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[1] 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.
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- ↑ 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
