Learning patterns/Edit-a-thon worklists

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Learning Pattern Library

Edit-a-thon worklists

problemYou host an edit-a-thon and no one knows what to work on.

solutionPut together a list of articles to work on and corresponding resources

creator• Harej

created on31 October, 2014

What problem does this solve?

If you host an edit-a-thon, especially one geared toward people new to Wikipedia, they may not know how to get started with editing.

What is the solution?

If you are organizing an edit-a-thon around a subject area, work on putting together a list of articles for attendees to work on. If your event focuses on the English Wikipedia, peruse the Requested Articles page. Match up this list with reliable sources, such as reference books or authoritative websites, that can be used during the editing process.

General considerations

• Having a worklist helps lower the barrier to entry by creating list of articles they could work on
• You as the edit-a-thon organizer have the responsibility to find resources; not everyone knows how to do research
• Also come up with a list of databases, reliable sources, etc.
• Find information that is of interest to your audience
• You're going to have to help people find resources that are useful to them—trying to explain Wikipedia's policies on reliable sources can be difficult, as is trying to help them search databases. Coming up with these resources ahead of time makes it easier for people to participate.
• Tell people they have to pick somebody from this list! Include a one word description of the person so people can find something they're interested in.
• Biographies: Easy place to start - they are very formulaic and easy to write. they follow the same format and are easy to organize (chronologically). Give people a template and they can fill in the blanks.
• Making new articles can be less intimidating for people than modifying other people's work.

Worklist generation edit-a-thon

As a concept for an edit-a-thon, instead of working on creating new articles, spend the time to come up with a list of articles to work on. You can tap into the experiences and expertise of your attendees to review the existing coverage of a subject on Wikipedia and develop a list of articles to work on. A subsequent event could be dedicated to working on those articles. The list you produce could also be of benefit to contributors online; consider partnering with a WikiProject on developing a shared list.

• The idea was generated as part of the Editing Facilitator Training in Seattle, funded by a Travel and Participation Support Grant. The Cascadia Wikimedians User Group is considering events based on this concept.
• Coincidentally, this ended up happening in practice at the Black History Edit-a-Thon at Howard University in Washington, DC. Attendees found significant coverage gaps on English Wikipedia and generated a list of articles to work on here.

Examples

• During an edit-a-thon at Howard University, Wikimedia DC prepared a worklist that included articles from three different sources:
  • the worklist from an event organized by a different chapter on the same topic,
  • a list of articles suggested by participants during the event,
  • and a set of worklists maintained by WikiProject working on the topic.

Other tools:

• Listeria bot can help with red links: en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Philosophers -- an example.
• en:User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages -- popular pages.
• en:Wikipedia:Lacmus -- a tool that paints links to created and missing articles in different colours. You can run it in a category in EnWiki to identify articles to translate.

When to use

• For an example: see the women scientist list on English Wikipedia. Note the citations to third-party sources.

See also

Related patterns

Creating new articles

• Grants:Learning patterns/Training senior citizens
• Grants:Learning patterns/Mix newcomers and veterans
• Grants:Learning patterns/Fear of editing
• Grants:Learning patterns/Fostering affinity groups
• Grants:Learning patterns/Safe space policy
• Grants:Learning patterns/Best practices in training adults
• Grants:Learning patterns/Creating new articles

Endorsements

• really helpful for inexperienced organizers Nanna1704 (talk) 16:39, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support, even experienced organisers do not always understand the importance of worklists. Le Loy 04:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)