On 3/26/2015 3:26 AM, Jane Darnell wrote:
Kerry, Thanks for that effort and I totally agree. Dyed-in-the-wool Wikipedians quickly develop a blind eye for other ways of approaching the topic of an edit-a-thon and it is the fresh perspective of the attendees that keeps us up-to-date and challenges the workflows we currently keep in place. So whether or not those attendees go on to become Wikipedians, edit-a-thons remain a very productive tool for bringing Wikipedians together with their reading public in focused topic areas.
I think the two most important things, at this early stage just to keep them coming back are:
* identify at the edit-a-thon the passion of each editor; that's what keeps them coming back; the topic of the edit-a-thon may be of passing or mild interest, but a passion lasts for years
* make sure there are at least two more lined up, even two hour sessions after work, and encourage them to come and help them with their area of interest. (DC does do something like that in a slightly less structured way.) It really does have to be more hands on.
Even as a compulsive writer, I only started editing because of crappy articles about myself, my peace group and a couple of acquaintances. It took another 8 months before it clicked in my head that I could improve articles on all sorts of topics I was interested in and started doing so. If I'd started with edit-a-thons that really clued me into how to use Wikipedia for the latter, it would have made sure I got to the second point and didn't just forget about editing after I'd dealt with those issues at hand.
CM