Wikimedians of the Levant/Reports/2020/WikiGap

Within Wikimedia Levant's vision for organizing Wikimedians who share similar interests, challenges [and] needs, it's extremely important to eliminate gender bias as far as possible in our community. Our user group already has a nearly equal percentage of male to female members, but this balance is yet to be fairly represented in either our online editing community or our content, which still suffers from a severe gender gap. We aspire to bridge this gap and achieve a more balanced community through various events and activities, of which WikiGap is still the most particularly prominent.

Previous versions

WikiGap Amman 2019.

Wikimedia Levant has been partnering with the Swedish Embassy, in addition to various other organizations and groups, to bring WikiGap event to Amman since 2018. WikiGap has been a major success in Jordan and has produced results ranking very high globally, in spite of the relatively small size of the country and its active community.

In the event, which takes place for about six consecutive hours during the closest Thursday to the International Women Day (March 8th), participants receive thorough training on how to edit Wikipedia, then each of them are assigned a single article about a Jordanian or Levantine woman to add to Wikipedia. Most of the contributions are made in Arabic, but some are also in English. Common partners in WikiGap Amman include UN Women, Jordanian Open Source Association, Women In Business, Writer's Cell and Al-Khwarizmi Academy (the hosting institution).

In 2018, the event has produced a total of 149 articles, which made it one of the most successful versions globally. In 2019, about 130 articles were contributed.

Lessons learnt

For purposes of quality control and organization, it's essential that the number of participants doesn't significantly exceed the capacity of the available Wikimedian trainers. This should be taken in mind when promoting the event. Past years produced poor results in terms of quality due to an overwhelming amount of attendees.
From this years' experience, it could be estimated that each Wikimedian can provide support for up to 5-6 participants at a time (3-4 of us were able to provide very reasonable support for a room of 20-25 people at one point). Otherwise, there's a shortage in staff and inability to keep track of content.
Training sessions during an edit-a-thon come at a cost. The average participant spends an hour or so at the event, of which at least half would be dedicated to a training session. Therefore, when holding such sessions, participants produce much less content and seem less likely to be interested in continuing. On the other hand, getting directly to writing allowed some to produce up to five articles during their participation, which was enough to make them invested and even develop an interest in being long-term contributors. This was the first time we were able to successfully recruit WikiGap participants as members of Wikimedia Levant. It can also be hypothesized that personal coaching (as opposed to group training) is far more likely to lead to a recruitment.
Preparing quality lists goes a long way towards a successful editing workshop.
Translating articles is far easier to new participants than doing their own research. This especially applies to cultures where there's low awareness of such issues as plagiarism (a major problem during WikiGap).
Technical preparation is a life-saver. It's almost necessary to check out issues such as IP address account creating limit, vandalism filters and speedy deletion actions beforehand. These issues may lead to loss of a much valuable time.

Goals

Produce & improve content

Develop 50 articles
Attract 50 participants

Outcomes

163 articles developed, 334% of the target met.
116 participated, 232% of the target met.

Results

Amman

102 articles developed, with around 500,000 bytes added.
Around 100 participants.

Created/edited articles

Palestine

61 articles developed, with around 256,000 bytes added.
Around 16 participants.

Wikimedians of the Levant/Reports/2020/WikiGap

Previous versions

Lessons learnt

Goals

Outcomes

Results

Amman

Created/edited articles

Palestine

Created/edited articles

See also