Submissions/How to run a successful project and involve new editors? Experiences from Czech WikiProject Protected areas

From Wikimania 2012 • Washington, D.C., USA

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no.

16

Title of the submission
How to run a successful project and involve new editors? Experiences from Czech WikiProject Protected areas (Youtube video with the talk)
Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)
presentation
Author of the submission
Petr Brož
E-mail address
petr.broz@wikimedia.cz
Username
Chmee2
Country of origin
Czech Republic
Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)
Wikimedia Czech Republic (Wikimedia ČR)
Personal homepage or blog
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Chmee2
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

The aim of this submission is to introduce a WikiProject run on the Czech Wikipedia and the lessons we learned from it; how to attract people to join Wikipedia. This WikiProject is target on an interesting environmental topic, namely protected areas in the Czech Republic (i.e. nature reserves, nature parks, natural monuments and others) - a popular topic for people who love travelling and nature. The project was established in 2010, and compared to other WikiProjects, its main task is to attract the wider public to Wikipedia and to motivate them to join Wikipedia and become editors.

Logo of WikiProject Protected areas

Many people are trying to run projects on different Wikis as a platform of cooperation with other wikipedians on the content of articles. However, a WikiProject can outgrow this description and became a place, where “long contributing” editors are sharing experiences with “newcomers”, where we can combine our efforts to reach new groups of people outside Wikipedia projects, potentially new editors. We are not using our WikiProject as a help desk only, but also as something worthy on the Czech Wikipedia that is good publicity and spreads among people. This is making our WikiProject quite unique as far as we know and we would like to share this issue with others.

We realized that it is hard to reach new members of our project inside Wikipedia, (sources are depleted :) ), because we are a small project. As a result, we started to target our activity outside the Czech Wikipedia to many different groups of people, with the possibility to engage and attract them to join our project. For this reason, we are operating a fan page on Facebook about our WikiProject with 360 fans. We are giving talks at conferences; negotiate with different institutions about the release of the contents and images; writing articles in news and magazines and trying to find other possible ways, how to reach our readers with our message. As examples we started a cooperation with Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science at the Charles University in Prague, in which students are writing articles on the Czech Wikipedia (and they enjoy it!), or we produced gifts for small children and their parents (a memory game about protected areas).

In this talk, the author would like to share with you his experiences about this WikiProject. It is an example for how to challenge stagnation of editors on Wikipedia. The results are suggesting (new articles, new images, new editors!) that this is a highly functional program, which might be useful to others.

Track
WikiCulture and Community
Length of presentation/talk (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long)
25 Minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
depend of scholarship from Wikimedia Foundation I will be at Wikimania
Slides or further information (optional)
Special request as to time of presentations (for example - can not present on Saturday)


Interested attendees

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  1. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 15:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. As an environmental scientist myself, I should attend this one. CT Cooper · talk 21:22, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Annie Lin (talk) 21:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 15:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Haxpett (talk) 23:30, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 20:46, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Carolmooredc (talk) 15:46, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  8. SarahStierch (talk) 16:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Eloquence (talk) 00:19, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Graham87 (talk) 12:44, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  11. SupaplexTW (talk) 05:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Boite-en-Valise (talk) 20:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Add your username here.
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