Wikimedia Blog/Directrices

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Esta guía pretende ayudarte a ti, miembro de la comunidad Wikimedia, a través del proceso del Blog Wikimedia y a enmarcar adecuadamente tu entrada para que sea concisa, legible y logre tu(s) objetivo(s).

Si tienes alguna duda, pregunta en digitalmediawikimedia.org, que llega a todo el equipo del blog.

El blog Wikimedia está gestionado por la Fundación Wikimedia. Publicamos anuncios de la organización, junto con noticias e historias del movimiento Wikimedia. Nuestra audiencia se compone principalmente del público en general, e incluye profesores, bibliotecarios, periodistas, programadores, donantes y personas de todo el ecosistema de la información, además de los Wikimedistas y los miembros del personal de la Fundación Wikimedia. Idealmente, tu tema aportará una perspectiva única e inusual a las iniciativas y acontecimientos en los proyectos Wikimedia de todo el mundo, con énfasis en el alto impacto y el interés público.

Valoramos la diversidad de voces y posiciones, y pretendemos publicar historias sobre una amplia variedad de temas. No es necesario ser jefe de proyecto, gerente, empleado de la Fundación Wikimedia o llevar mucho tiempo en el movimiento para redactar un artículo. Si tienes una idea que crees que ayudará al movimiento Wikimedia, nos encantaría escucharla.

Resumen de la misión del blog

Para 2030, Wikimedia se convertirá en la infraestructura esencial del ecosistema del conocimiento libre, y cualquiera que comparta nuestra visión podrá unirse a nosotros. El blog Wikimedia ayuda a avanzar en ese esfuerzo dando a los individuos dentro o aliados al movimiento Wikimedia un espacio central para compartir lo que han aprendido, lo que han hecho, y lo que hacen de una manera accesible y pública.

Trabajamos en abierto, compartiendo información que hace que nuestro trabajo -y el del movimiento más amplio del conocimiento libre y abierto- sea comprensible y utilizable.

Nuestro blog es una plataforma para poner de relieve la diversidad y humanidad de nuestra comunidad. Somos una organización reflexiva y global, y reconocemos el valor de destacarlo ante nuestros lectores.

En resumen, nuestros objetivos son:

• Apoyar y destacar el excelente trabajo realizado por la comunidad Wikimedia, el personal de la Fundación Wikimedia y el amplio ecosistema del conocimiento libre, y explicar cómo dicho trabajo apoya el movimiento del conocimiento libre y abierto.
• Fortalecer nuestras asociaciones con otras organizaciones
• Fortalecer nuestras relaciones con el público y las personas que deseen unirse a la Fundación Wikimedia o contribuir a nuestros proyectos.
• Promover la visión Wikimedia de un mundo en el que todos puedan compartir libremente la suma de todo el conocimiento.

Nuestra voz editorial

Nuestras publicaciones se adhieren a estas directrices de blogging, promoviendo un estilo unificado a la vez que se comparten multitud de voces. El equipo de blogs de la Fundación Wikimedia determina la estrategia editorial y los procesos de redacción y edición. Todo el contenido del blog apoya y refleja la misión más amplia de nuestro movimiento.

Los autores del blog suelen ser, entre otros, miembros del personal de la Fundación Wikimedia, afiliados de Wikimedia, voluntarios de Wikimedia y diversas personas afiliadas a organizaciones afines.

Cómo publicar tu artículo

Cada entrada pasa por seis etapas antes de aparecer en nuestro blog. Las entradas del blog pueden redactarse en Meta, en Google Docs o en Open Office; a continuación, el equipo gestiona la edición y las entradas se programan en nuestro calendario editorial.

Utilizamos seis etapas para gestionar cada entrada del blog.

1. Idea
2. Aprobación de idea
3. Autor escribe el artículo
4. Edición
5. Programación
6. Publicación

En esta sección, te guiaremos a través de cada uno de estos pasos.

Idea: ¿cómo creo un nuevo artículo?

Cada entrada de blog comienza con una idea, y te pedimos que te dirijas a nosotros en esta fase del proceso. Envía un correo electrónico a digitalmediawikimedia.org con tu idea y la revisaremos para ver si puede convertirse en una entrada de blog viable. No es necesario que sea una idea completa, podemos ayudarte con esa parte. Estas son las preguntas que nos gustaría que respondieras o que vinieras preparado para pensar con nosotros:

• ¿Cuál es el objetivo de esta entrada de blog? (¿Qué resultados esperas conseguir?)
• ¿Quién es el público de este post?
• ¿Quién tiene que aprobar este post (si procede)?
• Imágenes de la idea, si las tienes. Necesitamos al menos una imagen con licencia libre, con una anchura mínima de 1024 píxeles y normalmente (pero no siempre) de Wikimedia Commons. (Deja las capturas de pantalla y los gráficos para la mitad del post, por favor).
• Un esquema básico.
• Ideas para el título y el resumen (el título debe ser descriptivo, pegadizo y en tiempo presente)
• Fecha límite o fecha prevista de publicación, si el artículo debe publicarse en un plazo determinado. Ponte en contacto con nosotros al menos dos semanas antes de la fecha límite.

• Social copy: What is the one-line way to describe your post on social media? Are there any social handles we should include when putting your material out on @wikimedia? And are there any spaces online that we should socialize your post after publication?

Note: We do not want you to send a complete blog draft in your opening email. And if you don’t know the answers to these questions, do not worry! That’s why we’re here—to help ensure that you are reaching your intended audience with the content that will help you reach your goal.

Idea approved

We meet on a daily basis to go over incoming proposals. This process usually takes 2–3 business days, depending on how much is in our backlog. If we accept your idea, we have a few ways to publish incoming material:

• Blog post: Blog posts are typically between 500–800 words. They have a clear audience and goal, a general connection to the Wikimedia Foundation's or Wikimedia movement's mission, and a complete outline with a beginning, middle, and end—with a call to action, if possible.  They can be a Q&A, a numbered list, a series of short paragraphs, or something else entirely. (We will talk this through with you.) Some blog posts may be cross-posted on our Medium publication, which helps us connect with people outside of the Wikimedia ecosystem.

• Community digest: Strong topics relevant to the community, that don't need as many words, can be put into the community digest, a feature that pulls together items from around the globe to provide a venue for community updates and a diverse roundup of events. It aims to emulate and supplement already-existing community news outlets.

• Social media:  There may be ideas that are more suitable to a short message on one of our social media platforms, aimed at or targeted to a particular audience.

• Elevating or amplifying your content published elsewhere: If you’ve published material elsewhere, we can talk through ways to amplify your message on our platforms or elsewhere.

Once we approve your content, we’ll send you an email confirming what form it will take and then you can start writing!

Author writes post

Write your post! If necessary, please create a copy of our Google Doc template or follow the steps listed on our main Meta page. We have a list of sample posts that you can look at for inspiration or specific ways to structure your post.

Editing

We will work with you to edit your blog post and give suggestions or advice. We may ask you to send us sourcing material, or other material to ensure that the post is factually accurate. We will work with you to resolve any outstanding issues, and to make sure that your post is readable for a general audience. When these edits are finalized, we will add a comment to your document, move the document into the approval process, and set a date for it to be scheduled.

Scheduling

We maintain a private editorial calendar to schedule upcoming posts. This schedule is subject to frequent changes, based on other content in the pipeline and the approval process. Please let us know if you have any deadlines we should know about. At this step, we also need to finalize images.

Published

When your post is published, we’ll send you an email with the link and share it on our social media accounts.

Outlines for topics

Grand idea product launch

• What we launched
• The problem we addressed
  • Include brief background information on problem
• How we solved the problem
• One interesting fact about the development process
  • Or, how this project fits into the Wikimedia vision and 2030 strategy
• What’s next
• Call to action

One detail product launch

• What we launched
  • But I want to focus on this one detail
• Explanation of detail and why it’s interesting
• Connection to larger team goals or objectives
• Summary of other things people can find in the product
• Call to action to explore product or otherwise engage

Product update

• What’s the new feature
• Link and summary of previous work
• Deeper explanation of the feature
• Explanation of either an interesting technical detail of the feature or an important step in the development of the feature
• Connect the feature back to the team goals or product goals
• Next steps for the team

One thing I learned

• Brief explanation of your project and your work on that project
• Introduction of interesting thing(s) you learned
• Further explanation of what you learned
• The impact this thing had on your work
• How this is relevant to other projects/teams
• Point to documentation or artifact if it exists
• Question or call to action

How this really complicated topic works

• An example or metaphor that helps people understand just what you're talking about (Example: You can think of linked data as a garden full of flowers and trees, each with a name, or envision remote developer access as a set of special keys to open your apartment.)
• Take a step back: explain, generally, how it fits into our movement.
• Connection to larger outcome or goal.
• Why it’s important
• Conclusion

Technical explanation

• Explanation of the topic or feature this technical explanation applies to
• Your goal in developing this technical fix
• What you did
• Why you did it
• How this has positively impacted your project
• Connection to larger outcome or goal
• How this can be reused outside your project
• Call to reuse/adapt

Community profile

• Interesting anecdote or compelling lede that details something about person, preferably quoted in their own words
• What the person has done that is interesting
• Why it’s interesting or important
• How it relates to our movement or goals
• Conclusion

Photo contest winners

• Highlight one or several photos from the contest, with backstory from the photographer
• Talk about contest and overall goals
• Why it’s interesting or important
• Where people can learn more or participate in the next contest
• Conclusion

How to/guide

• What this guide will teach you
• Who this guide is useful for
• Summary of guide content
  • Multiple headings, paragraphs with bold intros, or a bulleted list are best
  • Concise explanations with code samples if applicable
  • Downloadable artifacts if applicable
• Why we think this type of information is useful
  • And how it’s improved our projects
• Call to action and links to additional resources

Announcement of new policy

• Announcement of new change
• 2 additional important details
• How this change fits into larger mission or goals
• Additional small or technical details
• Thanks, connection back to policy and moving forward

Cultural explanation

• Brief explanation of cultural value and why it’s good
• The cultural idea or practice you want to talk about
• How this came about
• How we do this in practice
• The positive effects we’ve seen
• Next steps or ways we want to refine this practice
• Question for readers

Organizational announcement / important change in the world and how it affects us

• Brief explanation of announcement—what do you want people to take away from this?
• How this change fits into larger mission or goals of team or organization
• Additional small or technical details
• Connection back to movement and conclusion

Highlight innovative work in our ecosystem

• Who, what, when of someone doing something incredibly innovative
• Why it’s important or noteworthy
• Additional details
• How people can learn more

Great interview questions

• How did you come up with that idea?
• What inspired you to do [X]?
• What are your next steps?
• Can you detail how [Wikimedia project] helped you do [X]?

How to write a great post

Writing for the Wikimedia Blog should follow these general guidelines.

Write short over long

Keep in mind: the blog is not a Wikipedia article. Complex topics deserve complex stories, but too long a blog post will drive readers away. Summary style is ideal; your post is akin to the lead section of a Wikipedia article, not the article itself. You can always link to external resources where possible to satisfy the uncommonly curious reader. Aim for a minimum of 300 and a maximum of 1,000 words—whatever is necessary to explain the topic without going into unnecessary detail, which can be left to external pages. Shorter items can be put into the community digest.

Remember accessibility

If you include charts or graphs, make sure that the colors are accessible. We also try to include alternative text, when featuring images.

Use clear, concise, concrete language

There is a lot of complexity under the hood of the Wikimedia movement, as well as a lot of abstract ideas. The Wikimedia Blog exists to distill all of that into meaningful information for a wide variety of audiences. Many other sites, particularly Meta-Wiki, exist for delving into the complexity and nuance. Being clear and succinct demonstrates respect for your audience’s time.

Assume nothing about the background knowledge or interests of the reader

Someone coming to this site might know nothing about the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia projects, or may have been wildly misinformed. Visitors may know a lot or a little about wikis, open source, or the free knowledge movement. While the primary audiences are those in need of an introduction, many will seek a pointer to deeper information. Always look for opportunities to summarize quickly and create paths to deeper information.

Be careful with humor and overall tone

Content on the Wikimedia Blog should be accessible and inviting to everyone. Wikimedians share a lot of fantastic in-jokes, which can be tempting to share. While humor can be an important and enjoyable part of being and sounding human, cultural differences and the lack of shared background information can quickly turn jokes into barriers.

Attribution

All images used on the Wikimedia Blog must be freely licensed and have proper attribution. For screenshots of Wikipedia articles, this will include attributing the text and license (CC BY-SA 3.0), along with separate attributions for any images included in the screenshot.

Miscellanea

Tagging / Categories

Categories and tags allow us to organize our blog posts, and they provide readers with an easy way to explore a particular topic. They're also useful for sending a collection of posts to someone with a single link. To keep tags useful, we aim to include only necessary tags and to apply only a minimum of tags to any single post. We usually come up with these ourselves, but you are welcome to propose some or all of them if you'd prefer.

Authorship

The authors listed on a blog post should be only the people who have actively contributed significant portions of text to the blog post. Generally, posts should only be written by one or two people. Limiting the number of people who write a post makes it feel more personal and less written by committee, allows for a stronger voice in the writing, and helps speed up the editing and approval process.

Team members who contributed editing, criticism, quotes, images, or small amounts of text should not be included as authors. You should also not include people as authors if they worked on a project but did not write the post. If there are people who contributed to a project or who helped make a blog post a reality (for example, by helping with idea generation, design, or editing), you can thank them with an italicized sentence at the bottom of the post.

Disclaimer: unless a post is signed by the Wikimedia Foundation, the views and opinions expressed on the blog are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views or opinions of the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization.

No authors

On occasion, it can be useful to have posts written by the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization rather than as an individual. We may use this for press releases, announcements, or posts that explain fundamental concepts of our culture where many team members contributed writing and editing. Posts with the Wikimedia Foundation as an author have a more formal and authoritative tone and are about statements of policy or fact rather than opinions.

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to 18F and its public domain blogging guide, which we have used in several areas here.

Footnotes