Campaigns/WikiProjects
Help us find WikiProjects or other online collaboration spaces!
[edit]As part of the 2024 work on Campaign Programs and Product at the Wikimedia Foundation, we would like to learn more about how you use collaboration spaces on Wikimedia projects like WikiProjects. We want to make sure that software features on the wikis facilitate collaboration between experienced Wikipedia editors, in the same way that Events and Campaigns help bring newcomers and outside experts to the wikis.
We need your help to better understand WikiProjects or similar online collaboration spaces and why they work (or don't work) for some Wikimedia communities (See the “Definition” section). This way, we can learn how we can potentially help or improve the experiences that exist today, so it's easier for more people to take part in WikiProjects or other forms of on-wiki collaboration.
Not all WikiProjects work (see the Existing documentation section) and not all wikis need a collaboration structure like a WikiProject (smaller wikis allow better collaboration since there are few collaborators), but for most of the larger wikis something like a WikiProject exists (there are at least 4000 individual WikiProject-like spaces on the wikis). We want to learn what makes them work, and how they help you create collaborations on-wiki!
We need your help!
[edit]Please respond to any of these options in your preferred language! The English language questions can be found here, to translate the questions to your local language create a subpage of Campaigns/WikiProjects/Preload/ with your language code.
Definition: What do we mean by WikiProject or other Collaborative editing initatives?
[edit]Not all wikis have WikiProjects, and the word “WikiProject” is applied to different kinds of efforts in the Wikimedia movement. Other concepts describing collaborative editing intiatives include topical neighborhoods, topical collaboration, task forces and sometimes simply “project”. We want to hear about all of these! If you are in doubt, complete this short form. But if it helps, here is a simple definition of scope:
We are hoping to learn more about:
- Persistent collaborations with no clear, predetermined end date (though collaboration might stop)
- With an on wiki home-page or portal that acts as a community space
- Intended to help participants collaborate better to do something in the Wikimedia community as a community with shared goals (i.e. creating content on a specific topic or managing a workflow, etc)
We are not looking for examples of :
- Activities with clear endings where participation is expected to stop (i.e. writing contests or events)
- GLAM or Education projects that have a tightly agreed upon scope with a partner institution or a collaborator.
- Formal organizations like Affiliates, student groups or other “clubs” or meetup groups
Learn about other documentation
[edit]| Open this collapse box to learn more about other documentation we have reviewed! |
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Most of the widely available and documented evidence of WikiProjects working really well come from case studies largely from English Wikipedia and a limited number of examples from other larger Wikis such as French Wikipedia, or Wikidata (i.e. Government Agencies or Brazilian Law). This evidence falls into three buckets:
We are also reviewing the documentation of WikiProjects in the following places:
We have also used this query of Wikidata to explore WikiProjects on different languages and this query to see how many exist per language Wikipedia, and you can explore each wiki with this query, used on Vietnamese Wikipedia). We acknowledge that in their current state most WikiProjects may appear dormant or non-functioning for some reason. Our hope is to identify what is working about the ones that people are most engaged in, to identify what kinds of systems help people collaborate. |
Responses
[edit]- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- <!-Leave your response here---> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I had done a lot of work on WikiProject Novels on English Wikipedia, but after grad school was tired of spending time on literature topics. I spend some time thinking about what I wanted to learn in the world, and what impact I wanted to have and Climate Change seemed like a pretty obvious place to work. I was really proud of the different kinds of topics that I discovered and worked on, while I learned more about the science and communication fo climate change.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- I think one of the most important features was a good core group of collaborators with a lot of on-wiki experience, but beyond that it was also the Popular Pages and "Hot articles" tools maintained by community tech
- Also, bambot was good for finding thigns to do: https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Climate_change.html, and the rater tool for evaluating the articles.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I think its really hard for new editors to find the WikiProject, so its impossible to tell how to grow the project, unless you keep running into editors on the local wiki.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- I have set up several WikiProjects on English Wikipedia, and everytime it take me down a maze of tools and gadgets, I wish there was better workflow for the discovery and setup of the topics. I also think tagging thousands of pages is a pain.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wiki?
- WikiProjects make Wikipedia a warmer place, they also encourage people to be community-oriented
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- the assessment categories and to do categories are especially useful
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- generally I’d like it if there was another assessment table for your wikiproject's articles that had other WikiProject topics on one column, and gradings on another, as this would identify people’s interests and assist them better. I'm not sure if there's code for this
- @Kowal2701: If I understand this correctly, you would like to be able to discover the overlaps between two projects? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, and this could foster interaction between WikiProjects Kowal2701 (talk) 21:52, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- and collaboration Kowal2701 (talk) 21:53, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- generally I’d like it if there was another assessment table for your wikiproject's articles that had other WikiProject topics on one column, and gradings on another, as this would identify people’s interests and assist them better. I'm not sure if there's code for this
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- a lot of people prefer working independently, and while WikiProjects should serve as a place for collaboration, they should also consider how to assist these people. Also editor time is valuable so projects need to be focussed on constructively improving the encyclopedia, rather than just being there because the topic is deserving of a wikiproject. The taskforce system is a really great way of livening up wikiprojects imo. One issue is that nobody responds on talk pages of wikiprojects and I don't know why
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- It's probably the most stable projectrelated to a GLAM in the wiki
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- It's a big umbrella project with smaller campaigns, with a limited time each.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Lots of pictures uploaded.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Passionate small editor base.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- This collaboration showed the potential for engaging with an international community expert on a specific topic and how to make an impact through both formal and informal methods of engagement with this community for the benefit of both the community itself and the Wikiverse.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Having a project page on Wikidata was vital for communication purposes as the conference website was slow to provide information on the Wikidata workshop being offered as well as slow to provide information on the workshop. Also participants sharing Workshop resources on WikiCommons was vital as it provided a place for participants of the workshop to obtain a copy of resources produced to support the workshop. The author disambiguator tool was a pivotal tool used to "wikify" the conference. Without it it would have been difficult to link scientific authors at the conference to their papers held in Wikidata.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The event dashboard never works quite as well as I'd like. We were short staffed at the Wikidata workshop portion of the WikiProject and so had limited time to ensure participants were added to the dashboard. It also didn't update as quickly as I'd like. Participants are often motivated by seeing their numbers creep up during the event. The delay in the totting up the number of edits can make the dashboard less effective.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- As a small and time limited WikiProject we didn't use the "discussion" page of our WikiProject page on Wikidata. We tended to use other forms of communication such as zoom calls, email and WhatsApp - all of which worked well for both specific Wikiproject business as well as organisation such keeping project participants up to date as to travel arrangements, meeting for dinner etc. I don't know whether this will actually require solving but I just thought I'd point out the discussion page was too specific for our more general discussion needs.
@Ambrosia10: Can I ask what made the difference in your mind of a "WikiProject" versus a more tightly scoped event or project? Why did it make sense for you to make something more "permanent" as is implied by a WikiProject? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
- I see a WikiProject as a collaboration of editors focused on a particular theme or effort. In my opinion I don't think it matters whether a particular WikiProject is a continuous ongoing collaborative effort about a subject that will never be complete or whether it is a collaboration has a definite start and end date. However I do think a WikiProject does need encapsulate a broader effort rather than just be focused on one Wiki event. So for example the IBC WikiProject I raised as my example had/has multiple aims, not just to deliver a Wikidata workshop. Yes it was based around one Congress event but my collaborators and I recognised that this effort would likely have an impact that outlasted the Congress itself and would require effort and work leading up to, during and after the Congress. As for making something more "permanent", one reason we created a WikiProject was so it can be referred back to. So again using the IBC WikiProject as an example, the next International Botanical Congress is going to be held in South Africa in 6 years. I and my IBC WikiProject colleagues have already discussed amongst ourselves reaching out to Wikimedia South Africa with the aim of raising their awareness of this important event and giving that chapter the opportunity to engage in similar work to what we've undertaken for the 2024 Congress. Creating a WikiProject with it's accompanying page assists with the linking to the contributors to that WikiProject as well as to the resources created for it, which can in turn help others replicate these efforts at a later date. Another motivating factor can also be funding. For our WikiProject IBC 2024 we had difficulty obtaining funding for our IBC efforts. These issues were eventually resolved but did almost derail our project at the outset. In my view, creating a WikiProject helps gain legitimacy and is an indication of intent by participating editors to deliver multiple results from the WikiProject. I hope this answers your question. Ambrosia10 (talk) 15:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
@Ambrosia10: when you say that you wished the programs and events dashboard worked better for you, could you describe a bit more what you were hoping to measure? What does impact look like in a collaboration like this where its both open ended and has an expiration date (has a possibliity of ending)? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- It is more that sometimes it can take a while for the dashboard to update. Participants in events are often keen to see the immediate impact of their contributions in the dashboard metrics while editing during an event. It can sometimes be demoralising for them if it takes a while for their edits and contributions to appear or be reflected in the dashboard. If the dashboard was more responsive I think it would act as a motivational tool during the actual event itself. Yes, it's a very important tool for end result metrics for the organisers but I'm of the opinion participants can get benefits from tracking their own contributions to the event via the dashboard, should those metrics be be updated more frequently in the dashboard. Ambrosia10 (talk) 23:43, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I am very interested in modeling paintings on Wikidata, and the work done on this project helps me find things to work on and helps me understand how to improve them.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- The project has many active users, over many years. The most important factor is Multichill's dedication to building scrapers and reports, and standardizing models. See the discussion under “How has this project been so successful?” on the Talk page.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Make “ping project” work on larger projects!
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- It should be easier to set up a new project. I’d like to see a New Project Wizard:
- Tool asks for a project name
- Tool prompts you to pick a category from a drop-down
- Tool prompts you to select a navigation template (from 3-5 of the most used styles - happy to discuss this further)
- Tool prompts you to enter names for the tabs/subpages your project needs.
- Tool creates the project pages with the navigation templates in place.
- Tool populates the “participants” subpage with boilerplate text and adds you to it.
- it should also be easier to create data modeling/item structure pages. To create tables like the ones at d:WikiProject_Visual_arts/Item_structure, I want a tool where I can enter the QID of a well-modeled example and have the tool spit out the table using examples from the QID I entered. Ideally, I would like to be able to enter additional QIDs and have the tool add any additional statements from those QIDs to the table, with examples to the entered QIDs.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- The project is a collaboration between the Wikimedians of the Levant UG and the Pasque UG. Appreciating the work that the pasque has accomplished (producing videos), we agreed with them to translate the transcripts of the videos into Arabic, so Arab readers can benefit from the knowledge presented differently. We evaluate that this phase was successful, participants (Who were from the entire Arabic community, shared their feedback that this experience was positive and they would like to participate in a second phase.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Translating on Commons
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- According to the participants, it would be great if the duration of the project was longer, with more follow-up. They also thought such projects should be covered through the wikimedia and social media channels (announcements and celebrations)
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
@Mervat: am I right in understanding that this is a bit like an "Embassy" project between two different wiki communities? Was it easy or hard for those two different communities to collaborate? Why? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:02, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- The Wikiproject was created because the Climate & Development Knowledge Network wanted to do a translation into Spanish of a guide on "How to edit Wikipedia on climate change" and run a set of edit-a-thons. While the project had mixed results, it meant that I was able to secure a bit of funding to actually create the Wikiproject (which was one important part being addressed in the guide, but that didn't exist in Spanish Wikipedia). This Wikiproject grew from just an online collaboration to a mix of people collaborating online and offline. To me, this Wikiproject has been part of the initial steps we gave towards creating the Working Group on Climate Justice & Wikimedia Projects, so it helped grow different parts of the movement. It made me realize the importance of topical lists, but also offer a model for collaboration with other movement organizers & technical communities. It also helps fill in some gaps of the current Wikimedia tooling.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- A mix of the people that participate in it, the activist aspects of the project, the technical prowess of Sophivorus, and the organizing energy that both Cbrescia and I have brought to it.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Make them easier to be found; make putting together lists and arranging lists easier; better online collaboration (if people don't tag you, and you don't regularly check your watchlist, you don't get any notification); have more integration with current tooling (i.e. newcomer tasks and mentorship tooling). More ways to make it easier to reach out to the "Participants list" and link activities that an organizer might be running related to the Wikiproject.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- I can't think of anything right now, aside from some ideas we've already discussed around lists & visualizations.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Me ayuda a saber en qué trabajar, en hacerlo bien, puedo ver ejemplos parecidos y aprender de personas que editan artículos similares. Me anima a seguir adelante
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Tenemos reuniones mensuales bastante livianas donde nos podemos conocer y ponernos caras y hablar de como va todo y lo que hemos estado haciendo. Cada vez tenemos un "desafío" conocido como Desafío del mes, en el que editamos artículos de una zona concreta, por ejemplo un país o un continente. Esto se empezó a hacer porque faltaba mucho contenido de latinoamérica y ha tenido muchísimo éxito, nos ha permitido ir rellenando huecos de información que faltaban.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Me gustaría que se pudiera saber en qué artículos están trabajando otras personas con la herramienta de traducción para no pisarnos entre nosotres. También, el proceso de pedir ayudas es un poco complicado y cuando lo hemos hecho hemos tenido que pedir ayuda a Wikimedia LGBT y aun así se nos ha hecho complicado.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Debería ser más sencillo que los wikiproyectos pudieran organizar eventos en persona y pedir ayudas. Como están las cosas ahora, hay muchísima burocracia de por medio que es difícil de sobrepasar.
@ElleAnónime: Gracias para tu participacion. Para vos, que esta la impacto mas importante para este proyecto? Que indicatores esta mas importante para progreso? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Sorry for the late reply! For me, the most important thing is teamwork. Sometimes I need sources, or I don't know how to write something, for example, when you're talking about someone who died because of AIDS, you want to be careful with the language you use because it's a sensitive topic. Same thing about everyone else: I'm trans, and people have been able to ask me questions about things they weren't sure about. We've united all our knowledge to solidify it and be able to write properly about the topics we're interested about. Sometimes reading about something it not enough and you need to ask someone who knows about the topic.
- Sharing that knowledge allows us to progress. And because we have that knowledge, we can identify gaps in wikipedia that need to be filled, and we can share that information so other people can work on those gaps, because they hadn't realized they were there in the first place. ElleAnónime (Talk; they/them) 14:25, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- This project is very important because its goal is to source articles that don't have any sources. Sources should be the foundation of every article on the encyclopedia but time to time it is not the case so we should now make an effort to source those that have been tagged as non verifiable. Indeed, the quantity of such articles is evaluated in hundred of thousands on fr wikipedia so without task forces, we can never advance in that maintenance.
- It is important for my experience on this specific wiki because it is a very warmful project that encourage you for everything you do to the advancement and the fact that you see people contribute in a such relaxed way despite the roughness of the work sometimes (maintenance is not often pleasant alone I think x)) is really amazing to see and be part of. That's what collaboration should be.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- The project has been launched in November 2023 and to this day, we have treated ~ 4200 articles. The key of this success until now is the model of the collaboration. Every weekend on saturday from 15:00 (European time) to midnight and often all over Sunday, contributors emulate each others in a thread dedicated to the project on the french-speaking Wikimedia community server on Discord and they source in chronological order the categories collecting those articles. That way to announce the articles you source and people reacting to your work with an attempt to source a large number together is what got me into the project.
- I also propose in a section, every day in the community larger talking space, three articles without any sources to invite people to contribute and to make the project more visible and it is a success since we have also there regularly contributors who make the job. To finish, after every weekend, a member of the project (User:Slzbg) make a resume of the work done during the week and mention people who did it and categories or articles treated (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Articles_sans_sources/Bilans). And he and i used to thank via the "thank feature" for every modification related to the project on articles we noticed have been treated in the project. Sometimes a very active member of the project (User:Nanoyo88) make calls in the community talking space to present results of the project and invite people to join.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I don't know if there is something I want to change about the system right now. Perhaps, we should think on how to have more people involved. We call sometimes other wikiprojects to help us source some specific articles for which they will have more resources. We should do that more often than we are doing now.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- I think a lot of work have been made to make discussions' pages more easy to interact with but on wikiprojects' discussions pages on fr wikipedia, there is not as much as connection as I can see on Discord. I know the Discord server is informal but it really helps to keep a sort of instantly connection and a feeling of working in an open space with other contributors while chatting. It is something proper to that platform and on wikis, I don't know if it is doable but approaching that sort of instant communication could boost perhaps some projects ? There is also the fact that a lot of projects seem dormant on the wiki. Time to time, I discover some very nice project and when I look more, there is perhaps one or two contributors still on it doing what they could and happy when you announce yourself. To think about making project more visible can help especially presenting them to newcomers early in their journeys. I will come back later for more answers to this question if they come to my mind.
- Veuillez faire un lien vers un Projet Wiki ou une collaboration communautaire sur Wiki qui, selon vous, « fonctionne ».
- Pourquoi cette collaboration est-elle importante pour vous et votre expérience sur les wikis ?
This project on the french-speaking wikipedia is the french equivalent to the w:Wikipedia:Reliable sources pages. It aims to gather discussions about the quality of the differents references used on the encyclopedia.
- Quels sont les outils spécifiques ou les caractéristiques de la communauté qui font le succès de cette collaboration ou de ce projet Wiki ?
--
- Si vous pouviez changer une chose à propos de votre Projet Wiki ou de votre collaboration sur Wiki pour la rendre plus efficace, que changeriez-vous ? (N'hésitez pas à faire plusieurs suggestions si elles vous viennent à l'esprit).
Currently it is very difficult to track the use of some references on a wiki at a global scale. Some tools can be useful (like the insource search, link search etc.) but none of them really shines in that domain. It is especially important to track the use of these references in case of fake news or propaganda, and right now only a small proportion of contributors are able to do so effectively. To remediate this on frwiki, I'm currently developping a tool counting the occurences of such links.
- L'équipe Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team étudie les Projets Wiki et autres collaborations sur Wiki pour faciliter la mise en relation des contributeurs ayant les mêmes centres d'intérêt. Y a-t-il quelque chose que vous pensez que nous devrions prendre en compte alors que nous continuons à étudier les Projets Wiki ?
I feel like the lack of instant chat spaces limits the possibility of collaboration between users. Some unofficial groups exist (such as IRC, discord servers, etc.) but they all have quirks as they're not built from the ground up with Wikimedia in mind. The real solution would be to implement it directly in Mediawiki, but as it requires gigantic efforts of implementations, I believe an official Matrix instance (somehow linked to Wikipedia, as a Mediawiki extension ?) with channels for each project would be good enough for now.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Collaborating on this WikiProject is of great importance to me, not least because as a Wikimedian from the DRC, my mission is to write the history of my country on open source platforms such as Wikipedia and its related projects. My main interest is in contributing in my chosen fields, with a focus on creating local Congolese content.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Firstly, the fact that we are bringing together articles relating to our country (which adds an extra motivation). Secondly, the suggestion of articles to be created and/or improved, which means that there is always an opportunity for contributions. Thirdly, the ease of discussion with local contributors, ...
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I'd suggest adding other features if possible, such as : A notification system for contributors who are part of this project (or those who want to be anyway), notifying for example articles that have just been created, important subjects that deserve to have an article or be translated, problem articles that need to be improved, ... Give recognition badges to contributors who have contributed more to a WikiProject, for example.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- We noticed that it wasn't possible to add the dashboard link to two or three registration pages. Sometimes we need two or three registration pages (for three workshops in three different towns) for a single project, using the same dashbord, and that complicates things. Sometimes we have to start adding other participants manually on the dashboard.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Through this project, we encourage authors who work on entire countries as a theme and offer each other support.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Discussion page on Wikipedia, real life meeting at WikiCon, Online meetings are possible, but less used.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I would have to spend more time in this project, than in my own theme project.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- ...
@J. Patrick Fischer: Would you be willing to have a call in English? I would be interested in learning more about this project, and how WikiProjects are organized on German Wikipedia? If so, please email me and we can schedule some time to talk. If not, I can write some questions here and you can respond in either German or English, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- You got a mail. J. Patrick Fischer (talk) 12:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
- Por favor, enlaza con el Wikiproyecto o con un ejemplo de colaboración wiki en tu comunidad que consideras que “está funcionando”.
- ¿Por qué esta colaboración es importante para ti y tu experiencia en la wiki?
- Desarollé el Wikiproyecto Circo en 2021, como un espacio de trabajo para facilitar a la comunidad de editoras y editores su contribución para reducir la brecha de conocimiento sobre el mundo del circo en la Wikipedia en español y demás proyectos Wikimedia (Commons, Wikidata...), mejorando, creando, traduciendo, categorizando artículos. Mi propósito como parte del movimiento es que el contenido sea fiable y esta es una manera de garantizar de que los contenidos son de calidad, están referenciados en fuentes fiables y tienen una estructura enciclopédica basada en los criterios de la Wikipedia en español. Mi experiencia es que crear un Wikiproyecto requiere dedicación y tiempo para mantenerlo activo y que no caiga en el olvido.
- ¿Qué herramientas o funcionalidades específicas de la comunidad hacen que esta colaboración o Wikiproyecto tenga éxito?
- Con base a la información del Wikiproyecto se han realizado editatones para aumentar la participación en el tiempo. En 2024, empezamos a usar la herramienta de campañas, para realizar un evento asíncrono y virtual que ha resultado en un éxito (60 artículos traducidos). Nuestra mayor contribución viene del equipo de editoras de Wikiesfera, grupo de usuarios del que nace este Wikiproyecto.
- Si pudieras cambiar una cosa de tu Wikiproyecto o colaboración en la Wiki para hacerlo más efectivo, ¿qué cambiarías? (No dudes en enumerar varias sugerencias si se te ocurren).
- (1) Mayor apoyo con la comunicación de los wikiproyectos vigentes para atraer a nuevas editoras, podría incluirse en el Inicio de la página de usuaria, como un apartado donde encontrar contenidos para trabajar por temáticas; (2) Creación/adaptación de una herramienta que ayude al seguimiento de los avances y resultados obtenidos (eventmetrics solo permite 1 año de seguimiento); (3) Formación/Asesoría/Recursos para los creadores/impulsores de los wikiproyectos sobre herramientas disponibles para facilitar la creación y mantenimiento en el largo plazo; (4) Facilitar el acceso de los wikiproyectos en otras wikis para impulsar la edición/traducción de artículos en otros idiomas; (5) Mayor representación en eventos de la comunidad (Wikimanía, Wimiedia Summit...) como invitados o becados; (6) Herramienta para los "admin" o miembros que notifique sobre novedades/actualizaciones del Wikiproyecto: (7) Herramienta para mapeo entre proyectos Wikimedia de manera sencilla o de actualización automática.
- El equipo de Campañas-producto de la Wikimedia Foundation está investigando Wikiproyectos y otras colaboraciones en la wiki para facilitar la conexión entre personas colaboradoras con ideas afines. ¿Hay algo que creas que deberíamos tener en cuenta mientras seguimos estudiando?.
- Crear un equipo multifuncional con varios creadores de wikiproyectos que puedan asesorar al equipo de Campañas en soluciones para problemas comunes (brainstormings, reuniones virtuales, grupos de prueba...)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I am a monolingual English speaker, adding content about Islamic culture to Wikidata, Commons, and English Wikipedia. This group has translated content into Arabic and promoted images to Featured Image status on Arabic Wikipedia.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- We have had online meetings with live translation between English and Arabic, bringing together Arabic speakers from multiple countries plus myself. I have guided the group through the Islam-related content the Khalili Foundation is sharing on Wikimedia and they have added Arabic labels, transcriptions and other guidance.
Babel boxes were useful in making initial contact, because I could see which users are comfortable to get English language messages on their Talk pages. The "Thanks" feature is also great for initial contact with a user. It is a way for me to thank a user for translating my content without me having to write a message in their language.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I hope they can get participation from other language communities of the Islamic world. This is quite a new user group. I know that they are Arabic-only at present, with ambitions to reach other languages.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- I would love there to be automated notifications on my home wiki (English Wikipedia) that an article I created has been translated into another language, or that an image from a category I'm interested in has got a Featured Image award from another language Wikipedia or is appearing on the front page of that Wikipedia.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
Because the first one (film) is my joyous project, I created myself. GLAM is our Wiki partnership website on successful cooperations with partners.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
Many (dashboard, hashtag tool,...)
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- finding strong and open partner
- finding devoted participants
- get extra funding for refreshments, entrance fees, etc.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Wikimedia Training Tour in GIEHP-CI Community : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/Rapid_Fund/Wikimedia_Training_Tour_in_GIEHPCI_Community_(Groupement_pour_l%E2%80%99Insertion_des_El%C3%A8ves_et_Etudiants_Handicap%C3%A9s_Physiques_de_C%C3%B4te_d%E2%80%99Ivoire)._(ID:_22222334)
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Cette collaboration est la plus importante de ma petite expérience d'organisateur d'évènements, car elle a non seulement permis à ma communauté (Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire) d'établir une collaboration directe (via une série d'Editathon) avec le Groupement des élèves et étudiants handicapés physiques de notre pays; mais aussi, elle a permis et favorisé leur inclusion dans le Mouvement Wikimedia qu'ils ne connaissaient pas auparavant. De cette collaboration est né un Club WIkimedia au sein de cette communauté dont plusieurs des membres ont fait leur adhésion officielle à notre User Group Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Les outils utilisés pour le pilotage et la réussite de cette collaboration sont :
- Google Forms (pour le recrutement des participants en ligne),
- l'Outil d'organisation d'événements de la Fondation Wikimedia (pour l'enregistrement des participants afin de recueillir leurs Usernames),
- le Dashboard Wikimedia(pour recueillir les métriques et résultats de l'événement)
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Rien
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Je pense qu'il faudrait améliorer l'outil d'organisation d'événements de la Wikimedia Fondation afin de permettre que les contributions des organisateurs d'événements Wikimedia soient comptabilisées dans le dashboard. Car j'ai remarqué que quand on crée la page de l'événement sur Méta et qu'on y ajoute le lien du Dashboard de l'événement, les contributions de l'organisateur de l'événement ne sont pas prises en compte.--Aristidek5maya (talk) 07:43, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Wikiproject brings together people involved in chemistry in the Polish Wikipedia. Despite the small number of participants, it is probably one of the most active projects. First of all, it allows for concentrating all efforts, problems and ideas for their solution in one place. All problems and questions from other pl.wiki pages and projects are also directed to one place.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- The most important place is the project's discussion page, where people reporting problems can get answers quite regularly and quickly. In addition, the wikiproject has one place where all information about proposals (to award or remove am article badge, to place an article in the "Did you know..." section on a main page, or deletion proposals) are collected. At the same time, from the talk page of each article in the project's area of interest, the corresponding template pl:Wikiprojekt:Chemia/info directs readers to the project's talk page as a place where they can report an error or any concerns about the article's content. Thanks to the template, it is also possible to continuously monitor the discussion pages of articles [1], in order to respond to any comments and remarks regarding chemical aspects in the articles.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- In pl.wiki there is an effective problem reporting function (pl:Wikipedia:Zgłoś błąd w artykule), however it is a grassroots initiative, not built into MediaWiki, which has not supported automatic reporting of such problems to the appropriate wikiprojects for many years now.
- There are no system solutions for wikiprojects and all activities must be performed manually. Starting with such simple things as marking reported problems with appropriate tags (solved, ongoing discussion, etc., cf. pl:Dyskusja_wikiprojektu:Chemia, as well as generating various types of lists). Additionally, marking articles as being under the care of a wikiproject could be solved by a built-in function, not by adding a template on the discussion page. Creating a list of articles tagged with a specific issue template often requires using several different tools.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- First of all, take into account the diversity of such initiatives and make the resulting solutions flexible. A wikiproject focused on collaboration on articles will have different needs, a team focused on collaboration on technical issues in a given project will have different needs, and a team focused on non-project topics (like some user groups or projects related to cooperation with organizations outside Wikimedia) will have completely different needs.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Women in Red (WiR) focuses on creating new articles about women's representation (biographies, their works, their issues broadly-construed). It does not focus on editors (editors of all genders are welcome), or off-wiki gatherings/communication, or article improvement. Before WiR, there was a concerted effort each year, in March, to create more biographies about women; the other months, not so much. WiR has filled that niche space on EN-WP and 34 other language Wikipedias.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- In addition to creating the articles, the WiR community relies on creating "redlists" -lists of notable women who have a redlink- and we use these lists to sort out which articles to create next. A majority of WiR's 1,000+ "redlists" are Wikidata-dependent, e.g., Listeria. WiR has several "tech" contributors who could answer questions about other tools.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Develop a presence on Meta-wiki to better align the 34 language versions of thi WikiProject.
- Establish a 501(c)(3).
- Get a grant and use the funds to hire a designer to spruce up WiR pages across all language versions where they exist (e.g., WIR mainpages, WiR templates, WiR meetup pages) so that they don't look so "last decade".
- Get a grant and use the funds to hire influencers to promote new WiR articles in their social channels. Their workflow would include a link to the Wikipedia article, or a QR code. In other words, go to websites people visit and induce them to view a Wikipedia article instead of sitting back and waiting for people to come to Wikipedia. Influencers, of all languages, that will direct viewers to WiR-scope Wikipedia articles.
- See WikiEdu Annual Plan 2024-25, page 38: "Younger generations increasingly turn to video as the default medium for seeking knowledge, and are less familiar with Wikipedia and text culture in general ..."
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- A few months after I became an editor, but still a newbie, I joined WikiProject Anthroponomy. I had no expertise in the area, but I was interested in the work. Everyone was so nice to me. I wish that of all editors associated with all WikiProjects.
- As an active member of Women in Red since its establishment in mid-2015, I fully support these suggestions. One really effective way of encouraging further participation would be to support contests by making funding available for awards in the form of book tokens or similar.--Ipigott (talk) 15:00, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- C'est un projet ou les organisateurs internationaux nous accompagne régulièrement avec des sessions de formation avant et pendant le projet.
- C'est une aubaine surtout pour les nouveaux organisateurs puisque j'y ai appris, ainsi que ma communauté, beaucoup de choses sur l'organisation des sorties photos, des sessions de formation en ligne et en présentiel ainsi que la gestion des participants qui peuvent être difficiles à gérer au début, mais avec l'expérience, nous arrivons à mieux les gérer.
WLA est également un projet qui nous met en communion avec notre communauté selon le thème annuel, nous arrivons à faire des sorties photos dans divers lieux pour mieux documenter en images plusieurs thèmes de mon pays. Nous arrivons aussi à faire le suivi des participants, à avoir des statistiques claires sur nos apports et évolutions du projet.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- C'est déjà la propriété du projet aux différents pays Africains où chacun essaye de faire mieux connaître son pays à travers des images de qualités qui reflètent le thème, C'est par ailleurs une rencontre de photographes amateurs et professionnels qui tentent à leur tour de montrer leurs talents en proposant de belles images.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- - Je dirais une durée de campagne plus longue (surtout pour les nouvelles communautés) pour nous permettre d'avoir le temps de trouver de nouveaux participants, car il faut les chercher, les sensibiliser pour qu'ils puissent contribuer librement. Ces différentes étapes prennent du temps avant d'en arriver aux sorties photos et téléversements.
- - Un package de formations sur plusieurs projets Wiki que la fondation pourrait proposer aux organisateurs locaux pour que nous le fassions au moins une fois dans l'année selon nos disponibilités, car d'intéressantes formations se font en rapport avec un projet Wiki ou pas, mais le jour ou l'heure coïncide avec nos temps de travail. Beaucoup d'opportunités nous échappent ainsi. Prendre une semaine qui nous est propre dans l'année et demander à être formé à l'organisation de plusieurs projets Wiki grâce à ce package serait une belle occasion d'accroître nos connaissances et nos aptitudes à l'organisation.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- -La barrière de la langue ː penser à traduire les pages ou à créer des pages traduisibles avant qu'on ne le demande. Pareil pour les webinaires et sessions de formation, prévoir la traduction humaine.
- -Plus d'accompagnement et de soutien aux nouvelles communautés.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- There's a mix of long term editors and new people. Editors have different interests but genuinely work together towards common goals and peer-support.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Tooling is very primitive and not inviting. In the beginning setting up the WikiProject to be more dynamic was very confusing and still relies on 3rd party tools e.g en:Template:Hot articles and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Simple which was designed originally for CDs! There is excellent Signpost article on automation but not enough on how to make WikiProjects easier to set up.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I've written about WikiProjects Israel and Palestine where there is functionally two separate POV pushing projects that don't collaborate together. Instead arguments happen on Talk page or arbitration board, instead of WikiProjects. Effectively these projects are reduced to noticeboards for move nominations, deletion discussions instead of building consensus or collaboratively improving the project.
- Future WikiProject toolings need to be mobile first. They should be easier to find, especially for readers and currently on mobile, they're difficult to find usually requiring 2 clicks to find them once selecting the talk page banner. Ambitious features would improve ability to merge/split WikiProjects and get notified of relevant activity in a customizeable way.
- Collaboration needs to be more fun and joyful. Currently talk pages, especially on WikiProjects are an eyesore. Lot of banners, bot notifications and little room for new editors to share their enthusiasm and excitement except when they have created an article. In contrast, Discord has semi-official en:Wikipedia:Discord where some active WikiProject editors can share their projects. On one hand, this is a better platform, on other hand there's less transparency or possibility to directly edit. Most WikiProjects don't have such social forums altogether, but they're crucial for community.
@Shushugah: How would you want to understand the impact of the Organized Labor group? Is there particular ways in which you would like to see the progress or impact of your group? If you were better able to monitor and track the WikiProject, what would you most want to see? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Looking at something like en:Category:Trade unions by country where is a significant gap of high-level articles about trade unions in different countries, I can imagine collaboratively creating those with existing tools and monitoring progress. However, once articles are created, how do we measure the impact of our WikiProject in terms of things like...additions of citations, edits to different articles (their limitations not withstanding) or see the overlapping impact with other WikiProjects? If overlapping projects like WikiProject Companies or WikiProject Sweden are active that could partly explain collaborative improvements.
- Improved dashboards that show the growth/trajectory of our WikiProject could also give us a sense of where we do well, versus...have a lot of room to grow. Where have we gained momentum/slowed down, how many human editors are actively involved and so on are all high-level metrics that could help.
- One thing I am exploring/thinking of is...whether to apply for Community Grants to assist with hosting more edit-a-thons at (non)-academic labor themed conferences where we might close some of our gaps. As a project that is inherently global in scope, we need more tools to help us identify not only our strengths but also shortcomings. What other WikiProjects do other editors who contribute to our Project come from? For example if we're missing content in Nigeria or India, it could be presumed that having more involvement from editors in articles also covered by Wikiproject India/Nigeria could help, but that's only true if all WikiProjects are good proxies for user activity, which they're not. Shushugah (talk) 22:49, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I launched the initiative 4 years ago. Covid year. I wanted something that would be a bit relax, without being super strict on goals, timeline, rules etc. Which would be limited in time (2 months back the I think). And which could allow any linguistic community to join if they feel like it. And which would allow new comers to participate rather « easily » (lower barrier to entry) and without the fear of immediate retaliation (for not doing the right thing) by an admin on the main language wikipedias. 4 years down the line, I am happy with the initiative.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Every single year, the pain point is about tracking the production. We used different tools over the year (such as the Hashtag tool, which broke), queries (I finally managed to get a set that tracks rather decently... but it is no magic bullet). The dashboard is being used as well, but only works in certain circonstances. Every year, a lot of time is spent trying to figure out what is produced, and part of the reason why it is difficult is because this is a multilingual project. Seeing the impact of what we do is really important to community members motivation.
- The coordination at large is done on meta. Again complex because of multilingualism issues. Just to mention one example... when I am on A wiki... a blue link mean « the page exist ». A red « It does not exist ». On meta, all links to other wikis are green... when one work on a project involving translation... this is not great.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Everytime I set up a programme... I know I will have to explore through a collection of tools and gadgets. Beside finding them (a first challenge, in particular when you do not know they exist), some are broken or no more maintained (but we do not know that). Or another tool might be better. And most other community members do not care exploring them and learning how to use them (if only because they know that those might be broken or short span). So not only tools are a challenge, but this is often a case where a few people (or me only) become a bottleneck. And finding another person to help... becomes another challenge because how would we always know who else is actually knowledgeable and willing to help ? I wish this was more fluid...
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Operation Majestic Titan
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I made friends and learned how to edit at a FAC level
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Talk pages
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- I was very fortunate that MilHist and Ships were very active with editors who cared about assessing the projects's articles when I got serious about editing around 2009. This created an environment that encouraged me to produce articles as good as I could get them. And they provided me models on which to base the structure and formatting of my articles. I starting out bringing ordinary articles to start or B class, and as I gained confidence, began pushing them through GAN, ACR and FAC. I don't think that I'd have been able or would have wanted to do that if I worked in a moribund project.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:48, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- This collaboration is essentially what updates and maintains the quality of all articles on organisms. As a biologist, it is extremely important for the maintaining of openly available biological knowledge. I consider it to be the most important (and possibly biggest) WikiProject both in general and in the realm of science.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- For example, the implementation of the automatic taxobox system, the existence of categories to keep track of all the existing articles, the help of external databases to keep track of articles that haven't been yet created, etc. but especially the presence of many editors that are willing to help so quickly when presented with an issue or a doubt.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I would modify the subprojects so that they are organized according to groups of organisms. For example, I would merge WikiProject Algae into WikiProject Protista, and I would change WikiProject Microbiology to WikiProject Bacteria. I personally deem some projects unnecessary due to their redundancy, such as WikiProject Marine Life. I would also maintain social media accounts that promote the WikiProject Tree of Life. I would also create an algorithm that automatically assigns newly created articles' talk pages to specific subprojects according to keywords. Lastly, I would create a database of all taxonomic names with the purpose of seeing which ones are already present in Wikipedia as existing articles and which ones are not.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- As someone who made their own WikiProject from scratch, I know the process of creating a WikiProject is extremely tedious. You will probably see that some have well-kept frontpages, while others look very poorly maintained, so consider the difficulty that implies the creation and coding of so many different pages that have to function together. Personally I would like to see this creation process more automatized in the future, simply to make future lives easier. Also, a lot of projects are inactive, which could be interesting to study.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you htink “works”.
- WikiProject Women in Religion
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- It's important because it creates a community of editors that are interested in creating and improving content about women in religion, a much-neglected topic on Wikipedia. We as a group receive support and encouragement. Editors don't feel alone, are encouraged in supported, and become accountable to each other.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- We have regular meetings: UserGroup planning sessions and editing sessions. We have a number of projects that address our members' interests and strengths: Wikidata contributions, artificial project, publishing of secondary sources. We work with other WikiProjects, including WikiProject Australian Women in Religion and WikiProject Circle of Concerned Women African Theologians Kenya. The Kenyan project originated as a subproject of Women in Religion and they branched out on their own, but members of Women in Religion continue to work with them. In a relatively short amount of time, since our founding in 2018, for example, we've published four volumes of biographies. We've been able to create a space across the spectrum of socio-economic, academic, and business groups, but is at the same time, egalitarian, kind, and supportive towards each other.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- We need more people! We need to have more effective recruitment. We need more diversity in our members. (Most of us are white middle-aged women.) We'd like to find tools to recruit more diverse members. One way to mitigate against privilege we found was to assist the African project to apply for grants that paid for their internet access.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- We think there should be more recognition of our work in the Wikimedia movement that aren't reflected in our edit counts. For example, Dzingle1 gets little to no credit for editing three volumes of secondary sources, which has been a valuable contribution to the movement. Figureskatingfan (talk) 22:05, 9 September 2024 (UTC)