2025:Program/Storytelling and Learning with Diff: Using the community blog to share your story and connect with others
Session title: Storytelling and Learning with Diff: Using the community blog to share your story and connect with others
- Session type: Demonstration
- Track: Community Engagement
- Language: en
đ„ Session recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WIKIMANIA_Day_3_Meru_-_Storytelling_and_Learning_with_Diff.webm đ„
Humans love to tell stories â from ancient oral traditions to modern contemporary platforms with worldwide reach. It's how we make sense of the world, connect and learn from one another, and move forward together. Not to sound too grandiose, but Diff, the Wikipedia community blog, is one way you can tell your story and learn from others.
Description
What is Diff? Diff is a community blog by and for the Wikimedia volunteer community to connect and share learnings, stories, and ideas. Diff is maintained by the Foundationâs Movement Communications team. Diff covers stories from the movement, announcements, technical updates, essays, and other movement-relevant content. Anyone can log in and submit a post. We see posts from affiliates, researchers, individual staff, editors, developers, photo contest organizers, event organizers, and the Foundation itself.
Our session has two main parts: Rae Adimer from the Foundation's Movement Communications team will share about how Diff works, how to setup your account, and the editorial process; Yuriko Kadokura will share what she has learned about the Wikimedia movement by reading and publishing on Diff: (1) Discover Wikimedia projects: In the Wikimedia movement, there are many projects besides Wikipedia. Through Diff I learned about projects such as Wikidata, Wikisource, and the various Wiki Loves projects that upload visual data to Wikimedia Commons. (2) Discover Wikimedia communities: I gradually learned that there are Wiki-communities around the world that support each project. These communities are project-specific or language-specific, and found regional group such as ESEAP and CEE. Then Wikimania is world-wide community that bring us hope and unity. (3) Understand about the Wikimedia Foundation's work: Through Diff, I learned that the Wikimedia Foundation announces its annual policy and timely measures such as its AI strategy. I was also able to learn about the Foundation's response to conflicts occurring around the world. (4) Blogging is understanding Wikimedia Movement: I write about my daily experiences with Wikimedia, not just the big events, on Diff, which makes me more happy and deeply committed to the Wikimedia movement.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 â Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
Our session relates most closely to, well all three! Impact is obviously the first and foremost. Being able to invite people into your work and to share with a larger audience than your local region or community is one of the goals of Diff. Secondarily, Inclusivity. We want to hear from all parts of our movement â whatever they're doing and wherever they are. Especially those parts that are under-represented or are new and emerging communities. Third, Sustainability. Diff is the place to share and learn and in the process we're creating a historical archive of all the work we do. So the future generations of contributors, affiliates, editors, and just people stumbling across our work on the Internet, can learn and build upon it into the future.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Rae Adimer
- Movement Communications Specialist, Wikimedia Foundation
- Yuriko Kadokura
- My name is Yuriko Kadokura, username is Wadakuramon. I have been working as a librarian in Japan since 1977. In 2008 I started blogging for work and my personal life. In 2016 I started to edit Wikipedia and in 2023 I wrote a book titled "A 70-year-old Wikipedian talks about the charm of libraries". I have been posting on the Diff blog since 2024 in English https://diff.wikimedia.org/author/wadakuramon/ and Japanese https://diff.wikimedia.org/ja/%E8%91%97%E8%80%85/wadakuramon/.