Who is needed to support this strategy (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external partners), and what do they need to do?
Who is needed to support this strategy (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external partners), and what do they need to do?
Who is needed to support this strategy (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external partners), and what do they need to do?
Could organizations such as Engineers Without Borders (http://www.ewb-international.org/) be intrested in organizing translation groups? They probably are technologically oriented and understands the importance of knowledge. Their members are probably able to learn the basics of editing a Wikipedia easily and could help in organizing groups and provide technical support to translators. The translators could either be people that know an under-represented language or native speakers. It would make it easier for people that wants to contribute but lacks computer knowledge to help out, and might fit well together with the organizations educational projects.
I will add we need a local chapter somewhare in MENA, most likely it'll be in Egypt since it has the larger organized group of wikimedians. in my own opinion having a chapter would make it easier to organize events, cooporation with universities etc.. it will also help improve the press coverage of wikipedia (i think arabic wikipedia is not covered enough, most of the press coverage is translated from western sources about western wikipedias) and will increase the awareness about wikipedia (through press releases etc...). --Histolo2 23:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wikimedia Foundation
- I think it is the foundation's task to encourage the chapters to formulate SMART goals for leveraging the local languages within their geographic area, as well as setting those goals itself - including fund allocation - for areas that are not covered by chapters. The foundation is IMO also responsible for aggregating the results that are reported from the chapters, so that a global overview of achievements and progress will be available, and best practices can be drawn up based on the successes and failures in the past.
- chapters
- The chapters are closest to the individual volunteers and local external partners. This process will only scale if the chapters take the responsibility of communication, coordination and execution of set goals together with the individual volunteers, local external partners, and international external partners where applicable. Monitoring, tracking, and chasing should be done on this level, because doing this on a global level will mean that a lot of language barriers have to be overcome, making the process cumbersome.
- individual volunteers
- Active volunteers are the back bone of everything that gets done. They are the people that care, for whatever reason, and put their time into "making things better". They should know who to approach - requires at least documentation of project goals if the volunteer wants to work within a project's scope - and they should be able to make a career in the projects; delegate responsibilities as soon as possible as low as possible to motivate the volunteers and to keep things scalable.
- external partners
- <no time to go into this yet>