Learning patterns/Strategies to achieve editing contest goals

Learning Pattern Library

Strategies to achieve editing contest goals

problemYou set great contest goals, now all you need is strategies to achieve them!

solutionIdeas like adding a few links to an event page or using social media to promote your contest can help meet contest goals.

creator• KHarold (WMF)

status:in progress

What problem does this solve?

You and your community have set great goals for an editing contest. Some of the ideas below can help you achieve your goals.

What is the solution?

Fill content gap

• Work with a partner organization who has experts who can judge (30 minute time commitment from expert judges), or who can help develop a worklist/bibliography
• Use tools to identify content gaps
• Consider working with university students studying the content gap subject. Offering a cash prize is not a bad idea, either.

Foster collaboration

• Give points to both competitors if they collaborate on an article
• Give a prize for collaboration, i.e. person who made most edits to other articles
• Tools to measure collaboration:

Bring in new users

• Use social media to reach new audiences
• Support new users with links to training resources such as interactive training programs online developed by WMF or the Wikipedia Adventure.
• Give a prize to best new user.

Volunteer capacity development

• Use short contests as a ‘sandbox’ for new program volunteers
• Ask volunteers to sign up for small roles.
• Find volunteers to support a program

Motivate existing editors

• Have judges help contestants set goals for themselves.
• Use a scoreboard or leaderboard to track contributions, or post weekly rankings on social media (wikiwomen). Link to WMNO contest pages.

See also

Examples

• “We use online writing contests as a ‘play area’ for trying to boost the commitment of Wikimedians. For example, you have Wikimedians who join your organization and you want to check if they are good at managing projects, we invite them to manage an online writing contest, often they are enthusiastic about this. If something goes wrong, it is not a big problem. It is a good way for us to test the level of commitment for new members of our volunteer community and give them ownership of projects.”  -- User:Kippelboy, Cátalan Wikipedia

Related patterns

• Filling content gaps