2025:Program/The "List of articles every Wikipedia should have" as a motivational tool
Session title: The "List of articles every Wikipedia should have" as a motivational tool
- Session type: Lecture
- Track: Community Engagement
- Language: en
đ„ Session recording: https://w.wiki/F8Si đ„
The âList of articles every Wikipedia should haveâ is a list of 1000 topics on Meta-Wiki that represents a global consensus of what the most vital encyclopedic content should be. It helps to increase the usefulness of a Wikipedia and is a great as a focus for contributors, in several ways!
Description
The âList of articles every Wikipedia should haveâ is a list of 1000 topics on Meta-Wiki that represents a global consensus of what the most vital encyclopaedic content should be, i. e. âclassicalâ encyclopaedic content. I will present its philosophy and how it can serve as a great motivator for WikiProjects on the local level, thaanks in part to a little bit of gamification â 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 direct feedback of increasing their home wikiâs 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.
The aim of the talk will be, on one hand, to create awareness of this initiative among the listeners, but also to showcase several tools that can be used in creating content (the ranking on Meta, PetScan, etc.). In particular, African languages tend to have less well developed content in this area, so opportunities are plentiful!
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 â Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
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). It can be also argued that improving encyclopedic content about internationally or universally important topics is a good way to increase impact.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Jernej Polajnar (yerpo)
- A long-time Wikimedia editor with over 15 years' experience, my primary home is Slovene Wikipedia where I am an admin and a bureaucrat, but still primarily devoted to contributing content. I also contribute to Commons, Meta, and Wikidata, and have founded the Wikipedians of Slovenia User Group.