[Foundation-l] Wikipedia video tutorials: the making-of

[Frank Schulenburg]

2008/12/19 Marcus Buck <me at marcusbuck.org>:
> I will not judge, cause I spent too few time on it, but this thing
> doesn't work well for me. The subtitles or better sidetitles seem to be
> not in synch and it looks confusing for me as a first time user. Is
> there a coordination place or a place with information about the work on
> the metavidWiki extension, where I can find info on the roadmap of the
> extension? Or: When will it be done?

I will ask Michael Dale for more information. For the moment you'll
find a nicer implementation at

http://metavid.org/wiki/Stream:House_proceeding_06-09-08_01/0:01:38/0:10:00

However, as the footage will be published under a CC-by-SA licence and
everyone will be able to produce a voice-over (or whatever seems to be
suitable) in his own language.

> I said "especially about languages", but I'm interested in the other
> questions too. Who is the target? What's the concept?

Our main goal is to reach out to a larger audience. I travelled a lot
during the last few years, gave Wikipedia lectures and organized
workshops. And people always asked me the same questions about
Wikipedia. Thus, it seemed to be obvious to make this more scalable.

What do we want to achieve with the two first Guided tours?

* Guided tour #1: Show people how easy it is to edit Wikipedia /
encourage them to click on the edit button:

My experience so far: you can't imagine how many people don't know
that everyone can edit Wikipedia. You give a lecture, everybody knows
Wikipedia, and suddenly someone asks: "but what happens when I click
on the edit button?" Every Wikipedian knows that uploading pictures on
commons is much too complicated - but obviously clicking the edit
button is almost the same big step. That was what astonished me most.
Wikipedians tend to live in *their Wiki world*. They tend to forget
about the problems of the "normal" user. To encourage these users to
click the magic button and to become contributors - that's what we
want to achieve with the first video.

* Guided tour #2: Give answers to one the most often heard questions /
build trust

When I started to give Wikipedia lectures and workshops some years ago
I had around thirty presentation slides on my notebook. After a short
while I recognized: that's what makes people get tired. From that time
on I open my lectures with two slides explaining the very basic
concept behind Wikipedia and then encourage the audience to ask
questions. And I can tell you: people have a *lot* of questions about
Wikipedia. But one question is always the first one: "Why does
Wikipedia work even though anyone can edit it?" Wikipedians would
answer: Don't you know watchlists? And those Wikipedians forget: no,
people don't know watchlists. The "watch this page" button is only
available for registered users (perhaps we may want to change this in
the future: unregistered users could be directed to a page explaining
what a watchlist is and how useful this is - and encourage people to
get a user account). Thus, to explain some of basic software features
related to quality control (watchlists, recent changes) and to build
trust - that's what we want to achieve with the second video.

One of our big goals is to encourage and to broaden participation. To
hit our target we need to create a personal invitation. That's why the
first two videos will be Guided tours. The key purpose of these videos
is not to explain, in detail, the "how" of editing. More in-depth
how-to video tutorials are a separate part of my work and I invite
everyone in the community who has experiences in creating screencasts
to get in contact with me.

> I mentioned the
> speaker in the previous post, cause she appears very "American" to me.
> In look, in habit, in body language.

Theresa is Canadian. Wikipedia is an international project and our
video tutorials should reflect that. Therefore, Theresa is one of many
faces we will use to represent us, "the first of several." The next
faces will perhaps come from India or from Russia.

And I tell you, we had thousands of questions to answer. Should she
wear earrings or not, what color should the table be, which browser
should she use, and so forth. And I'm pretty sure not everyone will be
happy with every little detail.

Cheers
Frank

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