Kim will solicit proposals from the community, which will have its own wiki pages, and Wikipedians are being asked to commit 10 hours a week for four months to join task forces divided by issues of concern.
UNSPARING
Jimmy Wales, the public face of the project, was unsparing in his criticism when he addressed the conference.
“We are mostly male computer geeks,” he stated, adding that there may be a measure of diversity, but only in that “we are from different parts of the world.”
As he spoke, a chart showed the self-reported demographics of Wikipedia contributors — more than 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, around 70 percent under the age of 30.
Some Wikipedias are dominated by articles about pop culture, Wales pointed out, especially Japanese Wikipedia; according to one of his slides, barely 20 percent of the articles on Japanese Wikipedia are about anything else.
More profoundly, he said that Wikipedia was losing sight of its commitment to give everyone in the world a free encyclopedia, particularly people in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Is it more important to get to 10 million articles in English, or 10,000 in Wolof?” he asked.
In her speech, Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, was effusive in her praise for all that Wikipedians have created, but she too thought there was reason for concern.
“I believe we are pretty suspicious outsiders,” she said, adding that there were good reasons for that. “We are vulnerable to exploitation — people want to monetize the traffic that comes to Wikipedia, or pursue a political agenda.”
“People want to help us,” she said. “We need to open ourselves up to external resources. It is important we open those doors and let those people in.”
Walking through Buenos Aires, Helm said this was unlike any communications assignment he had taken on.
“It is an awesome story to tell, but I have no idea what we’ll do in terms of tactics,” he said. “My hope is that no one will be able to say, ‘who did they hire to do this work?’”
Kim said one issue Wikipedians would need to examine would be “the introduction of bureaucratization,” as represented by outsiders like himself.
“It is important to me that my participation have a beginning and an end,” he said.
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