Talk:Wikimedia Girl Geek Dinner/Manchester November 2012
Participant expectations
Looking at the info Girl Geeks sent to participants, it looks like they want an editing day, not a training session. It also doesn't look like it is aimed at newbies. Some newbies will be present but we don't want to patronise. While it would be good to have Andrew's presentation in our back pocket, I think we should plan on the assumption that we're not going to give it. Yaris678 (talk) 06:48, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
- Promoting the Wiki Project Women scientists may be a good idea if there is enough time. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 10:25, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Vague plan
So we know what happens if we don’t change the plan... but we should be ready to change the plan and keep each other informed if the plan changes.
| 11:00 | People turn up, get a cup of tea, get the laptop booted up and connected to the WiFi. | |
| 11:15 | What do we want from today?
Everyone says their name, what their experience is of Wikipedia and what they want to get out of the day. Hopefully this will draw out of some of the participants why they think Wikipedia is so good so we won’t need to do any "selling" – the other participants do it for us. This may lead to a change of plan. e.g. an extra/alternative activity for the established editors. | |
| 11:25 | Notes on today
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| 11:28 | Newbies
Yaris678, Julie W and WormTT 1. Get everyone who doesn't have one a user name – Go to the English Wikipedia and click on create account. There is good guidance there on user names. 2. Try some wikicode in the sandbox. Link to the sandbox is in the top right. Get people to go Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Cheatsheet 3. Find an error – fix it! e.g. typo. Possible routes:
Before they save, get people to:
4. The History tab and diffs. Would anyone like to show off their edit? Gather round that person’s laptop. Click on history tab. Now we can all see why the edit summary was important. But what if we want to know the details of the edit? I wonder what the previous edit looked like... 5. What problems do people know about / can people foresee with Wikipedia? Right them down on a flip chart before addressing them. This should leads us to discussion and possibly reference to the following.
Be careful not to spend ages on one topic, unless that is the one that is obviously causing most concern. If it’s something we should be covering later (e.g verification), say so. For each thing that comes up, where appropriate, direct people to the relevant page. e.g. say "Type WP:MOS into the search box." If it's a policy get people to skim over it and talk about how it addresses the issue. For some things it will be possible to do something directly. e.g. posting a comment on an articles talk page... or at least seeing how to post a comment. If necessary, say that some of the points will be addressed in the afternoon. We could do a separate session if a group of people are particularly interested in a topic which can't be addressed quickly. |
Established editors
KTC and RexxS (or just one is there is very few established editors) 1. Discuss Wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists/Worklist 2. Who wants to do what? 3. Possibly split into pairs as per Wikipedia:Pair programming 4. Once everyone is introduced to the activity, KTC and RexxS can answer any questions as they arise. |
| 13:00 | Lunch | |
| 13:40 | Verification and citation
Plenary session. But if some of the established editors want to carry on with women scientists that is fine. 1. If verification has already come naturally in the previous exercise, great. Follow on from that. Otherwise, ask participants:
2. Introduce verification policy. Policy in a nutshell: Other people have to be able to check that you didn't just make things up. This means that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.
Explain that you can always check the policy by going to WP:V. There is also Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard 3. Citation tool | |
| 14:00 | Add information to Wikipedia!
Plenary session. But if some of the established editors want to carry on with women scientists that is fine. Invite people to use hard-copy sources provided and sources on the internet. Find something you want to write about. See if its already there. Start a new article or expand the existing one. This can develop into a general editing session with people asking the trainers for help as they require it. If they someone needs new inspiration, suggest:
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| 15:15 | Getting help
Plenary session. But if some of the established editors want to carry on with women scientists that is fine. Describe the different sources of help Get people to look at Wikipedia:Help:Contents – good summary of options Describe some in more detail:
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| 15:35 | Summary discussion
1. What did we learn today? Get one thing from each participant and write it on the flip chart. 2. Will people use what they have learnt? 3. Will they continue editing Wikipedia? 4. Is there anything else people want to know? | |
And remember what RexxS said about letting people try the things you tell them about and tell them when they are doing it right!
Yaris678 (talk) 14:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Trainer reflections
This was my first time training people to edit Wikipedia and my first real training in anything since the train the trainers workshop so I learnt a lot through doing it. The main thing I learnt was...
You need to be specific in what you want people to do. I knew this in the abstract. But its not until you get there and you say "Who'd like to edit one of these?" that you realise what this means in practice. In that case, because people hadn't edited outside their sandbox before they didn't really want to commit to anything. But when RexxS made it a lot more specific, by talking about a specific article, people knew what to do.
Things which I think worked really well and would like to repeat at future events:
- One trainer demonstrating what the other is talking about. We had a trainer on a laptop plugged into a projector, and another one speaking. The participants can then have a go and know what they are looking for.
- Showing a featured article. We did this after people learnt some of the basics of editing in their sandbox and had been introduced to user talk pages, the history tab and diffs. We directed people to Mary Anning. Got them to skim read it and tell us their impressions. We also got people to look at and respond to:
- The article history
- The list of contributors (There's a link on the history tab)
- The article talk page
- The discussions. e.g. a message thanking people for helping to get the article to FA status
- The wikiprojects the article is in
- The quality scale
- The criteria for each level
- The article history
- Crowdsoucing the summary. Towards the end of the day, we asked each person to say one thing they learnt and wrote the answers on a flip chart. This exercise helped sumarise the day for the participants and helped then to share each others knowledge and excitement.