Public outreach/Academy/Sustainability

Questions and interests from final session

Is there a way to be updated about whether a topic becomes out of date?

Yes- watch lists, RSS feeds. But keep in mind- there is no ownership of articles. Others may update as well.

Linking external databases (Pharmaceutical trials)

Yes - we have done some of this before (human genome), could also use template.

How do users/editors learn about new tools available for user interface.

We don't have great systems right now. Best ways currently are on WikiProjects, Community Portal make friends.

Can scientists say "according to the NIH" if they are writing articles

The best way is to just use the actual reference that are in the newsletters that you're writing about.or Go to TALK or go to Reliable Sources policy page

Will there be formal guidance for how we'll be involved.

NIH- will start a working group to develop policies

I could help with some of the writing on the breast cancer article. How is it handled in the community. We send our things in for approval.

We really need people who are able to write well. We teach people to do it in the community (Adrianne does it all the time ex Tim's article) People in the community appreciate it. Most know that they aren't good writers. There are no permissions so you can just go do things. Unless you're editing Anarchism. But almost every other article if its improved, people will like it. If you think it may be controversial try posting your draft changes to talk pages first.

Are your page view statistics available?

Yes, there is a link for page statistics on the history tab of each article

Federal News Radio John Burkow committed to working with WP. PodCast

Encouraging Sustainable Participation

following the Wikipedia Academy for Scientists

Brainstorming Ideas & Resources Needed

Create a newsletter updating participants on their colleagues activities, advertising need edits/articles, highlighting impact of Scientist contributions. Answering FAQs etc
Create a listserve of Scientists from this agency and Wikimedians working on shared counterparts
Collateral passed out at the event that reminds them of the importance of their contributions.
Invitation of participants to other in-person events (wiki-meet ups etc) and online events (training, IRC etc)
Create a welcoming portal for scientists that links to active WikiProjects: has buddy contacts, basic FAQs, visually inviting, etc.
encourage participants to join active WikiProjects
Keep track of the contributions made by the participants
Give them useful data to show that they're accomplishing their mandate
Keep stressing the positive motivations for contributing, and show how their contributions are being used
Limit possible de-motivations on Wikipedia
Engage as many active and supportive WPiens as possible by: listing on talk pages, personal appeals, list as 'Ways to help" on wikiprojects, touting Agency's resources/strengths in announcements Welcome Scientists to meta pages.
Please add your ideas

Ideas on intercommunication

Note: This was initially a separate page that was part of the RfC created by Bill

The long-term success of the workshop will be helped, I believe, by mechanisms for 2-way communication, both pre- and post-workshop, with our participants. A related idea is to consider how best to integrate them into the WP communities. I think we should think about how to do that elegantly.

Summary list

Agency-based

Agency-based online forum
Agency-based blog about Wiki-collaboration that is mirrored at Planet Wikipedia
Regular column in agency-based newsletter, or e-mailed newsletter (slow, not very interactive, but good reach)

Wiki-based

Participation in WikiProjects
Specialized team of helper Wikipedians (underway)
Listserve where Wikipedians and participants can mingle
IRC channels such as #wikipedia-en
"League of ...", similar to 'League of Copyeditors"
Separate WikiProject? (drawbacks: weak precedent; walled garden=bad idea for several reasons)
~~Portal for the participants?~~

WikiProjects

The best way to integrate the participants into a larger Wikipedian community is by having them join one or more active WikiProjects. Personally, I feel that creating a separate Wikiproject for them is not a good idea, since it will tend to isolate the participants.

Another approach to help them build productive relationships with Wikipedians outside our circle is to involve them in things like creating featured Articles. They'll definitely meet new people, and possibly make good friends/allies, among the article reviewers.

Portals?

The participants could work on improving a Portal, but frankly, I suspect that this will be a waste of time and effort for everyone. The traffic is to the average Portal is roughly 80 pageviews/day, about 50 times smaller than the traffic to a decent article. There is no significant correlation between the traffic to a Portal and whether it's featured or not. The 8 portals listed on the Main Page do get roughly 3,000 hits per day, but they're special cases. I also suspect that lay-people searching for information won't want to visit an intermediate site between Google and the final page; they're likely to be annoyed and frustrated instead.

Mechanisms set up by participants

A good approach might be to set up something on our partner's website, where the participants can talk among themselves and we can answer their questions. It would be a courteous gesture of deference, and might be more familiar and reassuring to them, since the site would be under their control.

A related alternative is to have a regular column in a newsletter or e-mailing the participating society sends out to their members. For example, every month or quarter, one could summarize the progress on "Infectious disease" articles in a newsletter. Questions could be addressed in such a newsletter, although this approach is less interactive.

Pages

General Welcome page (done, pending team input)
Welcome page for MCB WikiProject (done ditto; see also four other Welcome pages)
Article tables (done, except for sorting)

Tools

Tool scripts can be installed easily using golden box at the top of the en:User:Proteins/Draft_Welcome page.