Hi all,
 
I think there is what we do and what we imagine we do. Although the propaganda is that editathons are there to develop new editors, in fact they are very poor at this with somewhere around a 5% success level. This is something Wikimedia UK has known for several years, yet we have continued to run these even though they fail at their stated aim.
 
However, I do believe that a few hours involved with volunteer trainers does help people understand better what goes on when people edit, what kind of people are Wikimedians and what Wikimedians see as key issues. This I feel this  does encourage the sort of critical thinking Tom is talking about. And yes, a handful of people do actually end up as editors.
 
It is quite clear that if we want to train up editors then what is needed is regular (probably weekly) training events at which people can build their skills, carry out "homework" between sessions and perhaps be given an assessment if they are up for it.
 
We have evolved as a community of enthusiasts (OK, nerds) who are used to acquiring skills on the fly, and through interacting with other we have been able to convince ourselves that this is easy for everyone. As a consequence we have undervalued the skillsets we have developed and undersold them. WP editing is a form of coding with a strong socially interactive element.
 
I tend to agree with Jonathan, having been involved with delivering training to entry level computing/web literacy both with youngsters and silver surfers. There are various ways that wikimedians can get involved with "introducing people to the internet" through volunteering with local community organisations including the local library. I do not see the advantages of a national organisation like Wikimedia UK getting involved in this. We havesuccessfully  attracted a readership without this sort of intervention.
 
I feel that teaching people how to use Wikipedia is a bit like teaching people how to use a hammer at a handyperson training session: people want to learn how to fix things and can more easily develop skills using particular tools in that context, than learning about individual tools as descrete items.
 
I would dearly love to see the sort of critical thinking Tom discusses being delivered at pre-university school level. Having seen how Wikipedia is used in universities to teach internet research skills, I feel we only really started to explore this potentially very interesting area before we went through the restructuring, and I am interested to see how this might be further developed inn the context of the new structure.
 
No doubt the minutes from the Board Meeting of 12 September will be published soon, and we shall learn about the "Election of officers and appointments to board committees", and also whether the staff recommendation for "a single   'partnership' advisory board" has been accepted and consequently the GLAM and Education committees scrapped.
 
Personally as a long term volunteer on the Education Committee this would strike me as a somewhat odd way of making the organisation more responsive to volunteer in put, and would remove the opportunity to have the sort of detailed discussion in a more suitable environment than on this list.
 
all the  best
 
Fabian
aka Leutha
 
 
On 13 October 2015 at 14:01 Thomas Morton <morton.thomas@googlemail.com> wrote:

Getting people to understand how to interact with Wikipedia *properly* as a reader has always struck me as the most important thing. Because people sometimes don't apply the sort of critical thinking needed. An encyclopaedia is nothing if it's content is not *useful*.
 
For this reason (and I feel it is often overlooked in favour of encouraging interest groups to engage and edit, a worthy goal) I've always thought that we should spend a lot more time engaging with readers. Because that's an easier step. And from a large pool of great, critical thinking, readers will come the casual and committed editors needed to grow the corpus.
 
Tom

On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 at 13:55 Nick Poole < Nick.Poole@cilip.org.uk> wrote:

Hi all,

 

I am following this thread with interest. A lot of libraries are doing interesting things around Get Online week, and I think it’s worth thinking less in terms of people editing Wikipedia and more in terms of using it.

 

Obviously, edits is a metric, but I note in Martha Lane Fox’s dot.everyone initiative that they talk as much about giving people reasons to go online as they do giving them the skills to create web content.

 

I think that it would be worth thinking about partnering up with the library network on ‘Introduction to Wikipedia’ sessions telling people about the scope, how to search etc. Ideally this would serve  as an on-ramp for people wanting to become editors further down the line!

 

All best, and happy to discuss further.

 

Nick Poole

Chief Executive

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)

 

From: Wikimediauk-l [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of WereSpielChequers
Sent: 13 October 2015 13:49
To: UK Wikimedia mailing list
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Get Online Week

 

Dear Mike,

I think the target group is significant here. My suspicion is that editing Wikipedia is not an entry level computer task. I have twice trained non computer users at editathons I was helping at, on one occasion I spent an inordinate amount of time teaching someone how to use a mouse. My preference is that we leave "introducing people to the internet" to people who are experienced at that sort of training, and we focus more on cross training existing wikimedians and on those who are willing to help Wikipedia or at least want to fill one of our gaps.

Jonathan

 

On 12 October 2015 at 18:39, Michael Peel <email@mikepeel.net> wrote:

Hi all,

I've just discovered that this week is 'Get Online Week', see:
http://getonlineweek.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Online_Week

It's too late for this week, but for next year perhaps we should think about offering some sort of 'intro to Wikipedia' courses? Probably more 'how to read' rather than 'how to edit', given the target group here.

Thanks,
Mike
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