Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Iteration 1/Capacity Building/3

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.

Most likely, new comments will not be taken into account by the new three Working Group members in their work of developing the final Recommendations. You are free however to continue discussing in the spirit of "discussing about Wikipedia is a work in progress". :)

I totally agree that capacity building has to be in context. Not only geographically, but also according to themes (gender gap ect...). What could be done is a delocalisation of WMF staff in the different contexts. We also need more trainers visiting each group of contributors and mapping their needs. Today this is done by chapters, but chapters are themselves very centralized from my experience. We need to create a trickling down of know how in our movement. For the moment, the only places where I have experienced training myself are : wikimania Esino Lario, wikidata trainings organized by WMCH, participating myself to the building of the francophone Wikimooc (that was really intensive as I was at the time myself a newby) and on wikipedia online through community help (examples : mapping burned witches, setting up the automated evaluation tools for a project). I also learned about dashboards with Art&Feminism. And in editathons and meet ups. So the capacity building by the " community " is a very important and crucial element hre which cannot be ignored, but needs to be encouraged and developped. Actually one of my main activities on the francophone gender gap project Les sans pagEs is just that : reading what is available in English, and making it available on the project for people who cannot travel vbecause of lack of time, and finances. One thing that could be done - I do it myself at my local level - is to oblige any person receiving funding to share knowledge on the projects directly (not on some obscure online dramwer on meta. I think this would also bring the community to know more about WFM's fabulous work.Instead or reporting on meta, make the people report in tjeir language on their project and be transparent about the funds they receive. What I notice is that people tend not to share the learned knowledge in the first place, or at least not enough. They go to events but they dont report to their communities enough, mostly not because they dont want to, but because they are volunteers. i think we should pay for good volunteer reporting of knowledge in the first place, as this is also a way of recognizing people. And we should issue working certificates for the volunteer work done. Nattes à chat (talk) 07:28, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! these are all really good points, especially the one about reporting back. We are also putting an emphasis on peer-support following up any visited trainings, because we heard from community members that going to a training is only the first step, but then implementing what was learned in the local context often fails. Another concept we are looking at is coaches or navigators, who do assessments with groups and assist them as they determine next steps for building capacity. thanks again,--Nicola Zeuner (WMDE) (talk) 09:39, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree, implementaiton is often difficult! I experienced that with wikidata training. The best training were the ones that maybe did not go in depth but allowed space to implement and experiment. Also I do wikipedia trainings for newbies, and what I have learned as a trianer, is that you need to shorten presentations and allow a maaximum of time for exercices and experiments. Thanks for shairing! Nattes à chat (talk) 10:06, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

This also raises the capacity building needs that make just-in-time learning possible. Going away for training events can be useful, though without mentoring or coaching or ongoing support for when we actually have the need to know or need to do, then capacity building will not be practically useful. --- FULBERT (talk) 13:55, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

From Catalan Salon

Agree with descentralization and context. One-time training may not be enough, but (...)