2023:Program/Submissions/The "List of articles every Wikipedia should have" as a motivational tool - BZW7F9
Title: The "List of articles every Wikipedia should have" as a motivational tool
Speakers:
Jernej Polajnar (Yerpo)
A long-time Wikimedia editor with over 15 years' experience, my primary home is Slovene Wikipedia. One of my focal points are articles that any encyclopedia worth its salt *must* have, so I organized the vital articles Wikiproject on :slwiki based on the List of articles every Wikipedia should have on Meta. My outreach and organizational activities have started in 2012 when I became the Slovene community's formal outreach representative, later also establishing the Wikipedians of Slovenia User Group. I also contribute to Commons, Meta, and Wikidata.
Room:
Start time:
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Type: Lecture
Track: Community Initiatives
Submission state: submitted
Duration: 30 minutes
Do not record: false
Presentation language: en
Abstract & description[edit source]
Abstract[edit source]
The “List of articles every Wikipedia should have” is a list of 1000 topics on Meta-Wiki that represents a global consensus of what the most vital encyclopedic content should be. It is also a great as a focus for contributors, in several ways!
Description[edit source]
The “List of articles every Wikipedia should have” is a list of 1000 topics on Meta-Wiki that represents a global consensus of what the most vital encyclopedic content should be, i. e. “classical” encyclopedic content. I will present its philosophy and how it can serve as a great motivator for WikiProjects on the local level, thanks to a little bit of gamification – the monthly ranking of Wikipedias by coverage of those topics.
Several concepts act in synergy here: (1) the vital topics are the ones that visitors are likely to look for in their language, so it helps a small Wikipedia gain its visitor base; (2) those topics tend to be well-covered in bigger Wikipedias, thus improvement by translating/summarizing is easier; (3) contributors can be motivated both by the (vaguer) value of expanding core topics and the rapid feedback of increasing their home wiki’s score in the ranking. WikiProjects in several languages are active, and experience from the Slovene Wikipedia will be presented, where it has served to reactivate old editors and attract new ones.
A useful tool for content building, the list has been relatively stable in the past decade, but is always being tweaked as a result of proposals on its talk page, with special care to reduce western-centrism. Here, broader attention would be welcome. On the local level, a potential issue is the tendency of some contributors to dump a large quantity of content to increase the score, at the cost of quality. In Slovene Wikipedia, we are solving this issue by highlighting featured articles among the 1000, thus merging a global quantitative measure with the local qualitative one.
Further details[edit source]
Qn. How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration Future?
I would present a way to increase collaboration on writing about diverse topics, and advocate for a list of those topics to become even more diverse (i. e. reduce western-centrism).
Qn. What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Average knowledge about Wikimedia projects or activities
Qn. What is the most appropriate format for this session?
Onsite in Singapore
Remote online participation, livestreamed- Remote from a satellite event
- Hybrid with some participants in Singapore and others dialing in remotely
- Pre-recorded and available on demand
