Submissions/Covering the Wikimedia Community

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2015.

Submission no.
2069
Session etherpad
Title of the submission
Covering the Wikimedia Community
Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)
presentation/discussion
Author of the submission
  • Andrew Lih, Ed Erhart, Emily Temple-Wood, Fabrice Florin
E-mail address

andrew.lih@gmail.com

Username
Country of origin
  • USA
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
  • Wikipedia Weekly podcast; Wikipedia Signpost; Wikimedia Foundation
Personal homepage or blog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

With Wikipedia and Wikimedia volunteers spanning time zones, geography, language groups and projects, how might we best capture the pulse of activity inside this distributed community and accurately report on it, both internally and to the outside world?

The session will reflect on the year of Wikimedia community news and provide a forum for Wikimedians to talk back to "the media" of our community.

The Wikimedia movement's news is anchored by The Signpost, the Wikimedia Blog and various community newsletters from the education, GLAM and other interest groups, and the periodic Wikipedia Weekly podcast. What have been the challenges in covering this community and how effective has this been to keep our community in touch with its own voices? How might we improve our community news process for the future?

The panel of Wikimedia reporters and Wikimedia's communications team review the major stories of the past year and discuss how we covered it, from the Media Viewer superprotect issue (August 2014) to the Gamergate Arbcom case (January 2015) and long-running issues such as the health of WMF-community relations, paid/COI editing and gender gap/women-only spaces.

We also discuss the various off-wiki channels that are becoming increasingly important to our community. How do our on-wiki discussion pages co-exist with these multiple channels of communication that have emerged in recent years?

Some issues to discuss:

  • How well have The Signpost, Wikipedia Weekly and various newsletters done reporting on the breadth of community matters?
  • How well are cross-wiki, multilingual issues reported?
  • Have these outlets been fair, accurate and balanced in reporting on the movement?
  • Are there enough diverse voices and how might we improve in these areas?
  • What types of new reporting are most urgently needed?

Some of the big news stories from 2014-2015 we will recap, which will be updated for Wikimania:

  1. Media Viewer superprotect in de.wp and ongoing Wikimedia Foundation - Community relations [1]
  2. Wikipedia/Wikimedia experience for newbies - Problems with AfC [2], [3]
  3. Technological advancements - adopting HHVM [4]
  4. Continued paid editing of Wikipedia [5]
  5. Gender bias in Wikipedia [6]
  6. Gender gap - critiques of Wikipedia's culture for women [7], women-only forums in Wikimedia [8]
  7. Prizes and accolades - Erasmus Prize [9], Jimmy Wales receives prize [10]
  8. Ongoing issues with the growing Wikimedia community in India [11]
  9. Wikipedia in Education, including relations with the Wiki Education Foundation [12]
  10. Wikimedia Foundation milestones - Year in Review video, mobile (including Wikipedia Zero advances and questions [13])
  11. Wikimedia metrics - rise of mobile traffic, adopting new statistical measurement models and interpreting new trends, most popular en.wp articles [14]
  12. GamerGate - Controversy [15] [16] and Arbitration Committee performance [17]

This topic has been addressed at previous conferences, with other related proposed sessions for 2015 as well:

Track
  • WikiCulture & Community
Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests


Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

  1. CT Cooper · talk 17:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. KrystleChung (talk) 20:28, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Ocaasi (talk) 16:56, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. -Another Believer (talk) 18:42, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. guillom (talk) 23:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. User:GeorgeLouis, but not if it's only half an hour! GeorgeLouis (talk) 21:31, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 06:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. --アンタナナ 23:27, 22 May 2015 (UTC) (maybe)[reply]
  9. --Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE) (talk) 05:22, 13 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Add your username here.
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