Chapters meeting 2010/Documentation/Outreach I

Recruiting new editors (Frank Schulenburg)

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"Public Outreach" > renamed "New Editor Relations"

  • Support new editors through their first 100 edits
  • 5-year-plan, priority for year one:


Public Policy Initiative

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative


assumptions:

  • Students are the "fuel" of Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia is a great teaching tool
    • encourage universities and professors to use Wikipedia for teaching
    • gain users/editors:
      • students write articles
      • learn by editing


What is "Public Policy"?

  • a collaborative dicipline in U.S. schools and institutions
  • well suited field to start Outreach with
  • a topic area
    • laws and legal structure
    • how does government serve the people
    • e.g. "Clear Water Act", Health Care


Roles

  • Foundation: Develops a model and infrastructure
  • Chapters: Actual outreach


Model

  • Goal: Developing a model that can be replicated by others
  • experimental project; documentation on everything is needed
  • can be found on the outreach-wiki
  • first project: two semesters at 5-7 schools (Harvard, Indiana, George Washington,...)


Infrastructure

  • Sample Lesson Plans/Projects
  • Live Chat
  • Mentoring Programm
  • ...


Phase One

  • planning outreach:
    • outreach to key institutons in the field of public policy (finished)
    • meeting with professors; talk about interests, topics and content
    • evaluation of the results of the outreach phase (finished)
    • development of educational materials (in process)

Phase Two

  • quality-improvement
    • assessment of the current status of public policy articles on Wikipedia
    • Training of Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors: people that work to the classrooms
    • hands-on Wikipedia workshops
    • improvements of articles
    • evaluation and documentation

http://tinyurl.com/publicpolicyinitiative


  • Proposals for funds to have chapter reps travel to PPI sites to observe and ask questions
  • idea of helpdesk/live help that helps immediately
  • ambassadors to train people or classrooms
  • For now, this project does not include Wikisource


Britain loves Wikipedia (case study)

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Photo competition by WM-UK

  • collaboration with 20 museums in the UK
  • GLAMs involed: 20 museums, galleries, etc.
  • competition: Who makes the best pictures?


Promotion/Advertising

  • leaflet to navigate people
    • institutions involved
    • instructions
    • prizes
    • themes
    • links
  • own wiki; http://britianloveswikipedia.org
    • information on project
    • own upload system
      • button "Upload" on first page
      • Easy uploader: 2 pics and data at once
      • uploading via Flickr
      • confirmation of authentic photos by museums


Results

  • reasonable, but far from overwhelming
    • 584 photos uploaded; 25 declined by museums (Category: Britain_Loves_Wikipedia)
    • V&A: nad Postal Archive were the best attended (50-60 people at each event)
    • some museums with no photos


Comparison

  • wiki loves art (US and UK): ~10k photos
  • Wiki Loves Art/NL ~5k photos; 46 museums
  • NL used flickr: as photographer communitie; easy upload tools
  • NL had an approval process before uploading to commons


Problems

  • lack of publicity (little media takeup, no external advertising)
  • lack of visibility (in museums, on wiki, e.g. sitenotice)
  • geographical: museums in remote areas
  • possible reasons
    • not reaching correct audience currently?
    • cannot find people living close to remote museums
    • difficult user interface that does not attract non-Wiki audience
    • photo confirmation took time, did not appear right away
  • potential solutions
    • develop a core group of participants to guarantee events



  • Ideas
    • Wiki Loves Art International
    • Wiki Takes The World, May 2011
      • Coincides (approx) 10 year anniversary of Wikipedia going multilingual (de+cat 16 March, f 11 May, then language landslide...)