Dear Gordo,

We've followed that convention for London meetups for years, but the vast majority of attendees are from the English Wikipedia.

But when it comes to outreach events targeted at new or newish editors, it just gets too confusing to get them off EN wikipedia. There are also practical advantages, it gets them to confirmed status on EN wiki more quickly, and without global watchlists multiple wikis are a complication too far for most newbies.

More practically if you are going to have an event with a bunch of potential articles listed they will only show up as redlinks if you are on the same wiki.

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On 12 November 2015 at 14:59, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:

On 11/11/15 17:43, leutha@fabiant.eu wrote:

...

Please compare with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TNA_editathon,_23_November_2015

and

https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/The_National_Archives_Editathon

Editathons need to be set up on the relevant wiki rater than the Wikimedia UK, otherwise it is too complicated when people sign up.

This has been a problem for a while (with Meetups).

My opinion is that all events should be convened and recorded on "meta".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/London

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London

Some Meetups are not notable....

:-)

Gordo

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Hi all,

I don't think anyone is suggesting that watchlists are useful for drawing people into events (the alternative methods you mention are much better), but rather watchlists, histories and individual editors are excellent ways of keeping track of how well trainees are doing both during and after events.

I can see Gordon's point about separating mediawiki editing skills from wikipedia skills, but in practice we run one off sessions. In such circumstances people have little interest in learning how to edit Wikimedia UK wiki.

I don't know how to run a session where you go through a whole load of exercises (I always like to get people to drop notes on each others talk pages for example), and then say "...and now for something completely different!" In fact taking people through to Commons can be sufficiently complex in itself, even though it can relatively easily be linked and made relevant to Wikipedia.

all the best

Fabian

On 13 November 2015 at 11:09 Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:

On 12/11/15 16:23, WereSpielChequers wrote:

...

But when it comes to outreach events targeted at new or newish editors, it just gets too confusing to get them off EN wikipedia. There are also practical advantages, it gets them to confirmed status on EN wiki more quickly, and without global watchlists multiple wikis are a complication too far for most newbies.

I am not sure I agree that watchlists are an important mechanism for newbies. People like me (am I a newbie?) tend to rely on email as the primary source of information about events. Secondary sources are websites, including wikis. Having said that, I am using Facebook in tandem with an email for a series of event I run.

Eventbrite has some advantages. Easy to see if an event is full for example. Eventbrite is free for free events.

As a purist, I believe that EN is for articles (and User: space).

I have also suggested in the past that the editing basic skills can be taught on any Mediawiki installation. Learning about Wikipedia is distinct, with all those pillars.

Gordo

P.S.

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says website has been 'taken over by trolls' 46-year-old says he walked away from the internet phenomenon in 2001 because 'the inmates were running the asylum'

http://v.gd/Add7uQ

:-)

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