Wikipedian twin towns and sister cities

Basic Idea

There are active Wikipedians on the entire globe, who gather for various meetups, or regular and irregular tertulias. Those are becoming more and more complex. In Germany for instance, Wikipedians meanwhile have supraregional gatherings such as Wikipedia:Süddeutschland for South Germany, or regular shared cross-country train rides. Yet despite numerous national gatherings, international ones are scarce. Most prominent among the international ones is the annual Wikimania conference. Wikipedian twin towns and sister cities are meant to facilitate such international gatherings on a smaller scale, too.

Concept

Active tertulias of wikipedians, or town or city gatherings of wikipedian, respectively, seek international partner towns or cities, link themselves up with those, start an exchange with each other, develop common projects, and so on.

Rationale

Wikipedia is an international project collecting and supporting free knowledge. Therefore, meeting each other in person became inevitable. Wikipedian twin towns and sister cities provide opportunities to get in touch with foreign cultures and get to know them more thoroughly. They let people develop contacts to places abroad, and make people meet. They make wikipedians widen their views, and broaden their horizons, helping the projects, as well as themselves, to deveolp.

How to proceed

Groups of Wikipedians interested in this kind of exchange add themselves to the page Wikipedian twin towns and sister cities/Index and indicate, too, with whom they would like to found partnerships. They make contact, and their respective Wikipedia projectpages are linked to each other. How strongly, and how deeply contacts and cooperations develop, would of course depend on the interest and dedication of each individual group. The concept should openly and transparently be developed further by the participating groups, and there should be plenty of room for adding ideas, visions, and independent developments.

Relaunch of the same concept: WikiCities

The above concept was started in 2010 but the project seems to have lost its initial spin. The same basic idea arose again in June 2016 on WikiMania and a new project was launched at the page WikiCities.