I have spent years trying to figure all of this out. I feel like I rehash this question over and over again. Every year. Perhaps if I had a grant from the government I could sit around and figure it out finally ;-)

1. Training women to be trainers is important. After I did that with some folks after the first WikiWomen's History Month event, now those women do their own events.

2. I did an evaluation of events I've done. No, they don't retain people, except the "experienced usual suspects" - newbies rarely edit after the event and generally do it AT events. I've seen it in the 20+ events I have now facilitated internationally. I use Wikidata to track their contributions and surveys. No dice. People do it at events. Read it: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Library/Case_studies/WWHM oh and you can read the proof in the puddin' re: edit-a-thons and workshops here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Library/Edit-a-thons AND https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Library/Editing_workshops

3. Capturing people through "IRC" is a silly old school way of thinking. Sorry dudes. When I first got "hardcore" into the community here in Wikimedia I was SHOCKED that people were still using IRC. I used IRC in 1991. Not in 2011. Only uber geeks use that stuff - the average person doesn't. Seriously.

4. Pop up windows - interesting idea of an experiment. Even though I hit the "x" every time one of those things pops up when I'm using the ATT website among a million others. I ignore them, they look like spam. But that's just me, maybe others do use them.

5. Better cheat sheets are needed. People complain about how cluttered and overwhelming they are. Just like our online help pages. They're full of Wikipediababblespeak and not "to the point."

6. More guides on how to do events. I have developed checklists and so forth for people. I know how much Wikimedians hate writing documentation, but honestly, I know for a fact that Wikipedians in Residency's have started because of the case study I wrote, I know for a fact GLAMs have done content donations because of the case studies I write, and I know for a fact that people have ready the case study I wrote about edit-a-thons and learned from it and done it. I make powerpoints and post them and encourage people to reuse them, and they do.

So making more shit for people to use that is awesome and usable and quality and not full of babblespeak and such is helpful.

Those books that the education folks made were a great start, but those appear to be specifically for education - I've never seen them at edit-a-thons, but, I don't go to them very often these days.

Sarah Stierch

On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

You might be surprised how widely and how much Freenode is used for open source projects. The Blender main and dev channels were even more active than English Wikipedia's equivalents when I visited a few days ago.
Pine

On Aug 2, 2014 6:38 PM, "Michael J. Lowrey" <orangemike@gmail.com> wrote:
IRC is almost embarrassingly old technology; Wikimedia Foundation
projects are the only place I've seen it mentioned in the last five
years or more.

On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 7:29 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
> We already have #wikipedia-en-help which is remarkably good for a volunteer
> help project. Links to join that IRC channel could be offered in multiple
> places. Other languages may have similar channels.
>
> Pine
>
> On Aug 2, 2014 8:42 AM, "Jeremy Baron" <jeremy@tuxmachine.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 2, 2014 11:01 AM, "LtPowers" <LtPowers_Wiki@rochester.rr.com>
>> wrote:
>> > And then there could be a little chat window allowing real-time
>> > communication while the editor walks through her first edit.
>>
>> [originally didn't realize who you were replying to… also haven't read the
>> whole thread yet]
>>
>> That is technically feasible. Maybe would have new implications for
>> privacy (including WMF privacy policy). Unless the realtime chats were
>> publicly logged. (then same privacy as existing teahouse, etc)
>>
>> Essentially would be a more interactive version of teahouse? (i.e. shorter
>> wait for a reply and you're paired with someone that's known to be available
>> at that moment) would be a part of teahouse?
>>
>> How would you staff it? Shifts?
>>
>> Anyway, that does nothing for the case Kathleen describes. 25 people
>> (20f:5m) in a class and everyone getting that introduction to all things
>> wiki. Then 7 stay active for a year including all the men. (and only 2 of
>> the 20 women)
>>
>> I'm leaning towards thinking we as a community should (for now) focus more
>> on the retention gap than the recruitment gap. Then we're not recruiting
>> people just to (mostly) lose them in a month or two. But would be interested
>> to hear thoughts on that from someone with a more rigorous analysis.
>>
>> -Jeremy (jeremyb)
>>
>> P.S. http://www.onthemedia.org/story/31-race-swap-experiment/
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gendergap mailing list
>> Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gendergap mailing list
> Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
>

--
Michael J. "Orange Mike" Lowrey

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food
and clothes."
-- Desiderius Erasmus

_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Sarah Stierch

-----

Diverse and engaging consulting for your organization.