[Foundation-l] Whither, video tutorials?

Mon Dec 7 19:39:17 UTC 2009

Hello,

As one of the screenwriters for these videos I believe I can shed at least
some light on the process. Frank Schulenburg, Wikimedia Foundation's Public
Outreach guy, then VP of Wikimedia Deutschland may have more details for
you.

Anyway, Wikimedia Deutschland started the process around the end of 2007 by
going to the company Living Colour, with the plans of rolling out a whole
series of films, mainly but not exclusively directed towards the parts of
the population that don't already edit Wikipedia (women and seniors). The
goal was of course to inspire them to be bold. Since I am a screenwriter IRL
I was very interested in this project and volunteered. I wrote two first
drafts but was unable to participate in the shooting where some of the
dialogue was rewritten (it always is).

The films were ready by some time in the spring of 2009, I guess, and
Wikimedia Sverige showed them to a mildly impressed audience at our AGM.
There was no premiere or big news item about it and the whole thing went
almost unnoticed. Perhaps the idea was flawed, or the execution, or the
process, but either way, the films was not a success by any measure.

But this wasn't the "whole truth". All in all, if memory serves, there was
talk about a further dozen or so further films. The further films was
intended to deal with the various other questions that the audience may
have: reverts, NPOV, the principles, copyright, and so on. Perhaps this is a
project that the Bookshelf will take care of, or maybe this is something
that is better done by amateurs on YouTube? I have seen some YouTube videos
that explain some things in a fairly good manner, for example Bill
Wiedemeyer's videos:

http://www.youtube.com/user/BillWedemeyer

Best wishes,

/Lennart

-- 
Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia Sverige and press contact for
Swedish Wikipedia // ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt för
svenskspråkiga Wikipedia

2009/12/5 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk at googlemail.com>

> Thank you for the links. I wonder if these are the only two videos?
>
> In general, I am afraid that the videos reflect an older concept of
> Wikipedia training that underlines the "easyness" of editing. The risk
> is that people indeed come and edit in the faith that they should feel
> free to try out editing ; if something goes wrong "another editor
> fixes it", if someone tries to "rewrite history", "another editor sets
> it right".
> Instead, there should be much more warnings about what is accepted or
> not, that wrong editing can get you harsh comments, that you
> eventually can be banned. Our problem is not getting new people but
> keeping them.
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
> 2009/12/4 Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com>:
> > On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> They're very good. But the sound, for me, is *very* out of synch... by
> >> quite a number of minutes. Anyone else find that?
> >
> > Sorry, I meant *seconds*.
> >
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>
> --
> Ziko van Dijk
> NL-Silvolde
>
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