Wikimania submission: Community empowerment through professional Community involvement. Will it blend?

Und hier ist die zweite Wikimania submission. Diesmal tatsächlich rein dienstlich: Community empowerment through professional Community involvement. Will it blend?

Title of the submission

Community empowerment through professional Community involvement. Will it blend?

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

 

presentation

Author of the submission

Dirk Franke

E-mail address

dirk.franke@wikimedia.de

Username

Dirk Franke (WMDE)

Country of origin

Germany

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Wikimedia Deutschland

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

I love Wikipedians. All of them. I have to. It’s my job. But this is not about me. This is about a long and exciting journey through the dense forests of mistrust, up against high mountains of community pride, along tightropes of being inside or outside, through the minefield of community discussions. It features identity confusion, evaluation desparation and volunteer dedication. It is a journey that is designed to lead into the happy meadows of constructive, creative collaboration - welcome to the-thing-that-cannot-be-called-community-management.

The Wikimedia movement has several programs worldwide and some established procedures for volunteer support. The movement has spent years on outreach. But little do we know about inreach - the art and technique to support the existing community from within. Inreach means to offer support, help communicating, trigger discussions, moderate hotspots.

Drawing from the experiences of last years WMDE-supported community project on paid editing and drawing from the experiences of some more orthodox community liaision activities, this year we try something new: being as a Wikimedian active in a Wikipedia - trying to moderate, help, support the community to communicate with itself - inmidst the tensions of the Wikimedia/Wikipedia relationship and inmidst all the tensions of the community relations itself. Will it blend? How far will it go? How far should it go? Where is the limit of community acceptance? Where is the limit when community empowermemt becomes community dependence?

Last years experimental paid editing project was designed to facilitate and attend to a community wide discussion on all aspects of paid editing. It attempted to empower the community enough, so that it could reach some common decisions and conclusions, to develop some structures, on how to deal with this problem. In doing that the project used a whole range of measures online and offline..This year we will consider several lessons learned and try to deal with new projects, new discussions and new topics. Long and enriching journeys are awaiting us.

Track

• WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)

30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

none.

Wikimania Submissions: Authors we love – an ode to an endangered species on Wikipedia

Meine erste Wikimania-Submission dieses Jahr: was so alles aus komischen Ideen am Rande von Gesprächen entstehen kann. Großer Dank an Frank, von dem bisher die meiste Arbeit kommt.

Im Original auf dem Wikimania-Wiki. Wer eventuell nach London kommt, kann sich auch gerne bei den Unterstützern dort eintragen.

Mindestens genausogut: nennt und geile Artikel und super Autoren. Das kann man auch, wenn man nicht in London ist.

Oder noch besser: eine eigene Submission einreichen.

Title of the submission
Authors we love – an ode to an endangered species on Wikipedia

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

Presentation

Author of the submission

• Dirk Franke
• Frank Schulenburg

Username

• Southpark
• Frank Schulenburg

Country of origin

• Germany
• Germany/United States

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

• Wikimedia Deutschland
• Wiki Education Foundation

Personal homepage or blog

• http://www.iberty.net
• http://www.wikiphotographer.net

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

In the early days of Wikipedia, everybody knew: authors are the backbone of our encyclopedia. Today, with a growing number of roles, organizations, committees, and meta-discussions, authors tend to be sidelined. They are simply taken as granted. Just take a look at the monthly and annual reports or blogs of different Wikimedia organizations and you will notice that the work of content producers is rarely being featured. The many activities that are happening on the meta-level seem to be more significant, more important to what some people call “the movement”.
In our presentation, we will make the case that paying more respect to the people who write Wikipedia is crucial for the survival of this “endangered species”. We will show examples of how people from different cultures and language communities work tirelessly on improving content in their specific areas of expertise. And we will also showcase a select number of mind-blowing articles that result from this effort.
Our presentation will not only pay respect to amazing individuals from different countries but also encourage people to rethink their attitude towards Wikipedia’s content-producers. We believe that if you truly recognize the work of these volunteers, great things can happen. But this is not the main reason for why we’d like to bring authors back to the center of everybody’s attention. The main reason is that these people simply deserve it. Because they’re awesome.

Track

WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)

30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

As part of our preparation for the conference, we will ask the global community of Wikipedians to send us their suggestions for who should be featured as part of this presentation. If someone comes to your mind while reading our submission, please feel free to contact us via the email addresses above.

Special requests

None