Wikipedia talk:How to run an edit-a-thon

Please be bold

I've created this how-to guide with my work account instead of my personal one since I did this as part of my followup work after Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon, but this is not something the Foundation owns at all. Lots of community members have experience with edit-a-thons, so please hack away. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Input from a UK perspective

Please see [1] for a UK perspective based on the British Library events. We really need to figure out a single place that this information can be located. Perhaps Meta would be the best place, given its nominal role of being the place where all Wikimedia projects come together to discuss anything cross-wiki? Mike Peel (talk) 22:40, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I feel pretty resistant to saying we need a one-size-fits-all documentation page, especially on a place no one reads like Meta or Outreach wikis. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Also, thanks for the link to the libraries guide, that's great stuff! Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm just tired of pointing out the same link to information again and again. ;-) And I keep wishing that there was a single place for cross-project discussions to take place. I agree that a 'one-size-fits-all documentation page' isn't the solution - but a one-stop page that links to a variety of useful perspectives would be ... erm ... useful. Mike Peel (talk) 23:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC) P.S. some people (e.g. me) do read meta... ;-)

This is yet another case where cross-wiki transclusion would solve all our woes. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Or having a culture that is used to, and encouraged to, gather on both on a local scale, and a cross-project scale, in just 2 distinct places - rather than having the latter fragmented across multiple wikis and mailing lists. </rant> Mike Peel (talk) 23:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hear hear! Ijon (talk) 01:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

A key reason for the largest British Library event working well was having it well structured with a bit of up front introductions (by me) at the beginning which encouraged everyone to, very briefly, explain their background and expectations. This was a 25 people event, a small event might easily work well in a more un-conference like fashion, though not everyone is comfortable in the absence of an agenda. Identifying a leader for the event who is experienced, comfortable with keeping the event on time and injecting a bit of humour to the process is probably worth highlighting in a how-to. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 22:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that Fae. If anyone's interested, we started an event-specific notes page at Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon/Reflections. Cheers, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I still remember well the unexpected situation that we encountered at the first British Library editathon - we'd planned for 50:50 wikimedia:library curator attendees over the course of a 2-day event (Fri-Sat) that could support each other with their different skill sets, but it turned out that on the Friday we had 20-odd curators, and only 3 Wikimedians present - and then on the Saturday, the ratio was reversed as we had only a couple of curators but lots of Wikimedians. Fortunately, Fæ (who was an unknown Wikipedian to me at the time) saved the (fri)day. Lesson learned: plan for all eventualities, and have schedules planned for the three possible situations of curators-only, wikimedians-only and mixed-curators-and-wikimedians. Mike Peel (talk) 23:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Editathon - should it be a category?

I see a lot of editathons have come out of the Wikipedia Loves Libraries campaign. But I also see editathons held at other kinds of institutions (not all of which qualify for a meetup). Should there be a new category for editathons? -- kosboot (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I think thats a great idea! Zell Faze (talk) 19:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Be bold, my friend. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:07, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

getting articles from draft into the main space

At an edit-a-thon in Australia this week, we had 100+ mostly new contributers, some at physical meetups, others online. They initially created their articles in sandbox and as drafts, but at the end of the day, we really wanted to get the articles into main space (as past experience with edit training has shown a lot of people don't return to editing after the event is over and the work would be lost if we didn't immediately get it into main space). However, the new contributors could not do a "move", so we had to resort to copy-and-paste. A lot of the online participants needed someone else to do it for them. The result was the edit histories were lost and various people sent unpleasant messages to me and others involved because of it. There was nothing on this page that mentioned this issue, so I was unprepared for it. Can it be updated to explain how to deal with this problem? It's a waste if the event ends with all the articles still sitting in draft. I am told if we had had an administrator involved in the event they could have solved the problem in some way, but I am sketchy on the details. But presumably we have to have solutions that work for events that don't have an administrator involved. Kerry (talk) 21:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, but I'd be willing to review some articles if the problem ever crops up again. Its not a great solution, but I'd be happy to help however I can. Zell Faze (talk) 21:22, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

List of edit-a-thons

Since it will eventually dwarf the article content, perhaps the list of edit-a-thons should be spun off to a separate article? Speaking personally, I would like to see much more non-US and non-English language entries. kosboot (talk) 14:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I've removed it entirely as it doesn't belong here. Upcoming and past events should be listed at the applicable section of Wikipedia:Meetup. The list caused confusion among editors at UCLA, creating a wasted opportunity. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:08, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I've reverted the removal, since I think it does belong here or on a spin-off page. Editathons and meetups are two distinct things, with different objectives - the former on editing, the latter on meeting other editors (although of course, both things happen at both types of events). Having a distinct list of editathons would be good; having a joint upcoming events list would also be good. What was the confusion with UCLA editors? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:51, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I've been thinking of making a separate "list of editathons" article. One issue on my mind: What could a new article do that would appeal to Wikipedians across the world to contribute? (You might say "put it on Meta" - but the majority of people don't know about or don't check Meta.) kosboot (talk) 18:33, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's a better answer than putting it on meta, sorry. That's where other language contributors would work on the list; meta has the translate extension installed to enable this. I suspect that most people organising this type of event will already be familiar with meta; and the way to improve meta and get more people active there is to put good content there and to encourage people to expand it.

An alternative approach might be to focus on english language editathons, which would naturally be better suited to an enwp page rather than a meta page. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:15, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I notice now that the number of edit-a-thons has exploded, many of which are not listed on this list but are concatenated through the categorization (see the category of edit-a-thons in 2015). I wonder if it might be better to prune the list (of course making sure that each edit-a-thon page has appropriate categorization) and just listing those whose quality would serve as "best practices." - kosboot (talk) 16:55, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Rather than pruning, it might be a good time to move the list onto a separate page, and then integrate the best practices into the rest of the text? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:39, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking of pruning because there are now so many edit-a-thons that it seems most of those from this year are not being recorded on the list. Unless the list is maintained it becomes a historical artifact -- and why bother, since the categorization does that automatically. That being the case, and being that this page is going to attract newbies, I thought it would be better just to have examples of the most informative edit-a-thon pages. - kosboot (talk) 19:51, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The problem with just using categorisation is that there isn't one single wiki that hosts all (or even most) of the editathon pages - some are here, some are on meta, and some are on individual chapter websites. We can't do inter-wiki categorisation, but we can do inter-wiki lists, which is why I'm pushing to keep this list somewhere. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:12, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

To which I counter that the number of edit-a-thons makes the list unmanageable - it only represents "some" edit-a-thons - in other words, it's misleading unless people are going to make sure that every event is on the list. So far that doesn't seem to be the case. - kosboot (talk) 21:57, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

History of Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons

Has anyone put together a history of the Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon? Who was the first group to do it? Why? Was it the British Library? Could there be section on this page created by anyone in the know? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmhuculak (talk • contribs) 00:49, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

User account creation strategy

I am looking to host an edit-a-thon but am a little confused about the user account creation strategy. Can someone elaborate about what one has to do in order to request the exception to the account creation limit? Thanks! SBINFocus (talk) 22:29, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

The safest way is to ask all potential new attendees to have an account before they begin (ask them to submit their usernames in advance on the signup page, so that you know they'll set it up beforehand). Lacking that, befriend an administrator and explain the situation and they'll take care of it for you. kosboot (talk) 00:57, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Just to eleborate. There's two problems here. Firstly, the limit of new accounts that can be created at the same IP address in a day. This you can get around in two ways. Firstly, by asking folks to create accounts in advance which they will typically do from a wider range of different IP addresses. The problem with this is that some won't bother to it, while others will have forgotten their new username and password when they turn up to your event and have to create another one anyway! So you need to get yourself account creator right, so you can create the accounts on the day if the limit becomes a problem. There is a third way (which I have never done) where you arrange in advance for the IP address on the day to be allowed to create lots of accounts. Generally, I don't know the IP address of the venue's wifi in advance and am usually interfacing with people in the organisation who aren't technically minded. If you take this route, watch out for time zone issues so you and the person creating the relaxation have a common understanding of when it is required. The second problem is the restrictions on new accounts. Until an account is 4 days old and has 10 edits, it is limited in a number of ways, including new article creation (which might be a focus of your event!) and imposing the use of Capcha which people hate. To get around this, you need to get an admin to mark them as "confirmed users". To do that, you need to know the user names. So I try to get people to create user accounts in advance and then email them to me and then I pass them to a friendly admin to "confirm". However, if they turn up on the day without an account, you still have the problem unless you have an admin present. Generally, unless you have the luxury of many helpers, you are too busy to be able to take time out to pass those just-created user names to the not-present admin (who may be busy with their day job at that time or otherwise unavailable) so those folk are now restricted in what they can do relative to the others in the room. In that case, if new articles are needed, you create the minium intial article and then they can edit it (praying no super-zealous person will speedy-delete it between your intial creation and the first genuine edits). In my experience there is no danger in confirming these new users. People who come to events are never vandals in my experence but my groups are all self-selecting middle-aged and older folk. Perhaps it might be different if you are working with school-age kids or university students, especially if they are not there of their own free will. Because a lot of edit-a-thons have the goal of creating more content about some particular topic, being able to create new articles is important and using Article for Creation (the only option for unconfirmed users) is a bit of a disaster, so you really do want these folks to be "confirmed users". Kerry (talk) 02:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Following on from that, I don't know of any way to completely "protect" bumbling new users from over-zealous editors. We have editors in our communities who ignore everything in WP:NOBITE and smack new users over the head with speedy deletions, immediate reverts, nasty talk messages, etc in a really quite unjustifiable way. Sometimes it happens in under a minute to your newbies, which is really discouraging. And if you ever try to remonstrate with these people, you get abused too (apparently it's all your fault) as if you could be leaning over 50 people's shoulders simultaneously before they hit Save. Aggressive and abusive editors are difficult to avoid in my experience. Tip: if you can, discourage folks from editing very popular articles as they will have large watchlists. Try to keep any early edits in less popular articles to avoid awaking these sleeping dragons. Kerry (talk) 02:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kerry, just wanted to say a quick thanks for this good tip. We are running our first edit-a-thon this Sunday/Monday in virtual space so I was looking around for tips. If anyone wants to pop into this edit-athon on water and sanitation topics, we have a virtual room in Adobe Connect for that time, see here for details. Luckily or unluckily our types of articles usually only have small watchlistst. EMsmile (talk) 15:15, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Defined goals

Hi. I do a lot of NPP and have been helping to clean up and mark as reviewed a lot of articles created on editathons recently. I think many of these projects, especially the women in science editathons, have really great ambitions. I have a few thoughts about how they could help to get people used to the format of Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia is intended to be structured and interconnected. One article is linked to and discoverable from another, articles are marked with keywords so they can be indexed into categories and discovered from a search engine. Discovering how all this works is difficult for the new contributor. Speaking personally, when I joined Wikipedia in 2013 I sort of knew what an article looked like, on the outside, but I didn't understand how the formatting worked. I think a lot of people interested in joining Wikipedia will have read a lot of articles, too. But formatting is the hardest bit to discover, and a lot of people on editathons don't seem to go away any the wiser about it.

I suggest the following would make a great checklist for new Wikipedia articles created on editathons:

• Three citations (the Google Books citation generator is often really helpful here)
• Three categories - speaking of which, if editathon participants are often creating new articles, I suggest that HotCat is enabled by default on their accounts if they're mass-created by the person running the editathon
• Two links to other Wikipedia articles
• One WikiProject banner on the talk page
• One link from another Wikipedia article (if possible, may not be for obscure subjects)

I think that doing those things (or at least setting them as a standard aspiration) should give people a sense of how Wikipedia articles work and what reviewers are looking for and feel they need to fix.

More practically, a suggestion that I'd add to this guide is that for people unsure how to write good articles, looking at featured articles on comparable topics for guidance is often a great plan. I know I did that when I wrote my first few articles.

Although I wouldn't make it a hard and fast guideline, I would reassure new article creators that short articles are not a problem and what's important is citations verifiying the facts in an article. I've often seen gigantic articles created at editathons padded out with unnecessary information or obvious statements (a professor both teaches and does research! She's written many presentations at conferences! Here's her entire list of papers going back to 1986!) I sometimes just want to hug these poor people and tell them that they didn't need to write all that. Perhaps suggest that six sentences is a great target length for a first article.

My other concern is that I've sometimes unfortunately seen NPPs be a little brusque with editathon contributors. I think this is often because new articles on topics people care about can seem a bit gushing and promotional, even if they're just written at an editathon without promotion in mind, because people see articles as "their" project and want to "sell" the person to convince the reader that they matter. But anyway, I think it might reduce this problem if all editathon participants are encouraged to put a set text on their user page saying that they're at such-and-such editathon working on such-and-such a topic.

Any thoughts? Blythwood (talk) 22:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Look like good suggestion to me, Blythwood. (I might reduce it to two citations and two categories, to make life easier) Although I haven't yet attended an editathon (and only do a bit of new article checking whilst correcting spelling errors) I am very concerned by the ease with which new editors can be totally jumped on by people like you and me for legitimate weaknesses in brand new articles. I use Lupin's live spellchecker and, more recently, WP:AWB. Neither seem to allow any time whatsoever for an article to 'bed in' before errors are flagged up. So I have no way of knowing how recently, by whom, or under what circumstances an article has been created.

If I see a notice saying it's part of an educational project I do tend to be less critical (or at least try to be more more diplomatic) in correcting or pointing out mistakes. See this on my talk page for a not unreasonable example how AWB can upset someone when it's checking brand new articles. When I am suspicious, and think an article probably needs AfD or Speedy Deletion, I do go and check the user out more carefully, but I don't have the time or reason to do so otherwise. So, as well as your sensible suggestion recommending a note on each User's Talk Page, why not suggest users employ the {{in use}} or {{under construction}} templates at the top of each article, too? The 'under construction' template could easily be left on for a few days after the event, too.Parkywiki (talk) 15:21, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Edit-a-thon Training on the Programs and Events Dashboard

I am happy to announce a new "Running Editathons" training on the Programs & Events dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training/editathons .

I will be marking it up for translation soon: if you would like to leave feedback, or are interested in translation please let me know via the instructions at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_modules/dashboard/editathon

The goal of the training and to offer an online alternative to Train-the-Trainer" workshops, and synthesizes much of the advice found on this page with advice scattered about other parts of the community. I would welcome feedback, tweaks or integration of the training into advice on this page, if at all possible. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this; I think it is greatly needed and will be happy to review (learn from!) it. FULBERT (talk) 19:12, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I boldy added a link to the training since the only comments I have gotten back are on it's usefulness. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Post-event resource

Please could I invite any critical feedback on a printed handout I've drafted for giving to new editors who attend edit-a-thons?

Handout link: User:Nick Moyes/editathon/handout1

Instead of producing another "how-to-do-it" guide, I wanted to create something to hand to participants towards the end, before they leave. I'm trying to address the possibility of an enthused editor feeling lost once they sit at home, in front of their computer, not knowing quite what to do next, or where to get help from. Any suggestions, large or small, would be appreciated (be it here or on the handout's talk page). The main concern I have is whether I've addresses the area getting articles into mainspace sufficiently well. Finally, are there any other resources like this that anyone can point me towards, please? Many thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:13, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. I like starting out with what they've already accomplished. I personally prefer the Wikiedu training modules to the Wikipedia Adventure, but they both have pros/cons. I agree with the advice to hold off on creating new pages, although it seems contradictory to then suggest working on the Women in Red project. Is there a way to view new Women in Red pages and help improve them? If you'd like more feedback from other library people I recommend joining the Wikipedia + Libraries Facebook group. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:41, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

@Rachel Helps (BYU): - thank you for taking the time to look and comment. You make some good points: I guess that coming from the Teahouse host angle, I'm always trying to discourage immediate article creation. But from the Women in Red (WiR) angle, we're trying to increase the no. of articles created. So I was trying to aim somewhere towards the middle ground for guidance - but I'll take a look at that area again and see if it's misleading. (truth be told, I wrote it for a forthcoming WiR editathon, but hope it might have potential beyond that arena.) You also make a good point about improving existing WiR articles. Oddly, although their are categories like Category:WikiProject Women in Red from where you can find (eventuallly) find article to improve, I don't think the WiR project maintain the typical tables of articles by importance versus quality assessment, from where it's easy to find stubs to work on. So this is a question worth raising with the Project and especially  Rosiestep and  Victuallers. I will take a look through those training pages. I only discovered the rather nice-looking editathon training pages today which I plan to work through, and will do the same with these, too. However, I suspect for all but the most studious, the TWA gives a lighter, quicker fix of editing experience. Sadly, when I started, I was unaware of any of these resources, and I think the key issue we have is of keen people feeling utterly lost amongst a plethora of guidelines, instructions and jaded editors keen to delete anything they don't quite understand. The more we can guide and support them, the better, I feel. Many thanks for your feedback, and I've sent a request to the FB group, too. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:50, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: I definitely agree that the number of guidelines and instructions are overwhelming. Maybe you can suggest that new users can try creating a new page for Women in Red once they have a little more experience with editing? You might also want to give a few quick-and-dirty research tips, like "try Google Books" or direct them to a librarian or other user who can help them find sources if they're stuck. I've run a few editing events and my most successful have been when I get participants to add a citation right away in Visual Editor. So if you're not already using Visual Editor in your training I would encourage you to use it! It is so much more intuitive than source editing. It also really helps if participants have made a Wikipedia login beforehand, because then you don't have to worry about the 6 editors per IP address rule (but I also know how hard it is to simply get people to show up sometimes!). There is also a Wikipedia Library User Group on Meta, but the Facebook group has a more lively discussion. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:53, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Rachel Helps (BYU): Thank you, Rachel. Good points. Our editathon page is starting to shape up, though the library staff's main goals for the day have yet to go on. I'm just the hanger-on in this event, but we'll definitely be asking everyone to sign up in advance. We've got an admin present, so IP limits shouldn't be a concern. (I'm more worried about extraneous noise in the venue!) Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:16, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes:, in general I like it, but there is so much information, and so many bluelinks (all are necessary, of course!) that I wonder if the newbie will feel overwhelmed? --Rosiestep (talk) 01:33, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Rosie - My intention is to put this onto 3 sheets of A4 and print from MS Word, so there will be no blue links at all - just the shortcuts to type into the Wikipedia search box if they're interested. I left the blue links in whilst drafting it. But you're right - too much information puts people off; too little doesn't support them after an event. Question is, is the balance or the tone wrong, and what might be the right improvements/deletions to make, I wonder. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 01:39, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

More than a hanger on! I'm with Rosie. I would think that 1 side and possibly two is likely to be read. 3 sides seems like a pamphlet rather than an aide memoir. Its taken me a few days to get to comment as very busy. I think it could be made more digestible by a semi brutal edit. The idea of a sheet to turn those who have tried editting into committed volunteers in a great prize if we can crack it. Victuallers (talk) 23:19, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Blocked editing at high profile event

This Sunday morning at Wikipedia:Meetup/Black Lunch Table/ArtFeminism2018 Kickstarter, most of our new editors had their account. The introductory lecture had started, but suddenly nobody could edit, including me. Administrator User talk:Jimfbleak had intended to block one of our newbies who had inadvertently violated some rules, but all of us were failing and couldn't even ask on-wiki about it. After a few minutes a smart newbie connected by his phone. Oh, yes, my phone has a hotspot feature too! So, I went online by that route, bitched to the blocking Admin (I should have been more polite) and pretty soon we all resumed editing, our errant editor now properly informed of policies.

I figure this how-to needs a paragraph on this kind of emergency. One remedy would be the one I used, and another would be E-mail to a blocking Admin or to some address that might be set up for the purpose. And maybe there should be a Wiki page for advance notice, so before blocking the Admin can get into touch with one of the teachers / coaches / whatever on site. If we can recall other problems, a whole disastrous section would be appropriate. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:24, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

This is a difficult situation which has happened many times. A failure with a partner is a great loss of value, labor, and good will from the partner. It is difficult to think of a solution which is accessible to everyone. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:07, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Having all your participants blocked is a good teachable moment, so I hope you took the opportunity to tell everyone the damage one bad actor can cause. As far as revising this guide, I'd suggest reminding registered editors to follow the steps at WP:IBPE. The organizer should also do what you did and discuss it with the blocking admin. While having editors move to a different internet connection is a technical work-around, I wouldn't publicize it because it's going to cause our admins to make IP blockages even wider to stop fanatic vandals. It's always good to remind editors that so long as you understand the code, you can write plenty in a word document and then dump it into an article when you can edit again. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:27, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts, @Chris troutman: but they show my failure to supply details. First, I wasn't the lecturer; I was a coach and, at that moment, a WP:Account creator. Second, the rule-breaking was pretty much an innocent mistake. Third, aha! Yes, WP:IPBE is an excellent idea. Thank you; I applied for it myself, minutes ago, and it definitely belongs in this how-to. Fourth, my participation in local chapter activities has given me friends among Admins, who have hinted that they will handle trigger-happy blockers on their level. Well, they didn't say "trigger-happy" or anything like that. Let's see; we're up to fifth, and maybe you're right and the possibility of hopping ISPs should be kept somewhat quiet. Anyway I wouldn't consider inviting a dozen newbies or two to work through my phone hot spot. This weak link is just for us insiders to get things going. And finally, yes, editors who know the code can do much. However, Wikitext is now an advanced topic, only taught after many hours of handling Visual Editor. This page is about teaching the really raw newbies, which is a big part of my Wiki activities.

Oh, yeah, another point. The lecturer credited me with restoring our service, and I humbly accepted. Nope. Our Admin had walked into the other end of the room while I was asking the blocking Admin to unblock us. He figured out the situation and converted the hard block into a soft one, at just the moment that made me a hero. Anyway one of the things I learned was, there are "hard" and "soft" blocks and apparently the blocking Admin misjudged the situation in applying the "hard" one. That's a question above my level, however. So, thank you; eventually I'll use your advice to modify the how-to page unless you or another beat me to it. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:35, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• I am not aware of publicly available details, but based on what I have heard, there is no evidence that the block was merited. Shutting down a typical editing event with typical new editors should not be casually done. The policy at WP:IBPE is by design not intended to be accessible to new users or anyone hosting events. I would characterize this entire situation as being an indication that there is one camp which is in opposition to the existence of in-person group Wikipedia trainings and workshops and another camp which presents these workshops. I wish that there was a way for the two camps to be concordant with each other. Obviously I want security for wiki in wiki trainings, but too often and with no obvious process, patrollers shut down Wikipedia events. I assert that there is not an obvious reasonable way to prevent this except with the personal attention of highly and expensively trained Wikipedia outreach coordinators. It makes me anxious that partner organizations can arrange to provide spaces, catering, recruit the labor of subject matter experts, and connect cash funding in the USD thousands to match with even more in-kind funding, and then a patroller who has no experience with wiki event management or oversight can shut everything down without documentation or messaging.

I do not know what the longer term solution is here but the stakes are increasing, there is no mutual understanding between event organizers and wiki security teams, and I see no policy development in the foreseeable future. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:07, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: "...there is no evidence that the block was merited. Shutting down a typical editing event with typical new editors..." That's quite an accusation. I doubt a cabal of editors are trying to chase event participants off Wikipedia and I don't think you meant to make that accusation but it would seem you believe that "patrollers shut down Wikipedia events". Do you have a pamphlet that discusses this? Chris Troutman (talk) 21:27, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: I am not accusing anyone, but the IP block of a high profile event seemed like an accusation against the event, and I will again say that I am not aware of how to access documentation about why anyone felt that the event needed to be halted while in process. There is not intentional malice but there is a history of conflict. There is no "cabal", in the sense of organized opposition, but the people who are most likely to block events are also unlikely to have any experience organizing them. There are practices for patrolling and doing security, and these practices routinely lead to blocking individuals and events where users do innocent mistakes which merit userpage messages or pings to event coordinators or the event record but not blocks. There is no summary documentation of the conflicts between security and outreach but I have posted lots of issues at Wikipedia_talk:Account_creator/Archive_1 and at the education noticeboard, which you know because we have talked there. The legacy of the education program is meta:Programs and Events Dashboard and if you want a pamphlet, that is probably it. I could say more about any of this but there are lots of issues in play here and it would take interviews, mediation, and documentation to sort it out. I cannot myself commit the 100+ hours of documentation setup which would lay the foundation for conversation that might lead to policy and technical fixes. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Our little group here can easily agree that this particular hard block was a mistake. As for why this is commonplace enough to figure prominently among nuisances to these events, there are various possibilities. Yes, explaining it as a dark conspiracy would be awfully silly. My suspicion was at the other extreme, that a simple misclick on the blocking form made it a hard block, but the frequency makes this doubtful. One intermediate explanation is that a substantial number of Admins think Edit-a-thons are too futile an exercise to be worth protecting. Their argument could be, there are a couple hundred such events per year worldwide, each using various resources including several hours of labor by experienced editors. They produce only hundreds of new articles, several thousand edits to existing ones, and almost no persistent new editors. So, why care?

Another explanation is, it isn't easy for a protector of Wiki integrity to find that the edits and the editor in question are part of an edit-a-thon. I spent yesterday at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/WikiGap. (Oddly, the name does not hint that it was at United Nations Headquarters, for UN personnel.) It was a big event with speeches by high officials and maybe a hundred would-be editors. I was surprised when we hit the six new accounts limit and had to use SPECIAL:CREATEACCOUNT. So, part of standard procedure for such large events could be to request raising the limit for the day and posting the IP address range in a list of that day's not-to-be-hard-blocked list. Which of course would have to be created and maintained. Perhaps the Dashboard, created for a different purpose, could get additions to help in these two tasks. Another kind of flag could be to tell each new participant to paste a standard block of text into their userpage, explaining the situation and providing links to the event page and to the talk page of the organizer and of the coaches. (Hmm, or could Dashboard or other automated process also do that for them?) Anyway these methods would nullify the excuse of blocker Admins that they thought they were dealing with only one bad newbie. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:17, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to Czar for pinging me about this discussion, which despite it being about my actions, no one else has seen fit to do (I think, in fairness, that Jim.henderson tried, but i didn't see a ping). I blocked an account, and the underlying ip was blocked too. User:Bluerasberry, you said there is no evidence that the block was merited; I'm certainly capable of making errors, but you don't explain why the content of the deleted page should have been kept (I don't even know how you could see it, since you are not an admin, but I'll assume good faith that there is some basis to your comment), and surely you should have asked me for my reasons instead of making accusations behind my back. Shutting down a typical editing event with typical new editors should not be casually done.—obviously true, but as far as I know there is no way that any one other than a checkuser can even see the underlying ip, let alone know that it is being used by an edit-a-thon. Jim Henderson is obviously right, there needs to be a better system if such a situation occurs again, it's fortunate I was still at my computer. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:06, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I posted a complement to your talk page and I mean it because you are not at fault here and we are not a conflict. I apologize for the way that my message sounded like that. Instead, I think we have a mutual conflict with the software and infrasture. I would like for people who do events to be able to quickly give you the information that you need to do security. Currently this is difficult. The only evidence that I have seen is a log of a speedy deletion of a single new user's page. Somehow that lead to an group event in an expensive venue being shut down. In normal wiki outreach the wiki security processes routinely shut down events and discourage the partners who make financial, media, and in-kind donations. The fault is not with you. Instead, the fault is in whatever infrastructure has made this happen at so many events for so many years without any plan to prevent it or address it in a consistent way. I do not expect to you solve that problem, change your behavior, or participate in discussions about this, except to the extent of your own interest in your own way. I encourage you to keep doing what you are doing because I cannot think of a better way. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:58, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Little time; on my way to coach another edit-a-thon but yes, we're all in good faith here; sometimes we're a bit clumsy, in part because we have clumsy tools. My idea about a standard paste block, probably a template, in the event's newbie's userpage (oof, talk about clumsy prose) is one I can get started on myself and I'll see if there's time today to rough out a draft. Not a full solution but a bit that can help. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:16, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) This is the second time I've encountered something like this with a group, so @Jimfbleak, perhaps you might know the answer: Is there anything I could have done to expedite the IP block removal as an admin who entered the room as this unfolded? I generally haven't handled these types of blocks before. In both events, I've gone to the blocking admin's talk page, but is there a better/faster route or something I should do myself? I think I see the frustration on both sides of the block here (and the desire for a better solution) but as I recall, edit-a-thons years ago used to have admins specifically on call to escape snafus such as the above. Here I was yet unprepared. czar 14:23, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Czar, I guess the simplest solution is to just completely unblock the original account and explain to the blocking admin why you have done so asap afterwards, in the circumstances I don't think anyone is likely to object! If the admin wishes to reinstate the block, after the event, that's something that can be discussed at leisure, although if it's a multiple user ip, that may not be a good idea anyway. In the absence of an admin, I guess making sure that there is an admin on-call might be the best solution, and Jim Henderson appears to be working something out too Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:45, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Busy time today at Edit-a-thon. Also dubious whether I'll make time tonight for even a rough draft and even tomorrow is uncertain, but here's something I stole from a teacher, Simple:User:Swim123blue which gives an idea:

I am a student in [[User:Swim123blue]]'s class. I am participating in the [[User:Swim123blue/easell project page|EASELL project]].

And no, this won't finish the problem; just hope to make it a bit easier. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:25, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Not so much time needed; just postponed processing event pictures. My next WP public event that has a WP meetup page is Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Hack the Canon. I have put the rough draft in its talk page, and will move it into a section of the event page after giving a few days for objections and suggestions from here or there. Might be improved by adding a link to the talk page of one person who will be responsible for responding to complaints or warnings. Or otherwise improved. Ideally it would be a template taking all information from, umm, somewhere but for the nonce I propose to copy and customize it for each event. It can only be effective against misplaced blocks if, first the event organizers make an event page and include it, second each newbie indeed copies it, and third the blocking Admin checks the user page. The third one, I assume, is standard procedure. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

AFC Reviewer Question

How do I, as an Articles for Creation reviewer, check whether there is an edit-a-thon in progress for a particular objective? I have just seen four drafts on Ghanaian women. In the past, seeing multiple drafts from a continent or a nation, especially of women, means that there may be an edit-a-thon. In this case I don't think that the participants are being given the best possible advice, because one sandbox contained two drafts on two Ghanaian women. That seems to mean that they weren't properly oriented. I had to decline that submission and one other submission, and I wish that edit-a-thon volunteers weren't turned loose without proper instructions. One draft was of a woman who had briefly been the wife of a President of Ghana, and I thought that being a First Lady was sufficient notability to allow her stub. Maybe some other volunteer can expand it?

How do I know if there is an edit-a-thon in progress (and whether the volunteers have been properly instructed)?

Robert McClenon (talk) 20:30, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Where's a newbie to go?

I notice this is all for trainers, none for trainees. We ought to have a list of links to places where editathons are held. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Charging attendees

While conventional wisdom (and to some extent commonsense) says not to charge edit-a-thon attendees, it might be good to spell in out in the guidelines, or at least define the ethical parameters in doing so. I work at the Minnesota Historical Society and we put on annual public workshops around the state, we usually charge a nominal fee to cover lunch. However, this year we are working on running a series of public Wikipedia edit-a-thons around Greater Minnesota at local history organizations. In the spirit of Wikipedia we will not be charging and will be absorbing the cost of providing lunches to attendees. However, it did make me wonder about what some of the policies are surrounding this as I could not find anything about it. Myotus (talk) 19:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I have taught at dozens of these events, a few with lunch (usually sandwiches), many with snacks (cookies and pretzels), and some with only water. None charged, and when I had a small part in planning, the question never came up. However, I don’t see the need for an official recommendation or advice until we have a few reports from experience. Incidentally a traveling road show to local history orgs sounds like a lot of fun; please post a link to the event wikipage or pages. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I congratulate you Myotus on not charging for attendance. The ethos of the Wikimedia Foundation has been "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Once you put up conditions or requirements (such as charging for admission) that contradicts the stated mission. Of all the events I have attended (and had a hand in organizing), it was recognized that any admission would turn away potential attendees, so there has always been a strong effort to either have not charge at all, or a minimal charge that seeks only partial cost-recovery. Nearly all the events hosted by cultural organizations not only did not charge, but offered free refreshments. If you want to build your community, you should let the community know they can come together without being charged. - kosboot (talk) 18:45, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

There are several tricky issues here, and I know of at least two trainers who have experienced being the only person in the room who is there as a volunteer in their own time. I can sympathise with people who respond to that by going down the route of charging for places in order to cover costs of lunch and even a fee. My preference is that we be more selective as to who we run events with, with a strong preference for organisations that will invite their membership/volunteers to an editathon as opposed to an organisation that will invite a bunch of colleagues to an editathon. I would still be happy to be involved in such events. But I appreciate that if the purpose of the event is more Wikidata or Commons focussed, and you have a room full of museum people who are considering a mass upload from their institution to Commons or Wikidata, the vibe would be different.

In terms of solutions: I would like the movement, either through chapters, or the WMF, to have grants available to cover the cost of event refreshments and travel expenses for volunteer trainers. The WMF has the money to do this, and on the principle that “he who pays the piper picks the tune” this makes it much easier to keep such events free to volunteers, and focussed on tapping into the institutions expertise, collections and lists of members and supporters. But we also need to remember that culture varies. I gave a talk at a university of the 3rd age event some years ago, and when I am a bit older I may join them myself and offer an editing Wikipedia course. They have a non commercial culture, where events are in people’s homes and attendees contribute a minimal sum towards tea and biscuits. Five years ago it was 30 pence. In the UK that really isn’t much money, and if I or someone else from the London meetup were to join them and run such events would anyone be concerned at such a charge? ϢereSpielChequers 08:54, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Calendar of Events

Four fundamental questions for all involved in editathons:

• What is the single on-wiki place that all event organisers should add their up-coming editathon events to?
• What is the single place Help Desk/Teahouse volunteers should point new editors to so they can find out what might be happening regionally?
• Why do we still show on this Project page old calendars from 2011 to 2018, but absolutely nothing since?
• Why does this page not at least make some attempt to help beginners find editing events in their region?

I'd welcome not only answers to these questions, but also seeing some updates being made to the guidance page itself, if anyone can, please. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:53, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Work at home

So, we won't be breathing the same air at meetings for the next few months lest we all get infected. But, we've all got Internet access, and most have it at home. Remote participation is usually only a little more than an experienced editor lecturing on the phone or more often editing separately on the topic of the day, or both. Maybe we can do more. Lecture, seems to me, can just as well be canned. Perhaps we need better canned lectures; the ones given out by A&F are mostly very slow and sometimes concentrate on the obsolete (for newbies anyway) Wikitext editor. Has anybody reviewed many different ones? We can give our newbies the URL link, and they can each view the lecture separately, at their own speed if that helps.

Most edit-a-thons that I've seen follow the lecture with coaching. That's where they raise their hand, and we lean over their shoulder and say, yes, yes, no, No, NO! Well, not quite so emphatic. Anyway, then we explain what went right and wrong with that particular edit and how to do it better. When they understand, we look around for someone else who's waving their hand.

Now that we can't lean over their shoulder because everybody's in distant safe places, we need some way to see the page that they're editing. Preferably both tutor and tutee should be able to apply mouse and keyboard. A picture-in-picture feature would let them see both the page and our beautiful, patient face. Us seeing them can also help if they've also got a camera. And if not, let's have another way for them to wave their hand and ask for help without jamming the voice channel. Oh, we should also be able to switch between big editing page with small face video, and vice versa. Also the option to see many faces or just the student of the moment. But again, that's if they can and want to let us see them; us seeing them is only moderately useful.

Anybody have ideas how to do this? Or think it's futile? Thought of a better way to do what edit-a-thons have done for years? Jim.henderson (talk) 00:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah. Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Learn to Edit Wikipedia - Social Distancing Edition indicates that DC has given it a try with Zoom. Too bad I didn't learn about beforehand. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:41, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

@Jim.henderson: I feel the same, and would also like to learn about using tools like Zoom to deliver basic training, as Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) was clearly doing in DC. If you find out about any future such events, would you kindly ping me, please? If I'm allowed, I would quite like to lurk in the background at one or two such events and see how the tool is used to best effect before I consider making a fool of myself by giving it a go. (I've offered to give some of my local mountaineering club members an introduction to Wikipedia so that they can improve articles about their favourite summits, rather than actually climb them right now - and I'm worried they'll all suddenly ask for help at once, and I won't have the skills to offer training online, which seems the way to go in the current worldwide crisis.) Or maybe a few of us ought simply to give it a go and teach ourselves? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:04, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Pinging Richard Nevell (WMUK) into this thread. A bit of train the trainers, maybe? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:08, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

@Jim.henderson, @Nick Moyes Hi! We are running at least one training session each week for the foreseeable future. Our next one is April 3. Feel free to tune in. You will receive the link for Zoom after registering with Eventbrite. Jamie-NAL from the National Agricultural Library is also leading a session this week. Both are listed here on the WMDC-Meetup page. Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) (talk) 00:12, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ariel Cetrone (WMDC): Thank you very much. I have just registered with EventBrite and have had a quick play with Zoom for the first time, too. Hope to see you on Friday. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:57, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Jim.henderson, as a friendly FYI, sitting on the Affiliations Committee, I'm hearing the opposite, that not everyone has internet access at home, and sometimes it's spotty at best. Mind you, I'm referring to people from all over the world, not just a particular country.

Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) I really enjoyed participating in the last event and will try to attend the next one, too. For me and other veteran editors, it's not so much about learning to edit (though I am learning how to edit using Visual Editor by listening to you!) vs. learning how to manage an online event and sharing the learnings. For example, on the CROW Telegram channel, one of the participants wrote about 2 wiki editathons they facilitated last week via Zoom. An attendee at both events did a screen share and put up porn. The lesson learned from that was that the facilitator can't do it all and there should be at least 1 additional person at each wiki online event who manages the administrative stuff, e.g. Waiting Room, the Chat, break-out rooms, muting people with background noise, etc. Note, the 2 wiki editathons had been promoted on FB which included the Zoom link so that's how the random person got into the editathon. --Rosiestep (talk) 09:37, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Rosiestep I couldn't agree more that facilitators should have someone on hand to field questions on chat, etc. I'm so grateful for Jamie-NAL. She's been handling the chat while I run the slides. I've also been using Eventbrite to register folks and sharing the Zoom link only with attendees after registration. So far, we've been able to avoid issues like the ones you mentioned above. I've also been selecting the 'mute all participants upon entry' radial button for each meeting and that seems to help keep things under control. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) (talk • contribs) 05:55, March 30, 2020 (UTC)

Description of uses

Hi folks, this is something we're dealing with as well at Wikimedia UK. In theory, training people to edit is something that can be done remotely but it's a matter of settling on methods that work, with tools and approaches to engaging people. It's going to involve a bit of looking around at what tools are out there and learning from others. I've been playing around with Zoom over the past week, getting in touch with family, friends, and colleagues, and it does work pretty well. One essential bit of information is that the free version only allows you 40 minutes at a time before it logs you out if there are more than 2 participants. We're experimenting with a paid account. Perhaps Google Hangouts Meet could be useful as I've not experienced a limit like that, and it allows for up to 100 people on a call in free mode. But actually taking these tools into the wild to deliver events will highlights all the wrinkles which we might not have considered before, such as needing to ask people to mute themselves unless they have a question or telling people how to pin a particular screen so they can actually see what the presenter is showing rather than all the faces of the people on the call. More than ever it's probably going to be important to have two people running sessions, along the lines that Rosiestep suggests.

At Wikimedia UK we have a Train the Trainers programme where people learn the skills to pass on information in a workshop setting. One of the things we're considering at the moment is can we do a session specifically geared towards teaching people to deliver workshops online. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:43, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Starting this topic, Richard Nevell (WMUK) I was precisely interested in putting heads together to share good methods. I am never in charge of an editathon, but am usually one of the coaches. So, yes, if the whole load is on only one experienced editor (occasionally I'm by far the most experienced) it will be a burden. I expect to be on chat while someone else is doing an audio visual presentation. Hmm, I wonder if there's a way to split one chat into three or four for that many different coachings in progress.

Yes, we need practical comparisons of how the various conferencing services can be used for this purpose. Our varied experiences should be boiled down to a section of this project page, or more likely a separate advice page about remote working. Random disruptive participation is pretty well in hand of our processes when it's text vandalism, and hasn't been much of a problem for in-person events. Remote video is a third kettle of fish, requiring proper balancing of openness vs protection.

Rosiestep, by most of us having Internet at home, I meant us old-timers who normally work editathons. Editing from my job at slack time for my first few months as a Wikkan is what persuaded me that I also needed the ability to do it from home. At the time, I had Email at home but no Web. As for editors or would-be editors who have no access during the emrgency, is an editathon even possible? Best I can figure is, set up video lectures for when they briefly do have access. Oh, and I do expect to listen in on whatever WMDC session is in progress this Friday. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:39, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jim.henderson, Richard Nevell (WMUK), and Nick Moyes it is so cool that we're all learning right now about best practices and so forth. For example, I saw a beautiful advertisement for this coming's Friday event, and wanting to promote it, I did a cut/paste of the advert, and shared it on FB, Twitter, and Telegram, only to have multiple people ping me to say, 'which time zone?' as that wasn't included on the advert.... which I hadn't noticed! Other people replied by asking when is the Intermediate Training class scheduled? Someone else wants to know if there can be an editathon immediately after the WMDC training. My opinion is that these are all great ideas and someone (who???) just needs to take the initiative, plan it, schedule it, just like Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) has taken the initiative to facilitate the Newbie Training sessions. We're talking a lot about this, plus video conferencing platforms, etc. on the CROW Telegram channel, in case you're interested in continuing the conversation there. --Rosiestep (talk) 01:32, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

For clarification, CROW stands for Conference/Community Remote Options for Wikimedians. There are 111 wiki participants from everywhere. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:31, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Rosiestep:, too bad so much discussion must be on scattered forums but I guess it's mainly because their software better handles discussions. One problem for me is learning them all. I don't even know how to join a Telegram channel, except when my friend Pharos either put me directly into one or sent me a text message with a link.

The comment about Intermediate level instruction suggests a major advantage over in person edit-a-thons. In my experience such events are mostly arranged with a local host institution such as a college or library or museum who also provide the publicity. They also announce a theme and darn it, it's almost always biography; there are always plenty of people who deserve to be famous but aren't but there's much interesting in the world besides. Online events don't draw their audience from a single city or the from constituents of an institution; participants can be anywhere in the world that it's a convenient time of day. They can be alerted to the opportunity by topical discussions in social media such as Facebook and Quora. As for subject matter, pick your own. I'm a fan of bicycling, photography and astronomy, so those can be among my hunting grounds. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:49, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jim.henderson: I believe the reason we're having these discussions on Telegram is that it's the most acceptable alternative to everything else tried (Facebook, Meta, Wikimedia-l, etc.). We converse in English, even though many of the folks edit other language Wikipedias or other sister projects, e.g. Wikidata. We are in the same boat, needing to learn from each other, as swiftly as possible, the best way to facilitate meetups, editathons, conferences, etc.

I think what Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) has started with the 1 hour intro to editing Wikipedia is the right direction. Online training should be separate from online editing related to focus area, e.g. Art+Feminism, astronomy, or a particular institution, e.g. the Smithsonian, the Met. Online editathons are a good method for socializing, editing, talking about what you're editing, discussions about references related to the topic of the event. I think this month, we'll start seeing more online editathons, but I think there's a real benefit if they are separate from online training. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:28, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jim.henderson: "I wonder if there's a way to split one chat into three or four" a colleague has said that Zoom has the ability to split off chats into different rooms. I've not used it myself, but it could potentially be handy for group work.

As we start to get a feel for things at WMUK I would be more than happy to post notes and experiences here (or on a subpage) so that we can start distilling things into a guidance document. Stuff like dealing with different timezones like Rosie mentioned is not something that would have occurred to me since our events usually have everybody in one place.

The change in method also gives us a chance to bring in new session formats. So like Jim says, most sessions are aimed at beginners but we now have a chance to plan different types of event. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:35, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

In just the space of 2 weeks, I note that webinars on "working from home" or "teaching from home" have begun to coalesce among particular ideas. Whenever possible, asynchronous learning is favored (to compensate for multiple time zones and to provide a sense of self-accomplishment). Pushing distractions to the side. Providing the option of break-out rooms for 3-4 participants is a good idea (apparently this is possible on Zoom). Similarly with editathons and similar social instruction, I suspect we'll be able to learn what works well, what doesn't and options for things that fall in between positive and negative. - kosboot (talk)

All this talk about locations and time zones make me realize that online sessions can be freed from several accustomed constraints. An editathon is traditionally an event preceded by publicity, at a place, with a start time, a greeting, a schedule for lecture and coaching, and an end time. We can be free from such constraints. It can be an all day event. The publicity can have a link to a recorded introductory lecture, training, speech, whatever you call it. It will be a nicely produced how-to video of perhaps half an hour. Its page will have a link to ask for, usually, help with a particular article or technical matter. Click it, and one of us coaches sees the alert and responds, with video. We share the screen that is being worked on, and discuss what's going wrong or what can be done right or whatever.

If participation grows enough, then it is no longer an event; people can click into it any day, any time that they find out it's possible. It become just a feature of Wikipedia. We can also have events for special interests, such as pictures or translations, and topical events such as Handicraft Day, India Week, Weather Week, Tropical Storm Day, Female Diplomat Biography Day, or whatever. The full-blown walk-in version, Open For Business 24/7, may be a distant vision; I don't know whether any existing software infrastructure can support it. And then, if the main service of elementary, instant, online coaching stops being an event, then it's no longer an editathon, either, I guess. Jim.henderson (talk) 12:59, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Asynchronous learning, they call it. How pleasant, that my brilliant new idea was given a polysyllabic and precise name decades go when my father was practicing that trade, and is covered by a Wikipedia article written in the usual atrocious ed biz jargon. But yes, they've got it right; this method has flexible scheduling and some of the advantage of individual tutoring. We've been operating on the principle, thousands of years old, of the classroom. Not a bad method but we've got an opportunity to do some of our teaching differently. In my experience editathons are almost always held in universities, large libraries and similar institution rarely found outside big cities. That, after all is where classrooms and a concentrated audience are found, but plenty of people are living and working in rural places like north central Wisconsin where my parents grew up.

This morning's WMDC session was a lecture by Ariel Cetrone (WMDC) and I forget who else, rather than an attempt at asynchronous learning. What it needs as a successful first lecture for newbies is to be shorter and slower. Which is to say, it must say less. Nevermind categories, code editor, and pictures. Save those and other advanced topics for other sessions. Offer those sessions in a course to be run over a period of days or longer, with editing trials in between, or as advanced electives briefly described and offered in a menu. Online, real-time coaching must of course be synchronous, which means an experienced New Zeeland editor will be useful to newbies in India or Tahiti but seldom able to give much help to Florida or Brazil. Not a big problem, seems to me, especially since each coaching is generally one on one and only for minutes of a coach's few hours of putting ourselves on call. Hmm, I ought to put together a more coherent critique of Ariel's lecture, but I don't know where to put it. Also write replies to Richard Nevell (WMUK) and Sm8900. Come summertime, I hope to be shaking hands and hugging again and too busy for this much thoughtful prognosticating and pipe dreaming. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:27, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I would just like to put in my own two cents, that I think these remote sessions are great, since they expand the width of the audience reached by these conferences. with that said, I do think the in-person meetings are valuable as well. I think the two things should exist together. I would also like to thank Jim.henderson for tagging me, and thereby letting me know about this discussion here. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 01:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Video shorts

As far as where to host the ongoing discussions, as an alternative to Telegram (software), I would like to suggest Slack (software) or Discord (software) as options. the advantage to these programs is that they enable users to set up permanent channels for discussions. for Telegram, is there any way to join the discussion, other than having an admin add the individual's cell number? Would like to request info from anyone here who might be knowledgable, such as Rosiestep, or others. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 01:10, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

User:Fuzheado also pointed out some techniques that I've learned from webinars for teachers of undergrad/graduate students. You can use pre-recorded video for small individual steps (how to register, how to ...), the ideal length being about 3 minutes, 5 minutes maximum. It requires thinking about how we lead an editathon and breaking up actions into individual steps that can be accomplished with a short video. - kosboot (talk) 12:16, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Breaking off a section for video. So, I wondered what's the inventory of introductory videos. In Commons I didn't expect much, given the odd formats used there. Indeed a quick lazy glance failed to find any. YouTube has many, most of them years old, and maybe we can put together a list with brief critiques. As for where that should go, Meta:Video tutorials seems to have died years ago. It suggests looking into NavWiki/External Resources which is in a separate Wiki I never heard of. All of this fragmentation into small efforts on separate wikis, together with hints that someone is trying to do something in this area, makes me suspect there's a fairly large activity off-wiki, probably also scattered. Perhaps this has the benefit of discouraging participation by the ignorant, which strikes me as an un-wiki attitude. Anyway I can think of two possibly proper places to organize the existing, off-wiki videos: Commons and Meta. More likely Meta. Is any of this pointing towards a good idea? Jim.henderson (talk) 15:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

A less lazy search found a few relevant Wikipages:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Makes Video: Little action in recent years; mainly about video versions of articles.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Screencast: Relevant, but with little action in recent years.
• Commons:Category:Instructional videos on using Wikipedia: Not very big, and sparsely categorized, but as an experienced cat wrangler I can at least make a try at sorting it. After that would come identifying purposes for which each could be used. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Multi-language

I am unsure what best practices are for multi language edit-a-thons. I made an attempt here with English/Italian. Any advice appreciated: Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized Labour/Online edit-a-thon Tech February 2021 and it:Utente:Shushugah/Labour-Edit-a-thon. ~ Shushugah (talk) 23:12, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Note, seeking more feedback after running above edit-a-thon with German/Italian contributors as well. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Best way to intra wiki link multi language edit-a-thon? Shushugah (talk) 14:44, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Identifying editathon participants and their edits

This ties in with Robert McClenon's question of 3 years ago, above at #AFC_Reviewer_Question.

Today there was a little flurry of discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Many_new_editors because someone had noticed an unusual pattern of edits and was curious as to what was going on: a flurry of sensible edits by new, redlinked, editors, editing in a very similar way (adding links and citations) in a short time space. Some detective work identified it as an editathon celebrating 50 years of the Association for Women in Mathematics, all very laudable. But it would have been helpful - and helped promote the Association and the host institution, Worcester Polytechnic Institute - if the new editors had been encouraged to set up a minimal user page, and if there had been a banner to add to their talk pages, or to the pages of the articles they were editing, to mention that editathon. Editors following up would then have known that these edits came from enthusiastic new editors eager to learn about editing, which might influence the tone of their feedback if there had been any problems (like the text in the WiR banners which says, for example "This article was created or improved during the Plants & Gardens edit-a-thon hosted by the Women in Red project in April 2021. The editor(s) involved may be new; please assume good faith regarding their contributions before making changes."). As well as explaining an unusual pattern of editing to allay any worries about socks etc.

Should something on these lines be included in this guidance for Editathon organisers? PamD 08:18, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Safety features

Now that editathons have becomes a regular part of Wiki-culture, I've noticed that additional issues have come up. These issues center around the safety of the participants. I would think we need sections devoted to the Code of conduct, as well as sections devoted to safety: Having volunteers be aware of irregularities or problematic behavior - that these people can be dealt with in an expeditious manner. - kosboot (talk) 10:46, 30 May 2024 (UTC)