Archive:Workgroup Weeks/We can do this

Dear Citizens,

Workgroup Weeks (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Workgroup_Weeks) is the biggest initiative we have planned so far. It has the potential not just to raise our participation rates by double or triple, but by orders of magnitude. We have never done a massive, concerted, ongoing recruitment effort.

I built Nupedia and, based on that community, Wikipedia by the sort of recruitment I am inviting you all to do. I've done this sort of thing many times. I know it works. If we do this, we will get massive numbers of excellent new participants. It's not a question of whether it works, it's a question of whether we have the will to do the hard work to make it happen!

Now, if we were to leave this hard work to one person--me, say--I estimate it would take that person about a year of full-time work to get it done. We can't afford to pay anyone to do that, and I personally don't have the time to do it, with everything else I must do for the project. But if we all get together to do this, and spread the work out over many weeks, we'll require relatively little work from each person, but the collective impact of that work will be tremendous.

(1) Recruitment works. We'll get lots of new people this way. Cf. how Nupedia and Wikipedia got started.

(2) Limited-time "events" work. We'll get lots of activity in a particular workgroup this way. Cf. the Write-a-Thon.

(3) This is the single best idea on offer to "kick-start" work in workgroups.

(4) There's no need to get this approved.

(5) You're needed. You don't have to do it all yourself, but if we come together, we'll accomplish huge things.