Wikimedia Blog/Guidelines

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Don't have time to read the guidelines?

Just prepare your draft (directly in WordPress if you have access) and ask someone of the blog team to review and publish it.

About the Wikimedia blog

What makes the WMF blog different?

Ours is an "official blog". That simply means that all of our posts are representative of the organization as a whole. We limit representation from personal perspectives. We can always point to our own, personal blogs for that.

Target Audience

• The entire Wikimedia community (readers, users, editors)
• Major stakeholders and friend organizations, including donors
• General audience (who may not understand the Wikimedia movement)
• Media
• Other bloggers
• Business

Visibility

• Global
• Multilingual

What do we post?

• Technical and programming developments / changes
• Unique stories / media angles
• Profiles of the Wikimedia community
• Project milestones
• Art and culture partnerships / GLAM-Wiki initiative
• Periodic "Did you know?" posts / sister project updates
• Appeals for assistance or support (calls for sponsors, job openings, etc.)
• Elections info, new staff/personnel
• Expert reflection on major changes in our operational environment (legal precedents, free knowledge victories, major stories in the news)

What is a good post?

See also: Best practices in blogging about the Wikipedia Education Program

We want to tell the Wikimedia story to the world, whether that is through the MediaWiki programming and developer community, or volunteer initiatives in various countries and languages. The Wikimedia movement is extraordinary and we want to share the people and initiatives behind it with everyone. We also want our communications on the blog to be a catalyst for encouraging new participants to join in the most extraordinary collaborative knowledge project in history.

Style

• Individual posts are usually between 300-700 words. Rarely does a topic need more than that in the blog context, but occasionally we publish longer pieces.
• Try to use the Inverted pyramid structure, so that people get the heart of story from the beginning.
• Use a strong lead sentence/paragraph that explains the most salient and important point of your story up front.
• Links are very important: use links in text to point a reader to the relevant source, rather than describing elements in length. Where possible, use links to previous blog posts and to Wikimedia projects.
• Use pictures to tell the story more effectively. Some people only look at the pictures and their caption, so be mindful of the power of images.
• Being succinct doesn't prevent you from structuring your post. On the contrary, if you structure it well, it'll be even faster to write.

No puffing

• Don't try to oversell it. Let the facts speak for themselves. Puffery makes us look unprofessional and will often come back to bite you later. This is particularly dangerous with Wikimedians, who are used to NPOV and can spot buzzwordy fluff pieces instantly.

  Bad: We've done an amazing work at..., We've made terrific progress.

  Good: During this 2-week project, we implemented a...

Make yourself understood

• In the interests of translation and global audience, avoid complex words, contractions, and slang.
• If we're talking about complex financial or technical issues, provide links with more information (and hopefully in different languages).
• Avoid inside references that may be specific to North America (or any specific culture to the exclusion of others) that may not translate well.

Provide context

• Sign your post with your name and your title (or a reference that makes it clear who you are). Consider including a link to your user page on the Foundation wiki or another Wikimedia wiki.
• Speak inside your area of expertise/knowledge: if General Counsel is posting, topic should be related largely to legal matters etc.
• The broader your work, the broader your topic can be.

Choose a good title

• The title of your post should always be a brief (fewer than 8 words, if possible) descriptive and summarize your whole story.
• Avoid the blanket "Update on X" title.
• Use the present tense whenever possible.

  Bad: Update on offline

  Good: Offline Wikipedia app gets new download manager

• Edit the "slug". WordPress automatically generates a simplified URL for your post, but the URL may be a bit long. You can edit the "slug" to shorten it, but keep it specific, and keep hyphens for legibility.

  Automatically generated: /2011/05/12/offline-wikipedia-app-gets-new-download-manager

  Manually edited: /2011/05/12/offline-wikipedia-download-manager

Select the blog you're publishing on

The Wikimedia blog is structured with child blogs: as of January 2012, these are: the Tech blog, the Community blog, and the Global blog, with an additional Fundraiser blog during the annual Wikimedia fundraiser. They are directly accessible in the blog sidebar. The "Highlights" section contains high-profile news and announcements. You'll want to publish your article in one, at most two, child blogs.

Behind the scenes, the child blogs are managed through the parent categories, i.e. top-level categories that include the more detailed ones.

In general, publish your article in the parent category that bears the name of the Department of the Wikimedia Foundation you belong to, if you're an employee. If you're not, someone from the blog team will handle this step for you.

Add categories and tags

(add guidelines and examples)

• Choose one or more relevant categories (only create new categories if absolutely necessary - less is better).
• If you're adding more than 2 categories, 3 at most, you're doing something wrong.
• Tags are used as mini-categories and search terms for SEO. Use 1-3 keywords for tags that describe your post. Do not add a tag that is the same as a category. Very specific keywords are best.

Use images

• Use images from Wikimedia Commons when possible
• Don't hotlink images from non-Wikimedia sites
• Some prefer uploading a local copy in WordPress to make sure the image doesn't go away in case it is renamed or deleted on Commons. Make sure you appropriately credit the author and fulfill the license requirements, and link back to the original image page on Commons.
• To generate a thumbnail for a Commons image to use in a blog post (either for uploading it locally to the blog, or for including it directly via "Add Media" -> "From URL" -> "URL"):
  • Edit any wiki page in preview mode
  • Insert "[[File:Example.jpg|600px]]" (with desired file name and width in pixels)
  • In the preview, right-click on the thumbnail to get the thumbnail's URL or save it to your harddisk
• Add a caption; some people only skim through the text, but they look at the pictures and read the caption. The caption(s) should summarize the information developed in the article.

Check your links

• Add links to the words that they explain, or expand on.
• Avoid links labeled "click here" or "use this link".

  Bad: Click here to see our results.

  Good: Our results indicate that...

• If possible, use specific keywords that describe what you are linking as your link. IE. "The results of the mobile design testing... " This helps with SEO.
• Check all the links in your post before publishing it.

Add an excerpt

Excerpts are manually curated summaries of your post; they can be added using the appropriate field under the edit window.

If the introduction of your post follows the guidelines and you used the inverted pyramid, you can usually copy/paste your intro in the excerpt field. Links and formatting will be removed in the excerpt.

Draft your post

1. Do you have an author/contributor account? If not, see the paragraph below.
2. Visit http://blog.wikimedia.org/wp-admin/ (or login at http://blog.wikimedia.org).
3. Go to the Write tab.
4. Use the visual editing system - write and apply mark-up as needed.
5. Remember: link when relevant, and when it saves time.
6. Click save draft and have another admin/editor check the copy before posting (remember, once posted it immediately hits RSS feeds; we don't want to repost).
7. Click Preview post to see the results of your work.

Convert wiki pages into blog posts

If you prefer to draft postings in a Wikimedia wiki, or want to convert existing wiki pages into blog posts, have a look at the instructions at Wikimedia Blog/Converting wiki pages to blog posts.

If you don't have contributor rights yet

If you don't have an account yet, create one and ask the team for editing privileges (If you are on the board or are a staff member and need one, ask Jay, Guillaume or Tilman).

Get your post reviewed

It is strongly recommended to have your post reviewed by someone else, ideally by someone who is used to posting on the Wikimedia blog, and is familiar with these guidelines. Some departments have dedicated people who can help in this capacity:

• Posting in the Community channel: Steven Walling
• Posting in the Technology channel: Guillaume Paumier
• Posting in the Global channel: Tilman Bayer
• Posting in the main "Highlights" category: + Jay or Tilman

Schedule your post

In order to avoid clobbering someone else's super-important blog post, you are encouraged to use the communications calendar to schedule when you expect to make your post and coordinate with folks posting on/around the same time.

Advertise your post

• Social Media channels

Blog team

You can send an e-mail to wikimedia-bloglists.wikimedia.org, or contact someone directly. Currently, the people most involved in the blog are Guillaume Paumier, LiAnna Davis, Jay Walsh, Tilman Bayer and Matthew Roth.