Thanks Lennart!
A blog post would be awesome about this -I'm sure the program evaluation
folks at WMF would love to see it on the Wikimedia blog. Having it as a
blog would make it easier to share with a wider audience off this list.
Great work that continues to be done in Sweden!! :)
On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 3:09 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <
l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
Since this is the start of the new year, let me just shortly let you know
(or remind you) about what one thing we've done in Sweden last year and a
little about what we've learned.
We started in March in Gothenburg, the second largest city of Sweden, to
hold weekly editathons. The topic was formally "female main characters"
("kvinnliga huvudpersoner"), but we essentially let people write about what
they wanted, and tried to gently steer them towards literature and/or
women. It could be female authors, or seminal works in womens' literature
such as "The Mad Woman in the Attic". We welcomed people of all sexes.
Altogether we ran 35 editathons each running on a Tuesday from 13.00
onwards, editing in over 100 different articles, with about different 15
Wikipedians. The result was 11 articles reaching "recommended status"
(ranking just below Good articles) with more on their way. (We of course
want to improve on this for next year.) A full list of articles worked on,
sorted on how far they've come can be found on our project page:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Projekt_kvinnor/Kvinnliga_huvudpers…
This initiative is one of the most publicised Wikipedia/Wikimedia events
in Sweden during the year with two national radio interviews, two podcast
interviews and several articles. There has been no negative reactions
(which I am beginning to understand needs specifying) as far as I am aware
of. We have presented this on flyers and on the large Book Fair in
Gothenburg, and have started to get a very good reputation. We are hoping
to see the same sort of regular editathon thing getting off the ground in
other cities in Sweden during 2015.
So, what have we learned?
* we could not have done this but for a small group of dedicated people
who showed up nearly every time. We were four persons (two female, two
male). "All volunteers" led to very little bureaucracy during the
editathons themselves and sometimes editathons running over by several
hours. Making sure that the editathons didn't depend on any one person was
an early priority.
* we had access to a free space with wifi and a kitchen. Each time,
Wikimedia Sverige sponsored coffee/tea, sandwiches and fruit - and
gingersnaps and other seasonal treats. Don't underestimate the power of
"fika" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fika_%28coffee_break%29). All in
all, the cost of all 35 editathons was around 240-250 USD.
* we have two lines of communication: both the project page, and our
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/events/213852525478532/, where
we could remind people to come and get them to invite others who aren't on
Wikipedia yet. Personal invitations works much better in the long run -
getting people to come back week after week.
* the topic was very well chosen. Many are interested in literature and
the topic is underdeveloped on Wikipedia, so it's easy to explain the need
to outsiders. But it has also been good to allow some leeway and not
adhering strictly to any predetermined list of articles to edit. Sometimes
interesting topics crop up in conversation or a bad article was discovered
during fact checking and then we've encouraged people to edit that article.
* some people have wished for the editathons to be held on other
days/other times. It may have contributed to the sometimes very low
attendance rates. We've tried to taken that into account, and are thinking
about how to manage regular weekend editathons. We are also considering
ways to get the people most interested in going to those editathons to also
run them (empowering them, in effect).
* there are always going to be a few people who only come one time, just
to check what we're about. Especially after we put in weekly small ads (for
free). We took turns doing the introduction and making sure they made a few
edits, so that as many Wikipedians as possible had done it, and also to
make sure that the Wikipedians themselves could have time to edit. That's
also how we tried to do with the radio and pod cast interviews, to prevent
any one person "the representative Wikipedian".
* you also shouldn't underestimate how much this is a way for stressed
Wikipedians with normally very little time to edit Wikipedia to set aside
time to do it.
Finally, just FYI. During the winter holiday, when the editathons had a
few weeks off, demand for more meetings was so high that we organised a
Hangout remote editathon session just to relieve our feelings of abstinence
:-)
Best wishes,
Lennart Guldbrandsson
070 - 207 80 05
http://www.elementx.se - arbete
Skriv som ett proffs <http://www.elementx.se/skriv-som-ett-proffs/> - min
senaste bok
http://www.mrchapel.wordpress.com - personlig blogg
Presentation <http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%c3%83%c2%a4ndare:Hannibal>
@aliasHannibal <http://twitter.com/AliasHannibal> - på Twitter
"*Tänk dig en värld där varje människa på den här planeten får fri
tillgång till **världens samlade kunskap*
<http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Huvudsida>*. Det är vårt mål.*"
Jimmy Wales
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