Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Wiki Dialogues - A concept for digital learning in Wikipedia communities

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Summary

Exchanging ideas, sharing findings and skills , working on solutions together - The “Wiki-dialogues” offer a new format to address problematic issues on cooperation within the Wikimedia-community and discuss them in a structured, time-restricted and solution-oriented way. The recently published brochure " Wiki Dialogues - A concept for digital learning in Wikipedia communities" gives an overview about the concept and serves as a guideline for initiating own Wiki Dialogues.

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The Wiki Dialogue concept took its inspiration from cMOOCs (connectivist massive open online courses), an open, digital format that enables participatory and self-guided learning in “communities of practice”. Photo by Prof. Dr. Ilona Buchem, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The project “Wiki Dialogues” was developed in 2014 as a consequence of the “Wikipedia Diversity” project, which defined digital exchanges and learning opportunities as meaningful supplements to the work already being done in Wikipedia communities.

A Wiki Dialogue is an online format for digital, dialogue-oriented learning, where Wikipedians discuss various topics related to Wikipedia and its sister projects and work on topics together. These topics go beyond writing articles and focus more on overarching aspects of working together within Wikipedia and on diversity within the Wikipedia community. Wiki Dialogues consist of a series of open online seminars, which are like workshops during which a special topic (e.g. quality) and a shared goal (e.g. signpost article) is foregrounded. A Wiki Dialogue can last several days to several weeks, but as a rule do not last longer than ten months. Topics, goals, content and interim steps of the collaboration are documented digitally if possible, e.g. on Wiki pages or in a database. Various digital media are used in Wiki Dialogues to support the dialogue and the collaboration, depending on the particular group's preference and needs. Any Wikipedian can participate in the Wiki-Dialogues. The details of the topic to be discussed as well as of the organization of the dialogues are, in the spirit of active participation, left to the participants themselves. Each Wiki Dialogue has a facilitator, who plays a key role as a communications guide in the particular Wiki Dialogue. Facilitators initiate and moderate the dialogue within a community, set the framework for the content, provide suggestions on topics and ideas and links to further information, organize accompanying online events and are responsible for the infrastructure.

The Wiki Dialogue concept took its inspiration from cMOOCs (connectivist Massive Open Online Courses), an open, digital format that enables participatory and self-guided learning in “communities of practice”. cMOOCs foreground exchange on a particular topic and thus share learning within a social, practice-oriented community. As cMOOCs, Wiki Dialogues follow the connectivist principles of collaborative production of knowledge through networked learning (cf. connectivism). In contrast to the conventional, primarily asynchronous Wikipedia discussions, Wiki Dialogues aim for direct, and when possible synchronous exchange and collaborative creation of artifacts or knowledge products that serve as support, inspiration, templates and/or recommendations for working together within Wikipedia, such as:

• Quality criteria for Wikipedia articles
• Profile of requirements for the granting of awards
• Event preparation

Several Wiki Dialogues were initiated in the German Wikipedia, one of which focused on the question "Why did it become less attractive for editors to write "good articles?". The goal was to write a common article for the Wikipedia:Kurier (the equivalent to the signpost in the German Wikipedia) that summarizes the current problems of the quality discussions and aims to encourage further constructive discussion. Now that we evaluated the first Wiki Dialogues, we want to share the concept with the international Wikimedia Community and therefore produced the brochure “Wiki-Dialogues - A concept for digital learning in Wikipedia communities” which contains comprehensive information about the project and serves as a guideline for initiating own dialogues.

The brochure can be downloaded as PDF via Wikimedia Commons, and we are looking forward to your questions and comments on Meta. The format was developed by Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany), Wikimedia CH (Switzerland), and Wikimedia Österreich (Austria) in cooperation with Beuth University of Applied sciences in Berlin

Christopher Schwarzkopf, Wikimedia Deutschland

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