Campaigns/WikiProjects
Help us find WikiProjects or other online collaboration spaces!
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As part of the 2024 work on Campaign Programs and Product at the Wikimedia Foundation, we would like to learn more about how you use collaboration spaces on Wikimedia projects like WikiProjects. We want to make sure that software features on the wikis facilitate collaboration between experienced Wikipedia editors, in the same way that Events and Campaigns help bring newcomers and outside experts to the wikis.
We need your help to better understand WikiProjects or similar online collaboration spaces and why they work (or don't work) for some Wikimedia communities (See the “Definition” section). This way, we can learn how we can potentially help or improve the experiences that exist today, so it's easier for more people to take part in WikiProjects or other forms of on-wiki collaboration.
Not all WikiProjects work (see the Existing documentation section) and not all wikis need a collaboration structure like a WikiProject (smaller wikis allow better collaboration since there are few collaborators), but for most of the larger wikis something like a WikiProject exists (there are at least 4000 individual WikiProject-like spaces on the wikis). We want to learn what makes them work, and how they help you create collaborations on-wiki!
We need your help!
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Please respond to any of these options in your preferred language! The English language questions can be found here, to translate the questions to your local language create a subpage of Campaigns/WikiProjects/Preload/ with your language code.
Definition: What do we mean by WikiProject or other Collaborative editing initatives?
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Not all wikis have WikiProjects, and the word “WikiProject” is applied to different kinds of efforts in the Wikimedia movement. Other concepts describing collaborative editing intiatives include topical neighborhoods, topical collaboration, task forces and sometimes simply “project”. We want to hear about all of these! If you are in doubt, complete this short form. But if it helps, here is a simple definition of scope:
We are hoping to learn more about:
- Persistent collaborations with no clear, predetermined end date (though collaboration might stop)
- With an on wiki home-page or portal that acts as a community space
- Intended to help participants collaborate better to do something in the Wikimedia community as a community with shared goals (i.e. creating content on a specific topic or managing a workflow, etc)
We are not looking for examples of :
- Activities with clear endings where participation is expected to stop (i.e. writing contests or events)
- GLAM or Education projects that have a tightly agreed upon scope with a partner institution or a collaborator.
- Formal organizations like Affiliates, student groups or other “clubs” or meetup groups
Learn about other documentation
edit| Open this collapse box to learn more about other documentation we have reviewed! |
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Most of the widely available and documented evidence of WikiProjects working really well come from case studies largely from English Wikipedia and a limited number of examples from other larger Wikis such as French Wikipedia, or Wikidata (i.e. Government Agencies or Brazilian Law). This evidence falls into three buckets:
We are also reviewing the documentation of WikiProjects in the following places:
We have also used this query of Wikidata to explore WikiProjects on different languages and this query to see how many exist per language Wikipedia, and you can explore each wiki with this query, used on Vietnamese Wikipedia). We acknowledge that in their current state most WikiProjects may appear dormant or non-functioning for some reason. Our hope is to identify what is working about the ones that people are most engaged in, to identify what kinds of systems help people collaborate. |
Responses
edit- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I had done a lot of work on WikiProject Novels on English Wikipedia, but after grad school was tired of spending time on literature topics. I spend some time thinking about what I wanted to learn in the world, and what impact I wanted to have and Climate Change seemed like a pretty obvious place to work. I was really proud of the different kinds of topics that I discovered and worked on, while I learned more about the science and communication fo climate change.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- I think one of the most important features was a good core group of collaborators with a lot of on-wiki experience, but beyond that it was also the Popular Pages and "Hot articles" tools maintained by community tech
- Also, bambot was good for finding thigns to do: https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Climate_change.html, and the rater tool for evaluating the articles.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- I think its really hard for new editors to find the WikiProject, so its impossible to tell how to grow the project, unless you keep running into editors on the local wiki.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- I have set up several WikiProjects on English Wikipedia, and everytime it take me down a maze of tools and gadgets, I wish there was better workflow for the discovery and setup of the topics. I also think tagging thousands of pages is a pain.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wiki?
- WikiProjects make Wikipedia a warmer place, they also encourage people to be community-oriented
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- the assessment categories and to do categories are especially useful
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- generally I’d like it if there was another assessment table for your wikiproject's articles that had other WikiProject topics on one column, and gradings on another, as this would identify people’s interests and assist them better. I'm not sure if there's code for this
- @Kowal2701: If I understand this correctly, you would like to be able to discover the overlaps between two projects? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, and this could foster interaction between WikiProjects Kowal2701 (talk) 21:52, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- and collaboration Kowal2701 (talk) 21:53, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- generally I’d like it if there was another assessment table for your wikiproject's articles that had other WikiProject topics on one column, and gradings on another, as this would identify people’s interests and assist them better. I'm not sure if there's code for this
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- a lot of people prefer working independently, and while WikiProjects should serve as a place for collaboration, they should also consider how to assist these people. Also editor time is valuable so projects need to be focussed on constructively improving the encyclopedia, rather than just being there because the topic is deserving of a wikiproject. The taskforce system is a really great way of livening up wikiprojects imo. One issue is that nobody responds on talk pages of wikiprojects and I don't know why
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- It's probably the most stable projectrelated to a GLAM in the wiki
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- It's a big umbrella project with smaller campaigns, with a limited time each.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- Lots of pictures uploaded.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Passionate small editor base.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- This collaboration showed the potential for engaging with an international community expert on a specific topic and how to make an impact through both formal and informal methods of engagement with this community for the benefit of both the community itself and the Wikiverse.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- Having a project page on Wikidata was vital for communication purposes as the conference website was slow to provide information on the Wikidata workshop being offered as well as slow to provide information on the workshop. Also participants sharing Workshop resources on WikiCommons was vital as it provided a place for participants of the workshop to obtain a copy of resources produced to support the workshop. The author disambiguator tool was a pivotal tool used to "wikify" the conference. Without it it would have been difficult to link scientific authors at the conference to their papers held in Wikidata.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- The event dashboard never works quite as well as I'd like. We were short staffed at the Wikidata workshop portion of the WikiProject and so had limited time to ensure participants were added to the dashboard. It also didn't update as quickly as I'd like. Participants are often motivated by seeing their numbers creep up during the event. The delay in the totting up the number of edits can make the dashboard less effective.
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- As a small and time limited WikiProject we didn't use the "discussion" page of our WikiProject page on Wikidata. We tended to use other forms of communication such as zoom calls, email and WhatsApp - all of which worked well for both specific Wikiproject business as well as organisation such keeping project participants up to date as to travel arrangements, meeting for dinner etc. I don't know whether this will actually require solving but I just thought I'd point out the discussion page was too specific for our more general discussion needs.
- Please link to a WikiProject or an on-wiki community collaboration that you think “works”.
- Why is this collaboration important to you and your experience on the wikis?
- I am very interested in modeling paintings on Wikidata, and the work done on this project helps me find things to work on and helps me understand how to improve them.
- What specific tools or features of the community make this collaboration or WikiProject successful?
- The project has many active users, over many years. The most important factor is Multichill's dedication to building scrapers and reports, and standardizing models. See the discussion under “How has this project been so successful?” on the Talk page.
- If you could change one thing about your WikiProject or on-wiki collaboration to make it more effective, what would you change? (Feel free to list multiple suggestions if they occur to you.)
- Make “ping project” work on larger projects!
- The Wikimedia Foundation Campaign Product team is researching WikiProjects and other on-wiki collaborations to make it easier for like-minded contributors to connect with each other. Is there anything you think we should consider as we continue to study WikiProjects?
- It should be easier to set up a new project. I’d like to see a New Project Wizard:
- Tool asks for a project name
- Tool prompts you to pick a category from a drop-down
- Tool prompts you to select a navigation template (from 3-5 of the most used styles - happy to discuss this further)
- Tool prompts you to enter names for the tabs/subpages your project needs.
- Tool creates the project pages with the navigation templates in place.
- Tool populates the “participants” subpage with boilerplate text and adds you to it.
- it should also be easier to create data modeling/item structure pages. To create tables like the ones at d:WikiProject_Visual_arts/Item_structure, I want a tool where I can enter the QID of a well-modeled example and have the tool spit out the table using examples from the QID I entered. Ideally, I would like to be able to enter additional QIDs and have the tool add any additional statements from those QIDs to the table, with examples to the entered QIDs.