Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2013/Documentation/Jake Orlowitz

Session: Jake Orlowitz, Siko Bouterse // Inviting diversity: A playful approach to broadening our community

Abstract

Like other open-source projects, Wikipedia’s culture can seem complicated, inaccessible, or even intimidating to newcomers. This impression can work against our aim for diversity. A series of experiments use welcoming social interaction to see how changing tone can increase diversity in communities like English Wikipedia and Meta-wiki. This session will explore four strategies: invitation, acknowledgement, showcasing people, and playful design, which have been used in projects like The Wikipedia Adventure, Wikipedia’s Teahouse, WikiWomen’s Collaborative, and IdeaLab. Does this approach contribute to diversity in meaningful ways? Are there pieces of it that could be used in other projects?

Starting point / Insights

• Introduces his co-presenter today, Siko Bouterse (WMF) [1]
• Have you had silly experiences as a child? Askes attendees for their favourite childrens games, how they made them feel
• Free and empowering feeling that comes with playing games adaptable to

Challenges

• Frightening environment for new or potential editors
• Not good for attracting diversity, can we change the tone to encourage diverse contributors?
• Developed 4 experiments in welcoming social interaction
• Fellow experimentors: Sarah Stierch, Heather Walls, Jonathan Morgan
• Most important: invitation; makes you feel welcome, involved

Ideas / Experiments

4 strategies: invitation, acknowledgement, showing people, playfullness, that go across the following experiments:

• Wikipedia Teahouse
• The Wikipedia Adventure
• Grants:IdeaLab
• WikiWomen´s Collaborative

1) Invitation:

• Teahouse is the key project here. Bringing people proactively to the space - sending invites to new editors. Friendly tone being set.
• Wikipedia Adventure. There is a 'narrator' that takes you through it - invites you on a journey. Virtual presence of invitaiton. (It was a challenge to create a single character narrator that is inviting for all)
• WikiWomen's Collaborative. Some tone similar to Teahouse. People invited to get involved and say what they are doing; active on Facebook.

BUT: You reach out to who you know, so perhaps you are just reinforcing the existing culture of Wikimedia projects? Challenge of invitation.

2) Acknowledgement (Gives a sense of purpose)

• Wikipedia Adenture is full of it. Get a barnstar when you complete, positive comments from the narrator along the way. 'WikiLove'.
• Teahouse. Piloted ideas there. Badges projects - acknowledgement for skill acquisition, minor successes. Encouraging behaviours. (Not OpenBadges as they didn't integrate with MediaWiki that well).

BUT: There is a risk of 'gamification' - incentives may not work in the right way. Can seem trivial. People still need to be motivated intrinsically.

3) Showing people (Get newbies to understand that there is a human community behind the project, not a collection of scary robots. That can help in interaction, and for newbies to feel a part of the group).

• WikiWomen Collaborative - members can have profiles with photos (doesn't need to be your real photo) and share a story about themselves.
• IdeaLab - also user pages.
• Constricting the project pages so they show there are people behind them.

BUT: How do we get newbies to imagine themselves in a community where there aren't people like them. E.g. no photos of women on a Individual Engagement Grants page.

4) Playful design

• Attractive visual design, but also it's about the inviting tone). Aim is to show that it's ok to fail.
• IdeaLab: apply for grants doesn't need to be scary, it has a really playful design with a cat as a logo.
• Wikipedia Adventure. Help people absorb the Wikipedia policies. It's bright and colorful, showing the large scope of the projects. By joining you become part of a space adventure. Failure is taken lightly too, illustrated with a smiliing space unicorn.

BUT: Existing community takes the project very seriously, so would might alienate them by 'trivialising' Wikipedia in this way. Why make Wikipedia fun? Jake: 'this is hard fun - meaningful AND fun. They are not contradictory'.

• inspired by "serious games"/GWAP- games with a purpose, examples from citizen science-concepts
• might also be a generation-related problem, younger people are more open for gameification, dont feel infantilized

Point to remember: This may not work for everyone. There should be different entry points to Wikimedia projects, and we do need to try various things!

IMPACT?

From what we see so far, Teahouse gives more retention, and attracts more women. It´ll take time to evaluate effects and impacts of experiments, but many are worth working on them, very promising

Questions / Next steps recommendations

• Do you think playful tone and welcoming interaction may impact diversity?
• Will these strategies work?
• Do we sacrifice anything in taking the playful tone?
• Are these strategies attracting the wrong people?

Q: Unfriendly people can upset newbies or even long term-editors for days, can have very negative effect, what strategy is there to "cure" that? A:

• starting early, welcoming newbies at teahouse etc., so unfriendly experiences won´t frustrate them as much later
• probably internet wont ever get rid of negative, unfriendly people, so we can only try to provide more welcome spaces and positive atmosphere
• sometimes people don't realise they are being uninviting - language barriers etc.

The leaders can try to create the tone for the community (like in the Teahouse), and then hope the community follows.

Q: : What's the retention like? We gave newbies the 'friendly bubbles' of the Teahouse, but what happens when they go off to community? Do people carry through the welcoming tone through to other projects? A: A little too early to say. The early data shows retention.

Q: Do we have mechanisms for dealing with BAD behaviours? A: There's been a lot of community discussion. We have focused on promoting good behaviours instead.

Call for participation - please join some of these projects! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Diversity_Conference/Documentation#Jake_Orlowitz_.2F.2F_Inviting_diversity:_A_playful_approach_to_broadening_our_community (on slides which will be shared)

What new approaches might you try?

• Using Facebook - giving people small tasks to do. There is a problem in that Facebook looks inviting, colourful, and Wikipedia doesn't. Privacy and copyright concerns.
• Initially motivate editors to improve articles to encourage the to stay active
• Games or features can be perceived as childish, risk that people won´t take work behind it seriously --> "fun is serious business"