Submissions:2018/Calling All Subject Experts: Training the Next Wikipedians

This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2018.

Title

Calling All Subject Experts: Training the Next Wikipedians

Theme (optional)

Editor Recruitment and Retention

Academic Peer Review option

No

Type of submission

Panel

Author

Will Kent and Ryan McGrady

E-mail address

will@wikiedu.org

Wikimedia username

Will (Wiki Ed)

Affiliation(s) (optional)

Wiki Education Foundation

Abstract

Despite a wider acceptance of Wikipedia within academia, scholars, scientists, and experts are still skeptical of Wikipedia's quality in their area of expertise. They don't understand how we build the encyclopedia, and the few who try contributing content without learning how the system works experience challenges and barriers they don't know how to overcome. Yet experts are eager to make Wikipedia more comprehensive, have the context to identify significant content gaps, and have mastered the research and writing skills necessary for editing Wikipedia.

This year, Wiki Education started a program geared toward training experts to be Wikipedians—channeling their enthusiasm for improving Wikipedia and their unique skillset into real outcomes. These experts have engaged with Wikipedia consistently for three months, and several have contributed beyond the structured program. On this panel, the Wiki Education staff who have trained more than 100 experts to become Wikipedians in 2018 will join past participants to share their experiences as new editors in our community. We will share insights into how we have recruited and retained new editors. We will examine how to have these editors dive in to evaluate the missing content in their areas of expertise, how to cultivate an inclusive and supportive environment for the participants, and how we have helped change their negative perceptions of Wikipedia.

Panel participants will speak about their role in the program, motivation for getting involved, content contributions, and how the program could scale to include hundreds of experts in the near future. We will share details of our training sessions' weekly curriculum, tools we use to manage and scale the work, and best practices for introducing new editors into the Wikipedia community.

Length of presentation

45min

Special requests

Video and audio capabilities; projector

Preferred room size

30-40

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?

No

If you will be incorporating a slidedeck during your presentation, do you agree to upload it to Commons before your session, with a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, including suitable attribution in the slidedeck for any images used?

Yes

Will you attend WikiConference North America if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

1. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:19, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
2. LingLass (talk) 23:25, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
3. Samantha (Wiki Education) (talk) 17:04, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
4. Gamaliel (talk) 18:54, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
5. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:46, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
6. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 06:34, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
7. Add your username here.