User:Verbistheword/organizingmeetups

Wikipedians in Greater St. Louis, Columbia, and Kansas City metro area are getting organized! I'm collecting some information here to support that process.

Terms

Events

• Meetup might be a generic term for a gathering of people, as it is used on the Wikipedia:Meetup page, or it might be a specific term to distinguish this gathering from other types.
• Edit-a-thons or edit parties are gatherings when people edit Wikimedia projects at the same time, and likely have both a theme and experienced Wikimedians present to present to the group or coach attendees.
• Wikisalons are...

Organizations

• User groups are...
• Chapters are...
• Wikiprojects are...

Templates and other bits to borrow from existing meetups

• Location-based meetup main page
  • This page is linked directly from the Wikipedia:Meetup page, and is formatted differently across the groups.
  • Patterns in page structures:
    • List of upcoming meetups and of past/recent meetups, such as DC, Boston, or distinguished by month, as Minnesota, or with invite details for each, as Denver.
    • Table of upcoming meetups and past/recent meetups, such as Philadelphia.
    • Using the page for the most recent meetup, such as Connecticut, Newark, Boezeman.
    • Tabbed layout, such as New York City, Nebraska, West Virginia.
    • A space for suggested meetups, such as Austin, Boulder.
    • An IRC channel, such as the northeast, as said on Pittsburgh.
    • With history and other prose, such as Portland, Chicago, Detroit, Lawrence, Topeka.
    • With a box at the top, such as Connecticut, Seattle.
    • Link to social media accounts or other contact info, such as LA, San Francisco.
    • A welcome banner, such as San Diego, DC, Boston.
• To Do list / how-to for DC meetups
  • This subpage of the DC meetup main page lists ways to get your meetup posted and started. I recall being told that some steps are optional.
  • We might like to make our own version of this page, to help meetups go smoothly and notify people that they exist.
• Event templates
  • It is possible to make templates that an event organizer could use to start their meetup event page.
  • We might like to either use an existing template or create and maintain our own.
• Create a new meetup page box
  • Single field and button that leads to a meetup page template. It's a type of input box. DC and Boston and others this box on their Wikipedia:Meetup main pages. It's unclear where it started, but DC might know.
  • We can probably make a St. Louis version, to make creating new pages more straightforward.
• Location-based event infobox
  • We have a few variations on our pages, such as an arch with a fleur-de-lis or a photo of the St. Louis skyline.
• Template:Meetup (which displays kind of like an info box)
  • This appears to be a way to get meetups listed on other main level pages. Many many US meetup groups use it.
  • We might want to add our meetups to whatever this template pulls on, to help others learn about them, but I'd first like to learn more about its scope and whether it is effective in recruiting attendees.

Draft pages and draft templates

Pages

• Organizing a Missouri area gathering
• Ways to tell people about events

Templates

• Sharing meeting (Missouri's own special iteration)
• Edit party (Missouri's own special iteration)

Brand

Anyone may use the Wikimedia Community logo without asking permission, as mentioned on the Wikmedia user groups Meta-wiki article.

Places where St. Louis Wikimedians are getting organized

• Wikipedia:Meetup/St. Louis
• User group application draft
• A "template" (which may not have been template-ized) for recruiting to a Missouri User Group.
• Survey for STL event attendees