Grants talk:Project/FLG/History of Quebec and French-speaking North America/Midpoint

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi Mathieugp, and thanks for this midpoint report on your work so far with FLG supporting historical content about Quebec and French-speaking North America. I am accepting this report with the following comments and questions:

• It's great to see a central hub at WP:FLG on French Wikipedia that centralizes past and current projects, ongoing activities, content donations, and other organizational information. Thanks for taking the time to prepare this space to highlight this project but also the larger context of work and achievements that this collaboration has resulted in so far.
• Our outreach efforts paid off. Soon after our initial public announcement of the grant we received from WMF, the word got around and we received many e-mails and even phone calls from historians and teachers who wanted to give us their personal support.
  • I'm glad to see that your successful outreach efforts from this outset of this grant have resulted in a lot of potential future collaborations to continue and expand your work in this historical domain. It is certainly must be a pleasant feeling to be proactively contacted by other major historical organizations! Thanks for getting started to prepare some ideas with them already-- are there existing or new aspects of historical content you think you may be able to explore with these organizations?
• Thanks for preparing this learning pattern to help others in the movement prepare appropriate trainings for newcomers and to set appropriate expectations.
• On August 6, we trained Lucia Ferretti (Lancia Spaghetti), history professor at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) who will in turn train her students to contribute to Wikipedia as part of her course entitled "HST1094 - Démocratie et citoyenneté : perspectives historiques sur les enjeux actuels" (Democracy and Citizenship - historical perspective on current issues).
  • Fantastic news, and thanks for providing a link to the course material!
• Another challenge is keeping participants active after our training and contribution events. So far, we've put in place several strategies to do so: sending emails to invite them to free and recurring events of training and contribution such as "Mardi, c'est Wiki !" (Montréal) and "Jeudi, c'est Wiki !" (Québec City) organized by BAnQ, one of our major partners. We also recognize their contributions and encourage them by sending "thank you" notifications. In order to improve our editors retention rate, we will continue to apply these strategies and also try new ones, for example the sending of a newsletter (publicizing what's been done by active participants, announcing events to come, etc.)
  • It's clear you are open to trying and adopting different strategies to address this challenge, which is certainly one many program organizers have faced in our movement around training. I think the recognition aspect of participants' work through thank you's and highlighting achievements or progress from active participants is a great approach to test and
• Finally, thanks for your clear reporting on your goals so far, and you are on track. Your efforts show you on are on track for your goals, and I'm excited to see what achievements you have in the second half of your work.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

We thank you in return I JethroBT (WMF) for your positive feedback! :-)

Regarding your question ("are there existing or new aspects of historical content you think you may be able to explore with these organizations?"), the answer is yes, both existing and new historical content. It is confirmed now: on 23 November 2019, we will be co-organizing our 3rd major training + contribution event on "Major figures in the history of women in Montréal" with Société historique de Montréal (SHM), Archives de Montréal (Montreal City Archives) and Pointe-à-Callière Museum. We have already identified a few figures that simply do not have an article yet and several others that are only stubs. --Mathieugp (talk) 15:30, 23 September 2019 (UTC)