'. 

One 'wiki'. And several other places too facebook, twitter etc. On twitter let's get everyone using #wmuk
on all relevant messages. That way we can all know how to find this stuff easily. 

------Original Message------
From: Tom Morris
Sender: wikimediauk-l-bounces <at> lists.wikimedia.org
To: wikimediauk-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
ReplyTo: wikimediauk-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?
Sent: 2 Jul 2011 10:39

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 10:31, James Forrester <james <at> jdforrester.org> wrote:
> I think meta is a good place (but then, I did move the London ones
> there after a complaint from a non-enwiki-er, so I'm biased ;-)). I
> also think the real value now we have SUL is not in the home but in
> the advertising for them.
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Gordon Joly | 2 Jul 2011 13:38
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Jimbo on PM (Radio 4)


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0124qtw

Starts around 36 minutes....

Gordon

--

-- 

Gordon Joly
gordon.joly <at> pobox.com
http://www.joly.org.uk/
Don't Leave Space To The Professionals!

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Gordon Joly | 2 Jul 2011 13:44
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?


Experience from being involved with "London Wiki Wednesday" and other 
meetups is the consistency of information (date, time, place) at 
different places, and where to "sign up" (if at all).  "London Wiki 
Wednesday" was harmed (in part) by the use SocialText.... and now seems 
moribund.

London Wikimeets are a very mature group...... with an excellent pedigree!

Meeting 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/London_1

Meeting 47

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/47

Gordo

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-- 

Gordon Joly
gordon.joly <at> pobox.com
http://www.joly.org.uk/
Don't Leave Space To The Professionals!

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David Gerard | 2 Jul 2011 13:47
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?

On 2 July 2011 10:39, Tom Morris <tom <at> tommorris.org> wrote:

> We should be getting more non-Wikipedia people involved and attending
> events: because in-breeding isn't healthy.

And more non-techies, for the same reason.

- d.

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WereSpielChequers | 3 Jul 2011 10:00
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?

I'd say that meta is the right place for meetup pages, but with
pubilicity from other projects that might be relevant.

Holding it on Wikipedia might be seen as limiting it to Wikipedians.

The drawback of inviting non-wikimedians is that they may not be
interested in wikimedia. So I'd suggest one should proceed with
caution there (that said I'm hoping that one of our GLAM contacts will
be at next Sunday's London meetup..

WSC

On 2 July 2011 12:47, David Gerard <dgerard <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2 July 2011 10:39, Tom Morris <tom <at> tommorris.org> wrote:
>
>> We should be getting more non-Wikipedia people involved and attending
>> events: because in-breeding isn't healthy.
>
>
> And more non-techies, for the same reason.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l <at> wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>
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Deryck Chan | 3 Jul 2011 17:10
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Re: Wikimeets - best place to organise them online?

Wherever we host it, the most important thing seems to be geo-targeted notices. Where we host it doesn't actually matter, as long as we publicise the link well.

On Jul 3, 2011 4:01 PM, "WereSpielChequers" <werespielchequers <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd say that meta is the right place for meetup pages, but with
> pubilicity from other projects that might be relevant.
>
> Holding it on Wikipedia might be seen as limiting it to Wikipedians.
>
> The drawback of inviting non-wikimedians is that they may not be
> interested in wikimedia. So I'd suggest one should proceed with
> caution there (that said I'm hoping that one of our GLAM contacts will
> be at next Sunday's London meetup..
>
> WSC
>
> On 2 July 2011 12:47, David Gerard <dgerard <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2 July 2011 10:39, Tom Morris <tom <at> tommorris.org> wrote:
>>
>>> We should be getting more non-Wikipedia people involved and attending
>>> events: because in-breeding isn't healthy.
>>
>>
>> And more non-techies, for the same reason.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia UK mailing list
>> wikimediauk-l <at> wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l <at> wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l <at> wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
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Gmane