CIS-A2K/Outreach Programs/Editor Growth & Contribution Campaign

What is Editor Growth & Contribution Program?

Editor Growth & Contribution Campaign

The Editor Growth & Contribution Program will help raise the number of active editors on Wikimedia projects. The program will provide an entrance point for newcomers to Wikipedia, enabling them to contribute to its contents and share the knowledge they possess, while participating and communicating with existing Wikipedia community members.

This program focuses on small-to-medium sized Wikimedia projects and on designing, testing, and implementing online programs to attract and retain new editors in these language communities. The pilots and programs on-wiki that Editor Growth and Contribution will use in order to encourage new editors are intended to serve as a compliment to off-wiki outreach activities already underway.

Steps

Steps involved in Editor Growth & Contribution Program

The work on Editor Growth and Contribution Program involves four main steps:

Research : Learn about the underlying factors, reasons and motivations which drive new and potential users to contribute to various Wikimedia projects, as well as understanding the needs of the current editing communities
Planning : Work with the local communities to prepare plans for programs to support community growth
Action : Design, test, and implement programs based on the research findings
Evaluation : Evaluate the outcome of programs based on criteria defined in the planning stage for measuring success, improve the programs as needed, and support the community to expand programs that demonstrate success

Why run Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia?

Telugu Wikipedia at a glance July 2012

1. As per Wikimedia Stats Telugu speaking population is around 8 crore. Telugu Wikipedia has about 18 lakh page views per month and 21 active editors (5+ edits in a month).

In a community with such large number of speaker but extremely low number of Wikipedia editors, there seems to be a lot of scope and opportunity to increase Wikipedia's reach and awareness amongst Telugu speaking population and more so amongst reader of Telugu Wikipedia to start improving and expanding Wikipedia articles and foster the growth of Telugu Wikipedia community.

Comaprision of Telugu Wikipedia with other langauge Wikipedias

2. Number of speakers of other Dravidian languages like Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil is relatively low but have higher number of page views and active editors as compared to Telugu as seen in the table on the right. KA, ML and TA Wikipedia communities have run different programs over time to increase it's reach, spread more awareness and invite new editors. Some of these programs were TamilWiki Media Contest, Tamil Wikipedia Contribution Campaign, Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program, Kannada Medical Project etc. Telugu Wikipedia requires a similar high impact project that can help them grow their community.

How will the Editor Growth & Contribution Program run on Telugu Wikipedia?

3 Levels of Editor Growth & Contribution Program

Editor contribution campaign program will run in 3 levels.

Level 1: Contribution Campaign Banner
Level 2: Landing Page
Level 3: Tutorial Page

Level 1: Contribution Campaign Banner

To invite users to start editing Wikipedia, we will run banners using the local site notice on Telugu Wikipedia Wikipedia.
These banner will be in form of short bios/stories of Telugu Wikipedians who agree to be featured in the editor campaign. Most Wikipedia visitors are unaware of the fact that regular folks write articles on Wikipedia and not scholars or paid writers. These personal stories from active Wikipedians could feature their motivation to contribute, their passion for building and developing Wikipedia, their early experience with Wikipedia as an editor, their invitation to site visitors to become Wikipedia editors etc. Such personal stories will add a human touch to Wikipedia and will help new visitors related to real life stories.
One or two experienced Wikipedians can take the responsibility to invite highly contributing editors to provide this intro. This feature should be completely voluntary and with permission as some might be shy to share personal details and photograph.
Along with a picture, bio/ personal story the banner could feature a short message such as "Do you see an error on this article? Could you help us improve and expand this article? You can fix it by clicking "edit"!
Examples of short bio of User:Mathanaharan for Tamil Wikipedia Contribution Campaign can be seen below.

User:Mathanaharan's bio for Tamil Wikipedia Contribution Campaign

Examples of more short bios collected by Tamil Wikipedia community for contribution campaign can be seen here.
These bios will be turned into banners on the Telugu Wikipedia main page, switching out a banner every week.
Example of banners that were running on Tamil Wikipedia can be found below.

Two of the many banners running on Tamil Wikipedia during Contribution Campaign

Examples of more banners from Tamil Wikipedia can be found here.

Level 2: Landing Page

A possible layout of the Landing Page

Each of these banners will link to a landing page. The landing page will start with a question at its top saying “What would you like to do in Wikipedia?” followed by six buttons each listing an answer to this question, and linking to the corresponding tutorial page.

These six buttons will be:

Create your username
Create your userpage
Edit an existing article (Fix a typo)
Add a reference
Create a new article
Send a message

Landing page will be designed in a simple way to avoid any visual distraction for the visitor. We should also aim to used as little text as possible in order to quickly guide visitors to their target page without spending much time reading.

Finally, at the bottom of the landing page, we could add a link to add a new comment in the landing discussion page, in hopes of gathering early feedback/questions/concerns from visitors and the Telugu wikipedia community can engage with new visitors on this discussion page.

Level 3: Tutorial Page

Each of the buttons in the landing page will connect to a corresponding tutorial page giving a step-by-step instruction on how to complete each task. The tutorial activities will cover both creating new content and improving the existing content of Wikipedia.

Each tutorial page will contain a series of snapshots of Wikipedia along with comments pointing out the call for action (e.g. Click “Edit”) and a simple explanation. The figure on the left shows the first step of fixing a typo in an existing article. The example is in English and will have to be translated to be used in Telugu Wikipedia.

What will be the measures of success for this program?

Various aspects on which analysis will be run and success will be measured are shared:

Stage 1: Program Design	Measure of success #1:	Create an effective and well documented program design along with the Telugu Wikipedia community members.
Stage 1: Program Design	Measure of success #2:	Divide responsibilities amongst Telugu Wikipedians for a clear and efficient work plan.
Stage 2: Program Work Plan	Measure of success #3:	Collect short bios/personal stories of minimum 6 experienced Wikipedia to be displayed as banners during the campaign
Stage 2: Program Work Plan	Measure of success #4:	Prepare and translate documents for landing page and tutorial page
Stage 3: Implementation	Measure of success #5:	Run the campaign successfully for minimum of 12 weeks.
Stage 4: Analysis	Measure of success #6:	Number of clicks on the landing page
	Measure of success #7:	Number of clicks on the tutorial page
	Measure of success #8:	Number of new user accounts of user pages created during the campaign
	Measure of success #9:	Number of new visitors who edit during the campaign
	Measure of success #10:	Number of new visitors who leave comments on Landing discussion page.