Hmm, I see what you were saying now, Neotarf. We're throwing time, effort, and money at getting people in the door (or at least, an edit-a-thon's door), and some at keeping the long-term editors around, but there's sort of a "doughnut hole" between those two points where we expect people to just sort of find something in the eleventy-million (...that moment when you realize that a joke quantity like "eleventy-million" isn't that far off the mark of reality...) pages on a project that interests them enough to bring them back. With no help except maybe SuggestBot, if they manage to find that.

But what brings people back for edits five through one hundred, at a population level? Getting over the hurdle to showing up for a second day (whether on-wiki or at an event) is often going to call for...let's call it an attention bump. Something that drives people back to logging in even if they'd closed that browser tab. We could stand, as a community, to brainstorm ways to get people in for day two.

It's not enough to just not drive them off (though we struggle managing even that, in some areas/communities), it's that, especially in the case of women, I would expect to see an increase in return traffic when there's a path actively shouting "Hello! I am a path! A path that leads somewhere! I would like you to follow me!" Some social media send "Hey, we missed you, come log in again!" emails after X missed days, for example. That's a bit on the creepy side for my taste, but something a bit less stalky that could serve as a reminder of what's on Wikipedia to do, or how the community appreciates people's efforts, or what the person started but didn't finish while there...hm. Things like that could work.

Is anyone aware of any work that's been done in this "doughnut hole" area, covering the period after outreach when someone's attention can be captured or fail to be captured by a new hobby like Wiki[m|p]edia editing?


On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 3:53 PM, Neotarf <neotarf@gmail.com> wrote:
"I doubt I'd attend any event purporting to recruit women that nevertheless limited itself to "people who were born female"; that's very much a type of exclusion I'm uncomfortable with. In general, however, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from arranging a women-centric (or even women-only) edit-a-thon, or from reaching out to women in a certain field (via linkedin, maybe?) to urge them to get editing."

After what I've been through, I'm not likely to urge *anyone* to edit. My own opinion is that all Wikimedia spaces should be moving towards 50/50.   But my point is, all of these people express an interest, come in for a day, sometimes in conjunction with a friend who is attending a similar event in another city, make their first edit, and then ...what?  There's no signing up for a mailing list, no newsletter, no invitations to log into a safe space for continued collaborations, in short, nothing to show them that Wikipedia appreciates them or considers their contributions to be valuable. And nothing to show them the next step along the way. People are walking in the door.  And then they walk out. Where is the infrastructure for making that second edit?  And for staying connected with the people they meet?

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Katherine Casey <fluffernutter.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
I doubt I'd attend any event purporting to recruit women that nevertheless limited itself to "people who were born female"; that's very much a type of exclusion I'm uncomfortable with. In general, however, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from arranging a women-centric (or even women-only) edit-a-thon, or from reaching out to women in a certain field (via linkedin, maybe?) to urge them to get editing. Those are both cool ideas, and I suspect you'd get a lot of support, both from the WMF and from the gendergap community in general, in setting such things up. NYC would be, I suspect, a particularly fertile ground for gendergap-specific meetups; there's enough of nearly every demographic around there to fill some seats for a moderately-sized edit-a-thon, and the WMNYC board appears willing to work with minority-focused groups..

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Neotarf <neotarf@gmail.com> wrote:
See also this article: "AfroCrowd: The Black Wikipedia For People of African Descent" http://kreyolicious.com/afrocrowd/17531/

One of the drawbacks of GLAM is that people are just making a few edits, and leaving, rather than becoming long-term editors. There may be chances for followup here that we are missing. Is the wiki-world ready for "WomanCrowd: The Women's Wikipedia for People Who Were Born Female"?  Or maybe more realistically, ways for women in a particular cluster of professions to network with other women in their field, not to mention professional men who are supportive enough of women to come to one of these events (and who also might just happen to control access to career advancement). 

I have to say, though, that I totally support the idea of a Haitian Creole-language Wikipedia.  This language barrier was a huge problem a few years ago, when there was an increased number of Haitians entering the U.S. after the earthquake in Haiti.  The problem is the same with other creoles--instruction is usually given in one of the prestige languages--in this case French--rather than the individual's native or local village language, which makes communication and learning extremely difficult. 

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, the idea is to be extra inclusionary by reaching out to all these groups explicitly, and in particular to representing different cultural identities in rather non-monolithic African American / African Diasporic communities.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:48 AM, Jeremy Baron <jeremy@tuxmachine.com> wrote:

On Mar 23, 2015 11:25 AM, "Neotarf" <neotarf@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've never seen editithons that exclude people before.  I've been to a couple of black history events, and all were welcomed, although of course there was a very high proportion of African descent.

I think the point was actually to be extra inclusionary: to cover all of the above not just a subset when recruiting new editors. So potential recruits don't think but I'm not really {{label}} and exclude themselves.

I'm pretty sure others won't be excluded but these events will be *focused* on topics related to those groups and editors with some sort of a connection to Africa. To address biases similarly to women focused outreach but with a twist thrown in: adding a new language to Wikipedia too, they started already Garifuna Wikipedia on incubator.

https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cab

-Jeremy


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