Learning patterns/Understanding the shared goals of an external organisation and Wikimedia

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Understanding the shared goals of an external organisation and Wikimedia

problemUnderstanding the shared goals of an external organisation and Wikimedia can be very helpful to understand how they can work together

solutionOften when approaching an organisation to work with Wikimedia it can be difficult to explain why working together would be helpful, there are several strategies that can be useful.

creator• John Cummings

created on19:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

Often when approaching an organisation to work with Wikimedia it can be difficult to explain why working together would be helpful, often people have an understanding that Wikipedia is very widely read but do not understand what is possible, there are several strategies that can be useful.

What is the solution?

There are several strategies that can be helpful including

• Understanding the public education role of the organisation and matching this to the page views for the Wikipedia articles for that subject.
• Understanding the goals of the organisation and matching them to the goals of Wikimedia.
• Understand what content the organisation has that they could share through Wikimedia projects, this could be:
  • Images, audio or videos that could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and then added to Wikipedia articles
  • Data that could be added to Wikidata
  • Text that could be used as references for improving Wikipedia articles or if it under a compatible license added directly into Wikipedia
• Providing them with examples of kinds of projects that can be done including case studies e.g this list of potential projects between Wikimedia and the United Nations.

Things to consider

• Making clear that working with Wikimedia is an opportunity to share information about the subjects the organisation wants to inform the public about, not an opportunity to promote the organisation.
• Clearly describing Wikipedia's licenses so there is no misunderstanding around commercial reuse

When to use

When first talking to an organisation to understand how to collaborate with Wikimedia