Brahmanbaria Wikimedia Bootcamp & Outreach Editathon

Currently, there are no active Wikimedia Movement-related activities in the district of Brahmanbaria in Bangladesh. We plan to initiate Wikimedia Movement there with this program partnering with the local science club.

Insights

Usually, workshops or outreach programs in Bangladesh focus on teaching MediaWiki syntaxes and showing how to edit a Wikipedia page or create an article. The outcome is very low as usual. But this time a different approach will be experimented. Focus from the MediaWiki syntax and any single Wikimedia project will be shifted to the whole Wikimedia Movement, its values and goals. Instead of accumulating participants' minds with colourless and weird-looking "square brackets", "double or triple quotes", bunches of templates within just 2 or 3 hours, the training process would be divided into different phases.

The first phase would introduce the participants with the vast open knowledge ecosystem of the Wikimedia Movement, its aspects, diversified worldwide community; they will be introduced to "Creative Commons" and why it plays a pivotal role to "Open the knowledge", they'll know why we should work to make information open to each and every person of the world. They'll gradually be introduced to different Wikimedia projects and the local community there. And finally, they'll feel excited (I hope soǃ) to know that people from their own geographical location are also dedicated to this duty and they'll be prompted to contribute to the local community as well as the global movement. All these won't take more than a 2-hour training session and after that, they'll be provided with some reading materials - maybe some diff posts or meta-pages or some photos and videos (better if we find the materials in their mother tongue) which they'll review after the first "introductory" session. This phase would be designed very purposefully to engrave a very open, bright and colourful picture full of independence in the mind of the participants. After the first introductory session, they'll get 2/3 days to review the provided session record and reading materials. This short break will help them to "digest" the new ideas and make them comfortable with the ideas. Creditː This idea has been sort of inspired by Simon Sinek's quote, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe."

The second phase would focus on contributing to a Wikimedia project. This time the project would be Bangla Wikipedia. A super-short demonstration of Media-Wiki syntax will take place which won't take more than 20 minutes. Instead of watching tiresome editing examples, they'll learn to "explore" Bangla Wikipedia. They'll be shown what happens in Bangla Wikipedia, how many people are there, how to interact with the community and how the overall system works. After the short second training session, they'll get a "homework". The participants will have to complete "The Wikipedia Adventure" which is a super-fun way to learn editing Wikipedia within the shortest time. Our intuition says a significant portion of the participants will drop here which we may call cost for our project. We want to minimize this "cost" to the lowest possible amount.

The third phase would be a complete edit-a-thon. Before entering this phase, another training session will take place solely focusing on the edit-a-thon rules. The possible time-span for the edit-a-thon is 7 days. After the edit-a-thon, we will arrange a "closing ceremony".

We are interested to measure the impact of this new approach in a scientific way and see if this really works. But we don't have the expertise to collect data from the "traditional approach" and our new approach and analyze them to make a decision whether this "Ideology centered" approach works well than the "editing basic - centered" approach or not. We also want to know whether it's the "lack of motivation" or anything else that increases the "cost" of an outreach project. If "motivation" is the key, than this approach can be a game changer.

Primary Plan

The whole event will last 15 days. The first three days will be spent introducing the participants to Wikimedia movement. They'll also take a basic understanding of the Mediawiki syntax using The Wikipedia Adventure. The last seven days will give them a chance to show their newly acquired skills in action; they'll participate in an editathon. The rules of the editathon will be designed keeping complete newbies in mind particularly. So, the whole arrangement is going to be extremely newcomer friendly.

We'll arrange a number of workshops during this period of ten days. We plan to arrange at least two workshops during the first portion of the timeline. (The first three days, when the freshers will be introduced to the Movement) and before diving into the editathon, we'll arrange one more workshop which will focus on the editathon rules particularly. During the editathon, we've plans to arrange at least two sessions where participants will get a chance to interact with the facilitators directly and ask questions. We will be also open if the participants want to get extra sessions with us. After the editathon, we will take another 10 days to review their works and prepare the results and after that, we'll arrange a closing ceremony to declare the winners.

We've intension to arrange this event in the mid-February. The organizing team will consist of 10 members and the review team will consist of another 10 members. We'll provide 100 USD, 75USD, 50 USD prizes to the winners along with certificates. All the participants (with at least one article reviewed by the team) will get participation certificates. The organizing members and the reviewers will receive certificates. We also have plans to make souvenirs like custom printed mugs, wooden showpieces or something like these and distribute them to the participants, our partner organization and the organizers and reviewers. Organizing team members won't receive any incentive or any monetary compensation for their time except the costs for arrangements and certificates.