Re: [Wikimedia-l] editor retention initiatives

David Goodman has this exactly right — new volunteers (as opposed to casual contributors) aren't made with templates of cookies or beer, they are generally made one at a time, with personal attention and personal assistance. Teahouse is one of the best ideas of the last five years, being a place where newcomers can go to ask specific questions. Mentoring programs is another very correct step. I'm currently working with a buddy who is getting into it. Wiki markup gunk isn't a big problem for him; he's about 40 years old and has been around html enough that it doesn't put him off. Footnoting he initially found difficult, but I taught him how to do it long form rather than using layout clogging templates, so that might have added an hour or two to the learning curve. Still: not that difficult and he already has the knack of it — and once you learn that, it's all very simple. I'm going to write him a couple thousand word email on linking today. That's all pretty self-evident. We had lunch yesterday and I explained to him the way that some topics which interest him (alternative medicine) are going to be battleground areas in which he really must be a master of NPOV; while other interests, relating to popular culture and sports, are less intense, with rawer and worse articles standing that need Tender Loving Care. He's enthusiastic about WP, and there is absolutely no substitute for that. That is the thing that is missing in college students doing class projects. My experience thus far with them is that they dive in at the 11th hour, do minimally decent work necessary to complete the assignment, ask zero questions, and then vanish. Serious, longterm editors are made one at a time, I think. It starts with personal attention. It requires someone to explain editing techniques and (just as importantly) WP culture and policies and tour-guiding them through all the policy pages and various backstage aspects of WP. It also involves something we have totally ignored so far: making sure they have something to do: assigning projects."You like this band? Dig up more sources, flesh it out. Oh, your grandpa was a pro athlete and already has a page? Dig up some news stories on his career... Write about his teammates... Hey, this article on the NFL championship game he played in is pretty terrible, why not see if you can make it better? Another unspoken problem is photo rights, which is (1) confusing to start with; (2) subject to one of the worst decisions ever, the choice to use free files rather than to make use of American fair use legal doctrine; (3) populated by anal retentive volunteers who delete first and ask questions never, engage only with templates, work too fast, and who in many cases I suspect take malicious joy in their work. I know that that was the aspect of WP that alienated me the worst as a newcomer. It still does. So, WMF sorts: remember that this is a slow process and that there are no magical software solutions. Creating new Very Active Editors takes motivated candidates and volunteers willing to take newcomers under their wings. Tim Davenport Corvallis, OR "Carrite" on WP /// "Randy from Boise" on WPO DAVID GOOMAN WROTE: of personally communicating with new editors who seem promising and encouraging them and offering to help them continue. The key word in this is "personally". It cannot be effectively done with wikilove messages, and certainly not with anything that looks like a template. Template welcomes are essentially in the same class as mail or web "personalized"advertisements. What works is to show that you actually read and appreciated what they are doing, to the extent you wanted to write something specific. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>