User:Fabian Tompsett (WMUK)/Andy's questions

These are my responses to Andy's questions

What is a volunteer?

Presentation at the Wikimedia UK Volunteer Strategy Gathering

In preparation for our event I developed this presentation. What I was trying to get at is the difference between volunteering fro Wikimedia UK which is basically a not-for-profit firm governed by Charity Law, and the Commons-based peer production, which I found important because each one involves different behaviours, attitudes and consequently different issues as regards management.

Can we compare volunteers in different regions/chapters?

An interesting question best answered with a case study. But who has the time? Please see the results of the Wikimedia UK volunteer survey, December 2014 and our Volunteer Strategy Gathering, November 2014. I would certainly appreciate feedback as to whether people from other chapters find this approach useful, and how the results compare to the extent that they use similar questions in their surveys and other data collection they themselves use.

What do volunteers do?

I touched on this above to some extent. What an admin does is quite different from the activities of a deletionist, even though the same person can play different roles at different times. I also go into greater detail below.

If you were to list a volunteer position the same way as a job position, how would you describe it?

Perhaps the first issue here is "When would you want to list a volunteer position the same way as a job position?" My response to that question would be when there is critical activity to be accomplished generally as part of some sort of event. Thus with Wikimania 2014 we drew up a large list of roles, with a rota for people to carry them out, and an intermediate level of volunteer co-ordinators to manage them and ensure that any gaps were filled if someone was not actually available on the day.

Why do people volunteer to Wikimedia/Wikipedia?

Another interesting question. Maybe there has been some research into this.

As volunteer supporters, what is our responsibility to the volunteers?

As a Volunteer supporter working for Wikimedia UK I have quite a lot of responsibility for volunteers, not just morally, but also to a certain extent legally. This should be made clear in the policies of the organisation you work for.

What are volunteers taking from their experience in Wikimedia? What should they take away?

I think we can be seen around a variety of dimensions

• Coding Skills: We should not underestimate the coding skills that people learn through editing. Sometimes I think we make a mistake saying everything is easy - this can be very off-putting for a new volunteer if they find it a bit tricky to find their way at the beginning. If we encourage volunteers to immerse themselves in the coding aspect of editing as far as they feel happy with, this means they can a sense of achievement even if heavy coding of tables is not for them. This is much better than them feeling stupid because they find it a bit hard. This can effect employability.
• Social Skills: Working in a collaborative environment like Wikipedia means that you learn a variety of social skills to do with online interaction. I know we all feel somewhat concerned about negative feelings which arise from edit-wars etc. and it is important that we don't feel complacent about how Wikipedia can become a hostile environment, but the flipside of that is that actually on the whole people try and by positive and supportive to each other. This can effect employability.
• A sense of community: I feel face-to-face events are very important to help wikimedians realise that Wikimedia projects aren't just websites, but communities and indeed can become hybrid communities. Certainly in my own experience, participating in monthly meetups increased my involvement in editing, and also made more considerate of other editors. This can effect well-being.

How do you coordinate your volunteers? How do they react?

I think I prefer the term "facilitate": perhaps I co-ordinate the resources. I am sometimes concerned that volunteers might be come simply instrumentalised - treated as another resource - rather than understood as the lifeblood of the Wikimedia movement. Sometimes I use the term "activist" to describe what wikimedians do as participants in Wikimedia projects, and volunteers when they take on a specific role in the context of delivering an event like Wikimania. The two terms describe different sorts of relationships and different expectations. I find it useful to be clear about this. For example working as an activist on a particular wiki-project has a different dynamic to volunteering to represent Wikipedia at an event like the Science Museum Late. The first is open ended, for the second we all had to be at the Museum on time and were given lanyard to identify ourselves, and indeed acted in a more formal way. I have found that as long as we are clear about the roles and the sort of expectations that are linked to them, then things will go well. I never like pressurising people into volunteering: if they cannot see the value of the activity, whether to them personally or looked at in a broader framework, then maybe it ius who need to rethink our approach.

How do you "recruit" new volunteers? How do you keep them active?

One of the key things about the "Wiki-way" is being self-motivated and collaborative, and I feel this is reflected in having an iterative process by which people are drawn into the design of activities as soon as possible. When this works well, it can have a snowball effect as they encourage their friends to get involved, and it helps in the creation of viable communities which sustain their own activities without continued intervention by paid staff of the chapter. Such communities may then develop aspirations which require more formal organisation, particularly when dealing with formal organisations like educational or GLAM institutions. This then creates the opportunities for new micro-communities to develop within institutions - Wikimedia enthusiasts in the GLAM sector, or educationalists who use the education extension. These groups may need resources, whether access to social space, training, funds for travel or refreshments, and it is by working with the key people in these micro-communities to assess and meet these needs that we have an activist base within which new volunteers can find their feet and determine their specific personal interest, and then provide a pool of enthusiasts who are keen to get involved in the next project a chapter is organising. Remember the barn raising approach: micro-communities will happily support other micro-communities achieve goals otherwise beyond their reach with the expectation that they will receive similar support when they project needs support. An effective volunteer support organiser can promote this approach from a NPOV, thus enabling the micro-communities to be knit together into a broader, diverse community of communities functioning across platforms (sister projects, languages), topics areas, sector (GLAM, education), thus offering volunteers a network of useful contacts enabling them to take projects forward without the continual, detailed individual support of a Volunteer Support Organiser.