Bringing Wikimedians into the Conversation at Libraries/Planning for new contributors
Planning for new contributors
Engaging new volunteers with Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects has its challenges. Some first time editors lack the confidence to publish on such a visible and far reaching platform as Wikipedia. Others struggle with the technical aspects of editing. Perhaps, the biggest challenge, however, is retention of editors following an initial training session or Edit-a-thon event.[1]
The main challenge when introducing new volunteers to Wikimedia projects is frequently apprehension or lack of confidence: Wikipedia is a large website, seen as an almost venerable institution, and its often misunderstood by the public; contributing to that large and mysterious project can be intimidating or simply unmotivating. Having a champion on hand to lend confidence to new contributors, helps speed through interpreting the project’s nuances and feedback systems. For example, its very useful to have someone with Wikipedia experience in new-contributor events to serve as interpreters. When more seasoned Wikipedia volunteers have first interactions with new editors, sometimes they are rather abrupt or less than welcoming. Having a human on hand to explain what a template means, or how to figure out if the critique of the new editor’s work is valid, provides in-person opportunities for modeling the community/social dynamic of developing content.
If you are planning on hosting an event to edit Wikipedia, it is also useful to make contact with a few experienced Wikipedians via their Wikipedia profiles; if you can get hold of editors with admin rights that’s even better. These editors will then be aware that a group of new editors is being trained and can offer appropriate online support -- such as patrolling new content to ensure that it won’t solicit poor responses from other editors.
In order to address these and other issues of building sustainable communities of local editors, most projects needs at least one champion. Such champions come in many guises, from enthusiastic outreach staff within libraries and proactive local community leaders to Wikimedian’s in Residence and online Wikimedia volunteers. As the Wikimedia community has grown and become more effective at outreach, we have found that it’s less important for these champions to fully understand Wikimedia projects, but more important is for them to have strong teaching skills so that they can explain interactions to new contributors and for them to be able to tap a network of supporters with deeper Wikimedia knowledge.
Protip: Initially Wikipedia editors had to have a basic grasp of Wiki Markup[2] in order to contribute. In recent years, Wikipedia has introduced a new “Visual Editor” which modernises the process to act more like a word processor or contributing to a content management system like Wordpress. The introduction of this tool, since late 2012, has drastically cut training times and made Wikipedia editing accessible to a far wider audience. Those teaching new contributors how to edit Wikipedia can start volunteers in the Visual Editor, while providing a brief introduction to the wiki source code.
Another important component of maintaining volunteer communities is providing tangible feedback and demonstration of the impact of volunteer work. Wikipedia and its sister platforms provide a global environment for a hugely varied corpus of information, data and media. Because of this reach and scope, some volunteers will find motivation from seeing the instant fruits of their labor, in the shape of new or improved Wikimedia content. However, providing sustained morale building throughout the programming, helps strengthen that initial value.
There are a number of tactics for sustaining morale, that overlap closely with good library programming: for example, coordinating press and social media communications with volunteer activities, that highlights the value of individual volunteer work, or providing small benefits to participants in the events, like free refreshments or a “backstage” tour of your institution, which reward volunteers for participation with tangible benefits. Your local user group or Wikimedia chapter may also have a budget for merchandise such as badges, pens, stickers and t-shirts which they can distribute for free, and these are usually well received by volunteers. Innovating on different kinds of motivation and moral support, and sharing what works helps develop best practices for public knowledge projects more generally. For example, at West Virginia University, the Wikipedian in Residence is partnering with sororities to give sorority members service credit for their participation in Wikimedia activities in collaboration with the library and educators.
Case study: Many libraries co-ordinate small teams of volunteers who wish to work with them. At the National Library of Wales volunteers who wish to work with the institution are all offered the chance to work with Wikipedia and in March 2017 fifteen volunteers were working regularly on improving Wikipedia content. Tasks are tailored to every individuals needs and interests. The Library holds an annual awards ceremony to recognise the achievements of its volunteers and offers free parking and refreshments to all members of the team. The scheme has been so successful that there is often a waiting list to volunteer.
- ↑ A 2015 report from the Wikimedia Foundation shows that this number could be as low 5% at six months. See the report at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Evaluation_reports/2015/Editathons/Outputs. As the report notes, this does not represent all events -- only ones described through WMF grant reporting-- and our measuring strategies for generating these numbers may be inaccurate. We do have some evidence that sustained community activities have better retention results: in the Czech Republic, the public library did a training activity with senior citizens which used regular weekly trainings to get a 50% retention rate at three months: Dostál, Vojtěch. “Senior citizens learn to edit Wikipedia in the Czech Republic.” Wikimedia Blog, January 12, 2015. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/01/12/czech-senior-citizens-learn-to-edit/. Librarians and other knowledge professionals also have higher retention rates, often returning to Wikimedia contributions after long periods of time to host events and do information literacy work alongside contribution. A number of projects since 2015, have shown continuous ability to bring repeated attention and participation from large communities, including Art+Feminism, Black Lunch Table and Afrocrowd in New York City, and #1lib1ref.
- ↑ Wiki markup, also known as wikitext or wikicode, consists of the syntax and keywords used by the MediaWiki software to format a page. In addition to wiki markup, some HTML elements are also allowed for presentation formatting