(→‎Guidelines: link to steward description)
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** Are specific skills particularly being sought?
** Are specific skills particularly being sought?
** Five to ten talking points about the initiative
** Five to ten talking points about the initiative
** Provisional Steward
** Identify the (possibly Provisional) [[Appropedia:Initiative stewards|Steward]]
* Promotional support
* Promotional support
** Prior to launch, there should be 5 to 10 Initiative-related one-line messages defined
** Prior to launch, there should be 5 to 10 Initiative-related one-line messages defined

Revision as of 03:52, 6 June 2010

Appropedia Initiatives are parallel to the Wikipedia concept of Projects. These are coordinated activities promoted to the Appropedia at large with the idea of generating momentum and critical mass such that they "take on a life of their own" after the initial surge of effort. In that way, Initiatives can "kickstart" an important topic, or activity or policy.

  • For a list of upcoming Initiatives in the planning stages, see here
  • For a list of previously highlighted Initiatives, see here
  • For the currently highlighted Initiative, see here

Guidelines

  • One Initiative will be promoted as the "Highlighted Initiative" for a certain period, perhaps two to four weeks.
    • Should the duration always be a fixed number of weeks, or perhaps it should depend on the depth/complexity of the Initiative?
  • Past initiatives will be tracked below (potentially broken out to separate article at some point). Past initiatives should be linked from highlighted Initiative.
    • Should we create categories for previously highlighted Initiatives? No harm, obviously...

The following should apply to Initiatives:

  • They must have at least a provisional "steward" that can answer questions, provide some wiki-management, do prep work (if applicable)
    • If no provisional steward can be found for an initiative, there must be some question about whether there is sufficient support for the effort
    • If no ongoing steward is found during the time in which the Initiative is highlighted, it can continue on as community owned for some time and we can ask for stewards. However, after a time if no one steps up the initiative will likely lose steam.
  • Topic-oriented Initiatives should be narrow enough that something useful and practical can be captured in ten articles, and yet should be rich enough to justify 100 or more.
    • The idea being that during the focus time of the Initiative we can add some great value and get some momentum
  • There must be an Initiative launch page describing the initiative
    • What, specifically, are people being asked to do?
    • Is there clear guidance on how to do things?
    • Is there a sequence / priority?
    • Are specific skills particularly being sought?
    • Five to ten talking points about the initiative
    • Identify the (possibly Provisional) Steward
  • Promotional support
    • Prior to launch, there should be 5 to 10 Initiative-related one-line messages defined
      • We will use these as talking points to draw attention to the Initiative on Facebook, Twitter, Main page and Site Notice.
    • Someone (provisional steward or someone else) should commit to blog (at Appropedia?) about the Initiative
    • Where the topic has broad appeal (beyond Appropedia), a Facebook page is highly desirable

Questions about these guidelines

  • Should there be a "prep period" preceding an Initiative?
    • Initiatives are meant to generate a flurry of activity. Perhaps there should be some pre-coordination / groundwork / framework so that the flurry of activity is more effective.
    • Given that a flurry of activity is desired, there is value in informing a bunch of people, and in giving folks some notice so that they can allocate some time on their calendars
    • To that end, upcoming Initiatives and their timeframes should be "pre-announced" to enable awareness building and identification of the work to be done. Or perhaps this "pre-work" is really the body of an Initiative?
    • Things that could be done in advance might include
      • Contact potentially interested people (experts or amateurs, especially with collaborative orientation)
      • Identify good candidate content (especially if public domain or CC-BY-SA) and gather links to that
      • Work toward category structure
  • Seems like initiatives have "phases"? How does Wikipedia handle Projects? Do they focus on just one at a time?
  • Perhaps the whole idea of Initiatives should have a promotional phase, so that we can get good candidates with stewards etc.

More ideas (not guidelines) that can help an Initiative

  • Many Initiatives will deserve a Portal page. Can be developed as the initial article, or can come as part of initiative
  • Identify what resources are in place (policies, articles, tools, volunteers willing to help in specific ways)
  • Ask for a people to build a list (i.e. links to) potentially helpful or willing/committed people / partner orgs
  • Ask users to build a list of useful content (links) to images, videos, articles, etc, especially openly licensed, etc
  • Ask for suggestions or proposals of ways in which financial resources/assistance might be applied to advance the initiative
  • Define possible project phases / stages (if appropriate)
  • Perhaps define a set of metrics or milestones to measure progress
  • Ask for volunteers to handle 3 month stints of stewardship of the Initiative after launch
  • Series of blog posts providing pre-announcement, start, and progress updates and (if appropriate) closure (maybe blog post per talking point?)
  • Announcement text and possibly image for main page (ties in with Portal)
  • Acknowledgements / recognition of volunteers / organizations

Maintenance related to Initiatives

When a highlighted Initiative gets moved out of the spotlight, that Initiative must be added to the list of previously highlighted Initiatives. When this happens, a new Initiative should be primed and ready to go. If there is no new initiative ready to launch, we should consider highlighting some previously highlighted ones. In any case, please make sure that the redirect page gets updated! There is plenty of work at Appropedia to maintain steady flow of Initiatives, but doing it well means doing forward looking work.

Contact

Contact User:Curtbeckmann regarding the Appropedia Initiative initiative.

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