Wikimedia Conference 2015/Programme/34

34: Community Capacity Development Framework

How to move forward

Sati (WMF) presenting

What was this session about?

Asaf and Sati presented insights of in-depth interviews with communities on capacity building and ways the WMF can support them.

What are the next steps to be taken?

Publication of the report on the research by June 17

Who is the person to reach out to?

Sati Houston (WMF), more information on Community Capacity Development Framework

Photos

see the Commons category

Slides

This session documentation was approved by the speakers.

Session Documentation

Original Description

WMF has been conducting in-depth interviews with different communities, to learn about community practices, social spaces, and capacities, in preparation to identifying ways to further build community capacity. The session will present insights from those interviews, as well as a proposed baseline ("capacities every wiki community should have"), and some examples of support WMF can offer to interested communities to develop those capacities.

Desired Outcome: Inspiration to ask that kind of questions; interest in adopting some of the identified good (not "best") practices
Audience: everyone, with an emphasis on smaller/younger communities
Session Format: presentation; 20-30 min
Speaker: Asaf Bartov and Sati Houston (both WMF)

Summary of the session

After a short introduction of Asaf and Sati, they started with presenting the idea and reason of their research, which was executed by interviewing members of 16 different communities or countries. Aiming to understand context, structure and needs of the communities, the goals were to identify challenges and ways to support those communities in the future.

They presented three important insights of this research:

Communities are strong in encouraging and support new editors, by different ways
(On-wiki) policies were mentioned as a huge challenge, especially creating and/or changing them
Most communities named technical skills and building awareness skills as the most needed ones

Then, Sati and Asaf explained what kind of tools or ways to support the communities the Community Engagement department is planning to develop. Toolkits and training events were mentioned, but also facilitated dialogues on certain issues, like policy building.

After shortly presenting the next steps (publication of the report, further ways to engage), the presenters opened the stage for questions. One participant asked how to get rid of harassing editors in bigger communities. Asaf replied that the WMF is aiming to encourage e.g. functionary meetings. Another participant asked where there will be more interviews with other communities. The presenters explained that for now the research was finished and they were focussing now on actions. However, they said, other communities were invited to join this framework, support and learn from it.