User:Astinson (WMF)/WikiProjects

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Help us find WikiProjects or other online collaboration spaces!

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 for some Wikimedia communities (See the “Definition” section).

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! 

Help us document examples

Share a WikiProject or Collaboration you have participated in!

Not involved in a collaboration?

Give us feedback on the talk page

Interested in sharing privately?

Email Astinson (WMF)

Definition: What do we mean by WikiProject or other Collaborative editing initatives?

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

Open this collapse box to learn more about other documentation we have reviewed!

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 have a fair amount of evidence that some of the most active English Wikipedia WikiProjects have been incredibly effective (i.e. Women Scientists, Women in Red, Medicine, Military History or Climate Change). Moreover we have a fair amount of evidence that topical initiatives focused on outreach but not explicitly scoped as WikiProjects can work (i.e. Gender Organizing community, Black Lunch Table), campaigns (i.e. WikiForHumanRights, Art+Feminism) and writing contests (i.e Afro Cine Month).   We have a handful of documented examples of outreach initiatives have also used the structure of a WikiProject to effectively facilitate a better collaboration between on and off-wiki groups to allow community of practice growth beyond the outreach, (see for example Mais Teoria de Historia in Portuguese Wikipedia,  Wikiproject Occupational Safety and Health or  WikiProject United Nations). We are also reviewing the documentation of WikiProjects in the following places: Signpost’s WikiProject Report WikiProjects documented on Diff WikiProjects documented in the GLAM-Wiki Newsletter We have also used this query of Wikidata to explore WikiProjects on different languages (i.e. what is 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.