Wikimedians of Japan User Group/Our vision

Goals

Objective.

The Japanese Wikimedia project is large in scale, with Wikipedia in particular being edited some 5,000 times a month. Wikipedia is becoming increasingly important as times change, with smartphones becoming more popular and Wikipedia appearing at the top of Google searches.

Our goal is to help further improve the quality of Wikimedia projects and to help increase the intellectual curiosity of Japanese speakers, the audience, and reduce the intellectual divide. We also aim to create an environment in which participants in the Japanese Wikimedia projects feel safe and able to demonstrate their abilities.

If we can make the above changes, it will help us to work with the Wikimedia movement (the original state of affairs) and other language versions that are developing around the world.

Final Goals

• Participants from all walks of life should feel safe and accepted.

There are two types of safety here

1.Absence of criminal violence such as harassment, threats, or violence (some action can be taken immediately).

2. Feel psychologically safe (no character assassination or other detriment if there is an argument)

• Contribute to the further improvement of the quality of the Japanese Wikiprojects.
• To collaborate with wiki projects around the world that are currently close to isolation.

Recent Goals

In order to improve the quality of the Japanese Wiki Project in the near future, we have set the following goals

Around 2025 - 2026

1. Partner with universities and institutions of higher education that have departments that support student volunteers to have students write articles in their areas of expertise.(Improve quality of articles.)
   1. If possible, we will ask universities that have a system in place that allows students to benefit in some way from their volunteer activities (e.g., receive credits for participating in volunteer activities) (We will work with personnel mainly from companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange so that students can utilize their abilities in their job search.In no way do we support individual job hunting. We hope that activities on wikis will be valued as they are overseas. (Ability to communicate, write, research, and be useful to society; online skills, techniques, and knowledge; English language skills for those who translate; English conversation skills for those who participate in Wikimedia events overseas, etc.)

Around 2024 - 2025

Create a system that allows student volunteers to write without confusion.(First, ask a small number of students to do this.)

• Young students, especially female students, may find the culture of the Japanese Wikiproject difficult to penetrate.Interview or conduct a written survey of students at the relevant universities to determine what kind of environment and teaching methods would make it easier for them to write.
• Conduct a content gap study to identify where they should be asked to write.

Increase the credibility of the Japanese Wikiprojects

In Japan, there is a culture, especially in educational institutions, where it is difficult to be "trusted" unless the organization is accredited by the government or prefecture.

• Wikipedia is known, but the Japanese version is all volunteer.There is no WMF branch office in Japan. There is no organization representing it. This is not a very "trustworthy" situation in the sense of most Japanese people.
  • Trust" here is a state of being free from anxiety and worry about the following: - The quality of the product or service

    Is it a scam?
    Will they use my personal information?
    Is it an outpost of a radical political or religious cult?
    Will they make me do too much hard work for free?
    Will they make me do meaningless work?

  • We tend to think that there is some hidden agenda behind "being free."Even if it is for the public good, its parent organization tends to be thought of as "possibly untrustworthy.

The Wikimedia Foundation is probably not so trusted either.The fact that the machine translation of the fundraising ads was 'stinky stuff' also spurred them on.

We are trying to move forward with discussions to address the above situation.

We will make "Wikimedians of Japan User Group"

We aim to have the user group officially recognized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as a "non-profit organization" in 2024.

Around 2023 - 2024

• In 2023, we aim to be recognized by the Foundation as a user group.
• We also need to survey the opinions of current participants, both new and old, about the current community and rules in order to encourage student participation!
  • As a preliminary survey for the grant application, we surveyed about 30 Japanese Wikipedia editors about their satisfaction with the community.About 70% of the respondents were male, with other genders and about 30% female. It is worth noting that the respondents with the lowest satisfaction ratings were all women.
  • From October 27 to November 6, 2023, we will be conducting a large landscape survey of logged-in users, as well as a qualitative survey, primarily of women.(We have been contacted by a foreign accredited organization about trends among LGBTQ+ people, but we do not know how to survey them, so they are not the primary focus of this survey.Any wisdom you can offer for the future would be greatly appreciated.)

Wouldn't the opinions of the target audience be valuable in order to achieve better results?We don't know what results we will get.

For the group's accreditation

(On June 7, 2023, I received the first reply from Affiliated Organizations Committee for accreditation; on June 12, I received the second reply, advising me on two of the eight criteria; on July 6, I received a letter from Affiliated Organizations Committee, advising me that the application was for a new logo.On July 6, I received a letter from [I am pleased to inform you that the staff review process has concluded, I am now sending this application to the full committee for final decision. You can expect to hear back from me by the end of July 2023.")

(work) not yet started As for the Tokyo authorized NPO, we have until 2024 to prepare for its formation.We are stuck on where to address the address.

Incorporation

We initially thought that this was a condition for opening an account to receive the grant, but for the sake of transparency and fairness, we have decided to use functions held by the Wikimedia Foundation.Therefore, the grant will not be remitted to Japan, and all expenses, including payments to professional research firms, will be disbursed from the function on the left. The disbursements will be strictly controlled, and after 12 months, any remaining funds will be returned to the Wikimedia Foundation. For this administrative function, approximately 10% of the grant will be disbursed to the legal entity of the left function.

If you would like more information on this point, please contact YShibata (talk). If you have/will apply to the Wikimedia Foundation for grants for outreach, etc., you should not need to consider this feature. updateAs of September 3, 2023, a change is planned in this regard (changed).

Strategy

The reference format for creating user groups is "strategy".

1.日本語版ウィキメディアプロジェクトに関しては、コンテンツの質的な向上が必要である。執筆に関するコミュニティへの支援を行う。

1-1 貢献者と閲覧者の多様な要求に応えるよう、記事と貢献者双方における多様性を目指す

1-2 コンテンツの欠落を埋めるための活動を行う

2.ウィキプロジェクト参加者の心理的安全性を高めるための啓発活動

3.ユーザーグループのメンバーの増加と運営体制の確立

4.他言語版のウィキメディアン、多言語版のユーザーとの接点が少なく、日本語版の活動についてはあまり周知がなされていなかった。日本/日本語版での活動についての調査および情報発信を行う。

5.日本では、ユーザーグループの成立以前から、ウィキメディアンと外部との関係構築があり、多くの初心者向けプログラムが開催されている。これらに関しては、互いの活動を尊重しつつ、必要に応じて互いに連携・補完しあうことができる関係を構築する。

6.日本語版ウィキペディアに集中している状況から、他のウィキメディアプロジェクトへの関心を高める。

7.オープンデータの活用と活用方法の周知