Talk:Africa Growth Pilot/Live Tutorials on Core Policies/Module2

We want your feedback: The second module is about the many ways to contribute to Wikimedia projects. Leave us a comment about the general conception of this course outline and the core concepts to be taught. We will do our best to respond or incorporate your feedback into the course outline.

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Releasing content with an open license

I think it would make sense to include among the ways people can contribute to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, the possibility to simply release content with open tools and licenses (CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA). It is an indirect contribution, but something people can do with their research in university, with an articles or book, with their websites, with images already produced and uploaded elsewhere. it is a valuable contribution that we are used to recognise to GLAMs, but we normally do not acknowledge people doing it even if it contributes equally to open and free knowledge and it makes content interoperable with us (without the problem of uploading it or dealing with the communities). It is also something Creative Commons can support us in doing.

And thanks for this great initiative! iopensa (talk) 14:57, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

A very good point, thank you! It is definitely one of the 101 ways. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Iopensa for this suggestion. Creating awareness among researchers, publishers, and academics on the importance of releasing "content with open tools and licenses (CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA)" will go a long way in opening up knowledge about Africa and Africans which in turn simply the efforts of editors in closing contents gap. Atibrarian (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Brief Definition of Terms

I appreciate this initiative. From experience of teaching newbies, I learnt that a lot of them don't know the difference between Wikimedia Movement, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia and a Wiki hence my suggestion would be to briefly define these terms so they can understand what they are. Additionally, briefly talking about the different projects would also be great before we delve into how to contribute. Tochiprecious (talk) 12:19, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, @Tochiprecious. Yes, Wikimedia and Wikipedia will be defined in module 1, and other projects will be introduced in this module, Module 2, before the means of contributing to them are described.

(People are of course a lot more likely to become interested in contributing, say, proofreading to Wikisource, once they have been shown the purpose and impact of Wikisource.) Asaf (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Awesome! You're doing great. Tochiprecious (talk) 07:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a useful module

I would be interested in attending such a presentation (beta testing or earlier) to see what actually goes into it. I was involved in adult and skills education for part of my working life, so may be able to give useful feedback, and may learn some useful or interesting things myself. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Wonderful! I think it would be quite valuable to have an experienced editor like you attend and observe, to share feedback! We will be sure to invite you to attend. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Translation to African languages

It will be a good start to translate this page in to African languages. I would love to see my African languages being presented here. I have made several attempts but learning. Sethabathaba (talk) 16:17, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, @Sethabathaba. I am glad to read you find value in this project. For now, it is only an experiment, in the English language. If the approach we are piloting here proves effective, we will be encouraging translation of the materials (with necessary adaptations to local wiki standards) into other languages. What language(s) in particular are you working on? Asaf (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Ways to contribute

I'm not sure how categorisation works on sister projects, but on en.wp, the category trees are so complicated and detailed that in my decade-plus tenure as a Wikipedian I've probably only added or removed a handful. They're constantly evolving due to discussions at en:WP:CFD as well. New articles are probably safe targets.

Similarly with adding wikilinks, please foreground orphan and near-orphan articles, and trying to find ways to incorporate them into the encyclopaedia. Enwiki has a number of scripts that are run at high speed to delink common terms, like the names of countries, household items, and basic terms like "science". It's no good having someone's thoughtful work undone by a script with a dictionary of overlinked terms.

Fixing dead links can be a little bit of work, and should follow the guidance at en:WP:LINKROT. Many people assume that the best thing to do with a dead link is replace it with a "citation needed" template, or delete the cited claim entirely, which is only true in some cases.

My personal hobbyhorse for easy newcomer tasks is fixing citations. Citoid's output is not accurate or complete for many many domains, which is usually Zotero's fault. Automated references often lack important information including attribution and publication date, and editors who add automated references do an inadequate job of double checking. There are tracking categories for citation templates with sus data (like numeric information in an author name field), and fixing them is as easy as following the URL and making manual adjustments to the citation. It requires almost no experience in anything, except crucially it gives experience dealing with citations, which are critical in content editing. Folly Mox (talk) 01:50, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, @Folly Mox, these are all good points.

Since this module has the dual purpose of helping people who won't find encyclopedic prose writing a rewarding activity avoid the frustration, and helping them find ways of contribution they would enjoy, the amount of time we can dedicate to each contribution type we feature is necessarily limited. Therefore, we will not be purporting to actually teach the procedures for contributing in these ways, but merely present the very existence of other ways of contributing, and direct people to the best next-step resource we can find.

You are right that some tasks are more readily understood by newbies than others, and we will be whittling down the list when we get to writing the actual module according to the resources we find; I agree with you that categorization, for example, is probably not a great activity for complete newbies, so we will likely not feature it as one of the suggested means after all.

Maintenance tasks such as fixing link-rot or broken citations are indeed fairly uncomplicated tasks that should be easy for newbies to learn; however, they are likely to appeal to a relatively small fraction of potential learners, compared to contributing photos or pronunciation recordings, for example. Nonetheless, we will likely feature at least one task of the maintenance type. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Very true. Cleaning up citations is about as unglamorous as it gets. Apologies if I misunderstood the depth of this module or any of the modules. I'm very glad to have my words of caution read by someone involved here. I confess to not having read the summary page before commenting on the four modules linked from en:WP:VPM, which probably contributed to some misplaced concerns or misunderstandings. Folly Mox (talk) 18:49, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Other sister project needs attention too

I think the emphasis on the other Wikimedia sister project is a little less, we really need something like this for the better awareness and communication on them. Musa Vacho77 (talk) 07:07, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Musa Vacho77 for sharing this comment. For this pilot, we will not be able to cover all the sister projects but our hope is that module 2 will at least direct some people to other ways of contributing, including the sister projects. However, if the pilot succeeds, we may well be able to create structured learning modules for some of the sister projects as well. FNartey (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 17 July 2023 (UTC)