Wikimedia Argentina/GLAM Program Evaluation 2016/New Iberocoop contest: our culture in other Wikipedias

Our culture in other Wikipedias: new Iberocoop contest edit

Introduction edit

From May 1st until May 31st Wikimedia Argentina carried out a new editing contest with the Iberocoop network. This contest has a significant importance since it was the first time we proposed to edit about the culture of the countries that belong to the network outside our Wikipedias.

History edit

Wikimedia Argentina has been working intensely to develop innovative proposals for the Iberocoop network. For Wikimedia Argentina, Iberocoop is the perfect setting to work in an inclusive way with all the region in activities and projects that pursue similar objectives. All in all, we consider that all the organizations from the region work together because of and for the same objectives and that joint actions make us stronger. This idea of collective work bounded to the need of making our culture known beyond our Wikipedias was the seed that made this contest or activity grow and develop. Chapters and users tend to work both in the same language, and even though the movement is global, we usually improve the Wikipedias related to our main languages. This situation creates a huge disparity regarding the present contents of Wikipedias. In this regard, although we know it is impossible to homogenize and we don't consider that it is convenient either, it is true that from Wikimedia Argentina and Iberocoop, we set out to position model articles related to our cultures which weren't available in other Wikipedias, so that our countries’ culture could begin to be better known outside our borders, and so we could break the cultural stereotypes as well. Particularly, in the case of Argentina, from all the suggested articles, 50% were about notable women of our history who weren’t present in other Wikipedias.
The specific objectives we followed with this contest were the following:

  1. Breaking stereotypes and breaking cultural constructions: all the cultural references present in most of the rest of Wikipedias were rough outlines related to the characters, culture and defining moments of our culture. In most cases, these characteristics correspond to stereotypes which define us only on the surface. The aim is to be able to break this stereotypes and add new contents about the culture of our countries which will help portray a more appropriate historical and cultural reality.
  2. Bringing our editors closer: our community can be defined as a global one, but when the time comes we decide to work locally. Although we believe we should empower and work with our local community, we also consider it positive to improve good articles about our local reality using our editors from other Wikipedias. It is positive to interact with other communities to understand how they work and to be able to learn new strategies and put them into practice in the future, as well.
  3. Reformulating the meaning of improved articles: creating new activities and proposals in other Wikipedias can be a good strategy to improve and make new articles at Wikipedia. Improvements and creation don’t have to be made always on our own Wikipedias, instead, we can work together with other Wikipedias with the aim of improving its contents and quality.

Learning edit

The following learning pattern shows how to organize a contest of this kind.

Outcomes edit

Métricas Resultados del concurso Translating-Iberoamerican
Newly registered 0
Number of female participants 1
Number of participants 51
Number of volunteers involved 11
% Gender parity 1,9%
Number of articles created 425
Number of improved articles n/a
Number of created and improved articles under WMAR quality ratio 425
Number of WMAR volunteers involved 1