Wikipedia Welcomes X

Wikipedia Welcomes X is an outreach campaign concept aimed at drawing various professional niches or for organizing themed editathons. Wikipedia Welcomes X serves as a general format for naming various sorts of themed community outreach campaigns. Anyone (preferably involved in some Wikimedia sister project) can organize Wikimedia community events and may call their campaign "Wiki Welcomes X", where X can be substituted by the community niche aimed at.

Wikipedia Welcomes X acts as a prototype for public outreach attempts of Wikimedia aimed at specific communities or professions. These campaigns may or may not be held in collaboration with any professional organization or local groups from the respective niche.

Problem statement

• Wikipedia can benefit from contribution of experts from various fields.
• "Wikipedia is increasingly engaging expert communities to improve accuracy and coverage. Interested parties can contribute to several existing collaborative initiatives, or propose new ones."

Trademarks and branding

Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website globally and serves as a base for the Wikimedia movement and free content culture. Campaigns under this bannerhead try to orient people (from the respective niche or profession) to Wikipedia in an attempt to Welcome them and acknowledge the role their respective niche could play in enriching the related contents on Wikipedia. X is a common symbol for any variable and can be substituted for the respective niche or profession.

• X should not be substituted by vague terms like students and should be chosen in order to indicate a specific niches like medical students or law students when aimed at undergraduate or postgraduate students of the respective discipline.
• X refers to the people targeted to make the contributions. X does not serve as the topic to be improved upon. If aimed at doctors with the objective of improving medicine related articles, the campaign is to be named Wikipedia Welcomes Doctors and not Wikipedia Welcomes Medicine.
• It is advisable to target the niche audience from a specific geographical region. The geographic region can be rationally decided upon based on the outreach capacity of the organizers. The organizers of Wikipedia Welcomes Pro Photographers have targeted photographers and photography groups from Kolkata for the initial set of events.

Instead of Wiki Welcomes X or Wikimedia Welcomes X, the choice has been made in favor of Wikipedia Welcomes X since it is more likely that people external to Wikimedia projects have heard the name of Wikipedia and are at least vaguely conversant about what Wikipedia is about and might be more willing to be part of something big.

For anyone who wishes to use the trademarks owned by the en:Wikimedia Foundation, including logos and words such as "Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia", please refer to wmf:Trademark policy. Using such trademarks is often not part of a "Wiki Loves X" campaign. The campaign requires no deep planning or formal affiliation with the Wikimedia Foundation or any Wikimedia chapter.

Starting a Wikipedia Welcomes X campaign

Anyone can start a Wikipedia Welcomes X campaign at any time. However, for that anyone to be conversant with the wiki-culture and the norms of encyclopedic editing, it is assumable that such an organizer would be an active contributor in some Wikimedia sister project. One model for setting up a campaign is to follow guidelines for setting up WikiProjects, such as those at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Council.

Although there are no set norms for starting a Wiki Welcomes X campaign, there is a set of loose guidelines for managing or promoting Wiki Welcomes X events which may or may not be adhered to. For tutorials and some records of what has worked in the past, the "Learning Patterns" project at Grants:Learning patterns documents some outreach styles. Common strategies for promoting any kind of outreach project on English Wikipedia include making a request at en:Wikipedia:Mass message senders or the en:Wikipedia:Geonotice notice to get a message to a new audience.

Common guidelines

The campaign can comprise of a number of genres of events which are primarily aimed at audience who might not be active contributors to Wikipedia. This can be done by:

• Organizing orientation workshops aimed at professional niches or themed audience who have prospects of contributing to the Wikimedia movement.
  • Such orientation workshops are aimed at familiarizing them with the Wikimedia movement, the wiki culture and the significance of collaborative contribution.
  • Familiarizing them with the gaps and lacunae in relation to the related content on Wikipedia.
  • Pointing to the role the target audience could play in filling the gaps and how improving such content on Wikipedia could benefit them in the long run.
  • Making them aware of the Creative Commons license and how their contributions could get recognition as author as their work gets used.
  • Such orientation workshops can be concluded by welcoming the participants to register as users, to network with the organizers and other professionals from the respective niche such that they can improve offline interaction and contribution.
  • The respective efforts can be tagged under a wiki category defined for the purpose. Follow-up links should preferably be established. The organizers should follow-up on the users registered in the event and should preferably offer them guidance in an attempt to promote their contribution.
  • The established community can eventually get organized to be identified as a sub-chapter of the local Wikimedia chapter.
• Organizing editathons as follow-up events for the editors newly enrolled at the preceding orientation workshop.
• Organizing competitions aimed at non-Wikipedians from a particular niche and encouraging them to register and get familiar with the wiki culture preferably in a guided mode, and fill up specific lacunae existing on Wikipedia. It is advisable to utilize as resource persons the local professionals from the respective niche who are either existing Wikimedians or fresh recruits from the preceding events.

Example

• Wikipedia Welcomes Pro Photographers is the first effort of its kind and is aimed at professional photographers and professionally viable photographers. Since the organizers of the campaign hail from Kolkata, they have targeted photographers and photography groups from Kolkata.
• Wikipedia Welcomes Medical Students is a prototype intended to be held at medical schools/medical colleges.

Similar

• Wiki Loves X
• Wikipedia Takes Your City
• Commons:Photo scavenger hunts