New subject: Regular editathons in Sweden about women and literature

2 Jan 2015

Hello,

Since this is the start of the new year, let me just shortly let you know (or remind you)
about what one thing we've done in Sweden last year and a little about what we've
learned.

We started in March in Gothenburg, the second largest city of Sweden, to hold weekly
editathons. The topic was formally "female main characters" ("kvinnliga
huvudpersoner"), but we essentially let people write about what they wanted, and
tried to gently steer them towards literature and/or women. It could be female authors, or
seminal works in womens' literature such as "The Mad Woman in the Attic". We
welcomed people of all sexes.

Altogether we ran 35 editathons each running on a Tuesday from 13.00 onwards, editing in
over 100 different articles, with about different 15 Wikipedians. The result was 11
articles reaching "recommended status" (ranking just below Good articles) with
more on their way. (We of course want to improve on this for next year.) A full list of
articles worked on, sorted on how far they've come can be found on our project page: 

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Projekt_kvinnor/Kvinnliga_huvudpers…

This initiative is one of the most publicised Wikipedia/Wikimedia events in Sweden during
the year with two national radio interviews, two podcast interviews and several articles.
There has been no negative reactions (which I am beginning to understand needs specifying)
as far as I am aware of. We have presented this on flyers and on the large Book Fair in
Gothenburg, and have started to get a very good reputation. We are hoping to see the same
sort of regular editathon thing getting off the ground in other cities in Sweden during
2015.

So, what have we learned?

* we could not have done this but for a small group of dedicated people who showed up
nearly every time. We were four persons (two female, two male). "All volunteers"
led to very little bureaucracy during the editathons themselves and sometimes editathons
running over by several hours. Making sure that the editathons didn't depend on any
one person was an early priority.

* we had access to a free space with wifi and a kitchen. Each time, Wikimedia Sverige
sponsored coffee/tea, sandwiches and fruit - and gingersnaps and other seasonal treats.
Don't underestimate the power of "fika"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fika_%28coffee_break%29). All in all, the cost of all 35
editathons was around 240-250 USD. 

* we have two lines of communication: both the project page, and our Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/events/213852525478532/, where we could remind people to come and
get them to invite others who aren't on Wikipedia yet. Personal invitations works much
better in the long run - getting people to come back week after week. 

* the topic was very well chosen. Many are interested in literature and the topic is
underdeveloped on Wikipedia, so it's easy to explain the need to outsiders. But it has
also been good to allow some leeway and not adhering strictly to any predetermined list of
articles to edit. Sometimes interesting topics crop up in conversation or a bad article
was discovered during fact checking and then we've encouraged people to edit that
article.

* some people have wished for the editathons to be held on other days/other times. It may
have contributed to the sometimes very low attendance rates. We've tried to taken that
into account, and are thinking about how to manage regular weekend editathons. We are also
considering ways to get the people most interested in going to those editathons to also
run them (empowering them, in effect).

* there are always going to be a few people who only come one time, just to check what
we're about. Especially after we put in weekly small ads (for free). We took turns
doing the introduction and making sure they made a few edits, so that as many Wikipedians
as possible had done it, and also to make sure that the Wikipedians themselves could have
time to edit. That's also how we tried to do with the radio and pod cast interviews,
to prevent any one person "the representative Wikipedian".

* you also shouldn't underestimate how much this is a way for stressed Wikipedians
with normally very little time to edit Wikipedia to set aside time to do it. 

Finally, just FYI. During the winter holiday, when the editathons had a few weeks off,
demand for more meetings was so high that we organised a Hangout remote editathon session
just to relieve our feelings of abstinence :-)

Best wishes,

Lennart Guldbrandsson

070 - 207 80 05
http://www.elementx.se - arbete
Skriv som ett proffs - min senaste bok
http://www.mrchapel.wordpress.com - personlig blogg

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