On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 9:32 PM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:carolmooredc@verizon.net">carolmooredc@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
One thing we can all do is send letters of encouragement to women to<br>
join wikipedia. I don't know if there is a form letter already used<br>
that we can merge ideas like the below into. This is includes and<br>
expands on points I sent out to a couple of political women friends and<br>
womens lists - about 150 women total - as a personal encouragement.<br>
Underwhelming two responses so far: "good idea" and "I'm too busy." So I<br>
know that the letter needs work! Maybe we could have a couple versions<br>
linked from <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_Gap" target="_blank">http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_Gap</a><br></blockquote><div><br>I like this idea; and I want to point to some possibly relevant research. The paper "Socialization tactics in Wikipedia and their effects" by Robert Kraut et. al.[1] [2] studies various efforts at welcoming newcomers.<br>
<br>In that research, the finding is that the most effective techniques are those that reflect an engagement with the content that the user has added; in other words, if your "welcome" message is a genuine response to what they did (for example, "Thank you for adding information about so-and-so's history with such-and-such; are you aware of these other similar articles that need expansion?") More generic welcome messages were generally ineffective at getting people to stick around.<br>
<br>It may be that a "call to action" message like you suggest is effective; I guess that's not something this group specifically studied. But for anybody taking this on, I'd suggest that you personalize each one a little, based on the contributor's recent edits, or the info they've put on their user page!<br>
<br>-Pete<br><br><br>[1] PDF file: <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/connect/cscw_10/docs/p107.pdf">http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/connect/cscw_10/docs/p107.pdf</a><br>[2] Abstract on web: <a href="http://acawiki.org/Socialization_tactics_in_Wikipedia_and_their_effects">http://acawiki.org/Socialization_tactics_in_Wikipedia_and_their_effects</a><br>
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