Hatch-A-Wikimedian

Hatch-A-Wikimedian is a project of Wiki Advocates Philippines that aims to train new and existing editors to be ambassadors and community outreach organizers for different wikiprojects, communities and clubs. Wiki Advocates Philippines is a group of Bicolano editors that organized the Hatch-A-Wikiproject, a series of editathons and meet-ups that developed Wiksyunaryo, Wikisambit and Wikikawikaan out of Incubator. This pilot project is also supported by Art+Feminism through the Network Organizer in the Philippines. With the creation of the Leadership Development Plan, the group has intended to incorporate the resource into this existing program. The essence of Hatching A Wikimedian is taking birth to a leader in the Wikimedia Community.

While working on these two specific courses, Administratorship and Campaign Organizer, the group will provide a local translation of specific points in the LDP that we see are beneficial for the local community. There is also a goal to simplify the content for those who are new to the movement and provide additional visualization to make it more engaging for readers. Successful participants will be asked to provide testimonials of the Hatch-A-Wikimedian experience to be included in the publication of the LDP booklet.

Objectives

To broaden the scope of promoting global awareness on gender, feminism, and climate crises and continue preserving culture and language, Wiki Advocates Philippines will endeavor to train and form new community organizers that will create programs, and hold meet-ups within their local communities. These organizers will continue to bridge the gap in these knowledge areas through the use of wikiprojects and other open knowledge sources. In its first days of implementation, the group has focused on building editor and campaign organizing skills. The first session have focused with networking with newbie volunteers and eventually we have the chance to join as a group during the Learning Clinic being conducted by the Let's Connect team, tackling "Thriving as a Wikimedian in A Good Working Atmosphere", a crash course on UCoC and Friendly Space Policy.

With the creation of the Leadership Development Plan, the group has decided that this tool could be used as the backbone for the implementation of this current program. While we seek to develop them as contributors of open knowledge, we also perceive that each volunteer has their own individual capacities to take the lead in creating programs, leading campaigns, or being curators of different Wikimedia projects.

Hatch-A-Wikimedian course is supported by the Movement Strategy Implementation Grant and we have identified three practical outcomes each student may become after the training.

Administrator
Community Organizer
User Group Ambassador

Determining the tracks for participants

There are two courses offered, one for an administrator, which would include the basic tutorials on editing, the nature of the wikiproject selected (Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikipedia, etc.), criteria for being an administrator, and guidelines on how to administer a wikiproject. Another course is for campaign organizers; this would include creating a rapid fund, using edit tracking tools (Hashtag Tracker tool, Event Registration, and Program and Events Dashboard), planning and facilitating the program, and project reporting. The participants are free to choose which of these two tracks best suits their capacities, but to have a guiding point from which they could determine their capacities, an evaluation form or questionnaire will be given to them. This will assess their level of experience, either in editing or organizing. We understood that in some instances, a participant may change their option based on the level of their advancement or simply because of interest. Both tracks obviously need to be excellent leaders, so we will not confine them to their first option, although compliance will now prove to be harder since they would need to comply with both requirements for each track. These details will be thoroughly discussed at the start of the program.

Target Metrics

In order to assess the success of the program, we have identified practical numbers for the expected outputs. This will determine the learning of the participants if the fund was well spent based on the project objectives, and if this project would either need further improvement or filter out redundancies in terms of its scope.