2025:Program/How can we revitalize WikiProjects?
Session title: How can we revitalize WikiProjects?
- Session type: Roundtable
- Track: Technology
- Language: en
🎥 Session recording: https://w.wiki/FCwG 🎥
Many WikiProjects are dormant or have low activity. We are asking: Why did this happen, and what can we do to help them out? In this session, we will share findings from two recent research projects on WikiProjects, and we’ll open a discussion with session participants to learn about their experiences, observations, and ideas related to improving the activity and outcomes of WikiProjects.
Description
In this session, we will share findings from two recent research projects: the WikiProjects Survey Report (October 2024) and research on WikiProjects on Arabic Wikipedia (2025). Through these two reports, we have learned about some common challenges faced by WikiProjects today, including: finding new participants, giving people clear and actionable tasks to work on, and supporting newcomers. We will also discuss the fact that many WikiProjects are dormant or have waned in activity over the years. We will share some of our findings related to this dormancy, and we will ask for feedback, experiences and ideas from session participants. We wanted to know from session participants: What has been your experience? What do you think are the biggest challenges faced by WikiProjects? And what do you think can help them be revitalized?
This will be complemented by sharing some of the features available in the CampaignEvents extension (which is maintained by the WMF Campaigns team), so we can see if any current or upcoming work can assist in the revitalization of WikiProjects.
Through this session, we hope to:
- Share common challenges and opportunity areas faced by WikiProjects – and see if this resonates with session participants and/or if they are observing anything different
- Take time to discuss the challenges experienced by different types of wikis (big vs. small wikis, wikis that have more WikiProjects vs. less WikiProjects, etc)
- Discuss and document potential ideas to address these challenges
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
- Inclusivity: We see WikiProjects as one of the primary ways that contributors can find opportunities for community and collaboration on the wikis. We also want to talk about the role WikiProjects can play in helping newcomers, expanding coverage underrepresented languages and topics, and supporting other groups in the Wikimedia movement.
- Impact: WikiProjects can have a large impact because they provide categorization and structure around topics and tasks, and they help bring people together to work on topics/tasks. We also are interested in learning ways that WikiProjects can be more clear about their impact and how contributors can share their impact.
- Sustainability: WikiProjects are vital tools for working on topics for impact and movement goals. We want to find ways to further support and sustain them.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- ifried
- Ilana is the product manager for the Campaigns team at the Wikimedia Foundation, which focuses on building and improving tools for collaborative experiences on the wikis (such as campaigns, edit-a-thons, and WikiProjects).
- Deleted User