Grants:TPS/Panyd/Wikimania/2015/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2015!

Participant

User:Panyd

English Wikipedia

Outcome

Shared Experience:

The improved gender diversity at this Wikimania provided a lot of new perspectives and information about how we as a community can be more inclusive - this extended not only to talks but to the conference itself where the thinning line between the attitudes of 'online' Wikimedians of 'offline' Wikimedians could be felt.

I had an especially fruitful time during the talk on COI editors and Wikipedia. There were philosophical, practical, and offline solutions and experiences in tackling this problem head-on - and I feel as though I took away from it new tools for reaching out to (or chastising) COI editors. The philosophical points raised in the discussion regarding what the 'anyone can edit' part of our mission statement means were completely unexpected and are sticking with me.

Learning Pattern:

Although at wikidata talks I felt that I was in way over my head, they still inspired me to learn more about tools such as Terminator. I was also introduced to the new beta-version of the translate feature.

Both of these are very daunting for the newcomer and I am still experiencing big challenges to operating them successfully, but I am persevering and I cannot thank the speakers/programmers enough.

I also met people participating in the #100 wikidays challenge. I've passed this along to a few people and we are hoping to form a group, as the speaker recommended, to start this ourselves!

Connections

Wikimania is always a great place to see old faces, but here I was able to meet an editor from Mainland China, editors from Wikimedia India, and some Americans who didn't edit, but were curious to see what the conference was about. It was wonderful to see so many faces that you would otherwise never get to meet, and the new connections I have made are helping create discussions off-wiki and cross-wiki.

Anything else

The Wikimania team were fantastic and the conference was organised brilliantly as a warm and welcoming place where all could get their wiki on!

The outings and cultural monuments around the conference venue really helped add an appreciation for Mexico on the Wiki - (as evidenced by the surge in Commons media) - and as part of the larger Wikimedia community. Thank you all for the opportunity to share your conference with you.