Grants:IdeaLab/Engage the public to get involved by putting consistent banners on all projects
Project idea[edit]
What is the problem you're trying to solve?[edit]
- On big wikis there is not enough people available to review new contributions.
- This is manifested by the fact that talk page templates are used too often. They are dry and not engaging.
- New contributions are reviewed in a rushed fashion. There is not enough attention given to introduce the newcomers to the wikiprojects.
- Technical tools are lacking. Some of these tasks are really involved and can not be solved by existing tools; they're not flexible enough.
- We have protected templates because of the vandalism and protected pages locking out potential contributors.
What is your solution?[edit]
Two solutions.
- Put banners on all wikis, inviting readers to get involved with reviewing changes in a regular fashion to get more reviewers and sysops on the board.
- Put banners on all wikis, inviting readers to start hacking.
In other words each wiki should have a nice 'get involved' page which not only looks at new changes partol and counter vandalism but also invites people to participate in tasks which are important in long term.
Project goals[edit]
I would like to balance out the huge number of newcomers and the tiny number of helpers at big wikis.
Get involved[edit]
Participants[edit]
Endorsements[edit]
- If I understand the idea well it's to have more of those pop-up banners at the top? I agree; it's the only way I got to know this page as it popped up just now. That happened earlier with the Ibero-American translate contest which was not set-up in the best way but at least announed using this banner on the top. Wikipedia is far too big to expect contributors to look themselves for those things; I wouldn't want to spend hours to find areas my expertise and/or interests could be helpful and I am sure I am not the only one.
Very much agreed on the impersonal walls of "welcome" that are posted robotically on the talk page of the new user, see for more the other idea here above, where I commented. It shouldn't be too hard to also personalize those banners and information and invites to users based on their edit history; if there's an invitation on "Let's get some contributions on insects in Africa" then the users who have been editing pages with insects or Nature in Africa or so, should be invited using those banners. Smaller Wikipedias can profit a lot from more of those "translate contests" as the one I mentioned. I myself do not do translations, all my articles are from original sources, not translated from other wikis as I think the whole purpose of Wikipedia is to work based on external references. I have another idea that I will post (if I can find the right button in the sometimes overwhelming walls of established "policies" (brr..) and texts). The wiki syntax is extremely accessible, the back-office part is far from that. Tisquesusa (talk) 03:54, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Expand your idea[edit]
Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.