Talk:Draft proposal: Wiki Takes Leicester

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This seems like a sensible project to me (and perhaps one that Dhaval could simply go ahead and organise, in the same way that Harry organised Wiki Takes Chester?). The danger of just doing a 'Wiki Takes' event is that you get photographs, but not article content, so having a parallel training session makes sense - it might be good to also have an 'editathon' component after the photographs, writing about the things that photographs have been taken of. Perhaps that's a way of doing a Wiki Takes event during winter, when photography has to stop early due to it getting dark very early... (otherwise, I'd recommend waiting for spring/summer!) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:32, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments Mike, very helpful. Sensible suggestion regarding the editathon afterwards, will certainly look at that. Dhaval is of course welcome to go ahead and organise the event on his own if he'd like to but I am keen to support the event and help to deliver it. One reason I'm so keen is because I'd like to get a better understanding of how we can engage with communities that use non-English languages (or may be interested in editing in non-English languages). It is a useful area where the chapter can deliver an impact but a better understanding of how this may work is required. Do you have any thoughts on that? Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:47, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Be careful to avoid the perception of 'colonialism'. ;-) That's one of the reasons why it's better for (local language) volunteers to lead events like this, rather than staff on the whole. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:53, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it is a great idea to do outreach work to other language communities, but I'm not sure about doing it as a photography contest. I'd suggest that if we do Wiki takes Leicester or any other town we do so by inviting all our local or near local photographers to take part. However I think that a Gujarati editathon would be a great idea. We could support it with material things, laptops, mobile WiFI and so forth, we could also get one or two of our non-Gujarati members on the day to do things like sorting out PCs. We should remember that our biggest brand and biggest project is Wikipedia, so for an outreach event targetted at a particular language community I would suggest we run a session on editing Wikipedia. If this works there are many other possible ones that we could do, I've been talking to one of our arabic Wikipedians, and of course with wikimania next summer there may be several languages where we could do outreach - if necessary with an editor we've brought over early or persuaded to stay on after Wikimania. As for the name, I'd give it a Gujarati name or whatever language the editathon will be in. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 14:21, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the advantage that photography contests have that events aimed at editing perhaps don't is that photography is quite accessible. Although there's a real skill to taking great photos, modern digital cameras (the sort of thing you get a Tesco for £40) are very easy to use, which means that almost anybody can point and shoot, so the bar to entry is quite low. You'll get more people through the door for a photography contest than for an editathon in my experience.

Stevie, I'm not far at all from Leicester, so I'd be happy to help with the logistics of an event there, though I'm pathetically monolingual and I don't know much about outreach to non-English-language communities. Harry Mitchell (talk) 21:03, 21 November 2013 (UTC)