I think that we need to engage editors & to be consistent in our follow-up.
In October, we had the largest monthly meetup that I have been to. We did not have a one in November because several of us did a panel at
Mako's class instead. In December, we teamed up with the 3rd Monday Techno-Activist folks for the year-end holiday party instead of a meetup. In January, we did meet on a 2nd Tuesday, but at UW, not the café. In hindsight, I realized that anyone used to Café Allegro & not likely to travel elsewhere would have not attended our meetup for three months. I am not implying that we need to meet there every month since we have UW's schedule to consider, but we should consider our schedule at Café Allegro.
I thought of few things as a result of the 'I Love To You': Critical Wikipedia / Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon. Next time, & thereafter, we should have CWUG flyers & a means to join our user group. We could not have done that in time for this event, but we can do it going forward.
The event begged for a follow-up. Since ten groups co-sponsored the event, it is unclear who owned this. I would like to work collaboratively with someone on either the Draft:Feminist Hackerspaces or the Women Writers' Suffrage League articles. However, none of us created a contact list to coordinate those interested in editing these articles further.
I agree with Sage here in that “bringing newcomers into the online wiki community (after) local outreach events” is the hard nut to crack. I think that we may be able to engage editors by doing two types of “deep dives”:
- Topical
- Going beyond the basics
The first entails topic-specific editing sessions or following up on previous edit-a-thons. Maybe that means a series of meetups or organizing a focus group, perhaps with an experienced Wikimedian who is willing to take part. Examples include art & feminism, GLAM, or regional interests, like the list being drafted at
http://cascadia.wiki/List_of_Cascadia_topicsThe second is sharing our expertise. Most teaching edit-a-thons don't go beyond the basics. Maybe we need some “200” level sessions where we explore further into one aspect of Wikimedia/Wikipedia, like:
- how to add images & galleries to articles
- infobox templates
- citation templates
- Commons, how it works, & how its licensing differs from Wikipedia
- what are namespaces & how they function
- other language Wikipedias, & the how & what of translating articles
- other Wikimedia projects, for example, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikispecies, etc.
- what exactly are WikiProjects & what are their templates doing on an article's talk page?
This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor exhausting, but a springboard. Maybe we can encourage casual editors to go beyond the occasional, casual edit by showing them what is possible.
Yours,
Peaceray