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I've created this how-to guide with my work account instead of my personal one since I did this as part of my followup work after Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon, but this is not something the Foundation owns at all. Lots of community members have experience with edit-a-thons, so please hack away. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Please see [1] for a UK perspective based on the British Library events. We really need to figure out a single place that this information can be located. Perhaps Meta would be the best place, given its nominal role of being the place where all Wikimedia projects come together to discuss anything cross-wiki? Mike Peel ( talk) 22:40, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
A key reason for the largest British Library event working well was having it well structured with a bit of up front introductions (by me) at the beginning which encouraged everyone to, very briefly, explain their background and expectations. This was a 25 people event, a small event might easily work well in a more un-conference like fashion, though not everyone is comfortable in the absence of an agenda. Identifying a leader for the event who is experienced, comfortable with keeping the event on time and injecting a bit of humour to the process is probably worth highlighting in a how-to. Cheers -- Fæ ( talk) 22:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I see a lot of editathons have come out of the Wikipedia Loves Libraries campaign. But I also see editathons held at other kinds of institutions (not all of which qualify for a meetup). Should there be a new category for editathons? -- kosboot ( talk) 19:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
At an edit-a-thon in Australia this week, we had 100+ mostly new contributers, some at physical meetups, others online. They initially created their articles in sandbox and as drafts, but at the end of the day, we really wanted to get the articles into main space (as past experience with edit training has shown a lot of people don't return to editing after the event is over and the work would be lost if we didn't immediately get it into main space). However, the new contributors could not do a "move", so we had to resort to copy-and-paste. A lot of the online participants needed someone else to do it for them. The result was the edit histories were lost and various people sent unpleasant messages to me and others involved because of it. There was nothing on this page that mentioned this issue, so I was unprepared for it. Can it be updated to explain how to deal with this problem? It's a waste if the event ends with all the articles still sitting in draft. I am told if we had had an administrator involved in the event they could have solved the problem in some way, but I am sketchy on the details. But presumably we have to have solutions that work for events that don't have an administrator involved. Kerry ( talk) 21:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Since it will eventually dwarf the article content, perhaps the list of edit-a-thons should be spun off to a separate article? Speaking personally, I would like to see much more non-US and non-English language entries. kosboot ( talk) 14:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Has anyone put together a history of the Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon? Who was the first group to do it? Why? Was it the British Library? Could there be section on this page created by anyone in the know? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmhuculak ( talk • contribs) 00:49, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
I am looking to host an edit-a-thon but am a little confused about the user account creation strategy. Can someone elaborate about what one has to do in order to request the exception to the account creation limit? Thanks! SBINFocus ( talk) 22:29, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi. I do a lot of NPP and have been helping to clean up and mark as reviewed a lot of articles created on editathons recently. I think many of these projects, especially the women in science editathons, have really great ambitions. I have a few thoughts about how they could help to get people used to the format of Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia is intended to be structured and interconnected. One article is linked to and discoverable from another, articles are marked with keywords so they can be indexed into categories and discovered from a search engine. Discovering how all this works is difficult for the new contributor. Speaking personally, when I joined Wikipedia in 2013 I sort of knew what an article looked like, on the outside, but I didn't understand how the formatting worked. I think a lot of people interested in joining Wikipedia will have read a lot of articles, too. But formatting is the hardest bit to discover, and a lot of people on editathons don't seem to go away any the wiser about it.
I suggest the following would make a great checklist for new Wikipedia articles created on editathons:
I think that doing those things (or at least setting them as a standard aspiration) should give people a sense of how Wikipedia articles work and what reviewers are looking for and feel they need to fix.
More practically, a suggestion that I'd add to this guide is that for people unsure how to write good articles, looking at featured articles on comparable topics for guidance is often a great plan. I know I did that when I wrote my first few articles.
Although I wouldn't make it a hard and fast guideline, I would reassure new article creators that short articles are not a problem and what's important is citations verifiying the facts in an article. I've often seen gigantic articles created at editathons padded out with unnecessary information or obvious statements (a professor both teaches and does research! She's written many presentations at conferences! Here's her entire list of papers going back to 1986!) I sometimes just want to hug these poor people and tell them that they didn't need to write all that. Perhaps suggest that six sentences is a great target length for a first article.
My other concern is that I've sometimes unfortunately seen NPPs be a little brusque with editathon contributors. I think this is often because new articles on topics people care about can seem a bit gushing and promotional, even if they're just written at an editathon without promotion in mind, because people see articles as "their" project and want to "sell" the person to convince the reader that they matter. But anyway, I think it might reduce this problem if all editathon participants are encouraged to put a set text on their user page saying that they're at such-and-such editathon working on such-and-such a topic.
Any thoughts? Blythwood ( talk) 22:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
I am happy to announce a new "Running Editathons" training on the Programs & Events dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training/editathons .
I will be marking it up for translation soon: if you would like to leave feedback, or are interested in translation please let me know via the instructions at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_modules/dashboard/editathon
The goal of the training and to offer an online alternative to Train-the-Trainer" workshops, and synthesizes much of the advice found on this page with advice scattered about other parts of the community. I would welcome feedback, tweaks or integration of the training into advice on this page, if at all possible. Astinson (WMF) ( talk) 18:20, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
Please could I invite any critical feedback on a printed handout I've drafted for giving to new editors who attend edit-a-thons?
Instead of producing another "how-to-do-it" guide, I wanted to create something to hand to participants towards the end, before they leave. I'm trying to address the possibility of an enthused editor feeling lost once they sit at home, in front of their computer, not knowing quite what to do next, or where to get help from. Any suggestions, large or small, would be appreciated (be it here or on the handout's talk page). The main concern I have is whether I've addresses the area getting articles into mainspace sufficiently well. Finally, are there any other resources like this that anyone can point me towards, please? Many thanks, Nick Moyes ( talk) 13:13, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
This Sunday morning at Wikipedia:Meetup/Black Lunch Table/ArtFeminism2018 Kickstarter, most of our new editors had their account. The introductory lecture had started, but suddenly nobody could edit, including me. Administrator User talk:Jimfbleak had intended to block one of our newbies who had inadvertently violated some rules, but all of us were failing and couldn't even ask on-wiki about it. After a few minutes a smart newbie connected by his phone. Oh, yes, my phone has a hotspot feature too! So, I went online by that route, bitched to the blocking Admin (I should have been more polite) and pretty soon we all resumed editing, our errant editor now properly informed of policies.
I figure this how-to needs a paragraph on this kind of emergency. One remedy would be the one I used, and another would be E-mail to a blocking Admin or to some address that might be set up for the purpose. And maybe there should be a Wiki page for advance notice, so before blocking the Admin can get into touch with one of the teachers / coaches / whatever on site. If we can recall other problems, a whole disastrous section would be appropriate. Jim.henderson ( talk) 21:24, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
"...there is no evidence that the block was merited. Shutting down a typical editing event with typical new editors..."That's quite an accusation. I doubt a cabal of editors are trying to chase event participants off Wikipedia and I don't think you meant to make that accusation but it would seem you believe that
"patrollers shut down Wikipedia events". Do you have a pamphlet that discusses this? Chris Troutman ( talk) 21:27, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
How do I, as an Articles for Creation reviewer, check whether there is an edit-a-thon in progress for a particular objective? I have just seen four drafts on Ghanaian women. In the past, seeing multiple drafts from a continent or a nation, especially of women, means that there may be an edit-a-thon. In this case I don't think that the participants are being given the best possible advice, because one sandbox contained two drafts on two Ghanaian women. That seems to mean that they weren't properly oriented. I had to decline that submission and one other submission, and I wish that edit-a-thon volunteers weren't turned loose without proper instructions. One draft was of a woman who had briefly been the wife of a President of Ghana, and I thought that being a First Lady was sufficient notability to allow her stub. Maybe some other volunteer can expand it?
How do I know if there is an edit-a-thon in progress (and whether the volunteers have been properly instructed)?
Robert McClenon ( talk) 20:30, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
I notice this is all for trainers, none for trainees. We ought to have a list of links to places where editathons are held. Jim.henderson ( talk) 21:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
While conventional wisdom (and to some extent commonsense) says not to charge edit-a-thon attendees, it might be good to spell in out in the guidelines, or at least define the ethical parameters in doing so. I work at the Minnesota Historical Society and we put on annual public workshops around the state, we usually charge a nominal fee to cover lunch. However, this year we are working on running a series of public Wikipedia edit-a-thons around Greater Minnesota at local history organizations. In the spirit of Wikipedia we will not be charging and will be absorbing the cost of providing lunches to attendees. However, it did make me wonder about what some of the policies are surrounding this as I could not find anything about it. Myotus ( talk) 19:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Four fundamental questions for all involved in editathons:
I'd welcome not only answers to these questions, but also seeing some updates being made to the guidance page itself, if anyone can, please. Nick Moyes ( talk) 11:53, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
So, we won't be breathing the same air at meetings for the next few months lest we all get infected. But, we've all got Internet access, and most have it at home. Remote participation is usually only a little more than an experienced editor lecturing on the phone or more often editing separately on the topic of the day, or both. Maybe we can do more. Lecture, seems to me, can just as well be canned. Perhaps we need better canned lectures; the ones given out by A&F are mostly very slow and sometimes concentrate on the obsolete (for newbies anyway) Wikitext editor. Has anybody reviewed many different ones? We can give our newbies the URL link, and they can each view the lecture separately, at their own speed if that helps.
Most edit-a-thons that I've seen follow the lecture with coaching. That's where they raise their hand, and we lean over their shoulder and say, yes, yes, no, No, NO! Well, not quite so emphatic. Anyway, then we explain what went right and wrong with that particular edit and how to do it better. When they understand, we look around for someone else who's waving their hand.
Now that we can't lean over their shoulder because everybody's in distant safe places, we need some way to see the page that they're editing. Preferably both tutor and tutee should be able to apply mouse and keyboard. A picture-in-picture feature would let them see both the page and our beautiful, patient face. Us seeing them can also help if they've also got a camera. And if not, let's have another way for them to wave their hand and ask for help without jamming the voice channel. Oh, we should also be able to switch between big editing page with small face video, and vice versa. Also the option to see many faces or just the student of the moment. But again, that's if they can and want to let us see them; us seeing them is only moderately useful.
Anybody have ideas how to do this? Or think it's futile? Thought of a better way to do what edit-a-thons have done for years? Jim.henderson ( talk) 00:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Hi folks, this is something we're dealing with as well at Wikimedia UK. In theory, training people to edit is something that can be done remotely but it's a matter of settling on methods that work, with tools and approaches to engaging people. It's going to involve a bit of looking around at what tools are out there and learning from others. I've been playing around with Zoom over the past week, getting in touch with family, friends, and colleagues, and it does work pretty well. One essential bit of information is that the free version only allows you 40 minutes at a time before it logs you out if there are more than 2 participants. We're experimenting with a paid account. Perhaps Google Hangouts Meet could be useful as I've not experienced a limit like that, and it allows for up to 100 people on a call in free mode. But actually taking these tools into the wild to deliver events will highlights all the wrinkles which we might not have considered before, such as needing to ask people to mute themselves unless they have a question or telling people how to pin a particular screen so they can actually see what the presenter is showing rather than all the faces of the people on the call. More than ever it's probably going to be important to have two people running sessions, along the lines that Rosiestep suggests.
At Wikimedia UK we have a Train the Trainers programme where people learn the skills to pass on information in a workshop setting. One of the things we're considering at the moment is can we do a session specifically geared towards teaching people to deliver workshops online. Richard Nevell (WMUK) ( talk) 16:43, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Breaking off a section for video. So, I wondered what's the inventory of introductory videos. In Commons I didn't expect much, given the odd formats used there. Indeed a quick lazy glance failed to find any. YouTube has many, most of them years old, and maybe we can put together a list with brief critiques. As for where that should go, Meta:Video tutorials seems to have died years ago. It suggests looking into NavWiki/External Resources which is in a separate Wiki I never heard of. All of this fragmentation into small efforts on separate wikis, together with hints that someone is trying to do something in this area, makes me suspect there's a fairly large activity off-wiki, probably also scattered. Perhaps this has the benefit of discouraging participation by the ignorant, which strikes me as an un-wiki attitude. Anyway I can think of two possibly proper places to organize the existing, off-wiki videos: Commons and Meta. More likely Meta. Is any of this pointing towards a good idea? Jim.henderson ( talk) 15:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
I am unsure what best practices are for multi language edit-a-thons. I made an attempt here with English/Italian. Any advice appreciated: Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized Labour/Online edit-a-thon Tech February 2021 and it:Utente:Shushugah/Labour-Edit-a-thon. ~ Shushugah ( talk) 23:12, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
This ties in with Robert McClenon's question of 3 years ago, above at #AFC_Reviewer_Question.
Today there was a little flurry of discussion at
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Many_new_editors because someone had noticed an unusual pattern of edits and was curious as to what was going on: a flurry of sensible edits by new, redlinked, editors, editing in a very similar way (adding links and citations) in a short time space. Some detective work identified it as
an editathon celebrating 50 years of the
Association for Women in Mathematics, all very laudable. But it would have been helpful - and helped promote the Association and the host institution,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute - if the new editors had been encouraged to set up a minimal user page, and if there had been a banner to add to their talk pages, or to the pages of the articles they were editing, to mention that editathon. Editors following up would then have known that these edits came from enthusiastic new editors eager to learn about editing, which might influence the tone of their feedback if there had been any problems (like the text in the WiR banners which says, for example "This article was created or improved during the Plants & Gardens edit-a-thon hosted by the Women in Red project in April 2021. The editor(s) involved may be new; please assume good faith regarding their contributions before making changes.
"). As well as explaining an unusual pattern of editing to allay any worries about socks etc.
Should something on these lines be included in this guidance for Editathon organisers? Pam D 08:18, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Now that editathons have becomes a regular part of Wiki-culture, I've noticed that additional issues have come up. These issues center around the safety of the participants. I would think we need sections devoted to the Code of conduct, as well as sections devoted to safety: Having volunteers be aware of irregularities or problematic behavior - that these people can be dealt with in an expeditious manner. - kosboot ( talk) 10:46, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
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I've created this how-to guide with my work account instead of my personal one since I did this as part of my followup work after Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon, but this is not something the Foundation owns at all. Lots of community members have experience with edit-a-thons, so please hack away. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Please see [1] for a UK perspective based on the British Library events. We really need to figure out a single place that this information can be located. Perhaps Meta would be the best place, given its nominal role of being the place where all Wikimedia projects come together to discuss anything cross-wiki? Mike Peel ( talk) 22:40, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
A key reason for the largest British Library event working well was having it well structured with a bit of up front introductions (by me) at the beginning which encouraged everyone to, very briefly, explain their background and expectations. This was a 25 people event, a small event might easily work well in a more un-conference like fashion, though not everyone is comfortable in the absence of an agenda. Identifying a leader for the event who is experienced, comfortable with keeping the event on time and injecting a bit of humour to the process is probably worth highlighting in a how-to. Cheers -- Fæ ( talk) 22:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I see a lot of editathons have come out of the Wikipedia Loves Libraries campaign. But I also see editathons held at other kinds of institutions (not all of which qualify for a meetup). Should there be a new category for editathons? -- kosboot ( talk) 19:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
At an edit-a-thon in Australia this week, we had 100+ mostly new contributers, some at physical meetups, others online. They initially created their articles in sandbox and as drafts, but at the end of the day, we really wanted to get the articles into main space (as past experience with edit training has shown a lot of people don't return to editing after the event is over and the work would be lost if we didn't immediately get it into main space). However, the new contributors could not do a "move", so we had to resort to copy-and-paste. A lot of the online participants needed someone else to do it for them. The result was the edit histories were lost and various people sent unpleasant messages to me and others involved because of it. There was nothing on this page that mentioned this issue, so I was unprepared for it. Can it be updated to explain how to deal with this problem? It's a waste if the event ends with all the articles still sitting in draft. I am told if we had had an administrator involved in the event they could have solved the problem in some way, but I am sketchy on the details. But presumably we have to have solutions that work for events that don't have an administrator involved. Kerry ( talk) 21:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Since it will eventually dwarf the article content, perhaps the list of edit-a-thons should be spun off to a separate article? Speaking personally, I would like to see much more non-US and non-English language entries. kosboot ( talk) 14:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Has anyone put together a history of the Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon? Who was the first group to do it? Why? Was it the British Library? Could there be section on this page created by anyone in the know? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmhuculak ( talk • contribs) 00:49, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
I am looking to host an edit-a-thon but am a little confused about the user account creation strategy. Can someone elaborate about what one has to do in order to request the exception to the account creation limit? Thanks! SBINFocus ( talk) 22:29, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi. I do a lot of NPP and have been helping to clean up and mark as reviewed a lot of articles created on editathons recently. I think many of these projects, especially the women in science editathons, have really great ambitions. I have a few thoughts about how they could help to get people used to the format of Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia is intended to be structured and interconnected. One article is linked to and discoverable from another, articles are marked with keywords so they can be indexed into categories and discovered from a search engine. Discovering how all this works is difficult for the new contributor. Speaking personally, when I joined Wikipedia in 2013 I sort of knew what an article looked like, on the outside, but I didn't understand how the formatting worked. I think a lot of people interested in joining Wikipedia will have read a lot of articles, too. But formatting is the hardest bit to discover, and a lot of people on editathons don't seem to go away any the wiser about it.
I suggest the following would make a great checklist for new Wikipedia articles created on editathons:
I think that doing those things (or at least setting them as a standard aspiration) should give people a sense of how Wikipedia articles work and what reviewers are looking for and feel they need to fix.
More practically, a suggestion that I'd add to this guide is that for people unsure how to write good articles, looking at featured articles on comparable topics for guidance is often a great plan. I know I did that when I wrote my first few articles.
Although I wouldn't make it a hard and fast guideline, I would reassure new article creators that short articles are not a problem and what's important is citations verifiying the facts in an article. I've often seen gigantic articles created at editathons padded out with unnecessary information or obvious statements (a professor both teaches and does research! She's written many presentations at conferences! Here's her entire list of papers going back to 1986!) I sometimes just want to hug these poor people and tell them that they didn't need to write all that. Perhaps suggest that six sentences is a great target length for a first article.
My other concern is that I've sometimes unfortunately seen NPPs be a little brusque with editathon contributors. I think this is often because new articles on topics people care about can seem a bit gushing and promotional, even if they're just written at an editathon without promotion in mind, because people see articles as "their" project and want to "sell" the person to convince the reader that they matter. But anyway, I think it might reduce this problem if all editathon participants are encouraged to put a set text on their user page saying that they're at such-and-such editathon working on such-and-such a topic.
Any thoughts? Blythwood ( talk) 22:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
I am happy to announce a new "Running Editathons" training on the Programs & Events dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training/editathons .
I will be marking it up for translation soon: if you would like to leave feedback, or are interested in translation please let me know via the instructions at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_modules/dashboard/editathon
The goal of the training and to offer an online alternative to Train-the-Trainer" workshops, and synthesizes much of the advice found on this page with advice scattered about other parts of the community. I would welcome feedback, tweaks or integration of the training into advice on this page, if at all possible. Astinson (WMF) ( talk) 18:20, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
Please could I invite any critical feedback on a printed handout I've drafted for giving to new editors who attend edit-a-thons?
Instead of producing another "how-to-do-it" guide, I wanted to create something to hand to participants towards the end, before they leave. I'm trying to address the possibility of an enthused editor feeling lost once they sit at home, in front of their computer, not knowing quite what to do next, or where to get help from. Any suggestions, large or small, would be appreciated (be it here or on the handout's talk page). The main concern I have is whether I've addresses the area getting articles into mainspace sufficiently well. Finally, are there any other resources like this that anyone can point me towards, please? Many thanks, Nick Moyes ( talk) 13:13, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
This Sunday morning at Wikipedia:Meetup/Black Lunch Table/ArtFeminism2018 Kickstarter, most of our new editors had their account. The introductory lecture had started, but suddenly nobody could edit, including me. Administrator User talk:Jimfbleak had intended to block one of our newbies who had inadvertently violated some rules, but all of us were failing and couldn't even ask on-wiki about it. After a few minutes a smart newbie connected by his phone. Oh, yes, my phone has a hotspot feature too! So, I went online by that route, bitched to the blocking Admin (I should have been more polite) and pretty soon we all resumed editing, our errant editor now properly informed of policies.
I figure this how-to needs a paragraph on this kind of emergency. One remedy would be the one I used, and another would be E-mail to a blocking Admin or to some address that might be set up for the purpose. And maybe there should be a Wiki page for advance notice, so before blocking the Admin can get into touch with one of the teachers / coaches / whatever on site. If we can recall other problems, a whole disastrous section would be appropriate. Jim.henderson ( talk) 21:24, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
"...there is no evidence that the block was merited. Shutting down a typical editing event with typical new editors..."That's quite an accusation. I doubt a cabal of editors are trying to chase event participants off Wikipedia and I don't think you meant to make that accusation but it would seem you believe that
"patrollers shut down Wikipedia events". Do you have a pamphlet that discusses this? Chris Troutman ( talk) 21:27, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
How do I, as an Articles for Creation reviewer, check whether there is an edit-a-thon in progress for a particular objective? I have just seen four drafts on Ghanaian women. In the past, seeing multiple drafts from a continent or a nation, especially of women, means that there may be an edit-a-thon. In this case I don't think that the participants are being given the best possible advice, because one sandbox contained two drafts on two Ghanaian women. That seems to mean that they weren't properly oriented. I had to decline that submission and one other submission, and I wish that edit-a-thon volunteers weren't turned loose without proper instructions. One draft was of a woman who had briefly been the wife of a President of Ghana, and I thought that being a First Lady was sufficient notability to allow her stub. Maybe some other volunteer can expand it?
How do I know if there is an edit-a-thon in progress (and whether the volunteers have been properly instructed)?
Robert McClenon ( talk) 20:30, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
I notice this is all for trainers, none for trainees. We ought to have a list of links to places where editathons are held. Jim.henderson ( talk) 21:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
While conventional wisdom (and to some extent commonsense) says not to charge edit-a-thon attendees, it might be good to spell in out in the guidelines, or at least define the ethical parameters in doing so. I work at the Minnesota Historical Society and we put on annual public workshops around the state, we usually charge a nominal fee to cover lunch. However, this year we are working on running a series of public Wikipedia edit-a-thons around Greater Minnesota at local history organizations. In the spirit of Wikipedia we will not be charging and will be absorbing the cost of providing lunches to attendees. However, it did make me wonder about what some of the policies are surrounding this as I could not find anything about it. Myotus ( talk) 19:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Four fundamental questions for all involved in editathons:
I'd welcome not only answers to these questions, but also seeing some updates being made to the guidance page itself, if anyone can, please. Nick Moyes ( talk) 11:53, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
So, we won't be breathing the same air at meetings for the next few months lest we all get infected. But, we've all got Internet access, and most have it at home. Remote participation is usually only a little more than an experienced editor lecturing on the phone or more often editing separately on the topic of the day, or both. Maybe we can do more. Lecture, seems to me, can just as well be canned. Perhaps we need better canned lectures; the ones given out by A&F are mostly very slow and sometimes concentrate on the obsolete (for newbies anyway) Wikitext editor. Has anybody reviewed many different ones? We can give our newbies the URL link, and they can each view the lecture separately, at their own speed if that helps.
Most edit-a-thons that I've seen follow the lecture with coaching. That's where they raise their hand, and we lean over their shoulder and say, yes, yes, no, No, NO! Well, not quite so emphatic. Anyway, then we explain what went right and wrong with that particular edit and how to do it better. When they understand, we look around for someone else who's waving their hand.
Now that we can't lean over their shoulder because everybody's in distant safe places, we need some way to see the page that they're editing. Preferably both tutor and tutee should be able to apply mouse and keyboard. A picture-in-picture feature would let them see both the page and our beautiful, patient face. Us seeing them can also help if they've also got a camera. And if not, let's have another way for them to wave their hand and ask for help without jamming the voice channel. Oh, we should also be able to switch between big editing page with small face video, and vice versa. Also the option to see many faces or just the student of the moment. But again, that's if they can and want to let us see them; us seeing them is only moderately useful.
Anybody have ideas how to do this? Or think it's futile? Thought of a better way to do what edit-a-thons have done for years? Jim.henderson ( talk) 00:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Hi folks, this is something we're dealing with as well at Wikimedia UK. In theory, training people to edit is something that can be done remotely but it's a matter of settling on methods that work, with tools and approaches to engaging people. It's going to involve a bit of looking around at what tools are out there and learning from others. I've been playing around with Zoom over the past week, getting in touch with family, friends, and colleagues, and it does work pretty well. One essential bit of information is that the free version only allows you 40 minutes at a time before it logs you out if there are more than 2 participants. We're experimenting with a paid account. Perhaps Google Hangouts Meet could be useful as I've not experienced a limit like that, and it allows for up to 100 people on a call in free mode. But actually taking these tools into the wild to deliver events will highlights all the wrinkles which we might not have considered before, such as needing to ask people to mute themselves unless they have a question or telling people how to pin a particular screen so they can actually see what the presenter is showing rather than all the faces of the people on the call. More than ever it's probably going to be important to have two people running sessions, along the lines that Rosiestep suggests.
At Wikimedia UK we have a Train the Trainers programme where people learn the skills to pass on information in a workshop setting. One of the things we're considering at the moment is can we do a session specifically geared towards teaching people to deliver workshops online. Richard Nevell (WMUK) ( talk) 16:43, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Breaking off a section for video. So, I wondered what's the inventory of introductory videos. In Commons I didn't expect much, given the odd formats used there. Indeed a quick lazy glance failed to find any. YouTube has many, most of them years old, and maybe we can put together a list with brief critiques. As for where that should go, Meta:Video tutorials seems to have died years ago. It suggests looking into NavWiki/External Resources which is in a separate Wiki I never heard of. All of this fragmentation into small efforts on separate wikis, together with hints that someone is trying to do something in this area, makes me suspect there's a fairly large activity off-wiki, probably also scattered. Perhaps this has the benefit of discouraging participation by the ignorant, which strikes me as an un-wiki attitude. Anyway I can think of two possibly proper places to organize the existing, off-wiki videos: Commons and Meta. More likely Meta. Is any of this pointing towards a good idea? Jim.henderson ( talk) 15:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
I am unsure what best practices are for multi language edit-a-thons. I made an attempt here with English/Italian. Any advice appreciated: Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized Labour/Online edit-a-thon Tech February 2021 and it:Utente:Shushugah/Labour-Edit-a-thon. ~ Shushugah ( talk) 23:12, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
This ties in with Robert McClenon's question of 3 years ago, above at #AFC_Reviewer_Question.
Today there was a little flurry of discussion at
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Many_new_editors because someone had noticed an unusual pattern of edits and was curious as to what was going on: a flurry of sensible edits by new, redlinked, editors, editing in a very similar way (adding links and citations) in a short time space. Some detective work identified it as
an editathon celebrating 50 years of the
Association for Women in Mathematics, all very laudable. But it would have been helpful - and helped promote the Association and the host institution,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute - if the new editors had been encouraged to set up a minimal user page, and if there had been a banner to add to their talk pages, or to the pages of the articles they were editing, to mention that editathon. Editors following up would then have known that these edits came from enthusiastic new editors eager to learn about editing, which might influence the tone of their feedback if there had been any problems (like the text in the WiR banners which says, for example "This article was created or improved during the Plants & Gardens edit-a-thon hosted by the Women in Red project in April 2021. The editor(s) involved may be new; please assume good faith regarding their contributions before making changes.
"). As well as explaining an unusual pattern of editing to allay any worries about socks etc.
Should something on these lines be included in this guidance for Editathon organisers? Pam D 08:18, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Now that editathons have becomes a regular part of Wiki-culture, I've noticed that additional issues have come up. These issues center around the safety of the participants. I would think we need sections devoted to the Code of conduct, as well as sections devoted to safety: Having volunteers be aware of irregularities or problematic behavior - that these people can be dealt with in an expeditious manner. - kosboot ( talk) 10:46, 30 May 2024 (UTC)