Happy New Year Harej!

Wikidata weekly summary #139

Wiki Loves Monuments registration

Hi, I saw your invitation to rate Wiki Loves Monuments submissions on WT:NRHP. However, I can't seem to register; every attempt is returned with "the captcha is invalid" even though it clearly isn't. Any solutions, or an alternative means of registration perhaps? Knight of Truth (talk) 04:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello Knight of Truth. I contacted the person who maintains the tool and he fixed something that was wrong with the server. Can you try again? Thanks, Harej (talk) 21:56, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the help, it seems to be working just fine now and I'm rating awsy! Knight of Truth (talk) 03:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: December 2014

 




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Wikidata weekly summary #140

WikiProject X

Hi Harej: Don't forget to Join the project. I recommend that you place your user name atop, because you are one of the founders the project! NORTH AMERICA1000 18:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello Northamerica1000, I have now joined the project. Out of curiosity, what does membership in WikiProject X entail? I hadn't previously thought of participation in terms of membership, but more in terms of various modes of participation (from doing the bare minimum of signing up for a newsletter to the highly active mode of participation of being a pilot tester). Perhaps this is something that could be clarified? (Regardless, I am quite obviously a member  .) Harej (talk) 19:09, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
HI Harej: It just seemed natural to have a members section, whereby participants can actually sign-up as a member for the project. This may provide a sense of unification for folks, and also provides an area where people can check out "official" participants to possibly enable potential various collaborations. The page seems to be functioning as intended; as of this post there are now 10 members signed on with the project. I'm a fan of WikiProjects, and I look forward to the prospect of WikiProject X's potential to revive various projects. Hope this clarifies matters, and feel free to contact me anytime. NORTH AMERICA1000 03:40, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Idea

In the main page of Wikiprojec ask, create a link to a subpage where people can post their ideas to improve the projects. I'd be the first to leave my ideas. (ping me) Tetra quark (don't be shy) 21:43, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #141

Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia!

  Sunshine!
Hello Harej! Bananasoldier (talk) has given you a bit of sunshine to brighten your day! Sunshine promotes WikiLove and hopefully it has made your day better. Spread the sunshine by adding {{subst:User:Meaghan/Sunshine}} to someone else's talk page, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. In addition, you can spread the sunshine to anyone who visits your userpage and/or talk page by adding {{User:Meaghan/Sunshine icon}}. Happy editing! Bananasoldier (talk) 23:00, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

A beer for you!

  wiping the NYC mayoral slate clean! Valleyforge1991 (talk) 03:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)


Good luck with Project X

I'm really hoping your efforts to revitalize this component of the project are successful, particularly because I hope it will improve with editor retention. I'm not seeing many signs others are perceiving the same thing in general, but I've sometimes of late been feeling like a can hear the slighest creaking from this place in terms of stability -- not just in small (but more common) technical hiccups, but even on content-side, and in procedural areas, everything feels "undermanned" at present; seems like everywhere has a backlog or just generally not enough hands to go around. If your efforts can do something to reverse that trend, the effort will worth that alone, even putting aside the other kinds of value your grant statement speaks to. But the challenge as I see it is that by the time an editor comes to a WikiProject, they've already passed a certain threshold of interest in (and knowledge of) the project and thus are amongst those who are (at least marginally) more likely to be retained anyway, at least for a time.

What we really need is a way to keep the countless people who decide to make just a few test edits, who have just discovered talk space but aren't sure how welcome their thoughts are going to be. How you recruit new editors with knowledge of a key area into a WikiProject even as they are just learning the basics of policy and process, I'm not sure. And great pains would need to be taken so that newer editors in WikiProject understood the limits to what a WikiProject can do and don't get too WP:OWN about things (ArbCom will not thank any project for bringing that kind of mess to their workload again, I daresay). But the truth is, we don't have that many community spaces where large numbers of editors can coordinate, and many of those we do have are for administrative purposes more connected with behavioural problems and grievances than anything. WikiProjects could really fill that void, if more tightly (and and maybe uniformly) coordinated. I know there's always some concern of making the project too familiar, or personal, or social, or what-have-you and some of those concerns I completely endorse, while others are clearly farcical, histrionic or just reflect impractical thinking. But one thing that's for certain is that this project has accomplished as much as it has in good part because of a sense of community and if we fail to maintain that sentiment, we're going to see real consequences to our manpower and the way things get done here. WikiProjects can straddle the divide of making people feel engaged and connected to their fellow editors while keeping us all focused on the task of building the encyclopedia, I think, but very few have come even close to realizing that potential.

But I'm droning on and should probably save this for the project. I did have one practical notion along the lines touched upon by the second talk thread. It would require a certain non-trivial amount of effort to galvanize the community to support and implement this, mind you, but why not a new class of editor privileges (let's call them "coordinator privileges") that would allow certain editors to do things like a) send out mass messages to those who have already joined a WikiProject announcing events, projects and important discussions (through an interface, template, bot or such, rather than requiring them to manually message each person, or b) allow them to see a list of all new editors who have contributed a certain number of edits to articles which have that have a given projects template on their talk page, so they can invite them to participate in the relevant project? And though it's arguably silly, just the mere fact that coordinators have been invested with specific tools (which they would have to be vetted for, of course, same as admins, bureaus, and other with special privileges) might give projects more of a feeling of legitimacy. Though again, I can't stress enough how important it will be to educate members that they are there to advise and help one-another, not generate their independent rules for content to apply on top of policy; the more prestige WikiProjects get, the more explicit we will have to make that line. It's already in policy itself, but needs to somehow be codified into the way the projects themselves operate, in order to avoid run-ins with the larger community of editors as they go about forming local consensus.

Anyway, that's enough dumping upon your talk page. It's all rather long-winded way of saying best of luck and that whatever little support I can give, I will! Snow talk 06:43, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Snow Rise! I do hope WikiProjects can help make people feel like they are a part of the community while also encouraging encyclopedic contributions (or even the occasional copyedit!). It's feeling like you're part of a community that makes people want to stick around for the long term, or so I've found in my experience and observations. As for your ideas, I think they can be done without creating new classes of editors. I'm entertaining the idea of "WikiProject hosts"—dedicated people who are interested in volunteering for maintenance work. The mass message sender privilege can be made available for WikiProject hosts if they want. As for WikiProjects asserting that their guidelines are equal to Wikipedia-wide policies and guidelines when they're not, I am going to be working on that too, though I caution I cannot stop existing projects from doing this. But in any case, I do hope that something great comes from this project. Harej (talk) 03:21, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
To be honest, I had never realized that massmessage rights were given out as individual privileges; that does simplify things quite a bit. Still, with apparently only 32 such (non-admin) users having these privileges at present, this would be a significant upscale and the process for requesting these rights seems to fall on one person at present (User:Cenarium), if I am reading the page history correctly, so you might want to give them an early head's up once you've begun to flesh things out. I suppose one could also use the system that's in place for RfC's; contributors to a given project could sign up to receive bot notices on a certain number of randomly selected discussions per month. But then you need someone to develop and maintain the bots.
And yeah, as to the issue of project overreach, I know one user can only do so much on such a broad issue, but my thinking is that Project X might end up having some influence on small changes towards uniformity in projects, and if we can get every active project to include a caution regarding WP:Advice pages somewhere on its front or talk page, that alone could make a significant difference. And actually WP:Advice pages itself should probably be augmented and promoted to its own guideline page to reflect the importance of the distinction between giving advice and trying to create ad-hoc topical policy outside the proper process. Snow talk 04:23, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #142

Saturday February 7 in NYC: Black Life Matters Editathon

Saturday February 7 in NYC: Black Life Matters Editathon
 
 

You are invited to join us at New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for our upcoming editathon, a part of the Black WikiHistory Month campaign (which also includes events in Brooklyn and Westchester!).

12:00pm - 5:00 pm at NYPL Schomburg Center, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue), by W 135th St

The Wikipedia training and editathon will take place in the Aaron Douglas Reading Room of the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, with a reception following in the Langston Hughes lobby on the first floor of the building at 5:00pm.

We hope to see you there!--Pharos (talk) 06:03, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/January 2015

Hi. Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/January 2015 looks pretty sad currently... could you ping the mailing list and maybe send out another talk page message? My suspicion is that people have forgotten that this meetup is happening. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Learning Quarterly: January 2015

L&E Newsletter / Volume 1 / Issue 3 / January 2015
Learning Quarterly

Stay tuned
blogs, events
& more!

Leave your mark on Meta!
Get #Inspired on IdeaLab and Learning Pattern Library.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

Museum hacks and museum edits

Hello there!

Upcoming events:

  • February 6–8: The third annual ArtBytes Hackathon at the Walters Art Museum! This year Wikimedia DC is partnering with the Walters for a hack-a-thon at the intersection of art and technology, and I would like to see Wikimedia well represented.
  • February 11: The monthly WikiSalon, same place as usual. RSVP on Meetup or just show up!
  • February 15: Wiki Loves Small Museums in Ocean City. Mary Mark Ockerbloom, with support from Wikimedia DC, will be leading a workshop at the Small Museum Association Conference on how they can contribute to Wikipedia. Tons of representatives from GLAM institutions will be present, and we are looking for volunteers. If you would like to help out, check out "Information for Volunteers".

I am also pleased to announce events for Wikimedia DC Black History Month with Howard University and NPR. Details on those events soon.

If you have any questions or have any requests, please email me at james.hare wikimediadc.org.

See you there! – James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 03:11, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #143

Invitation to Participate in a WikiProject Study

Hello Harej,


We’d like to invite you to participate in a study that aims to explore how WikiProject members coordinate activities of distributed group members to complete project goals. We are specifically seeking to talk to people who have been active in at least one WikiProject in their time in Wikipedia. Compensation will be provided to each participant in the form of a $10 Amazon gift card.


The purpose of this study is to better understanding the coordination practices of Wikipedians active within WikiProjects, and to explore the potential for tool-mediated coordination to improve those practices. Interviews will be semi-structured, and should last between 45-60 minutes. If you decide to participate, we will schedule an appointment for the online chat session. During the appointment you will be asked some basic questions about your experience interacting in WikiProjects, how that process has worked for you in the past and what ideas you might have to improve the future.


You must be over 18 years old, speak English, and you must currently be or have been at one time an active member of a WikiProject. The interview can be conducted over an audio chatting channel such as Skype or Google Hangouts, or via an instant messaging client. If you have questions about the research or are interested in participating, please contact Michael Gilbert at (206) 354-3741 or by email at mdg@uw.edu.


We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent by email.


The link to the relevant research page is m:Research:Means_and_methods_of_coordination_in_WikiProjects


Ryzhou (talk) 23:18, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #144

Wikimedia DC celebrates Black History Month, and more!

Hello again!

Not even a week ago I sent out a message talking about upcoming events in DC. Guess what? There are more events coming up in February.

First, as a reminder, there is a WikiSalon on February 11 (RSVP here or just show up) and Wiki Loves Small Museums at the Small Museum Association Conference on February 15 (more information here).

Now, I am very pleased to announce:

There is going to be a lot going on, and I hope you can come to some of the events!

If you have any questions or need any special accommodations, please let me know.


Regards,

James Hare


(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 18:20, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1

Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:

  • "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
  • "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
  • "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

  The WikiProject Barnstar
Hi Harej – Thanks for your great work at WikiProject X, an interesting new WikiProject that will hopefully help to maintain and advance other WikiProjects! NORTH AMERICA1000 12:13, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
Thank you Northamerica1000! Harej (talk) 21:56, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: January 2015

 




Headlines
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To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

WP:Co-op news for December 2014 – Feburary 2015

 

Hey Harej, it's been a while. The Co-op team has been hard at work during over the winter, so let's get right into what's been happening:

 
Landing page draft. You know it's a draft when you need to squint at the logo, ha ha.
  • Graphic design work is nearing completion and development work is coming along slowly but surely. The main components of the space, profiles, the landing page, and the mentor landing page have all been built, and we're basically just putting the pieces together. We have close-to-final draft of the landing page, which is currently at User:Slalani/Landing_page, and in the thumbnail to the right. You can check out other components over at User:Slalani if you're curious. Soni, Slalani, and I are working together on some of the front page elements. We've also been doing some testing on test.wikipedia.org for profile building and matching. If you're curious about checking that out, let me know.
  • We've finished up a survey for newer editors to assess their experiences of using existing help spaces (e.g. Reference Desk, Teahouse, IRC, The Wikipedia Adventure) on en.wikipedia. Gabrielm199 is putting together a summary of that survey, and in the meantime, some findings from that survey of 45 newer editors include:
    • On average, editors found contributing to Wikipedia to be easier after using the help space compared to before.
      • However, after using one or more help spaces, only half of editors reported that editing, addressing social challenges, and resolving technical issues were easy or very easy. The other half of editors were either neutral, or reported that these matters were difficult or very difficult.
    • Just under 30% (11 of 38 editors) of newer editors said they probably would have stopped editing entirely had they not received support from the help space they used.
    • Editors frequently reported either 1) that they would not have been learn what they needed without the help space, or 2) That they could have found it, but admitted that it would have been difficult or taken much longer.
  • We will be making one final move of the pilot start date to March 4th, 2015. This is the last move (I promise), because we can't afford to run the pilot any later than that. So there it is: March 4th or bust! But we won't bust, because there are just a few things left on our plate before we can run our pilot successfully. I'll be alerting you about when you will be able to make mentor profiles soon, so when you get a message about that, please take a minute or two to create your profile here (otherwise, you won't get matched to any editors!).

Thanks to all of the new mentors who have joined over the past few months. Big thanks to Missvain to posting about our little project here to the gendergap-l mailing list. I, JethroBT drop me a line 00:47, 13 February 2015 (UTC) on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:36, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #145

Native American literature wikithon

Hi Harej -

I'm an academic who researches and writes about Native American and First Nations literatures. I'm also an occasional Wikipedian and would like to work to improve the project's coverage of Native American authors and books.

With this in mind, I've proposed that the next Native American Literature Symposium (NALS) in March run a wikithon session to get academics and writers, of whom there should be around 150 in attendance, contributing to Wikipedia. I have a list of authors who don't currently have articles, and I will also get participants working on improving existing stub articles. The NALS programme can be found here [1].

I'd love to get your input on how best to get the maximum out of this session. Please feel free to email me directly at j dot mackay @ euc dot ac dot cy.

Best, James Mackay, aka Vizjim (talk) 12:28, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #146

WP:Co-op: Presentation at Wikimania 2015

 

Hey Harej. I've put in a submission for a presentation at Wikimania 2015 called Is Two the Magic Number?: The Co-op and New Editor Engagement through Mentorship. I'll be talking about the state of finding help spaces on en.wiki and how our new mentorship space, The Co-op, factors into that picture. Reviewing will begin soon and I'll need your help to be able to present our work. Please review our proposal and give us feedback. If you would be interested in seeing this presentation, whether you are attending or not, please add your name to the signup at the bottom of the proposal (you do not need to attend Wikimania to express interest in presentations). I, JethroBT drop me a line on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:19, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

 
Hello, Harej. You have new messages at Hell in a Bucket's talk page.
Message added 15:19, 27 February 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hell in a Bucket (talk) 15:19, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Another presentation

I have also proposed a proposal to make Wikipedia free of data charges for users from developing countries, I will be glad if you can sign up here (just to ensure that you are also interested in making Wikipedia free of data charges), signing up doesn't mean that you have to attend so don't worry. Thank you, friend. Jim Carter 11:05, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Co-op: Mentor profiles and final pilot prep

 

Hey mentors, two announcements:

  1. You can now make your profile at The Co-op! Please set up your mentor profile here as soon as you are able, as the pilot begins on March 4th. It isn't very involved and should only take a minute. If you need more info about what the different skills mean (e.g. writing, communication), please refer to these descriptions.
  2. Profile creation, invitations, and automated matching of editors, profile creation, that will be coordinated through HostBot and a few gadgets may not be ready for our pilot, and will have to be done manually until they are ready. In preparation for the pilot, please read over these instructions on how we will be manually performing these tasks until the automated components are ready. I, JethroBT drop me a line on behalf of Wikipedia:Co-op.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:41, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #147

Editing for Women's History in March

Hello,

I am very excited to announce this month’s events, focused on Women’s History Month:

  • Sunday, March 8: Women in the Arts 2015 Edit-a-thon – 10 AM to 4 PM
    Women in the Arts and ArtAndFeminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Free coffee and lunch served!
    More informationRSVP on Meetup
  • Wednesday, March 11: March WikiSalon – 7 PM to 9 PM
    An evening gathering with free-flowing conversation and free pizza.
    More informationRSVP on Meetup (or just show up!)
  • Friday, March 13: NIH Women's History Month Edit-a-Thon – 9 AM to 4 PM
    In honor of Women’s History Month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is organizing and hosting an edit-a-thon to improve coverage of women in science in Wikipedia. Free coffee and lunch served!
    More informationRSVP on Meetup
  • Saturday, March 21: Women in STEM Edit-a-Thon at DCPL – 12 PM
    Celebrate Women's History Month by building, editing, and expanding articles about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields during DC Public Library's first full-day edit-a-thon.
    More informationRSVP on Meetup
  • Friday, March 27: She Blinded Me with Science, Part III – 10 AM to 4 PM
    Smithsonian Institution Archives Groundbreaking Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Free lunch courtesy of Wikimedia DC!
    More informationRSVP on Meetup
  • Saturday, March 28: March Dinner Meetup – 6 PM
    Dinner and drinks with your fellow Wikipedians!
    More informationRSVP on Meetup

Hope you can make it to an event! If you have any questions or require any special accommodations, please let me know.


Thanks,

James Hare

To unsubscribe from this newsletter, remove your name from this list. 02:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

  Here's a cookie for your awesome edits on Wikipedia. :) Kamran Mackey (talk) 08:21, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #148

Sunday March 22: Wikipedia Day NYC Celebration and Mini-Conference

Sunday March 22: Wikipedia Day NYC 2015
 
 

You are invited to join us at Barnard College for Wikipedia Day NYC 2015, a Wikipedia celebration and mini-conference for the project's 14th birthday. In addition to the party, the event will be a participatory unconference, with plenary panels, lightning talks, and of course open space sessions.

We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.

10:00pm - 9:00 pm at Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, by W 118th St

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 21:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)