Wikipedia:Meetup/HonouringIndigenousWriters/Prepare

Indigenous Writers Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Main Page

Event Preparation

Resources

Articles to Edit

Start Your Research

Organize an Event

We have developed a number of supports to help you plan your own #HonouringIndigenousWriters Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon:

An Organizer Kit, including checklists, communications, and resources can be found here: #HonouringndigenousWriters Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Organizer Kit
Connect with other event organizers through the Twitter hashtag: #HonouringIndigenousWriters
Create your program on the Wikipedia Program & Events Dashboard. Instructions are below.
Share your event details via social media and other promotional materials

Handouts

Here are some handouts that you can use or adapt to have on hand during your event for writers to consult:

Outreach Dashboard

The basic purpose of the dashboard is to provide an easy way to organize groups of editors who are working on a common project, and to make it easy to keep track of what they are doing and what they've contributed.

To learn how to use the Programs & Events Dashboard, complete the following training module:

Using the Dashboard

You can also view a series of videos on using the Programs & Events Dashboard on Youtube, including:

Preparing Articles for Editing

Participants for your edit-a-thon may have varying degrees of comfort with editing Wikipedia. While some participants may come with a specific writer's Wikipedia entry they would like to improve, many will need support and guidance on selecting an article or developing a new article.

The Articles to Edit tab provides a list of categories of Indigenous writers (e.g. poets, novelists, short story writers, etc.) that you can use to develop your Wikipedia article editing list.

Research Sprint

During an edit-a-thon it can be difficult for people to do research and write at the same time. Consider hosting a research sprint and inviting/training people to do research ahead of time.

Set-up

While asking authors for permission to be included in your edit-a-thon, you might have collected some information from them (for example, their CV). This information can be useful to give researchers an idea of where to start their research. Include a space beside each author name for researchers to indicate whether or not they are working on a particular author so that there are no duplicates.

Create Google Drive folders for each of the authors that you have collected information for.
Create an Author List Google Doc with all of the author options available during the edit-a-ton event.
Hyperlink author names with their corresponding Google Drive folder so that researchers will be able to easily find this information if available.

Create an Author Research Google Doc for researchers to contribute to. Because of Google Drive restrictions, all of your researchers will need to use this one doc. Following the instructions and strategically using Page Breaks will make this process easy. If you have a large group of researchers, you might consider breaking them into teams and having more than one group doc (for example, one being Authors A-M and a second Authors N-Z).

This Workflow and Citations handout outlines the steps that researchers need to take during the event to get set up and start working. On the reverse side, there is a guide to what information is needed for Wikipedia Citations. Having a copy of the Citations and Notability handout is also helpful.