Global Volunteer Leaders On Wiki (GLOW)

GLOW or Global Volunteer Leaders On Wiki is an intervention program designed to create interest for people to edit in Wikimedia Projects by empowering volunteers.

This program is designed to systematically calculate resources and conditions. It is to ensure results and deliverables particularly increasing the readership by increasing the number of very active contributors who contribute to additional valuable content in a certain period of time and increase the quantity and/ or the quality of our content.

Background

The program is introduce as an intervention since currently Wikimedia project culture identify as "not welcoming to strangers/ visitors" of the website. Although the site is “free for anyone to edit”, globally statistic shows that the numbers of very active editors is stagnant – worse, the same statistic number may not show very active contributors who leave – considering that there's an assumption of additional new very active contributors every now and then. Discussion shows that it may be a result of both "high technical barrier" or "social structure" developed within community.

In short, Wikipedia is not attractive to edit, people didn't see the advantage of learning the technological side of it (wiki) or the benefit of getting involve in it socially. In general they are not compelled to become one (volunteer) providing the existence of barriers and the absent of incentive. These problems threats the wikimedia strategic goal worldwide: increase readership.

Alexa noted that Wikipedia is rank eight, while in Indonesia, where the internet infrastructure is getting better and more people are able to connect to the internet, it dropped to number thirteen, several numbers below top two free blogging sites: blogger and wordpress.

Combining lesson learn and better practice of two Wikimedia pilot projects using University students, professors, and volunteer in Indonesia (Free Your Knowledge 2010 writing competition) and in United States of America (Public Policy Initiative), the designers of these initiatives (the team) from Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Indonesia met in San Fransisco on November 2010 to brainstorm and explore the possibility of using a new intervention project that feasible to apply globally.

Focused intervention similarity: Wikipedia and Universities

Both pilot interventions (U.S. and Indonesia) approaches universities as entry point of interference, where students contribute, professors rate the contributions, and wikipedia used as the platform to allow learning/ rating process by providing additional entity as a medium to allow smooth transition for both learning and rating process interaction without overwhelming the existing volunteer.

Based on the previous pilot lesson learn and better practice, the team then prepared selected information needed and schematic process of the previous pilot project to answers some of the basic questions that arises.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Question)

Question: Where?

“ Where should we held an intervention project? ”

• Should an intervention program done on language-based project? (i.e English Wikipedia, Indonesian language Wikipedia, Javanese language Wikipedia) without considering the location? Or,
• Should an intervention program done based a location? (i.e Brazil, Philippines, U.S., Africa) without considering the language based project (i.e. Indian editing English Wikipedia vs Indian editing Hindi Wikipedia)

Answer: Depends, what available resources do you got?

“ Intervention project should consider available resources that exist both on the language based project and/or location based project in order to be feasible ”

Schematic intervention by location

Intervention initiative introduced in the absent of volunteers in a certain location.

Schematic intervention by language

Intervention initiative introduced in the absent of volunteers in a certain language.