The microcosm of Wikimedia.ch

Dear all,
I write this email not like a board member but like a wikimedian. I
would have written it before but I think that the meeting of tomorrow
can be a good opportunity.

You know that Wikimedia CH is an heterogeneous association and we have
accepted a big challenge: "To be a community".

This is very difficult because the Switzerland is divided in different
Wikipedias and also if this country is smaller than others, our
association is like a "microcosm" of Wikipedia. Probably you know that
we are the only association with different national languages and for
other associations it's very strange that we can proceed. Probably in
the future there will be other associations, for example Wikimedia India
which have a multitude of languages but all people know English, or
Canada, but in any case they will have only two languages. As you can
see in our web site we have chosen to translate it in 5 languages
because we accept 5 languages!

You probably know that most of us comes from Wikipedia and Wikipedia is
a community structured by language. The only communication with other
languages is the interwiki, we don't have either single sign on, but we
are going further.

Some of us probably are already friends because they have collaborated
in Wikipedia, but we are not only a "unique" but also a "single"
community, we are not four or five communities.

For this reason *I hope that all people would accept to introduce
himself here*, in this mailing list, I suggest that any of us can write
here who he is, what he does, where he lives. It could be a good way at
least to find persons who has our same interests, our same holiday
places, our same university. The language? It is not important, in
Switzerland most of all knows at least two languages.

I suggest also that any board member can introduce Swiss wikimedians
known by himself (in this way we pull down the shyness).

I hope that this could be a first step to *build community* and if we
have a Wikimedia CH meeting (I hope that this could happens frequently)
we can meet together as friends and not as unknown persons.

I will take the first step in the next email.

Only one request: please translate this email in French and in German if
you agree and resend it to this mailing list.

Ilario

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