2019:Community Growth/Encouraging the spirit of new editors - A structured approach to mapping onboarding efforts
 | This is an Accepted submission for the Growth space at Wikimania 2019. |
Description
When new editors start in Wikipedia they face a lot of challenges: technical, cultural and systemic challenges. As a result, a lot of new editors quickly leave Wikipedia and never come back. The question of how we can retain new editors, how we can keep them motivated and help them learning what they need to know in order to become Wikipedians has immense importance for community growth
This workshop will focus on mapping onboarding materials and efforts, like learning materials, mentoring programs etc. for Wikipedia online and offline in different communities. After a short input and an introduction of the used framework the focus of the session will be on the interactive workshop part. Using a structured approach participants will map and assess onboarding efforts in their respective communities and for different groups of users. The goal is to identify and share successful approaches and evaluate under which conditions a transfer to other communities is possible. The result of the workshop will be a structured map giving an overview under which conditions which onboarding efforts are being used, how successful they are and where future efforts could be directed.
Relationship to the theme
The organisers of the community growth space believe that the space will address the following Sustainable Development Goals:
- 9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure
- 10 Reduced inequalities
- 11 Sustainable cities and communities
- 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
- 17 Partnerships for the goals.
This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:
Access to knowledge and information (Goal 2, 3, 4, 9) depends on the possibility of participating in creating free knowledge. Helping new editors to become active in Wikipedia is an important part of that. Ensuring knowledge equity (Goal 10) is paramount for equality in representation - opening Wikipedia for all possible groups including for example marginalized groups without the benefit of formal education is an important aspect of onboarding new editors.
Relationship to the space
The organisers of the space and the community have identified a number of topics they wish to address in this space. Please explain how your proposal its into these topic areas.
As a reminder, the proposed topics are listed at 2019:Community Growth
This session will address the topics of the Growth space in the following manner:
- Recruitment, activation and retention: This session focuses on the retention phase after activation because facilitating good experiences for new editors increases their continuous contributing.
- On-wiki engagement: Experienced community members are required to identify and support new community members. To be able to do that an overview over tools and techniques teaching and mentoring can be helpful.
- Off-wiki engagement: Retention rate of off-wiki programs is proven to be high. We want to explore how they can be combined with (more scalable) on-wiki tools and programs.
- Newcomer experiences across projects and cultures: The new editor experiences study by the WMF has been extremely helpful in understanding needs of newcomers. In this session we want evaluate possible different needs between languages, communities and cultures and refine an onboarding framework which may be customized by different communities in the Movement.
Session outcomes
At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:
At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:
- a comprehensive overview of approaches to onboarding new editors in the Wikimedia movement
- a structured understanding of onboarding methods and parameters for success
Session leader(s)
Christine Domgörgen (WMDE)
Verena Lindner (WMDE)
Session type
Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:
- Workshop to work on an framework to solve a problem
Requirements
The session will work best with these conditions:
- Room: Presenter, flexible tables and chairs, space on the wall for the map
- Audience: We welcome everyone, especially active Wikipedians who are interested in the attraction and retention of new editors.
- Recording: This session can be recorded.
- Time requested: 90 minutes
Relationship with the organisers of the space
The organisers of the community growth space wish to provide any necessary support to presenters and participants that they may need and also wish to have an active role in shaping the content of the space to maximise the benefit of all attendees. Please let us know if you would appreciate any help, and if you consent to constructive suggestions from the organiser team that would allow the largest amount of people to share and benefit from each other's contributions.
- I would be interested in receiving help in shaping my submission: YES.
- In particular, I would need the following type of help or advice:
- I consent to the organisers of the space contacting me to discuss alternative ways to present my knowledge (for example, merging two proposals into a common presentation, a panel debate instead of a lightning talk, etc.), or ways to modify and improve my proposal (for example by ensuring a gender diversity on panels) : YES
- If my proposal is not selected for a presentation, I would be interested in presenting my proposal in the form of a poster in the Community Growth space: YES
- I consent to my proposal being proposed to organisers of other spaces if it would be a good cross-over topic or if it fits better into the other space's scope: YES