[Foundation-l] Thematic weeks in ru.wp

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

Just wanted to draw an attention to a series of actions we started on
ru.wp which are known as "Thematic weeks",
[[:ru:Википедия:Проект:Тематическая неделя]]. It might be that some of the
bigger projects have smth like this or discussed smth similar at some
point, but at least the feedback I have got so far was encouraging and I
believe it could be interesting for some of you to know what it is about.

The idea is to suggest a broad topic which can be of interest to a broad
class of editors, and within roughly a week's time (last time we have
taken two weekends and a week in between) to create new articles, improve
stub articles and possibly bring some selected articles to the featured
level. We had two "weeks" so far, Swedish week (organized spontaneously
when we have taken over sv.wp in terms of the number of articles) and
Bulgarian week, since we previously added a large number of bot-generated
stubs on Bulgarian towns which caused some negative response, and we
wanted to improve those stubs). We are currently planning Austrian week
sometime in July. It turned out that an event attracts many editors with
very different interests and background. Some write articles on history,
some on sport, some on industry, some on music, and so on. It also creates
cohesion and enthusiastic collective work. During both Swedish and
Bulgarian weeks we created a number of articles which are better than
corresponding articles in Swedish and Bulgarian Wikipedias, and a few
which are currently the best in all projects. The event also attracts
interest to the culture of the corresponding country or topic or whatever.

We are still looking for the optimal way to stage the event, but it looks
like the best interval between the "weeks" is about a month (with possible
exceptions of summer months). This month is spent for preparation of the
next week, i.e. finding the list of articles to create/to improve. In both
Swedish and Bulgarian topics we received a considerable help from
corresponding Wikipedias. In particular, Lars Aronsson has not only made a
lot of suggestions, but also helped actually edit articles, and without
him we would probably never come to the idea of organizing regular events.
Also it is good of course to have people able to read the corresponding
language at least a bit, and to advertise the event in a proper way.

We have created about 200 new articles during the Swedish week and about
150 during the Bulgarian week, and we also try to accent the quality as
much as possible, improving existing articles.

I was in particular rather sceptical in the beginning, thinking this was a
one-time splash of enthusiasm impossible to reproduce, but so far the
feedback from the participants was very positive, and they contribute much
in the planning. I think if we do not overdo, the event will go on for
quite some time.

Cheers
Yaroslav