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