Good question. In our experience from the weekly editathons in Gothenburg (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Projekt_kvinnor/Kvinnliga_huvudpersoner_p%C3%A5_Wikipedia) there are a few things we've learned:

* even though people are interested, it may take a while before they actually come. In a few cases, people thought about it for several months before showing up.
* media reports are key to reaching newcomers and the reports need to be positive, including reporting on results ("we've created this many articles", etc)
* recruiting people with a large network is also a big plus. If you can get that person enthusiastic about the editathons, he or she can be better than any poster or article in the newspaper.
* the place needs to be easy to find, centrally located and feel homey/welcoming. Signs pointing towards the editathon is a good idea
* make a welcoming project page (ours is a work in progress)

But realistically, the bulk of the work is going to be done by the core team, so make sure you have fun even if noone shows up.


Best wishes,

Lennart Guldbrandsson

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Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 18:12:40 -0500
From: slowking4@gmail.com
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Request for advice about editathons

i agree the trend is low undergraduate attendance if not part of grade

some campus marketing (fliers, partnership with groups seems in order) 

but we don't have a handle on it.

major divide between readers and editors seems hard to close.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 5:38 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi GG mailing list and Maria from WMF Eval,

Cascadia Wikimedians ran a series of editathons at the University of Washington with themes like "Women and astronomy" and "Women and Health Sciences". We did some communications through the University's Facebook pages and mailing lists. While we had regular attendance from veteran Wikipedians and from university librarians, we had very little attendance from current students on campus who we had hoped would attend.

I heard from a female undergraduate that there was buzz and interest on campus in what we were doing, but few people took the next step of coming to one of our events.

Another comment I heard at Wikiconference USA is that university editathons are most successful if there's a current undergraduate on campus who is interested and recruits their friends. In the absence of that, the university editathon model tends to have mediocre outcomes.

Any suggestions about how to increase attendance if we decide to try this again in the future?

Thanks,

Pine

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