Wikipedia talk:Encourage the newcomers

Awkward phrasing

I've added an editor's comment in the Introduction about some awkward phrasing. Can originator or someone clear it up? Thanks.--S. Rich (talk) 16:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

virtual classes in editing Wikipedia and otherwise supporting Wikimedia Foundation projects

What if anything has been done to offer classes in ~"Editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects"?

If there were interest, I'd be willing to develop and offer a class that could be offered virtually. Or, more precisely, I would happily prototype such a class on, say, Wikiversity, inviting the world to help develop classe(s) [and curricula]. Invitations for the first class might go to the first ~3 people who create new Wikimedia user IDs after we complete the materials for that first class. After that first class, we discuss, revise, and offer to more people.

What do you think?

DavidMCEddy (talk) 06:09, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

You should see and participate in some of the discussions regarding online learning, such as the one on the talk page of WP:How to run an edit-a-thon and the attempts and resultant discussions of the Wikimedia DC chapter. In brief, it's really challenging having a successful and effective online class. Many people have concluded that people need one-on-one interactions for learning WP. - kosboot (talk) 12:50, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

DavidMCEddy, kosboot: Bluerasberry has some very depressing evidence on the effectiveness of (in-person) classes at actually inspiring people to edit long-term (I cannot find the discussion at the moment, or I'd link). It seems most people who edit as part of a class do not continue to edit. This may be related to broader evidence suggesting that significant extrinsic motivations to do creative work don't effectively incentivize people; in fact, they can be counterproductive. Trivial extrinsic motivations, like prizes of zero financial value, may help, though. One suggested reason is that the rationalizations might be "I just did that for the class, I'm not really interested" or "I can't have done that for no good reason/that trivial prize, so I must really enjoy it". Or maybe it's just the habit? Mentoring editors might be a simple way of doing 1-on-1s.

On the subject of the essay, perhaps it should discuss class effectiveness evidence. What do you think? HLHJ (talk) 02:13, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

HLHJ thanks for the ping and DavidMCEddy thanks for your interest in outreach. There is not a single authoritative paper or essay in available which lays out the situation, but I have some evidence and anecdotes -

1. Wiki Education Foundation has a dashboard and structured data on what is right now 44,000 students, mostly undergraduate in the United States and Canada. These students make lots of good contributions over the period of one class. After those few weeks, retention is ~0%. The majority of content which comes from this is good and hardly anyone in the wiki community notices that it comes from classes.
2. In the meta:Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network all the staff Wikimedians at organizations can give presentations, but no one ever has justified the position as being a channel for editor recruitment. Even with institutional support to connect to very interested volunteers, retention rates for editors may be at best 3%.
3. Wikimedia New York City is in a city of 10 million who can commute to meetups. This organization has a community base of maybe 3000 people who have attended at least one meetup, and who attend an additional meetup every 2 years. 1-2 meetings every two years may not sound like much, and most of these people never edit at all. However, I think outreach to readers and people who want to discuss Wikipedia socially is an underserved demographic which supports editors and content donors. Even at editing meetups, typically 20% of people just want to watch and see what others do, and if they do edit, it is only to test. Outreach can mean lots of things, and meaningful engagement with Wikipedia can happen with community discussion of editorial decisions or social issues even among non editors.
4. Prizes and recognition are highly effective. There are lots of meta:Wiki Loves X events. Unfortunately, none of them are well documented, because wiki volunteers focus on impact and care less about administration. However, anecdotally, the ones with prizes have different and better results in the context of the current practice of running this. There could be a lot to discuss here.

I could say more - best wishes in your exploration. There are lots of good avenues for outreach, just bounce ideas off others to see what has been tried before. Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:00, 31 July 2020 (UTC)