On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Pete Forsyth <pete.public.email@gmail.com> wrote:

But in general, it ties in with what Sue brought up: people brand new to Wikipedia often need a *lot* of support and advice before they start to get their legs. So directing them to educational resources, and establishing a "cafe" type space to ask questions and build a sense of community, would certainly be helpful in keeping with what we've learned from our outreach efforts.

Related to this, I'm helping organize and conduct a series of "wiki academies" aimed at the Australian, possibly New Zealand, sport community.  The details can be found at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/UCNISS/Sport_Wiki_Academy . The content for the academy will really depend on who is there.  How we approach university professors will be different than how we approach athletes.

Wikimedia Australia and UCNISS are working on helping fund these academies.  (Details are being sorted out and only the first academy date and location are set.)  We're hoping to really address the women's sport community as the articles in that area can be a little underwhelming when compared to the men's side.  There are also some major women's sporting events going on this year, which Australia and New Zealand are both participating in.  They include the netball world championships and the women's soccer World Cup.  This can help create additional interest, give fans and organizations a reason to participate.

While the focus is on how sport organizations and athletes can use wikis in general, there will be a fair bit of discussion about how to use Wikipedia correctly to help work towards meeting institutional objectives, like increasing visibility as Wikipedia ranks so highly on Google searches.  If there is interest, we'll see if we can't work it out between UCNISS and Wikimedia Australia to set up some form of Wikipedian in Residence program so that sport studies students can get academic credit, but that is a bit further down the road.



We'd love some help with this if you're local.  If you might want to try something similar or have any advice on running these academies, please let me know either on list or off.




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