User:Flammifer/WikiProject New member recruitment

WikiProject proposal (Wikiproject/List of proposed projects).

Just gathering ideas; orignally thought as an improvement of Newbie Recruitment Initiative. This was after seeing that Building Wikipedia membership already existed, but hey, this is a project and the focus is only on editors.

Goal
Recruit new editors for wikipedia. This can cover both convincing people from "outside" top come read and edit wikipedia (telling them their contributions are needed, etc.), and getting wikipedia "passive" readers to edit.

This can be seen as part as WikiProject Countering systemic bias - finding topics with too few editors, and reaching out to people in those areas.

What can be done to attract members?

 * Making a "hall of fame" of good recruiters
 * Inteviewing new members, asking them what encouraged them to come edit
 * Organizing "recruitment raids" on forums dedicated to under-represented topics (maybe asking forum owners / list administrators beforehand if it's ok).
 * Contact knowledgeable people in that field
 * Ask professors in that field to talk about wikipedia to their students
 * Printing and distributing flyers at universities
 * ... other ideas?

Example
"Today's newbie recruitement drive is ... reptiles!" -> emails to biologists specialised in that area, posts on bulletin boards dedicated to people who have reptiles as pets, etc.

To keep in mind

 * This runs the risk of looking a bit like spam, especially if done with too much enthusiasm :) Since it's about addressing people *outside*, extra civility and care is required. No dumping a big boilerplate text on loads of forums. Asking the administrators if it's ok to talk about that on the forum could be a good move.
 * There's the risk of attracting vandals and trolls more than anything else - especially if the original recruitment looks a bit spammish. Examining troll and vandal motivations could be useful (easier said than done, ok).

Alternative names

 * Wiki evangelism
 * Wiki outreach

Related

 * Please do not bite the newcomers
 * Recruiting Editors Brainstorming