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Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016/Programme/Submissions/Wikiworkshops: we were doing it wrong

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Wikiworkshops: we were doing it wrong

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The who

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Krzysztof Machocki, User:Halibutt
Wikimedia Polska, spokesman

The what

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  • Best practices for editing workshops

Type of submission (Please choose one)

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  • Presentation (one-to-many), then
  • Workshop (work in groups), then
  • Open discussion (many-to-many)

Summary

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We are bleeding people, most Wikipedias are. Editor retention is low, the workshops we organise usually do not turn interested attendees into Wikimedians. For the last year or so we have been working on improving the way we teach Wikipedia to newcomers. We realised that we were doing it wrong all along. While lectures and presentations seem natural as a way of transferring knowledge, this is not how most of us became Wikimedians. We didn't attend Wikipedia classes at school, most of us simply saw a red link, filled it with content, jumped to another one and learned in the process. A good wikiworkshop should try to replicate that path. This means dropping the presentation altogether, limiting the amount of knowledge transferred during the workshop and engaging the attendees rather than putting them to sleep with all our rules and regulations.

I would like to share a syllabus of an ideal wikiworkshop we came up with. I would also like to show you a couple of quick, easy and useful exercises that could engage the attendees of a wikiworkshop or an edit-a-thon, while at the same time showing them what Wikimedia are all about. And you can do them off-line too! Finally, I would like to learn what are your best practices for teaching Wikimedia to beginners: what works best in your countries, what exercises you use and so on.

Expected outcomes

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  • Exchange best practices in education projects in CEE countries
  • Promote using exercises instead of raw presentations when teaching Wikipedia and her sister projects
  • Start a central repository of lesson scenarios, syllabi, exercises and so on

Duration (without Q&A)

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  • 45 minutes+
    • 10 min presentation
    • 20 min workshop
    • 15 min discussion

Specific requirements

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Slides or further information

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Interested attendees (Please add yourself, and you may indicate your questions to the presenter).

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  1. Polimerek (talk) 22:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC) - Do you have any statistical data to present about effect of using your syllabus ?[reply]
    1. No, not yet. Halibutt (talk) 14:49, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC) Want to learn more about this approach![reply]
  3. --アンタナナ 23:15, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  4. --Γλαύκος (talk) 08:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC) I used to participate and organize workshops and speeches about Wikipedia and Free Content even recently. I would love to learn more on how to make it better. --Γλαύκος (talk) 08:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Yarl (talk) 21:36, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --AnnaKhrobolova (WMUA) (talk) 20:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  7. --Packa (talk) 13:25, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]