Great work Carol! I've left a few comments on your training page.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Sarah
On 1/29/12 1:16 PM, Carol Moore DC wrote:
As well as beefing up the main page, I first reported
this here after
being asked to do the first workshop, which really got me thinking
about training. (Besides what I'd been reading about discussing on the
GenderGap wikimedia mailing list)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_District_of_Columbia/Local_ou…
Discussed in person and via email with Katie F. and created a One Day
Workshop outline which we used during the workhop (now updated to be
more general):
http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/One_day_training
I then reported here on it, text below:
http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Talk:One_day_training
/We had 11 new editors show, only two with accounts or some
editing experience. While they appreciated the overview of
Wikipedia policies and procedures, they also were hot to try to
edit. Most wanted to and did create accounts and were very
interested in creating a sandbox and/or personal cheat sheet page. /
/So I can see the need to integrate simple exercises earlier in
the program. Going through one tutorial page at a time probably a
good idea. Getting them to try do it at home before the workshop
even a better idea! So I'll study those more and how to integrate
them. I made a few changes to outline for now to make it more
generic and will do more soon. /
/They are a group of people involved in a network of groups that
work on civil liberties articles, especially about high profile
individuals they feel were entrapped into crime. Katie and I
stressed how important it is to put the interest of the
encyclopedia first and to work on different types of articles, and
that's one way to ensure you are a better editor on the articles
of interest to you and to keep from getting frustrated with those.
I gave them tips on how to work together on Wikiprojects like
Wikipedia:WikiProject Human rights. I will continue helping them
to do that. Hope to do another one in later February for a more
general interest type of potential editor, hopefully
computer-savvy retired individuals (especially professionals)
looking for something to do in their spare time. Will start
looking for recruits in various ways soon./ (end report)
Also inspired by the workshop was the idea of strongly encouraging
newbie editors to go through the whole tutorial before the workshop
and having at least two veteran editors/trainers helping newer editors
with issues on their laptops.
I also noticed Feb 4th is a proposed day for a workshop, but since I
see there's a board meeting the next day and time is getting short,
probably the next week is better. I'd propose doing a meetup that at
least is partially training for new editors and/or a discussion of how
we can organizing out reach and training. I'm particularly interested
in outreaching to some of the thousands of DC area recent retirees who
are computer savvy and looking for fun activities to fill their time,
as well as to women and to the hundreds of activists on my various
lists, some of whom doubtless are already editing and not doing a
sufficiently NPOV job.
So that's what I have to say for now, but am still exploring the
various existing Wikimedia outreach and training programs to beef up
the WikiDC page(s).
Carol in dc
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