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Strategic Plan 2010-2015/Accelerate growth in high potential countries

From Strategic Planning

In many cases, the causes of low market penetration can be addressed via targeted investments:

Cause of low market penetration Opportunity for targeted investment? Support from the community and external experts
Lack of content in accessible language Yes 628 million people lack access to a mature Wikipedia
Lack of culturally relevant content Yes “Remarkably there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 53 countries in Africa . . . [and more articles written] about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia.” -Local Language Projects Task Force [1]
Lack of awareness of Wikipedia Yes “For Wikimedia projects to grow . . . it is first of all important to make people aware of the usefulness of such projects, and also aware of why they should contribute.” - Local Language Projects Task Force [2]
Lack of awareness of how to contribute Yes “For the most part, people are not aware of how Wikipedia works and why it’s valuable. That might still be the issue for the African continent.”� -Lova Rakotomalala, African blogger
Censorship No “There are some problems in China. Freedom of speech is one. We had Wikipedians who got harassed this year in China shortly before June 4. They were taken to the police station and got ‘educated’ (no physical violence).” - Ting Chenread interview, Board of Trustees Member [3]
Competition No “I hate to be pessimistic but I think that competing in China is very difficult now that other companies like Baidu and Hudong have pulled ahead.” - Chinese Internet Entrepreneur


References

  1. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:Task_force/Local_Language_Projects/What_strategies_and_tactics_are_successful_in_increasing_awareness_of_Wikipedia_projects_in_a_specific_geographic_region_and_how_can_Wikimedia_empower_people_to_implement_these_strategies_and_tactics%3F#What_strategies_and_tactics_are_successful_in_increasing_awareness_of_Wikipedia_projects_in_a_specific_geographic_region_and_how_can_Wikimedia_empower_people_to_implement_these_strategies_and_tactics.3F_2271
  2. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Local_language_projects/Outreach
  3. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interviews/Ting_Chen