Institute of Physics Workshop
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As part of a working relationship between Wikimedia UK and the Institute of Physics, a Wikipedia workshop for IoP members took place in the Guthrie room at the IoP premises in central London on Thursday 1 September 2011. This was a small-scale event to try out the idea of a science-themed Wikipedia workshop in future. The contact for this event in IoP was Lena Weber. The contact in Wikimedia UK was Martin Poulter, martin.poulter@wikimedia.org.uk .
The workshop tool place a day before the Science Online London 2011 conference at the British Library, which "explored the ways in which the Web has transformed scientific research and communication". The conference included a session on "How are wikis being used to carry out and communicate science?" led by Henry Scowcroft of Cancer Research UK and Mike Peel of Wikimedia UK.
Programme
Before the day: attendees were asked to register an account and were given links to some introductory videos and text
All attendees received "Welcome to Wikipedia" booklets, cheat sheets and printouts of the "Physics on Wikipedia" article in Physics World.
- Start at 10am
- Introductions
- Overview presentation (15 mins)
- Physics on Wikipedia (15 mins)
- Hands-on training
- Break for lunch 12.30-1.15
- Attendees work on articles of interest, with in-person help from Wikimedians
- Afternoon coffee break + informal quick presentation of some other things that are useful to know (Wikimedians)
- Close at 4pm
Attendees
- Wikimedia UK volunteers
- Institute of Physics members
Anonymous evaluation
Numerical
- The workshop aimed to show you the context of Wikimedia projects and what they are trying to do. How well did it achieve this? (1=poorly; 5=very well)
Mean score: 4.7 (six votes)
- The workshop aimed to give you confidence to edit Wikipedia. How well did it achieve this? (1=poorly; 5=very well)
Mean score: 4.3 (six votes)
- What will you do as a result of today's session?
- Improve or create Wikipedia articles (6)
- Keep an eye on Wikipedia pages and correct errors (5)
- Encourage colleagues to contribute in some way (2)
- Submit photos or diagrams to Wikimedia Commons ("I may try")
- Arrange an event in your workplace ("I work from home")
Free-text comments
These were optional and not answered by all attendees.
- Identify something surprising you learned today (about Wikipedia or anything else)
- How easy it is to edit text
- Talking to other editors
- Only 1/8 of Wikipedia editors are female. The term 20/20 vision is based on the fact that it is a test of your vision at a distance of 20 feet away.
- Identify one thing that would have improved this workshop for you
- Written step-by-step instructions i.e. too much data to remember by rote
- Not sure. It was very good! Perhaps a bit too much sidetracking because of in-depth questions from the audience
- (verbally) Title slides in the initial presentation to separate out the different topics
- Identify one thing that would make Wikipedia better
- More professors setting the protocol standards for writing Wikipedia articles
- A better help menu