Grants:Project/NCTE/CCCC Wikipedia Initiative 2021-22/Midpoint

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This Project Grant midpoint report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. If you would like to add comments, responses, or questions about this grant report, you can create a discussion page at this redlink.



Welcome to this project's midpoint report! This report shares progress and learning from the first half of the grant period.

Summary[edit]

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far.

Methods and activities[edit]

How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions. List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.

This report captures methods and activities from the first half of the grant period (April 2021-July 2022) as they relate to the project plan, goals, and impact listed on the project proposal. The revised timeline for the grant period is officially designated as April 4, 2022 to September 31, 2022. However, since we started grant activities in April 2021, this methods and activities section starts then and ends in July 2022. Moreover, this report includes some of the methods and activities documented in the 2020-21 CCCCWI Project Grant Final Report because of the overlap in timelines between the two grants.

2021-22 CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program[edit]

April 2021–June 2021: Creating and distributing the call for applications[edit]

  • Developed the graduate fellowship call for applications with the goal of attracting applicants with language skills and international perspectives to expand the scope and reach of WikiProject Writing by 1) establishing a Translation Task Force focused on Spanish, French, and English Wikipedias, and 2) leading new collaborations and programming to engage and support a diverse community of professional academics to edit Wikipedia toward knowledge equity goals.
  • Designed the fellowship to include cohort (collaborative) projects carried out with CCCCWI leadership and fellow (individual-led) projects supported by a project mentor–a faculty adviser, a faculty member at another institution, or a Wikipedian community member doing knowledge equity work–of their choice. The collaborative projects included the development of the translation task force and participation in the ongoing programming of the CCCCWI. The individual projects focused on fellows’ individual skills, investments, and communities as they relate to engaging scholars to edit Wikipedia.
  • The application was modeled after similar digital humanities fellowships catered to scholars in English graduate studies programs (e.g., HASTAC Scholars and Digital Rhetoric Collaborative fellowships). Application materials included:
  • A cover letter introducing yourself and highlighting academic and non-academic skills and experiences that make an applicant an ideal CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellow
  • A resume/CV highlighting the work most relevant to the project
  • An individual project proposal summarizing project goals throughout the year, including key activities, products, and outcomes
  • Distributed the call for applications to 75 graduate writing programs, relevant writing studies listservs (CCCCWI-L (initiative listserv), nextGEN (graduate student listserv), and WRITINGSTUDIES-L (flagship professional listserv), CCCC member groups, and the WikiProject Writing Twitter account with an application deadline of July 19, 2021.

July 2021–August 2021: Application extension, review, and selection process[edit]

  • Extended the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Graduate Fellowship program application deadline to August 2, 2021 to afford a larger applicant pool.
  • Formed a graduate fellowship application review committee of volunteers from the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Committee.
  • Developed an evaluation rubric for scoring applicants based on language skills, significant non-academic experience doing diversity work, record of experience contributing to Wikipedia and/or open knowledge projects, a strong community-engaged project proposal, and a strong mentor letter of support.
  • Reviewed applicants and selected five (one dropped out for personal reasons) based on scores and notes developed by the review committee and a final discussion by Dr. Melanie Kill (CCCC Chair) and Savannah Cragin (CCCC Wikimedian-in-Residence).
  • Sent letters to all applicants informing them of fellowship decisions, with personalized letters expressing appreciation for the promising ideas presented by applicants not selected.

September 2021–October 2021: Project scoping, pre-onboarding, and onboarding[edit]

  • Shifted our original language focus (French, German, and Spanish) to Russian, German, and Arabic based on the language skills of the fellows.
  • Organized and sent a curated set of pre-onboarding Wikipedia and Wikidata tutorials, guides, and exercises to fellows to help inform the creation of a translation task force on WikiProject Writing. We adjusted our onboarding plan to include additional Wikipedia and Wikidata training since all applicants had limited experience working on Wikipedia and no experience working with Wikidata.
  • Scheduled and held project scoping meetings with each of the fellows and their project mentors to better define individual project goals in relation to CCCC Wikipedia Initiative goals. Fellows had strong knowledge equity experience, but project proposals were not oriented towards engaging and supporting others to edit Wikipedia (See “What are the challenges”).
  • Held an initial onboarding meeting where we introduced:
  • A breakdown of the expected average of 5-7 hours/week toward fellowship efforts:
  • 1+ hours on editing, acclimation, and ethos-building on Wikipedia
  • 2+ hours on collaborative CCCCWI and WikiProject Writing projects
  • 2+ hours on individual CCCCWI project
  • Our Discord server–a messaging service with different text channels–for communication among fellows, the CCCC WiR, and the CCCCWI chair between meetings.
  • A shared google drive for fellows to organize and share individual and collaborative work.
  • Our schedule of monthly meetings with fellows to focus on collaborative tasks.
  • A plan for fellows to meet with their mentors at least once a month to address individual project goals.
  • A request for fellows to send us an updated individual project proposal and timeline for completion.
  • Created a structured list of collaborative projects for fellows to work on throughout the fellowship period:
  • Translation task force
  • Lists of important/vital articles in need of translation
  • Translation guides and resources
  • Workshop curriculum and materials on Wikipedia translation for academics
  • Tweets (@WP_Writing)
  • Blog posts
  • CCCCWI Coffeehouse Topic Focuses (live editing on Twitch)
  • WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlights
  • WikiProject Writing maintenance and development

November 2021: Getting started with the translation task force[edit]

  • Developed an initial translation task force outline in collaboration with the fellows and the CCCC WiR modeled off of original components of WikiProject Medicine’s Translation Task Force. This included sections for how to get involved, an integration guide, and additional help resources on translation.
  • Gave the fellows translation assignments to learn from experience working directly with Russian, Arabic, and German Wikipedias. This included completing a full translation of an article either to or from English Wikipedia. Fellows were instructed to find and document translation best practices discovered from the community-specific guidelines of each language Wikipedia.
  • The fellows created and submitted a proposal to present at the 2022 Computers and Writing Conference (2022 theme: Practicing Digital Activisms).
  • Created and distributed a structured google document for fellows with individual and collective tasks to complete weekly and monthly.

December 2021–January 2022: Collaborative project development & midpoint fellowship review[edit]

  • Fellows’ proposal for the 2022 Computers and Writing Conference was accepted!
  • Hosted an informational meeting with fellows interested in Wikidata to kickstart the development of Wikidata queries that showcase content gaps within writing studies topics across language Wikipedias.
  • Asked fellows to test and develop instructions for use of the Content Translation Tool in German, Russian, Arabic, and English Wikipedias. These instructions were added to WikiProject Writing’s translation task force resources. The tool was selected based on feedback from fellows about common issues concerning translation including (1) translating templates across language Wikipedias and (2) bypassing trust networks that make it difficult to publish in another language Wikipedia as a new user.
  • Held office hours with fellows planning content development spotlights and live editing sessions on Twitch to train them on the technical logistics of on-wiki event planning, streaming requirements, and best practices.
  • Held a midpoint review meeting with fellows to discuss how individual projects were progressing, how fellows were engaging scholars to edit Wikipedia in their collective and collaborative work, and what new workflows could be introduced to support productivity.

February 2022–March 2022: Revising fellowship task structure, developing Wikidata queries, and revamping the CCCCWI Meetup Page[edit]

CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Meetup Page
  • Based on feedback from the fellowship midpoint review meeting, we altered our meeting schedule after the holiday season to include two meetings a month to support the completion of the translation task force. These meetings were scheduled and attended by the fellows with occasional support from the CCCC WiR when needed.
  • Started developing potential article lists for WikiProject Writing through discussions with editors facilitating the Wikidata Query Request Service.
  • The CCCC WiR held office hours with CCCC member groups and CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellows to facilitate collaborations for upcoming WikiProject Writing Spotlights.
  • Adjusted our task schedule to include structured opportunities for reflection and documentation of learning in the form of blog posts and learning patterns. This was adjusted after the fellowship midpoint to prepare fellows during a particularly busy time for them (i.e. defending dissertations, onboarding/moving for new jobs, and teaching amid the direct and indirect effects of multiple global crises and the ongoing pandemic).
  • The CCCC WiR began working on revamping the CCCCWI Meetup Page with additional resources, events, press, and a new pedagogy corner for writing scholars to add relevant curricula and classroom materials pertaining to teaching and learning with Wikipedia in their undergraduate and graduate courses.
  • Fellows and their mentors developed, publicized, and hosted WikiProject Writing Spotlights and CCCCWI Coffeehouses:
  • Published an initial version of the translation task force based on information compiled in the translation task force outline. Based on feedback from fellows, the CCCC WiR created a sandbox with a basic outline that matched existing WikiProject Writing pages for fellows to input information.

April 2022: Revising and clarifying the translation task force[edit]

  • Held two April CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship meetings focused on providing necessary feedback on the translation task force and preparing for CWCON 2022. Continued the meeting model of having fellows meet outside of monthly group meetings to continue working on the translation task force and CWCON 2022.
  • Fellows started planning for CWCON 2022 by preparing a collaborative task for participants to contribute to and individual presentations related to the individual projects and collaborative goals of the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative.
  • Provided detailed feedback for fellows on how to improve the translation task force page. This included adjusting the wording and organization of the page to welcome and address Wikipedia newcomers who may need guidance on how to get started before translating and focusing the information presented in each section.
  • Drafted a learning pattern template for “Understanding language-specific challenges to translation on Wikipedia” for the fellows to reflect on their experiences translating in Russian, Arabic, and German Wikipedias. Additionally, there was a section to document the unique challenges of finding content gaps across language Wikipedias through Wikidata-generated queries.

May 2022–July 2022: Finalizing the translation task force and reflecting on the fellowship year[edit]

  • Developed and distributed a final checklist of tasks for the final months of the fellowship period (May, June, and July) for fellows to complete. May checklist items focused on revising the translation task force with a series of direct tasks developed in conversation with the CCCC WiR and CCCCWI Chair. June and July focused on reflecting, documenting, and finishing up any remaining components of individual or collaborative projects.
  • Distributed and gathered responses to a series of fellowship reflection questions focused on understanding some of the specific ways fellows think about knowledge and have supported knowledge equity goals by engaging scholars to edit Wikipedia.

CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Programming & Events[edit]

  • Continued to host two online workshops monthly with revised material based on participant feedback and observations:
  • Paused routine workshop scheduling from June to August 2022 to host a monthly introductory workshop centered on the Summer-long Edit-a-thon on Literacy:
  • Hosted an individualized workshop for the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW):
  • Expanded the CCCCWI community resource library with two advice manuals on:
  • Why should scholars edit Wikipedia?
    Why should scholars edit Wikipedia?
  • Why should scholars edit Wikipedia? (2)
    Why should scholars edit Wikipedia? (2)
  • Supporting scholars writing articles on biographies of academics
    Supporting scholars writing articles on biographies of academics
  • Created a five-question follow-up survey for workshop participants to gather feedback and measure the impact of our twice-monthly workshops.
  • Launched the CCCCWI Coffeehouse as a virtual group drop-in writing group where scholars can come to chat about Wikipedia projects with other scholars. Switched the format to be hosted on Twitch after August 2021 due to low turnout in the original format.
  • Created and hosted the presentation on “Wikipedia and the Collaborative Humanities” at Wikimania 2021.
  • Continued coordinating monthly content development spotlights on WikiProject Writing in collaboration with CCCC member groups and professional organizations including the Asian/Asian American Caucus, Black Caucus, Latinx Caucus, Queer Caucus, Feminist Caucus, Global & Non-Western Rhetorics Standing Group, Standing Group for Disability Studies, Transnational Composition Standing Group, and the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW).
  • Started creating a CCCCWI website on WordPress.com.
  • Facilitated an editing workshop and an edit-a-thon at the 2022 CCCC Annual Convention (March 9-12, 2022, Online).

Midpoint outcomes[edit]

What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date.

2021-22 CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program[edit]

Collaborative projects and presentations[edit]

CCCCWI for Knowledge Equity in Writing Studies Coverage

Individual projects[edit]

2Rath
  • Abir Ward: Developed and expanded 2Rāth, a project that addresses the necessity for digital collaboration between students and librarians to develop an online presence for Arab authors on Wikipedia.
  • 2Rāth Edit-a-thons Dashboards/Training Courses
  • Wikipedia Courses
Interview with Dr. Charles Bazerman
  • Interviews
  • Invited/Guest Presentations
  • When the Sum of All Knowledge Doesn’t Quite Add Up: How Students are Tackling Knowledge Equity on Wikipedia. Wikipedia Education.
  • Ward, A (2022, April 29). The Cultural Politics of Representation. International Biodiversity Day at the American University of Beirut
  • Conference Presentations
  • Ward, A (2022, Apr 8). Representation of Arab Women on Wikipedia: Student Engagement in Culture-Oriented Writing Projects. 12th International Conference on Effective Teaching and Learning. American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
  • Ward, A (2022, Jan 28). Using Community Building Exercises to Teach Digital Writing Skills GSOLE Online Conference 2022
  • Ward, A (2021, Oct 8-10) 2Rāth: To Digitally Preserve Arab Literary Heritage. WikiConference North America 2021 https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions:2021/2Rāth:_To_Digitally_Preserve_Arab_Literary_Heritage
  • 2Rāth in the News
  • Notable articles created/edited by 2Rāth participants
  • Alexandra Krasova: Focused on translating articles related to composition and languages provoking better and deeper understanding of writing studies. Engaged scholarly audiences by developing a WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlight and publicizing it by hosting a CCCCWI Coffeehouse stream on Twitch.
  • Translated articles
WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlight on Digital Composition
  • WikiProject Writing Spotlight
  • CCCCWI Coffeehouse
  • February 2022: Digital Composition (NOTE: Not saved due to technical difficulties and stream quality).
  • Andrew Yim: Focused on advancing the field of composition studies by focusing on articles related to writing transfer throughout different project outputs. Worked closely with the Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s (IUP) Writing Center to develop and host a Wikipedia Editing Workshop for faculty. With support from his mentor, began research on ownership and genre awareness on Wikipedia. Engaged scholarly audiences by developing a WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlight and publicizing it by hosting a CCCCWI Coffeehouse stream on Twitch.
  • WikiProject Writing Spotlight
Andrew Yim (2021-2022 CCCC Wikipedia Grad Fellow) editing the Wikipedia article on Dr. Kathleen Blake Yancey
  • CCCCWI Coffeehouse
  • Notable articles created/edited
  • Interviews
  • Research on Wikipedia Ownership
  • Finalized a draft of a journal article with his project mentor and another student on editors’ sense of ownership over their Wikipedia article (Plan to submit to the Written Communication journal in July 2022).
  • Created a Qualtrics survey where over 100 Wikipedia editors had identified their opinions on their sense of ownership and genre awareness on Wikipedia.
  • Katie Bramlett: Focused on improving knowledge equity in relation to the history of cross-cultural allyship between African American and Asian American communities. Implemented Wikipedia learning in course material. Engaged scholarly audiences by developing a WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlight and publicizing it by hosting a CCCCWI Coffeehouse stream on Twitch.
Katie Bramlett (2021-2022 CCCC Wikipedia Grad Fellow) editing the Wikipedia article on Dr. Haivan Hoang
  • WikiProject Writing Spotlight
  • CCCCWI Coffeehouse
  • Wikipedia courses
  • List of articles in need of edits
  • Notable articles created/edited

Developing skills & understanding[edit]

  • Two online workshops hosted monthly:
  • Individual office hours by sign-up offered weekly
  • CCCCWI Coffeehouse hosted twice monthly
  • Collaborated with the CCCC Global & Non-Western Rhetorics Standing Group, European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW), CCCC Transnational Composition Standing Group, CCCC Asian American Caucus, and UCSB Writing Program to plan group projects (e.g. Group article revision or creation) and upcoming WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlights.
  • Hosted a workshop at the 2022 CCCC Annual Convention:

Creating community support structures[edit]

  • Monthly WikiProject Writing Content Development Spotlights in collaboration with CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellows and CCCC member groups:
  • Revamped the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative meetup page with embedded expert-focused resources and an emphasis on addressing knowledge equity goals.
  • Expanded our community resource library with two new documents on:
  • Established the NCTE/CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Award. The recipient will be awarded a plaque and receive professional recognition for their Wikipedia-related research and contributions on the CCCC website.
  • Created and hosted the presentation on “Wikipedia and the Collaborative Humanities” at Wikimania 2021.

Participation and Content[edit]

We track our participation and content outcomes on the dashboards listed under the 2021 and 2022 CCCC Editor Activity dashboards (December 31, 2021 - July 26, 2022). In our original participant goals, we were tracking overall participation from all dashboards listed under the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Campaign, but realized that there were duplicate users among dashboards due to cross-over in event and WikiProject Writing participation. To showcase a more accurate depiction of participation goals, we have only listed the participation statistics from the two dashboards mentioned above (unless otherwise mentioned) and adjusted our original participation outcome goals for accuracy. This accounts for the significant difference between these numbers and the numbers listed under our participation and content outcomes in the original project grant proposal.

Total participants[edit]

  • 83 faculty members and graduate students registered on the initiative dashboard and introduced to Wikipedia editing and WikiProject Writing via workshops, out of 100+ participants.
  • 10 faculty members and graduate students registered on the initiative dashboard and editing from our workshop at the 2022 CCCC Annual Convention, out of our original goal of 20+ faculty members and graduate students .
  • NOTE: We had hoped to surpass our goal for participation but encountered several user-centered issues including (1) the program was not searchable and had limited sessions, (2) there was no advanced registration for workshops which caused confusion about who could attend workshops at the conference, and (3) the conference was entirely online again this year-due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic–causing issues with videoconference triaging and direct participation with workshop participants.

New accounts registered[edit]

  • 48 new editors registered on the initiative dashboard, out of 80+ new editors added to the initiative dashboard.

Content pages created and improved[edit]

  • 734 articles tagged and ranked for quality and importance by WikiProject Writing, out of 400+ articles (Tracked under WikiProject Writing Metrics).
  • 0 articles nominated to good or featured status, out of our 5+ article goal (See “Next Steps and Opportunities”).
  • 549 references added with a focus on citing significant scholarship from underrepresented groups and international communities, meeting our 350+ article goal.
  • 565 articles edited with a focus on vital articles and high-impact, discipline-specific topics, meeting our 250+ article goal.
  • 32 new Wikidata items and 349 new claims created for undocumented field-specific articles, out of 200+ new items and claims.

Finances[edit]

Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.

Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far? Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project.

We have spent funds according to plan. We have a surplus of funding for graduate fellowships due to the funding of only four fellows out of our original plan of six fellows. Additionally, we reduced the fellowship award to $2,000 based on research conducted on similar graduate fellowship programs and paid two fellows out of our prior project grant funding.

Learning[edit]

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting! Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

Wikipedia and scholars in the humanities share a goal of providing reliable and equitable public knowledge. Yet, there have been no official programs aimed at engaging scholars to practice organizing scholarly efforts in this space. Within the humanities, graduate fellowships often fund students’ ongoing research projects. In our case, we modeled the 2021-22 CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program after the few digital humanities fellowships that oriented fellows as public scholars (e.g., HASTAC Scholars and Digital Rhetoric Collaborative fellowships). Despite this, we struggled to develop an understanding of how to organize on Wikipedia, since many activities involved non-traditional organizing tasks (I.e. On-wiki editing, Wikidata-generated article lists, Twitch streams, and editing advice manuals for academics) that presented an unanticipated learning curve for fellows. These cultural differences between the humanities and Wikipedia afforded us the opportunity to try various pedagogical practices that aided in uncovering useful methods of counteracting Wikipedia-hostile attitudes and establishing a modified graduate fellowship program in the future.

Alongside combatting cultural tension between Wikipedia-oriented and traditional digital humanities organizing work, we continue to exist in a mental health crisis that disproportionately affects scholars in the humanities. As teacher-scholars, many fellows and the communities of scholars they were engaging through their projects have the added responsibility of supporting their students through this crisis. Additionally, fellows were in the late stages of their Ph.D. programs, writing and defending dissertations, teaching courses, and searching and preparing for new jobs. Although this pushed us to rethink project goals and timelines throughout the year, we are proud to say all fellows gained critical insight into why this work matters, completed successful projects that engaged scholars to edit Wikipedia, and plan to complete some form of Wikipedia organizing in the future (See ‘Grantee reflection’).

What are the challenges[edit]

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered? What will you do differently going forward? Please list these as short bullet points.

2021-22 CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program[edit]

  • Project proposals focused on engaging scholars. Grants and fellowships in the humanities are often geared toward funding for pre-existing, individual projects. We found that most individual project proposals applicants submitted were not developed with attention to engaging others to edit Wikipedia. Instead, proposals were often geared towards the applicants’ own teaching, research, and Wikipedia content creation, incorporating Wikipedia in the classroom, or supporting scholars’ own research projects by incorporating a Wikipedia component. In the future, we need to better prime fellows on what this work looks like and why we are doing it in both the call for applications and onboarding materials.
  • Project scoping meetings. Before we started onboarding fellows, we scheduled and held project scoping meetings with fellows and their project mentors to better define individual project goals in relation to CCCC Wikipedia Initiative goals. Fellows had strong knowledge equity experience, but project proposals were not oriented towards engaging a scholarly audience to edit Wikipedia. These meetings involved reviewing different outputs and outcomes that align with engaging scholars to contribute to Wikipedia based on fellows' research interests and goals. At the end of the project scoping meetings, fellows were tasked with provisioning an updated timeline and project summary, but we only received one updated summary for a fellow. We believe these meetings were productive but might benefit from additional meetings with fellows’ project mentors and the CCCC WiR to further develop individual project goals and timelines.
  • Creation of standalone resource. Out of the ongoing CCCCWI programming, the creation of standalone resources (i.e. CCCCWI advice manuals) was something fellows were less interested in than other programs (i.e. WikiProject Writing spotlights and coffeehouses). We found that unless there was an upcoming date that fellows could document and prepare for that is public-facing, the task was less likely to receive priority.
  • Keeping tasks on a monthly and weekly schedule. We tried two workflow models throughout the fellowship period including (1) fellows monitoring their own work based on an established weekly time guideline, individual project timelines, and project plans of their own design and (2) a weekly and monthly task document curated by the CCCC WiR and individual fellows that is filled out at each monthly meeting. Ultimately, both models did not keep tasks in line with our weekly time guidelines. Due to the already high labor of Ph.D. students and the ongoing burden of world events, tasks were often pushed until the next month, prolonging many project outcomes until the end of the fellowship period. We implemented meetings where fellows would work on tasks and ask questions about projects within that time and these received positive feedback from fellows as a way to encourage productivity in future iterations of the graduate fellowship program.
  • A Discord server for primary fellowship communications. Since our fellowship cohort was a multilingual and global group, we tried out Discord as our primary method for communication outside of monthly meetings. We chose Discord because it has a wide array of language and accessibility options and other groups in the Wikimedia movement utilized Discord as a space to foster community. Our hope was to eventually open up another channel on the Discord server for WikiProject Writing participants to join, get help, ask questions, and mingle. However, due to (1) constant power outages experienced by one of our fellows in Lebanon and (2) the learning curve to understanding how to use Discord effectively, the app fell short. Instead, many fellows used a WhatsApp group for communication amongst themselves, which proved to be a more reliable communication source for them.

CCCCWI Programming & Events[edit]

  • Multiple sign-up platforms. When conducting workshops, participants were frustrated by having to sign in on multiple platforms (meetup page, dashboard, WikiProject Writing). We’d like to streamline this process moving forward by having participants provide their username when signing up for an event, in order to sign them in before the workshop (except in the case of WikiProject Writing).
  • Virtual standing group office hours with the CCCC WiR. We noticed that many scholars did not show up for the virtual group office hours (original iteration of the CCCCWI Coffeehouse). We changed the format of this to the Twitch Stream for scholars to observe either the CCCC WiR, CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellow, or CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Committee member and received better engagement.
  • Lecture-heavy workshops. We found that many workshop participants were excited to meet and chat with other scholars interested in editing Wikipedia. By limiting our workshop size to (10) ten participants and focusing on directing the workshop to more discussion-based questions and activities, workshop participants were able to spend more time editing and asking questions.
  • Producing collaborative drafts in sandboxes. Scholars in the humanities think of Wikipedia editing a lot like publishing rather than revising. In a publish-or-perish professional culture, we often feel overwhelmed by an article that needs a lot of work. Google documents feel safer and allow other scholars to edit and add comments without fear of deletion or editing over others, an issue multiple editors can experience while editing in the sandbox or draft space. For example, the CCCC Transnational Composition Standing Group has been focusing on revising and expanding the Wikipedia article on Translingualism in a google document. The article is nearly complete, with an extensive log of revisions, comments, and edits dating back to August 2021. Yet, none of these edits have made it to the Wikipedia mainspace, largely because the group wants to clean up the article completely before discussing the next steps as a group. It’s harder to ‘complete’ a project on Wikipedia since it is constantly subject to change; this made it difficult to track our total impact throughout the project.
  • Solely email communication with CCCC member groups. When we first started facilitating collaborations with CCCC member groups, CCCCWI committee members would reach out via email with attached shared google documents that asked pointed questions about Wikipedia articles in need of edits and creation, as well as vital scholarship that needs to be added to the site within their field of expertise. We found this didn’t work because member groups were confused by (1) the initiative’s overall project goals, (2) what WikiProject Writing is and how to contribute, and (3) how to navigate Wikipedia to find articles in need of edits. We adjusted our methods by directing interested CCCC member group participants to come to our pre-existing workshops and meeting with group liaisons to discuss a few potential options for Wikipedia projects. This gave groups the freedom to find their own fit in the initiative’s goals and taught us more about the preferred collaborative workflows of scholars.

What is working well[edit]

What have you found works best so far? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

Next steps and opportunities[edit]

What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project? Please list these as short bullet points.

  • Begin to develop a plan for documenting community-driven notability standards within the humanities to aid in representing marginalized teacher-scholars and their scholarship on Wikipedia, eventually expanding upon and modifying the current academic notability criteria.
  • Continue coordinating monthly content development spotlights on WikiProject Writing in collaboration with CCCC member groups and professional organizations including the Asian/Asian American Caucus, Black Caucus, Latinx Caucus, Queer Caucus, Feminist Caucus, Global & Non-Western Rhetorics Standing Group, Standing Group for Disability Studies, Transnational Composition Standing Group, and the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW).
  • Develop a plan to approach engaging participants in improving articles to good article status. Currently, this includes creating a guide for how to approach the nomination process and integrating targeted edits in CCCCWI Coffeehouses and workshops.
  • Continue providing twice-monthly editing workshops, focused on editing Wikipedia as an academic and engaging with WikiProject Writing.
  • Continue improving the categorization and exposure to field-specific articles across multiple language Wikipedias by creating properly linked Wikidata items for undocumented articles by:
  • Hosting CCCC Wikimedian-in-Residence Coffeehouses on Twitch focused on improving Wikidata items on scholars under the scope of WikiProject Writing.
  • Developing queries that target finding specific articles within writing studies across language Wikipedias with the help of the Request a Query service. We are working to develop these queries with ListeriaBot to implement lists of articles in need of edits/translation on WikiProject Writing’s Translation Task Force.

Grantee reflection[edit]

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an grantee has been so far. What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months?


We are thrilled to have led the first cohort of CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellows through a transformative year! The fellows exhibited a diversity of interests that exist at the intersection of Wikipedia and humanities research that evolved throughout the fellowship period. The fellowship allowed many to realize the community of scholars that exist within the Wikimedia movement and why it is important for scholars to edit Wikipedia as a form of public scholarship.

“In looking back at this experience, I realize how wide the gap is in knowledge production between what is written in English and what is written in other languages. English seems to be the lingua franca of every area (science, technology, medicine, etc.). However, this experience also showed me why it is inherently difficult for Arabic as a language to be digitized. It is not only in its lettering and font but also in the approach to writing and how much it is, as a language with many different dialects, to be completely reliant on writing.” - Abir Ward

“…there is a robust community of Wikipedia editors and scholars who are willing to work together to help build knowledge equity. There is a number of scholars talking about the benefits of using Wikipedia. I am planning on contributing to the field as I am about to submit an article to Written Communication on how Wikipedia editors have a sense of their ownership over their articles. I had the opportunity to interact with some of these scholars through this fellowship.” - Andrew Yim

“The thing that impressed me the most was the inequity of global knowledge. There are multiple articles which do not have any representation in other languages rather than English in Wikipedia.” - Alexandra Krasova

“One of the most interesting things about my experience as a Cs Graduate Fellow is how working on Wikipedia has helped reorient my own position as a scholar in relation to public access to information. I was a relatively new member of the Wikipedia editing community and when I began to contribute and edit articles in my field of study, I was struck by the immediacy of my contributions. I had just started my sixth year of PhD work, and although I enjoyed my research, it often felt like I was in my own world where no one really saw or had access to the hard work I was doing. Thus, the immediacy of Wikipedia in relation to the audience and access helped motivate and reinvigorate my research. Additionally, I noticed how a lot of the research I was doing was absent from Wikipedia so it made it feel like I was really filling in knowledge gaps.” - Katie Bramlett

As the first graduate fellowship of its kind, we learned a lot about what is needed to support and engage a community of emerging academic Wikipedia editors. Most notably, we learned that scholars don’t recognize that organizing work directed towards engaging others scholars in the humanities to edit Wikipedia exists. The training and skills we are developing through ongoing programming, expert-focused resources, strategic partnerships, and professional pathways increase the exposure of this work and shine a light on the power of Wikipedia as a platform for social justice work. We feel grateful and excited for the ability to continue expanding our programming to support a growing community of scholars in the humanities and to build understanding on how to organize others to complete this work in their own communities. We know how critical this is to creating sustained volunteer engagement and believe we are making solid progress towards those goals.

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