Learning patterns/Project/Diversity learning patterns campaign
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 | This page in a nutshell: Support of creative solutions for the upcoming Inspire Grants Campaign Help us create a list of tools and knowledge around gender and diversity. |
Support future grantees in the Inspire Campaign
Share what you know about Diversity in the Wikimedia movement.
- Have you preserved your cultural or national history through photo contests and editing events?
- Have you worked to enrich a particular language or cultural group on Wikimedia?
- Have you studied diversity issues in online communities?
- What have you learned about encouraging diversity on Wikimedia?
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Multiple ways to contribute! |
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1. Describe a Problem
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2. Offer a solution
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3. Describe a Problem and Offer a Solution
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4. Endorse others
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5. Create a Learning Pattern based on a Problem and Solution set
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Problem: Writing for non-native English readers: density and complexity
Sometimes it is hard to know what level of complexity written documentation is and you need to know whether someone with a basic reading ability will understand (User:JAnstee (WMF)).
- Yes, this can be tricky for me too --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
- Solution: How about using the Hemingway App? (link) -- JAnstee (WMF)
Problem: Writing for non-native English readers: idiomatic language
Native speakers may make frequent use of idiomatic language that makes it harder to translate (even mentally translate for one's own understanding) for non-native speakers.
If one makes a conscious effort, proper idioms like "the whole nine yards" or "busman's holiday" are relatively easy to avoid. Much harder to avoid is the idiomatic aspect of a core feature of English -- phrasal verbs, meaning verbs that combine with a preposition or particle to create their actual meaning. Phrasal verbs are often opaque (as well as harder to find in the dictionary!) to non-native speakers. For example, "blow up" may be harder to understand than "explode" or "enlarge"; "repeat" is more understandable than "do over"; "choose" easier than "pick out". Ijon (talk) 01:49, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
- Solution: consciously avoid idiomatic language, and when you find yourself using an idiom, replace it with a more literal version (in writing), or follow it up (in speech) with a literal re-statement of what you meant. It's hard at first, but experience shows it does become habitual, with time. :) Ijon (talk)
- Solution: Even when I try to avoid using idioms, they still show up in my writing. One thing that helps me detect idioms is to translate a sentence from my native language (English) to my second (Spanish) or third (Flemish) language. I am not as good at speaking Spanish or Flemish as I used to be, so if reading the translation is difficult, I know that I need to choose new words to explain myself (in English). --KittyCarmichael (talk) 06:30, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
Problem: Talking points for diversity
Sometimes, its hard to know how to talk about diversity to new wikimedians or partners. What resources are out there with data and links that we can use?
- Solution: *Mind in Croydon Equal Opportunities Policy, maintaining equal opportunity when serving a community with mental health challenges
- Solution: *Volunteer diversity in sports in Australia
- Solution: *"If you're facing internal resistance, get somebody from outside the organisation to talk to the organisation or deliver diversity training. People are far more willing to accept change when it's suggested externally rather than internally. If your organisation's capacity allows it, make sure that meetings, forums, equal opportunities monitoring questions etc are totally confidential, or as confidential/anonymous as possible ...Lots of diversity training is crucial, particularly around the importance of language. People can cause tremendous offence through language without meaning to, and training can address this problem."-- Involving LGBT Volunteers Case Studies, p. 6
- Solution: *Involving LGBT Volunteers
- Solution: *"Every delegate has the right to experience MUN in his or her own way. They do not have the right, however, to negatively affect the experiences of others. Conference organizers would also do well by remembering this. For every delegate who throws a culturally insensitive remark, there is a member of staff who is allowing this negative environment to fester." From Cultural Insensitivity in Model United Nations: A paradox.
- Solution: *Retention of Aboriginal Volunteers
- Solution: *Case study on diversifying your volunteer base, an example of training
- Solution: *"It is clear that a wide range of interventions are required in disadvantaged communities to address the multi-faceted challenges connected to disadvantage and barriers to volunteering specifically." Interventions may include: investing in civic leaders, offering accreditation, offering short-term opportunities. From Volunteer Now’s Response to the Urban Regeneration and Community Development Policy Framework, p. 8
- Solution: *When addressing questions of diversity in an international setting, it may be helpful for staff and volunteers working in organizational development to be familiar with generally accepted best practices in the private sector worldwide. Example: Society for Human Resource Management Diversity Page, a professional organization serving over 60 countries.
- Solution: *Urge the The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to adopt and implement a Diversity and Inclusion Policy, such as these examples: The Prince's Trust Diversity and Inclusion Policy, United Way U.S. National Board of Trustees Statement on Diversity and Inclusion, Healthwatch Worcestershire Diversity and Inclusion Policy --Djembayz (talk) 15:22, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
Problem: What is a good way to promote your cultural heritage?
--EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 18:24, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
- Solution: Add any solutions here!
Problem: Uncertainty as to what constitutes sexist incivility
According to a thread at the Gender Gap Task Force, there is uncertainty as to what constitutes sexist incivility. --Djembayz (talk) 19:39, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
- Solution: Get community input and come up with a definition. --Djembayz (talk) 19:39, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Problem: Experiences from Wikipedia edit training
I have conducted a number of Wikipedia edit training sessions and an edit-a-thon. This is what I have learned from those events. Firstly, based on doing somewhat informal follow-ups on the contributions by the user accounts and the articles worked on (which I generally put on my watchlist), I believe that very few people continue to edit after the event themselves and the few that do peeter out pretty quickly. But, the feedback at the event itself is generally very positive. People appear to enjoy the workshops and leave in an apparently positive frame of mind towards contributing to Wikipedia. The edit training is mostly organised through local libraries mostly held during the working week, many of those recruited are regular library users and often local historians (as local history groups often meet at local libraries). The edit training groups tend to be both male and female but usually majority female. The groups are predominantly middle-aged or older people. The edit-a-thon was about female scientists and the participants were themselves female scientists; the age group was slightly younger on average as most were recruited through universities and hence still of working age plus there were younger PhD students etc.
Various approaches have been used in training. Initially Article for Creation was used, later live editing of existing articles became more of the focus (having observed creating new articles wasn't successful).
The people at the workshops being mostly middle-aged and older (noting I am retired myself so this is not a "generation gap" comment) generally regard describe themselves as "not an expert with computers" but generally they are all seem to be regular users of email, web browsing, Facebook, Skype (to keep in touch with family) and (often) wordprocessing to produce newsletters and brochures (usually Microsoft Word). They certainly have "basic IT literacy" and use computers as part of everyday life. But it becomes apparent in workshops that to edit Wikipedia, you need a higher standard of IT skills. Things some of them do not know about or at least get them very confused:
- copy and paste
- having two tabs/windows open in a web browser at the same time
- multiple scroll bars
Why does this matter? Well, when you try to show someone how to create a citation to a web page, you generally need them to to have one browser tab/window open in EDIT mode of Wikipedia (which means two vertical scroll bars) and another one open on the web page to be used as the citation and you want them to copy the URL and title from that second tab/window into the citation template form in the first window. Something I do many times each day, but it involves understanding all three of those things above, which are often new to people.
- using a workflow in a browser
The Wikipedia source editor model of EDIT->PREVIEW->...->SAVE is quite unfamiliar to them (they would probably do better with NEXT ... NEXT ... NEXT. They create their own edit conflicts all the time using BACK in this workflow and many of them do so many PREVIEWS, they never get around to SAVE (oh dear - all their work is lost!)
I have not yet done edit training using the Visual Editor as it is not yet a default option on en.WP. That might resolve a couple of these problems (multiple scroll bars and the workflow).
Citations. Being older, many of the people have not been educated to a level where the use of citations is required at all. They struggle to understand why they are needed. They "just know" information or are repeating what an expert has told them. Those who have a university degree mostly got it a long time ago before inline citations were commonplace (noting that different disciplines moved to inline citations as the norm at different times -- humanities being one of the slowest). At most they are comfortable with creating a list of references. The notion of the encyclopedia "that anyone can edit" as it says on the Wikipedia Main Page is violently at odds with the expectation of inline citation.
Photos and copyright. The participants are routinely disappointed when I tell them Wikipedia cannot accept most of the photos they have brought with them as they are not their own work and are probably still in copyright, being scanned from books, copied from websites, or orphan works (meaning we don't know who took the photos so we can't even seek permission). The copyright issue also extends to copy-and-paste of text from websites (often from their local history or local town council website where they feel they have a communal ownership over the content - "they won't mind" they say, probably quite truthfully).
Competition for their contributions. Compared with the barriers I have outlined above with contributing to Wikipedia, many of these participants have other avenues to share their knowledge. They can write an article for their local history newsletter or do a poster for their local library or tourist information centre. Often there is a Facebook group called "Local History of Smallville" (or similar) where photos are shared and people comment on them "Oh, that's the old shop on the corner of ...". None of those ways of sharing knowledge involve the complexities of Wikipedia editing and Wikipedia copyright concerns. In a world that routinely disregards copyright concerns on most online platforms, Wikipedia's "do the right thing" is a barrier to contribution, while other outlets have much lower barriers to entry.
Finally, I would also note that during edit training or shortly after, some other editors revert the newbie's contributions or make nasty comments on the user talk pages. Sometimes I understand why they don't like the edit, perhaps the contribution was a bit borderline in some way (a bit too chatty or a bit too enthuasiastic is common) "The old Smallville Homestead is full of fascinating relicts from the pioneer daysand is open Wednesday to Sunday (admission only $2)" but there is no consideration given to the WP:NOBITE policy or trying to improve the edit by toning it down a little. Also things are deleted because there is no citation, which the newbie may have been intending to add in their next edit (as citations are so much harder for them, they rarely do the citation with the added content) but the edit is gone before they can add the citation. Sometimes I don't understand the revert at all; I can only conclude it must be "I don't like it" as I cannot see any policy problem. Obviously while this might affect only 1 or 2 people in the room, the rest of the room become aware of it and quickly learn that there are "hostile" editors out there on Wikipedia unwilling to give newcomers a chance. Again, the other ways for sharing knowledge mentioned above are rarely hostile (the Facebook post will score lots of LIKEs), everyone will say "well done" for creating the poster or newsletter article. I try to make sure that our newbies don't edit on "very popular" pages for this reason but even in quiet backwater topics, watchlists allow a sleeping dragon to be awoken. I have occasionally attempt to educate these hostile editors about being kinder to newbies, and almost always get a vitriolic response (usually abusing me for having failed to prevent the edit being made in the first place). I have given up trying to educate hostile editors; it doesn't work.
I'm sorry I don't have a solution to most of these problems. Visual editor may help a little with some of the technology barriers, but in the name of "quality" and "not get sued for copyright", we have created an encyclopedia that most ordinary citizens cannot make contributions to (maybe they can fix spelling, but not a lot more). It might be possible to do something about the aggressive behaviour if there was some way to report it without fear of retaliation and that would result in some kind of censure and ultimately bans if needed.
Yes, I am discouraged by my experience with outreach. While having more sessions of training might allow people to get beyond some of the technological barriers and the citation barriers (which appears to be the current thinking), it won't solve the copyright barriers or the hostile community barrier. Meanwhile there are other places online and offline with lower barriers to entry and more positive cultures offering alternative ways for people to contribute their knowledge.
Finally, I would encourage reframing our diversity discussions away from seeing the women (or whichever group) as a "problem to be fixed" (which tends to lead to outreach/training "solutions" aimed at "fixing them") instead into "why isn't Wikipedia attractive to women (or other groups)?" and focus our efforts on finding solutions that "fix Wikipedia" so diverse people will come to Wikipedia willingly because it's simply a great thing to be part of! Kerry Raymond (talk) 02:01, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
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About this initiative
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For many years, the Wikimedia movement has acknowledged language, culture and gender diversity as important for its goal to share the sum of all human knowledge. The Wikimedia movement faces many diversity challenges.
Several initiatives have tried to understand the problem and work towards increasing diversity in participation and content coverage to address these gaps (e.g., Writing Diversity back in Wikipedia toolkit and Charting diversity). We want to add one more! We are awarding Learning and Evaluation barnstars!
Diversity Learning Pattern Campaign Calendar
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