Fellowship News/2012-10
| Fellowship News |
| VOLUME 1 | October 2012 | ◄ ISSUE 5 |
| General Fellowship Updates |
| by Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowship Program |
October was a month of changes for the Wikimedia Fellowships Program. Peter Coombe's project has ended. Help documentation improvements are well-underway on English Wikipedia thanks to his work, and we're wishing him much success in his future endeavors. As the Wikimedia Foundation begins to narrow it's focus, we're preparing to wind down the Fellowships Program and so no new fellows will be announced to take his place. WMF may investigate other avenues for supporting individual editor's projects via grant-making. Meanwhile, Sarah, Steven, and Tanvir will be continuing their projects for several more months and we'll continue to keep you updated via the News for the rest of 2012, so stay tuned! |
| Dispute Resolution Project |
| led by Steven Zhang |
This month, the Request for Comment was closed in favour of implementing the universal DR request wizard. This process will change how users file requests for dispute resolution, formatting their request in an easy manner and routing it to at the best forum for resolving their dispute. This process is currently under development and should be ready to implement over the coming weeks. A second survey is also being drafted to follow up from the first one. This survey will focus on dispute resolution volunteers in order to learn how they started doing dispute resolution and what encourages them to continue. By learning what motivates existing volunteers, we hope to encourage others to do the same and increase the volunteer pool. This survey will open in early November. |
| Help Pages Redesign Project |
| led by Peter Coombe |
The redesign of the English Wikipedia's main help page is complete and usability tests have demonstrated good results. Implementation of the new design is currently being discussed by the community. Response so far has been very supportive. This month marks the end of Peter's fellowship, and he has written a summary of his work. |
| Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project |
| led by Tanvir Rahman |
This month concludes a 6 week pilot of help documentation improvements in Bangla Wikipedia. A midpoint progress report is now available and a full statistical report on the outcomes is being prepared. Plans are in development for the next Bangla experiment, focusing on building a support system for new editors tailored to a wiki of this size. |
| Teahouse Project |
| led by Sarah Stierch |
We've wrapped up phase 2 of the project, having built increasingly stable systems into the Teahouse to become a volunteer-sustained space on English Wikipedia. The phase 2 project and metrics reports are documented on Meta. Work completed in phase 2 includes automated invites, the redesign of the host lounge and the creation of a maitre' d position. Metrics demonstrate an increase in participation at the Teahouse, increased retention of new editors who participate in the project, and positive movement on the gender gap. |
| WikiWomen's Collaborative |
| led by Sarah Stierch |
We're digging into results of the first month of this social media initiative and an assessment report is in progress. Content for the WikiWomen's Collaborative Facebook page, Twitter feed and blog channel is being created by Sarah and WikiWomen volunteers around the world, using the WikiWomen's organizing hub on Meta. While October has been focused on building the existing community via social channels, November will be focused on engaging women who aren't yet editing Wikipedia & related projects. |