User:EGalvez (WMF)/Sandbox/Wikimedia Conference Session Notes

Learning Day

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Volunteer Engagement

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Strengths Struggles
  • Something to offer in exchange - credits for students
  • Sense of ownership
  • Be fun and sense of belonging
  • Partnerships and expertise
  • Regular meet-ups (e.g. wikiSaturdays)
  • Microgrant systems ($ for books, travel)
  • Unity from shared culture and land
  • Put photo of most active editor on main page
  • Contest for best articles <-- works well
  • Power to act solo
  • Appreciation through blogs, media, on-wiki (thanks, talk pages, barnstars)
  • Ownership & Agency
  • Community engagement (indonesia)
  • A2K - Diversity of roles of volunteers
  • Prestigious fundraising program that folks want to be involved with
  • Database list of conacts & history which helps in getting people involved
  • Only accept Wikipedians as program volunteers


  • Distance (e.g. Australia is large)
  • Professional organization and having paid staff - some volunteers dislike this
  • Commitment
  • Culture of volunteering
  • Lack of volunteers
  • Policies & rules
  • Disruption
  • Too few leaders - not enough time
  • Burnout - people once active get tired
  • People wait for training to get involved
  • People don't want responsibility
  • Dominant personalities drive people off
  • Just getting started (very new)
  • Fulfilling time commitment (Indonesia)
  • Neglecting volunteers (eesti)
  • Coordinating communications (CH)
  • Retention (Shared knowledge)
  • Not enough physical meet-ups (A2K)
  • We don't know what to assign when we get new volunteers
  • We don't have on-boarding process for new volunteers or board members (very important but very time consuming)
  • Too much time to explain movement to new comers
  • It's hard to trust people who come from outside the movement (some people)
  • Its difficult to re-engage with community after a long period of absence
  • Need to keep volunteers all the time or else the lose interest
  • Lack of communications across departments (?)


Roles

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  • Internships
  • Mentorships
  • Financial support
  • wiki project specific training (offline)
  • Tutorial videos, handbooks, cheat-books
  • Curiosity
  • make a difference
  • don't make it feel like a factory - think of ways to return dedication further than thank you notes.
  • make sure there is an open door

Existing

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  • Professional training
  • Access to expertise
  • Connections
  • Partnerships
  • Support for grants (local & global)
  • Documentation support
  • organization has notability in the country
  • developing skills
  • fun/social
  • have an emotional connection to wp already
  • Document what you learn
  • be responsive

Motivations

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  • Attend Annual general meeting
  • Legitimate
  • fresh/openness
  • Connection to roots
  • Personal interests attract new volunteers - new exxposure
  • learn & challenge the existing group - shake up
  • bring own projcts
  • No vision yet
  • Students learn with WEP, reinforce what they learn in school
  • sharing vs knowledge vs altruism; learning, reading, writing
  • Wiki Loves Monuments is very different - care more about photographs
  • Provide opportunities
  • Give access to resources, fund for travelling photos,
  • Global underrepresentation for their culture & community; motivated to fill in gaps --> can invite new volunteers to help fill in gaps
  • Money for projects
  • Facilitation, connections
  • interest/agenda
  • Novelty enthusiasm
  • Be involved, help
  • feel more official
  • identity "I'm a Wikipedian.."
  • New, democratic , free
  • Look at my edits!


Existing

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  • havint finished mission
  • skills & resources (e.g. writing articles, content building)
  • Bridge & ambassadors
  • vision of how they will help
  • "volunteers" is value - image of the organization is different of the organization
  • cultural foundation --> "sense of community" how to measure?
  • volunteers stay longer if they become paid staff?
  • Career progression in organization
  • Loyalty, invested
  • ownership/empower
  • Developing skills
  • Career, life development
  • Apply experiences to personal life
  • Organizational changes

Strategies for Engagement

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0 - 6 months

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  • Telling interesting wikimedia stories
  • Role models
  • Mentorships
  • OFfline meetings
  • Access to the brand wikimedia
  • Swags
  • Positive feedback (frequently)
  • Public recognition (depending on volunteer)
  • Connection to peer groups

6 mo - 1 year

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  • Shared power -- move up in organization
  • Welcome! Frendly encouragement
  • Praise --> Recognition
  • Veterans being gracious
  • Give them purpose
  • Process for veterans to help
  • Recognition in press
  • Appearances at conferences
  • How to help chapters groups
  • Show them how to change how they edit
  • Encourage them based on their work
  • Mentors -> get veterans officially involed
  • Give them opportunities to guide
  • Online presence and connections
  • Events for editors


1-2 years

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  • Local meet-ups
  • Recognition
    • Encourage to run own project 00> Funds for projects generated from community, gives a sense of ownership
  • Send to conferences
  • Wikipedia of month/year
  • Attribution via annual reports
  • Engage other NGO's via jury
  • Share stories in local newspapers
  • Organize unconference and engage volunteers ; session leaders & facilitators
  • Mentorship matching when facing challenges
  • Be thankful to those who have been around
  • Send cards & verbal gratitude
  • What would they tell their friends and family?
    • their awards & their work
    • number of articles they've written
    • Good civic involvement & donating time


2+ years

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  • Keep providing opportunities
  • Make sure people have fun
  • Actively reaching out; make them feel there is a good reason to come back --> personalized
  • offline - have an open-office day
  • Announce frequently on the same mailing list
  • It is important to meet people in person to keep volunteers engaged
  • With online volunteers to need to designated times to engage them
  • Make events a series
  • continue to show appreciation
  • Professional developing in areas they are interested in

Community Listening with Surveys

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Group 1

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  • Think of what the results will influence
  • Have questions related to your expectations
  • Test the survey with people (board members, and wikipedians will help you make questions clear and distinct)
  • Volunteers may question why an organization is doing a survey -- may get negative
    • Feedback about the survey
    • Challenged why you are spending money on this
  • Posting survey to village pump and newsletter
  • People compain I didn't hear, I didn't want to hear about this
    • related to topics they didn't like/do not contact
  • List of questions are spcific related to where there was a problem (biased in this way)
  • For proper survey, need to watch out for biases
  • Doing surveys about community for replication in other communities
    • Publish Results: commons, WMNL, wiki-l, newsletter
    • Ask communities for input about approaches in the organization (e.g. communications, conflict training, gender, that may result in offline workshop)

Group 2

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  • pre-testing with board/community members - set up a test dataset
  • know and communicate they WHY of your surveys
  • Be clear how the answers can lead to actions
  • Use communicate in the right channels --> local village pump
  • Don't do it too often
  • Focus on questions you really need - do a check for each question

Group 3

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  • Need to target the people intended
  • Know who to target and how - didn't know how to use site notice
  • Questions must be clear and exact
    • Still agenda to what you ask
    • Survey by WMF years ago - questions can skew results if leading questions - leading to answers by method, including inclustion of participants - some dont want to use google surveys
  • Analysis - profession - sometimes need to ask/have someone who knows what they are doing
  • Double check question - ask experienced outsider - pilot with small set of people
  • Not too many questions or all same type of questions
  • Open-ended questions are difficult to analyze - can cause fatigue
  • Need balance
  • Complex language - Response bias

Community involvement

  • Discussion on limit to see what we should ask from who
  • Learn what questions communities need to answer
  • Allow to review an document on designed draft
    • Be cautious if surveys are for research in which knowing in advance may alter future answers.

Group 4

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Strengths

  • Understand demographics
  • Getting information about interests
  • Anonymity

Weaknesses

  • Not enough responses
  • Not representative results
  • Targeting the wrong audience

Opportunities

  • Close in time to an event (right timing)
  • Test with a group
  • Innovative and user friendly design

Threats

  • Bad survey design
  • Survey fatigue
  • Lacking motivation and polarized answers