Public outreach/Academy/Goals
Goals
edit- Increase the scientist's understanding of the English Wikipedia (established practices and procedures)
- Encourage the scientists to help improving Wikipedia's quality
- Enable the scientists to contribute to Wikipedia
- Increase Wikipedia's credibility
- Establish a content partnership with our partner
Increase understanding
editWikipedia is well-known for being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. However many people may have little more information than that, or worse - misinformation about the project. The goal of Increasing Understanding of agency employees is aimed to educate them about the mission of Wikimedia and the principles behind Wikipedia and how it works. In addition, Wikipedia has developed a very complex system of quality management, of policies, rules and communication that can be daunting to new contributors. Our objective is to explain some parts of this complex universe: e.g. the system of quality management (that is –from my experience with prior Academy events– what scientists are most interested in) and some of the core principles ("no original research," the reason Wikipedia itself is generally not cited but instead the sources are cited, etc).
Indicators and Measures of Success
| Indicator | Measurement |
|---|---|
| 75% of participants/respondents indicate a positive awareness of WP | Pre & post event survey |
Encourage participation
editSome of the scientists already showed interest in participating, but others certainly need more encouragement. Our survey will hopefully give us an answer to the question how much encouragement is needed. Several ideas for encouraging sustainable participation have already been developed. Participation is not limited to edits only. It may include Meta-level work on medical and health projects, advising and reviewing articles, participation in discussion groups and other activities.
Indicators and Measures of Success
| Indicator | Measurement |
|---|---|
| 75% of participants/respondents understand the importance of contributing to WP | Pre & post event survey |
| Participation rates of 20% @ 3 months | user name activity / newsletter activity |
| Participation rates of 10% @ 6 months | user name activity / newsletter activity |
| Participation rates of 5% @1 yr+ | user name activity / newsletter activity |
| Artifacts of event enable broader participation | best practices are used with other groups |
Facilitating the first steps
editStarting to edit in Wikipedia takes more familiarity than we have time to offer in this event. Teaching the scientists how to get a user account, how to use a Wikipedia signature, how to communicate with others, how to cite sources, etc. will be our objective for the "Wikipedia basics" workshops. Depending on how many scientists create accounts/ have accounts prior to the workshop, we may offer a more advanced track for a portion of participants.
Indicators and Measures of Success
| Indicator | Measurement |
|---|---|
| 95% of participants create an account | Sign-in reconciled with new user accounts |
| 40% of participants/respondents indicate confidence in editing | Post-event survey |
Increase Wikipedia's credibility
editRecent studies have shown that Wikipedia's credibility is significantly lower in anglophone countries than elsewhere. Wikipedia Academy events are a big opportunity to change Wikipedia's perception both in the general public and in academic circles.
Indicators and Measures of Success
| Indicator | Measurement |
|---|---|
| 85% of participants/respondents indicate a positive view of WP's credibility | Post event survey |
| __# of non-negative press stories on the event or relationship | Communications dept stats |
| Any referrals to/invites from other highly credible organizations or agencies | Meta:Public Outreach |
Begin to Establish a content partnership
editWikipedia Academy events offer a big opportunity to get to know each other better. Face-to-face contacts create trust – and trust is one of the preconditions to establish content partnerships. This is a minor goal of the event. The objective is simply to start building the relationship.
Indicators and Measures of Success
| Indicator | Measurement |
|---|---|
| Identification of agency's point of contact for content partner relationship | Report from Mathias Schindler |