User:Node ue/Language invite form letter

Since sending an e-mail to somebody asking them if they'd like to create a Wikipedia for a language and for the most part failing miserably, I've thought a lot about how it would be nice if there were some suggested format for such letters.

Having Wikipedias in languages like Hawaiian, Aymara, Navajo, and Inuktitut really fits well with the "spirit of Wikipedia". The problem is, the chances of getting a speaker of one of these languages randomly that actually knows they're able to create a Wikipedia for their language are pretty low. I'm sure we've had more than a few speakers of each of these languages visit Wikipedia, maybe even edit. But chances are they didn't realize they could make a Wikipedia for their language.

There is an army of minority language activists who would be overjoyed at the prospect of making a Wikipedia in their language. There are also people who actually work on a Wikipedia already, and are aware they *could* start a Wikipedia in their language, but for some reason don't anyways.

In the case of countries like Bhutan, somebody might even be willing to pay people to help make a new Wikipedia.

I thought it would be a good idea to send letters to some prominent speakers of minority languages. I gave them links that described in detail how Wikipedia works, including the Welcome, Newcomers page and such.

The response was usually "I made a few changes to the main page, but I can't help because I don't know how Wikipedia works".

I thought it would be nice to try to involve other people in making a standard letter of invitation to a minority language activist who appears to be the sort of person who would be interested.

The key requirements are:


 * It should be easy to understand, but not be condescending
 * It should be polite, but should not sound extremely formal
 * It should make clear the mission of Wikipedia
 * It should be able to convince people that they don't need lots of special knowledge to help create a Wikipedia, and that one person is enough to get a Wikipedia started (in the past, people have said to me "I would, but I'd be the only one working on it" and other such things) and people will come

Here is my basic draft of the letter, please make changes where you see fit:

(Subject: [languagename] OR Can you help with a [languagename] encyclopedia? OR something)

"Hello, [person],

As an advocate of [languagename], I thought you might be interested in a project I'm involved with called Wikipedia. It is a project to build a free encyclopedia in many languages on the Internet. It is a collaborative project, and anyone who wants to contribute can do so without even registering.

We would very much like to have a complete free encyclopedia in [languagename]. Wikipedia is already well-known around the world, with extensive versions in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and many more languages, including smaller ones such as Corsican and Low Saxon.

I really hope you can help. At the same time, you'll be doing something good for [languagename], because soon a lot more information will be readily available in [languagename] on the Internet thanks to Wikipedia.

Just let me know if you want more information. :)

Best wishes, [sender]"

I can tell there's definitely something wrong with it, but I felt like I needed to write *something* to start with.

If you can think of any more requirements, you can add them too.