Archive:Workgroup Weeks

What are Workgroup Weeks?

Many people have been frustrated that, while the wiki as a whole has been fairly active, individual workgroups do not seem to be getting "critical mass." Another frustrating aspect of recruitment is that most people do not "stick around" to work on the wiki if they are not working with other people, and while we are growing, there are still many areas and topics on which one will find no collaborators.

To "kill two birds with one stone," we are planning a long-term recruitment effort with these features:

• Each week, a different workgroup will be featured in a Workgroup Week. It will be "Biology Week" or "Philosophy Week," or what have you, on CZ. This will be a major headline on the front page. This is similar in concept to the Write-a-Thons, but extends "horizontally" across a discipline instead of "vertically" across CZ.
• Make the starting versions of all Core Articles for the workgroup the main goal for the week.

The lead-up to a Workgroup Week

Most of the organizational work for a Workgroup Week will probably be done before the week itself.

Leading up to a given workgroup week,

• We canvass as many and as varied a group of mailing lists, blogs, etc., as possible, including of course CZ lists. We also contact the secretaries and chairs of all major research departments. We follow up each of these once if not twice. Push Eduzendium hard in these communications.
• We do a press release focused at industry publications/blogs, in advance. We follow this up with reports to major mailing lists and blogs.
• We broker endorsements and partnerships with major departments: put together Advisory Boards for each workgroup?
• Recruit an Editorial Personnel Administrator for each workgroup.
• Ask old editors to follow up with new editors personally.
• Each workgroup needs something like a coordinator, secretary, or reporter--as informal and low-key as possible--as a key expert contact point. This person should be willing to put his or her name as a press contact.
• We develop the workgroup's page brilliantly.

Here are more details about preparations.

During the week itself

During the week itself, we will:

• Announce the week to Citizendium-L, Citizendium-Editors, the CZ blog, and the mailing list for the CZ workgroup (e.g., cz-anthropology), at the beginning of the week.
• Do daily updates on the mailing list for the CZ workgroup, reporting what new articles have been started, what significant work was done, welcoming new arrivals "publicly," cheerleading, etc.
• Announce the start of the week to the previously-canvassed mailing list(s), as well as Web forums, blogs, and "big" websites.
• Do an end-of-week wrap-up e-mail.

Sign up to help organize workgroup weeks

If you are at all interested in helping with this initiative, then please add your name below! For each workgroup, we will probably need people to (1) respond to inquiries about specific workgroup efforts (e.g., someone writes to Larry about setting up a relationship between CZ and a professional organization: Larry wants to forward such mail preferably to an active editor); (2) help respond on mailing list announcements about CZ; (3) collect a list of the best articles in the workgroup; (4) solicit CZ endorsements for the week (and in general) from prominent experts, organizations, and departments...

Workgroup recruitment volunteers (sign up sheet)
Please add new workgroups below

Workgroup or general function (alphabetical)	Name and what you're willing to do
GENERAL INITIATIVE ORGANIZATION	Larry Sanger: create workgroup queue, drive the initiative forward, fill in as needed Your name here: what you'll do
PHILOSOPHY	Larry Sanger: respond to announcements made on various philosophy mailing lists; get in touch with some old philosopher accounts (there were many made last fall, when some excellent philosophers joined and were never made editors) Your name here: what you'll do

Sign up sheet for launch tasks

This is in progress...I'll be working more on it in the coming days. But feel free to add to it if you like! --Larry Sanger 14:34, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

To do (sign up sheet)

Task	Description/explanation	Person taking responsibility (add your name here)
Make workgroup week launch template	Make a precise (yet flexible) plan that new contributors can follow.	Larry Sanger
Write CZ:Why should experts join CZ?	Since we'll be inviting a lot of new editors to join the project, we should beef up our explanation of why they should join us. This should be linked from the top of CZ:Why Citizendium?	Noel Chiappa
Organize community pages	See CZ:Sidebar Design for a list of CZ: namespace pages, with things I think need to be done to them. What must be done in preparation for a regular influx of new people (if anything)?	Sign up...
Simplify Core Articles Initiative	See CZ:Proposals/Simplify Core Articles Initiative	Anthony Argyriou
Hammer out a template for workgroup homepages	Basically, what features should a really good workgroup homepage have? There is a related proposal.	Sign up...
Serve as Eduzendium point person	We will want to push Eduzendium hard when we do our recruitment leading up to a Workgroup Week. We need a person we can list as a contact person for professors interested in learning more about Eduzendium.	Sign up...
Write a mailing list recruitment letter	This letter will be adapted by various workgroups and sent to mailing lists and Web forums	Larry Sanger and whoever wants to pitch in and craft the most motivating letter possible
Write a blog recruitment letter	This letter will be adapted by various workgroups and sent to bloggers	Larry Sanger and whoever wants to pitch in and craft the letter most likely to get a blogger to post an announcement
		Sign up...

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