Grants talk:IdeaLab/Outreach to people interested in genealogy and family history

Interesting idea[edit]

I think this is an interesting idea in terms of attracting newcomers. There is already a proposal for a new genealogy project (see Wikimedia genealogy project) which I think sounds pretty cool. I'm not sure how much we can do to get genealogists involved in Wikipedia given the bar on original research (and much genealogy is original research). Cheers, Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:36, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! "Family history" might be a better focus term than genealogy - you're right that a lot of genealogy is original research. Here are a few examples I'm thinking about:

A female relative who has learned a lot about contextual topics while doing genealogy research: a small town in Sweden where distant cousins live, the history of a company a grandfather was involved with, finding an old magazine article about an award a great-uncle received, and so on.
A female newcomer editor I saw (via an article history) who contributed a large chunk of information about a company her family had run a few decades ago, but without references - possibly original research, but possibly based on published sources she hadn't realized she needed to explicitly indicate.
A self-promotional article I saw that had been written by a female editor about herself, to help promote a book she wrote about her grandfather, who was historically interesting. (Her article got deleted.)
A female friend who is a current editor and would like to add to the existing article about her grandparent; she is interested in Wikipedia having some guidance for this case.

I suspect there is an interesting pattern and opportunity here. Dreamyshade (talk) 02:17, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia genealogy project[edit]

I don't mean to distract, but I will point out the slow but ongoing discussion at Wikimedia genealogy project, in case any of the background information there proves to be helpful to this discussion, or because people reading this page might also be interested in commenting on a WMF-hosted genealogy project. --Another Believer (talk) 05:10, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I looked again at that page from the perspective of background information, and it is an interesting collection of how Wikimedia/Wikipedia people feel about this area of research, and it could definitely be a way to find interested volunteers for a project like this. Dreamyshade (talk) 07:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Related ideas[edit]

Hi Dreamyshade Related ideas: Looking at the description of these ideas, I see similarities in the target audience and the work that would happen on and off site. So, it might be a good idea to consider working together on one idea if the idea is going to move to the stage of a proposal for funds. Even if there is no request for funding for any of these ideas, it still might be a good idea to talk among yourselves to coordinate your activities where they overlap.

The biggest community resource needed for success of plans is not money but people to work on projects. So, if we can combine projects we can prevent overstretching the people who are interested in working on the gender gap issues. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 14:51, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]