Proposal talk:Encourage laid-off automobile workers to edit Wikipedia articles related to the worldwide recession

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

By encouraging the common man to edit Wikipedia, we can make it less for university graduate students and more for the masses. GVnayR 02:30, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

... it already *is* for the masses. If it were written for graduate students then no one who wasn't a specialist in whatever field the article was about would be able to read it (meaning pretty much no one would be able to understand any given article). Wikipedia articles are written specifically with a general audience in mind. Gopher65_talk 19:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I apologize right there. What I meant to say is that we need more laid-off automobile workers to stop wasting their money on booze and acquire Internet access to explain their side of the story to people who read Wikipedia articles. GVnayR 03:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that auto-workers recently laid off are, in the majority, still unemployed? Or, alternatively, that they constitute a significant amount of the unemployed? You suggest that the majority of them are "wasting their money on booze" - is this just speculation on your part? Is this relevant to the topic at hand (that the auto-workers have free time and might use it for relevant educational purposes?)

What would the implementation of this proposal look like? For example, would Wikipedians in areas of high unemployment be encouraged to go out and help the unemployed edit Wikipedia? Would the WikiMedia Foundation fund the installation of wikipedia kiosks or online-accessibility computers in (un)employment centers? --Lyc. cooperi 08:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure some of the unemployed automobile workers have found jobs in other fields besides manufacturing. However, most of them have only known their local automobile plant and don't see themselves moving in a new direction. I only mentioned the booze part because I was conditioned to believe that unemployed people hit the bars and drink away their "green" when times hit tough for them. We could install Wikipedia kiosks in areas of high unemployment and they could edit Wikipedia there without tying up the family's internet access or phone line. Make it free or else nobody that was laid off could afford the opportunity after gassing up the vehicle and arriving there. GVnayR 23:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)