Hello colleagues,

Overview

A video tutorial for creating references on Wikipedia with VisualEditor is in development for English Wikipedia and possibly also for Spanish Wikipedia. Publication is likely to happen in March 2019. If this tutorial is well received then additional tutorials may follow.

If you would like to receive notifications regarding the availability of draft or finished tutorial products, or to learn additional information, then please continue reading below.

How can I request notifications for when drafts or finished products are ready for review?

If you would like to receive a notice when a draft or finished product is ready for public review then I invite you to go to the the project talk page and follow the link to the newsletter subscription page [1]. During the development of this single tutorial the newsletters are likely to be short. I am likely to send approximately 3 to 6 notifications to subscribers between now and the end of this mini-project.

(The reason that I am not including a link to the newsletter's subscription page directly in this email is that I may change the name of the newsletter in the future, and I prefer to minimize any potential confusion and the number of redirect pages, so I think that including a link from this email to the talk page is preferable because the location of the talk page is likely to remain stable.)

Background information

Some of you may remember the project that was originally named LearnWiki [2]. For various painful reasons that project was not completed within the original schedule and budget. However, I continue to believe that video tutorials Wikimedia projects could be very useful for new contributors, and also for helpers who could use the videos to demonstrate concepts to new contributors. I think of this project as being a pilot iteration for "LearnWiki version 2.0", or maybe "LearnWiki 2.0 beta 1",  with a major change between this effort and the original LearnWiki project being how the project is executed. The goal for this tutorial remains aligned with the original vision for LearnWiki. I believe that I know more about project management than I did when I attempted LearnWiki version 1.0.

WMF approved a rapid grant for me to develop a single tutorial module [3] regarding creating Wikipedia references with VisualEditor. This tutorial is in development, I and I plan to publish the finalized script and video in March 2019. Depending on the amount of remaining funds after development of the English version of this tutorial and on whether WMF agrees, in addition to an English version of the tutorial I may also produce a Spanish version within the budget of the current rapid grant. Additional translations or derivative versions would be welcome from anyone who would like to create them.

If this first tutorial is well received then I may request funding for additional tutorials.

Within the next few days I plan to publish the first complete draft of the script for the referencing tutorial. I will place a link to that draft on the project talk page [1], and I am likely to create links from the same talk page to further drafts and additional tutorial products. If you would like to receive project updates then please watch the talk page and/or subscribe to the newsletter.

I welcome any comments or questions that you have, either on a mailing list or on the project talk page [1].

Yours in service,