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Reception and engagement of new users during Wikicontest Wiki Loves Pará

The challenge of welcoming new users has been shared in different contexts of the Wikimedia Movement for years, and there is still no closed formula for how to solve it. It is necessary to experiment with different formats to include new people, especially in large campaigns that have professional support in their organization.

The case discussed here celebrates the effort to welcome new users throughout the Wikicontest Wiki Loves Pará while recognizing the limitations of the format adopted for this purpose, in the expectation of reviewing consolidated practices in recent years.

Context

Since 2021, Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) has organized a wikicontest dedicated to a Brazilian state: Bahia in 2021, with 127 entries, and Espírito Santo in 2022, with 486 entries. In 2023, WMB organized the Wikicontest Wiki Loves Pará, one of the most impactful activities for improving the quality of information available on the state of Pará on Wikipedia in Portuguese. The contest had 512 editors registered over the three months of the campaign, from April to July.

The practice that generates the most return for people's registration is to launch a notice site on Wikipedia in Portuguese in the first weeks of the contest. Thus, the page is viewed thousands of times a day and we convert readers into subscribers. In this year's campaign, during the duration of the notice site from April 13 to May 15, we had a daily average of 18,000 hits on the page. The drop in visits to the page is drastic after the end of the display of the banner, reaching only one hundred. The volume of entries in the contest also drops during this period.^[1]

It is worth mentioning the profile of the editors entered in the contest. The most active throughout the period are experienced editors, who do not require much support in their editions and generally have already participated in other campaigns of this type. In addition, there is a volume of smaller editions that require more attention from the contest organizers, especially during the first month of activity, when the banner is still active. These are people who have never edited Wikipedia and who became interested in doing so through the wikicontest campaign. We still don't have precise evidence of the motivations, but the suspicion is that people register on Wikipedia and in the contest for the prize offered and for identification with the theme.

It is part of Wiki Movimento Brasil's strategy to welcome new users and encourage their autonomous participation in the community, especially through the guidelines for action listed below the axis "Coordinate the Brazilian Wikimedia agencies":

Encourage community health from new spaces for communication and integration between experienced volunteers, new contributors, cultural, educational and social organizations and other free knowledge partners
Create opportunities for continuous learning among peers, with the formation of new networks of volunteers
Adopt and promote welcoming practices in projects and activities so that everyone can contribute without compromising their individual safety

Therefore, throughout the contest, in addition to closely monitoring the editions of new active users who needed support, we offered spaces for direct contact and integration workshops. This case study will focus on organizing workshops to support new users.

Format and communication changes

Three workshops were organized on the following dates and times: May 19th at 6:00 pm, May 30th at 6:00 pm and June 14th at 2:00 pm, in addition to a launch event on April 13th.

The workshops were held via Google Meet, upon registration via form. The first version of the form only requested the participant's name and email, with an open field for any comments. The version for the following workshops asked how long the person has been editing Wikipedia and if they had any specific questions they would like to cover during the workshop.

The simple insertion of the form was already a change in the practices of previous wikicontest workshops. Since 2020, Wiki Movimento Brasil organizes wikicontest as a way to boost large projects and engage the community in them. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was necessary to adapt the initial planning of the wikicontest held in partnership with Museu Paulista to include remote editions. The format used was a thematic webinar and editing tutorial via YouTube and social networks, followed by a workshop space via Google Meet. During the live, the interested person was asked to send an email asking for the access link. That is, there was no application form. At first, the format worked, but with the resumption of face-to-face activities, reduced health risk and virtual fatigue, there was a significant decline in engagement in this type of event. First people stopped showing up at the workshop part and then stopped watching the thematic webinars. For this reason, for 2023, we excluded the thematic webinars and reformulated the communication of the workshop spaces.

Instead of being an edit-a-thon, that is, an editing marathon that requires breath and time from the participant, we chose to label it as a workshop: a space for new users to learn to edit and to clear specific doubts about editing and about the subject itself. wikicontest.

The communication of the workshop spaces was carried out inside and outside Wikipedia. We sent messages on the discussion page of the more than 500 people registered, in addition to posting on the esplanade and announcing the workshops on the wikicontest page. We also advertise on social media and community channels on Telegram. There were only 5 participants in the first workshop and no participants in the next two workshops. That is, the conversion rate was extremely low.

Workshop dynamics

Workshops are spaces where you can connect community members who don't necessarily know each other beyond their usernames. As they are open spaces, from the point of view of the organization, it is necessary to have flexibility and agility to deal with both the social aspects and the different levels of knowledge of the participants. Especially during the first workshop, in which it was not known what the expectations of the participants were, it was necessary to adapt the program according to the reaction of the people present.

Not necessarily people who participate in the workshops will arrive at the space feeling comfortable to share their experiences or even to ask questions, although the facilitation reaffirms at different times that there is a space of connection and support.

The safe path was to calibrate knowledge, offering a quick presentation so that everyone at least had the same information, regardless of their level of editing knowledge. Therefore, a quick presentation was prepared explaining the context of the wikicontest, indicating the reasons for organizing Wiki Loves Pará and its activities beyond the contest, and quick guidelines on editing principles on Wikipedia and tips to avoid the main mistakes made by contest participants so far.

After the presentation, the facilitation opened the space for the participants to present themselves telling about their relationship and interest with the wikicontest. The average profile was people who were curious to edit Wikipedia and who were interested in the state of Pará. Of the five participants, only one did not want to open the camera and introduce himself or even interact through the chat. The other participants, while commenting and sharing about their edits, seemed cautious in their interactions - which reflects the average profile of people who edit Wikipedia.

Although Wiki Loves Pará has dedicated assistance, it was not possible to delegate the activity to her, as she is not a person with editing experience. Consequently, the organization and conduction of the workshops was the responsibility of other people from the Wiki Movimento Brasil professional team and also served as a learning space for the person in charge of assistance.

At the end of the workshop, a feedback questionnaire was launched to understand what worked or not and whether expectations were met, in addition to other topics they would like to see in the following workshops. There were three feedbacks, indicating that the workshop was useful and that they would like to have more experience to know exactly what to ask.

On the one hand, we achieved the established goal of organizing three events throughout the wikicontest period. On the other hand, we did not establish the number of participants, already imagining that it would be difficult to make an accurate estimate due to the change in format and the new context of general engagement in remote activities.

Learnings and more questions

There is also fatigue on the part of the team when organizing events with this format. There is a break in expectations and frustration due to dedicating time to organizing the event and there being no participants. At the same time, it is necessary to maintain safe and humanized spaces so that new people can connect to the community and learn how to contribute positively to Wikipedia in Portuguese.

The question is therefore how to improve the format so that it is actually attractive and useful for people who come to Wikipedia via the wikicontest.

Within the remote support that we can offer, even individualized support was not returned. When following up on edits from new active users who made mistakes, we send messages on their talk pages alerting them to errors in a friendly language, different from the semi-automatic administrative messages that other users eventually send. In addition to language, there was an aspect of humanization in the sense that individual support was offered, with the possibility of meetings to teach editing and answer questions. In some cases, the exchange took place by email, and not in the public space of the discussion pages. Even so, there was no request for individualized support.

From this experience, it is necessary to talk to other communities that have similar resources and contexts to understand which approaches have paid off. A bet can be communication through social networks, in order to increase the visualization and engagement of people in the networks in which they are more used. In other words, organize more material on social networks about the workshops as a space for newcomers.

Another possibility is to direct team efforts towards the organization of in-person events with the network of partners, that is, engaging a specific and motivated core of new users, with the objective of both bringing in new contributors and strengthening ties with them, in a way to create more bonds and proximity with Wikimedia projects. On the one hand, this alternative has social capital involved that can be advantageous, but on the other hand, it does not solve the lack of support from new users who enter the contest through the banner they face.

At the end of the wikicontest on July 13th, there will be a general feedback form to be sent to the participants, so that they can evaluate both the contents and the prizes and the type of support offered throughout the contest. The expectation is that we will have responses from people who entered Wikipedia because of the contest and that we can have more clarity on what is the best approach for the next campaigns.