Grants:IEG/Wikipedia meets Open Help
 IdeaLab |
 meet more people |
 visit more ideas |
| join other ideas | ||
wikimedia.orgWikipedia Help page improvers, Answer-servers, and other user-friendly Open Helpers, signup here!
OUTCOMES edit
A team of 4 Wikimedians went to Open Help 2013! You can read about what we learned in our blog post and the Participation Support report.
Original project idea edit
Open Help Conference is June 15-19 in Cincinnati Ohio, USA. The conference has a strong focus on open, attendee-led discussions, and the other half is spent on presentations and demos. After the conference, multiple teams stick around for three days of sprints.
What if we sent a Wikipedia team? During the sprint days, we might decide to work on Wikipedia help pages, Teahouse improvements, or something else depending on the interests of the team.
Participants in need of funding to attend will apply to the Participation Support Program to cover travel costs.
Project goals edit
- share how Wikipedia does open help with others working on open source projects
- bring new inspiration and learning back to Wikipedia about what else is going on in open source help world
- improve aspects of Wikipedia and MediaWiki's help systems in a 3-day team sprint
Work sprints edit
For the 3 sprint days, we're considering focusing on 2 key areas (note: subject to change based on inspiration at the conference itself):
Sprint area 1 edit
Improvements to Wikipedia Help Project's volunteer engagement systems
- guidelines for new volunteers
- manual of style
- templates to reuse
- badges to acknowledge participation
Anticipated impact edit
- By building stronger processes and systems for engaging volunteers on the Help Project, we hope to increase the number of people improving English Wikipedia's Help pages. This ultimately contributes to improving the new-editor experience, since many new editors rely on help documentation.
Sprint area 2 edit
Improvements to Teahouse and MediaWiki Greeter's Program's participant engagement systems
- Teahouse wishlist - page & process improvements to engage more people to build and test new Teahouse improvements
- MediaWiki greeter’s program - framework improvements for this new Teahouse-inspired program to engage new MediaWiki contributors
Anticipated impact edit
- By building stronger processes and systems for engaging new Teahouse builders, we hope to increase the number of volunteers involved in Teahouse upgrades. This will ensure that Teahouse stays strong and vibrant and can continue to help boost new editor's participation and retention on English Wikipedia for years to come.
- By building out processes and systems for the MediaWiki greeter's program, we hope to increase the number of greeters who participate in the program, and facilitate a better experience for new MediaWiki greeters.