Wikifai, or How are we going to help Wikipedia

Hello, Habr.

With this post we open a series of weekly reflections on Wikipedia and how to work together to make it better. And first, let's briefly introduce Wikify , on whose behalf we are talking: Wikife is a cultural project aimed at developing and popularizing Wikipedia. Our mission is to effectively bring together editors, experts and sponsors to improve and expand the encyclopedia.

Given the popularity of Wikipedia as the primary source of information and an excellent tool for (self) education, we consider it important to improve the quality and number of articles. At the same time, it is obvious to us that it is necessary not only to edit articles, but also to involve public organizations, companies' resources, experience of experts and funds of sponsors for the development of the encyclopedia. It is impossible to ignore such opportunities, but we will not.
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Today is just a short post-greeting, an invitation to dialogue, criticism and exchange of thoughts. We are extremely interested in the opinion of the habrovchan people, how we can equip Wiktifay. We believe that together we can not only write articles, but also make a super-efficient and open organization to help Wikipedia.

Wikifa Story in two paragraphs

It has long been a feeling that something went wrong in the Russian-language section of Wikipedia. The years go by, the editors come and go, but there has not been a qualitative jerk, and there is no. You can complain about fate, but you can take the initiative. During the summer months, we intensively communicated with many private and public organizations and almost always met an understanding of the importance of developing Wikipedia. On the question of what ways to help them come to mind, usually answer one of two things: to edit articles yourself or donate money to Wikipedia . But usually there is no time for the first one, or it stops the fear of screwing up, but they don’t see a big deal from the second - donations go to the Foundation in the States and do not affect the quality of the content in the Russian section directly. How else can you participate - almost no one knows. And to understand yourself is not enough motivation. Accordingly, if we want to convey to the general public the values ​​of free knowledge, we need an effective and open control tool of propaganda. And we will do it.

Someone may reasonably notice that there is already an American Wikimedia Foundation and its Russian chapter, NP Wikimedia RU . But the fact is that, by virtue of their ideology and structure, they are poorly suited to coordinate such work. The first is extremely far from our local problems, so there is not much use of it; the second is the association of volunteers, where there is no center for decision making and coordination of work.
However, for the qualitative implementation of projects and communication with other organizations, we need a clear structure, quick decision-making, flexibility and subordination in order to ask from whom for deadlines and results. So in fact, we are building Wiktifay as a business structure. Moreover, there are many wonderful examples of how to do this. The projects of Alexei Navalny or, for example, the City projects of Ilya Varlamov and Maxim Katz are not only a source of inspiration, but also an invaluable experience that it was silly not to apply to Wikipedia.

Activity structure

All our activities can be divided into three areas:

• Wiki-support , where we answer any questions on Wikipedia for free .
• Initiatives and joint projects.
• Paid services , which are funded by all initiatives.

In order not to lump everything together, we will devote a separate post to each topic at one time. In the meantime, you can look at the site a little more detailed description of each direction.

Instead of conclusion

It is no secret that many encyclopedists perceive with hostility any near-wikipedia activity and look askance at activists like us (especially for commercial services). But we also know that many approve of our initiative. And without the number of those who are not being Wikipedists, I still would like to help Wikipedia. And we invite such people to the virtual club of Wikifa's friends . Any participation will be useful, together we can make WikiFight powerful and effective.