Talk:New Readers/Community collaborations

Consultation

Consultation is not collaboration nor consensus, and surveys or "market research" are not consultations. Talking with people and studying the context is of course a good thing, but doesn't prove that the end result is somehow aligned with local needs of the local Wikimedia communities.

The general practice is for outreach initiatives to be initiated by their target communities, and supported from outside if needed. Of course this is a bit harder when the local community is weak, but could be possible by involving closely aligned parties. For instance Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/An Awareness Campaign for Wikipedia in Camaroon: Iolanda Pensa / Grants:IEG/What is about - C'est quoi. A series of communication tools about Wikipedia. Cameroon pilot project seemingly worked well due to being designed and thought primarily by locals who were well-aligned with Wikimedia's goals.

Phone surveys such as those mentioned in New Readers/Messaging for Nigeria are useful to gauge progress (e.g. whether that 23% awareness figure goes up after some work, or not), but I don't see anything in the results that could help inform/produce a campaign or initiative.

Then of course there's the problem of the name itself of the initiative: "new readers", instead of a more traditional "new users", conveys the idea that we're talking about passive targets or "consumers". I don't know what consultancy firms you're involving and what experience they have with free culture, but surely they may easily be confused by such working on the Wikimedia Foundation's end, and produce sub-optimal results. Nemo 17:24, 4 June 2017 (UTC)