Dear David, Please consider this my formal application for membership of Wikimedia South Africa.
Best regards David Robert Lewis On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 5:03 PM, David Richfield <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi all, > > Now that we're incorporated, we need to grow our membership so as to > achieve critical mass. > > According to the consititution, "Any person who makes a written > application to become a member of the company and whose application is > accepted by the directors shall be and become a member of the > company." > > Dumisani has expressed interest and been welcomed on the email lists, > but I'd like to get confirmation that he has been formally accepted as > a member. I support his membership. > > Maarten has asked how he can become a member, which I take to be a > written request, and I also support his membership. > > I am sure that if we ask Douglas whether he wants to be a member, > he'll join, and I'd like to ask pre-emptively whether anyone has an > objection to his membership. > > I'd also like us to agree on a membership process. One reasonable way > to approach this would be to require a prospective member to contact a > board member or post directly to the WMZA list. A director can then > approve his or her membership tenatively with a posting to the board > list - with no objections within two weeks, or with all directors' > agreement, that director should then be allowed to approve the > membership request formally. Please give me your feedback on this > proposal. > > In terms of getting new members, we urgently need to get more > Wikimedia project people into the organisation. We can do this by > advertising on the wikis. > > Wikiproject South Africa: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_South_Africa The > Wikiproject South Africa is quite active, and I think we should all > join it, and announce any meetups on the project page. > > We should try to get banners on South African language Wikis ASAP: > > The only really active one is Afrikaans: http://af.wikipedia.org . We > have none of the more active af-wiki editors in our membership, which > is a shame. I'm sure we can fix this soon by simply approaching them > and letting them know who we are and what we're doing. > > Registered but less active: > > http://nso.wikipedia.org - Sepedi Wikipedia has 568 pages, but not > very many active editors. I see Mohau has been editing a bit there. > http://zu.wikipedia.org - isiZulu Wikipedia has 543 pages, and a > relatively similar state to Sepedi. > http://tn.wikipedia.org - Setswana Wikipedia has 491 pages, but not > very much seems to be going on there since the Google challenge > finished. > http://ss.wikipedia.org - siSwati Wikipedia has 361 pages, slightly > less active than Sepedi and isiZulu > http://ts.wikipedia.org - Xitsonga Wikipedia only has 193 pages, but > seems to have more activity recently, and has a nicer-looking front > page than many similar-sized minor language Wikipedias. I see > Dumisani (Thuvack) has been active there, maybe he can help connect > with the community. > http://ve.wikipedia.org - tshiVenda Wikipedia has 190 pages, but > doesn't seem active at all at the moment. > http://st.wikipedia.org - Sesotho Wikipedia has 145 pages, but doesn't > seem very active. > http://xh.wikipedia.org - isiXhosa Wikipedia has 136 pages, but is not > active lately. > > If we can manage to connect to active users in these Wikipedias, we > might be able to get them to write a note on the front page asking > users to connect with us, to build community connections. > > http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nr/Main_Page - Southern Ndebele > has one article, about the National Language Service, so I doubt > there's a community to work with. > > I think we should also ask for a geolocated banner ad: this way anyone > who uses Wikipedia in South Africa can be alerted to our existence, > and hopefully we'll get some traction. > > Kind regards, > > David > > -- > David Richfield > [[:en:User:Slashme]] > +27718539985 > > _______________________________________________ > WikimediaZA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza > -- *David Robert Lewis* *PO BOX 4398* *Cape Town* *8000* *South Africa* * * *Mobile 082 425 1454* *Home 021 448 0021* *Office 021 447 7899 * *Fax **0862396815* *Skype david.robert.lewis* * *
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