Community Capacity Development/Tamil 2016/Post-training survey results

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Abstract[edit]

This page presents evaluation survey results from the on-wiki technical skills training conducted in the Tamil Wikipedia community in India on May 4th 2016, in the context of the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Capacity Development pilot project.

23 responses were received, of which 78% have been contributing to Wikimedia projects for at least 3 years. Only one respondent indicated that they had less than a year's experience.

Key results[edit]

Usefulness of the training sessions[edit]

On a personal level, respondents ranked the usefulness of the overall training event as well as each of the training sessions that took place. Using a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most positive, all responses collected about usefulness of the Overall training event was between 6 and 10. In particular, between the scale of 8 and 10, most useful training sessions were:

  • Contributing to Wikidata (96%)
  • Introduction to Wikidata (91%)
  • Tools demonstration (74%)
  • Querying Wikidata and using Quarry (70%)


Least on the rank were

  • Bots workshop (57%)
  • Introduction to Phabricator (57%)
Community Capacity Development 2016 Tamil - Usefulness of the training sessions
Community Capacity Development 2016 Tamil - Usefulness of the training sessions

Familiarity with Wikidata after training[edit]

All respondents indicated that they at least understand the general idea of Wikidata after the training. For those who understand semantic data

  • 52% can now "contribute directly to Wikidata, add labels and fill values in properties for items they know about".
  • 34% can now "contribute to the Wikidata ontology (e.g. through proposing new properties) as well as to individual items".

Quality of training delivery[edit]

Using a scale from 1 to 10, respondents rated the quality of the training delivery.

Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Scale
How much of an obstacle was the English language, for you? Not an obstacle at all 14 5 1 1 1 1 Very much an obstacle
To what extent was the instruction in Tamil, or translation into Tamil, helpful for you? Not very helpful 1 4 1 1 3 12 Extremely helpful
How clear were the trainers' (Yuvaraj and Asaf) explanations? Not very clear 1 5 8 8 Very clear
How easy was it to get answers to your questions from the trainers? Quite difficult 1 5 6 10 Quite easy
Overall, how much do you think you have learned? Almost nothing 2 2 5 9 3 2 Almost everything was new to me

Looking forward[edit]

Most respondents strongly indicated that they are likely to

  • Become an ambassador for these tools and concepts, and to actively share what they've learned with others who did not attend.
  • Recommend this sort of training to other communities.

Free text responses and selected comments[edit]

What was the most useful session for you? What were the most exciting things you've learned?
  • Wikidata (56%)
  • Tools (48%)
  • Bots workshop (17%)
  • Phabricator (9%)
  • Other (4%)

These are some general additional comments provided by respondents (most appearing only once):

  • It was interesting to learn [Wikidata] through a group session and demonstration. Trying to understand [it] alone is boring.
  • Tool development demonstration with Jupyter, Pywikibot, Wikidata are super awesome. This training gave answers to lot of my year long questions and solved much problems with hands-on training.
  • Running the bots in PAWS is a awesome functionality, if paws is not there it would take a day to setup the bot framework and configurations in windows.
  • I am so excited [to learn] that we just need a few steps to run a bot in a wiki. Now I can use some basic bots and can also use some other complicated bot scripts. I trust that this workshop will be the basic milestone for my future bot projects.
What was the least useful session for you?
  • Phabricator (22%)
  • Tools (13%)
  • Bot session (4%)
  • Wikidata (4%)

These are some general additional comments provided by respondents (most appearing only once)

  • Bot and sparql. Little difficult to catch up.
  • Everything about programming.
  • Phabricator, as it is a procedure of raising a bug rather than technically interesting.
  • Some tools because I could explore it myself.
  • The introduction about the editing tools was the least useful section for [me] because I already had a better knowledge on that section.


Of the new things you've learned, what concepts, techniques, or tools are you most excited about putting into practice soon?

Comments provided by respondents (most appearing only once)

  • I will be using Wikidata query.
  • Running bots and learning python using the PAWS interface. Playing the Wikidata games and using Wikidata query service.
  • Creating Infoboxes using Wikidata.
  • Tools related to Commons, Wiki data, Wiki Source.
  • Video2Commons, Gap finder, Wikidata.


Any general comments, good or bad, about this event?

Comments provided by respondents (most appearing only once)

  • It was great to meet and mingle with other Wikipedians ... some of [whom] we never met before.
  • This event gave a good opportunity to interact with Wikipedia community in person.
  • It's good but it was mostly like a classroom. I think the program should complete by 4.00 p.m. everyday ... so, we could easily relax and learn. Otherwise, we get tired and we couldn't remember many things after going back.
  • Please give screen casts to share [with] other Wikimedians.
  • All the organizers and trainers ware approachable [and] helpful.

See also[edit]