Discussion Room/1
The Discussion Room is a space for open and facilitated discussions at Wikimania that are actually about the content projects. Participation of the audience in the session is critical, because there are no speakers, and there is no expert panel!
You can find a full overview of the discussion topics on the Discussion Room main page. Please note: there is limited seating available, and we're not saving any seats! Please be on time, but feel free to join during the midway break between two discussions.
Basic facts
- Discussion topics this session
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- The Wikipedian self help group: Collecting the most annoying, beautiful & hilarious memories of Wikimedians
- Notes
- https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/2015-discussionroom-1
- Facilitator of this session
- Iolanda Pensa and Lodewijk Gelauff
- Length of this session
- 45 minutes + 40 minutes (with a 5 minute break in between). This session will have a short break in the middle, but the discussion is in total 90 minutes.
Approach
Each discussion targets specifically online Wikimedia projects, it lasts 40 minutes and it starts with a short 5 minutes introduction.
To set the tone of our discussions, we have three rules:
- Focus on YOU. We are interested in discussing and triggering individual action, things people can personally do and change to improve our Wikimedia projects. We trust the discussion can be much more interesting if we do not focus on what others should do ("the others", Wikimedia chapters and Wikimedia Foundation).
- Be constructive and polite. Disagreements animate discussions and they can allow us to unfold all issues related to a topic. Let's avoid personal attacks, let's consider that we have different backgrounds and let's aim at making everybody comfortable in sharing their legitimate point of view.
- Be short and on topic. Let's create space for everyone to express his/her opinion.
Specific rule: When going into examples, please don't focus on who did something, but rather what the experience was like. This is not a blame-game, but an opportunity to share how people experience something, and what you remember. It may serve as a warning, inspiration or great laugh.
Self help group
Every wikimeetup there are memories being shared about how awful an experience was, how great it was to work together on a specific topic, or how hilarious that vandal was. We would like to have a little more structure in collecting these experiences, and get them from all over the world.
Did you get annoyed when someone kept reverting your edits, even though you pointed to a valid source for it? Or were you touched by a family member trying to edit? Were you helped during your first edit? Did you come across a new user that left funny edit summaries behind? Share these stories! Maybe your close friends on your home wiki know them already, but they might be valuable lessons and input for others as well.