2019:Community Growth/Welcome and help: how to keep a community ready for newcomers

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Community Growth/Welcome and help: how to keep a community ready for newcomers

Description

When you visit most wikis years after years, you will see the same user names. Where are newcomers?

Our wikis are not optimal when you start to contribute (if you think they are, you should definitely attend). In 2011, French Wikipedia decided to make some efforts about newcomers, to ease their first steps:

rewriting help contents and documentation
privileging tools that are easier to use for newcomers
providing a central safe place for newcomers
redesigning the mentorship system and the welcome message
providing on-line classes and in-person workshops
more and more!

During this talk, you will discover the different efforts led by the French community since years to welcome newcomers and reduce the barriers they face. The talk will be about tools and methods used to know what newcomers need, that are both freely reusable. We will also discuss about the community changes (so as pain-points and blockers) that followed those efforts to make French Wikipedia a better place for newcomers.

Overall a long journey, but that worth the change.

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:

Those changes have made our wiki a place with a better infrastructure (goal 9). We have been working on reducing inequalities (goal 10) by lowering barriers to make successful edits, looking for a more sustainable community with newcomers joining the existing community (goal 11).

We also hope that those efforts help to reduce gender equality (goal 5) by providing a better way to get on-boarded, and, by creating better help pages, we have been working on quality education (goal 4).

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 by online and offline strategies, case studies, considerations, and (when applicable) research.
Technology work software tools for engaging and educating newcomers.
On-wiki engagement: techniques for mentorship, teaching, and keeping newcomers involved from on the wikis.
Off-wiki engagement: programs, events, and communication for training and keeping newcomers involved in the off-wiki world.
Newcomer experiences across projects and cultures: research and experience reports around what it's like to be a newcomer and interact with newcomers on French Wikipedia.
Learning from outside our movement: research and lessons on newcomers from other types of online and offline communities outside the Wikimedia movement.
The future of newcomers and editing: how will our beliefs about newcomers and our technology around editing need to change in the future as more new people come onli ne and get involved?

Session outcomes

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

Attendees will have clear examples of projects that would help newcomers to feel more welcomed and helped when the onboard the wikis.

Session leader(s)

Trizek

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:

Teaching session

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

Room: projector + screen

Audience: no prior skills needed.

Recording: yes

Time requested: 20 minutes + questions

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: NO.
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

Note: I'm submitting this proposal as a volunteer. Since I'm one of the co-leaders of the Growth space in my professional capacity, so I'll abstain when the decision to have or not have this presentation will be taken.