2019:Community Growth/Personal invitations, coffee and small talk - how regular editathons can increase new user retention

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Community Growth/Personal invitations, coffee and small talk - how regular editathons can increase new user retention

Description

There's a real danger in being comfortable with the existing Wikipedia community. As we've seen, the Wikipedia community is shrinking. And we may have already have reached the limits of self-recruited editors from a relatively homogeneous group. That's why we need new healthy ways to widen the appeal to new groups of editors.

The solution may come from an unexpected place:

We have been running , focused on women and literature, for more than five years now, to great success. Our editathons have decreased the gender gap in articles about female authors and womens' literature. At the same time, the number of active female Wikipedians have gone up. Even previously skeptical users, who have met the Wikipedia watchdogs with disastrous results, have come back to produce good articles, after going to our weekly edithathons. We have already have a sister project in another city (with one more on the way). And we've run Wikipedia camps for non-males for several years at this point. This project have evoked big interest from the media and from like-minded organisations. Even among non-Wikipedians, the weekly edithathons have become quite known in Gothenburg but also nationally.

We are now looking to expand our model to even more cities, with curious Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians visiting us, to better be able to copy the model.

So, how did we do it? There are a few easy answers: personal invitations, a generous amount of time and small talk, and coffee. But there are more things going on here. Let us show you some of the things we've done to make newcomers feel welcome, gather confidence and start editing. We'll also show you why they stay as Wikipedians.

Let us also answer the questions on everybody's mind: how do you replicate what we have done? Where are the pitfalls? And what would we have done differently?

Relationship to the theme

The organisers of the community growth space believe that the space will address the following Sustainable Development Goals:

5. Gender equality

10. Reduced inequalities

11. Sustainable citites and communities

This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:

Our project has been focused on reducing the gender gap and increasing the number of editors, to grow a sustainable Wikipedia community, both online and offline. But we also want to seek out the other participants' experiences in running editathons and learn from one another.

Relationship to the space

The organisers of the space and the community have identified a number of topics they wish to a ddress in this space. Please explain how your proposal fits into these topic areas.

Recruitment, activation and retention: online and offline strategies, case studies, considerations, and research.

This session will address the topics of the Growth space in the following manner:

The presentation is focusing on a successful example of a project dealing with recruitment, activation and retention. But we also want to get other points of view and other participants to share their experiences and methods in order to further grow the community.

Session outcomes

At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

The participants will have hands-on knowledge on how to run successful editathons and new ideas for their own projects in their own communities. They will also new friends with which to talk about editathons, hopefully to continue this important sharing of knowledge long after the conference.

Session leader(s)

User:Hannibal, longtime-volunteer Wikimedia Sverige (l_guldbrandsson@hotmail.com)
Sofie Jansson, volunteer, board member Wikimedia Sverige (sofie.jansson@wikimedia.se)

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:

Other: we would like to start with a short presentation (10-15 minutes), followed by a short Q & A and a roundtable discussion.

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

Room:

Room with a projector, and chairs around tables for easy discussions.

Audience:

Prospective and veteran editathon-runners, and people with an interest in growing an online or offline community. No Wikipedia/Wikimedia experience necessary, but experience is a plus.

Recording:

We'd like the short presentation recorded, with the Q & A and roundtable only for attendees. The presentation may give prospective editathon-runners inspiration and ideas, while the rest may be harder to film with a single camera.

Time requested:

40-45 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: NO
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