How to better engage WMAU's members and the on-wiki Australian Community

Abstract/description

How to better engage WMAU's members and the on-wiki Australian Community.

Relationship to Wikimedia Australia, Wiki skills, the Wikmedia Movement

Wikimedia Australia is the Australian chapter of the international Wikimedia Foundation. As an independent, not-for-profit organisation and registered charity, we support our members, the broader community and partner organisations to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikidata and other Wikimedia platforms through events, training and partnerships.

While WMAU membership continues to grow, we are not seeing the same level of engagement by some of our long-serving members within the organisation as we have in the past. Similarly, experienced Australian Wikimedians have mentioned lower levels of interaction between WMAU and the on-wiki Australian contributors e.g. in project talk pages etc. There are also concerns (which are difficult to quantify) that we are losing active Australian contributors as long-standing contributors become inactive for reasons that are not well-understood.

This session seeks the opinions of longer-serving WMAU members and/or active on-wiki contributors and/or Wikimedians interested in becoming active on-wiki contributors with regard to their experiences (on- and off-wiki) and, if so, what WMAU might do (or lobby to achieve) that would help to support and re-invigorate both its own members and/or the active Australian contributor community to make being a Wikimedian a better experience.

Some initial suggestions already put forward include more targeted communication with experienced contributors about topics of interest to that group, holding more online and face-to-face meetups in cities and larger towns, providing training in advanced tools, and other "how to" sessions. What are your reactions to these ideas? What other ideas do you have?

Session type

Discussion session, not a presentation. Bring your thoughts and ideas. For those in the Studio room in Canberra, we will bring the post-it notes (bring a biro to write on them). For those on Zoom, we will use Zoom's Chat facility to collect your thoughts and ideas.

If you are unable to attend the session but would like to contribute your thoughts, please email kerry.raymond@wikimedia.org.au

Duration

1 hour.

Audience

WMAU board members, WMAU members, on-wiki Australian contributors.

Username/s

Jeremy Ludlow and Kerry Raymond will be coordinating the session.