Talk:How to start a grassroots group

"OLPC xxx" namespace usage

There are many pages and categories in the pattern of "OLPC country", which is perhaps best read as "OLPC volunteers in country", although sometimes it may be confused as being more narrowly defined as the local chapter organized with the name "OLPC country". The narrower construction emphasizes a specific organization over cooperative and hopefully coordinated efforts in a given country. OLPC Nepal and OLE_Nepal offer an example where there are two local organizations working on OLPC deployment in Nepal. Tagging an OLE Nepal developed page with the category "OLPC Nepal" would hopefully not be seen as improperly crediting OLE Nepal's worthy efforts, but rather it should be seen as a way to allow newcomers to more easily navigate (using category tags) to all of the pages related to the efforts (of all parties) to help children in Nepal by deploying XO laptops and XS servers and related content efforts.

See Category:Countries for a discussion of conventions on establishing a new "OLPC country" page. Further discussion of emerging standards on the use of the "OLPC country" and "OLPC language" namespaces is just getting underway with the goal of establishing some consensus to guide wiki users.

Proyecto Ceibal (also sometimes known as OLPC Ceibal or on this wiki as OLPC_Uruguay) offers an example where a local organization does not choose the "English-standard" "OLPC country" naming convention. Through it's efforts, OLPC embraces localization into many languages and local organizations are, of course, free to name themselves as they choose; however, it is to be expected that english-language users on the wiki will generally look for the english language pages related to a given country's OLPC efforts at the "OLPC country" page.

To add to the confusion, there are also many wiki pages employing the naming pattern of "OLPC city/region". This is seen mostly in North America where the G1G1 program has resulted in many XO laptops in the hands of donors in various metro areas, where they have organized themselves under "OLPC city/region" banners for meet-ups to explore the XO together and also to coordinate contributions to the broader OLPC effort. These pages generally have the "XO User Group" category tag. Cjl 02:21, 11 April 2008 (EDT)