Translations:Course-v1:edz+11+2023 SP/en/block-v1:edz+11+2023 SP+type@html+block@a8a25db0ab284262948487179ba3713b/content/en
The most successful Wikimedia campaigns have recommended actions for participants. Recommended actions need to be specific, easily understood, and help make meaningful changes to the Wikimedia projects.
Creating a recommended action often starts with applying a focus area onto one of following workflows:
- Easy Article Creation -- Either a strong list of missing or easy to translate topics for simple article types (i.e. like biographies or films) WikiGap, Art+Feminism and Months of African Cinema. Some campaigns have used, for instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mbabel" target="[object Object]">Wikidata driven templates </a>to help newcomers have an outline for their new articles.
- Translation -- because translation doesn’t require creating new content, many campaigns encourage newcomers to translate existing content. For some smaller language Wikis, this is an easy activity to start new editors on if they are bilingual. However, on larger Wikipedias (such as English, Spanish and French), standards for quality of translation prevents newcomers from being consistently successful at this task.
- Expanding content -- A simple way for participants to add content to existing pages on Wikimedia projects (such as adding a section). This kind of “expand an article” approach has been successful in a number of topic areas, including Student assignments in the Wikipedia Education Program.
- Micro-actions from a backlog -- Wikipedians place a number of different tags and notices that describe problems on Wikipedia articles. Each of these tags could be a small action for new editors. Campaigns focused on micro-contributions (such as #1lib1ref and #WPWP) use a backlog to scale quickly, and reduce the risk of local organizers misinterpreting the skills being taught to newcomers.
How may these actions be different on other wikis?
Increasingly organizers in the Wikimedia movement have been starting newcomers on non-Wikipedia projects. These actions are in part because many of the non-Wikipedia projects have simpler workflows or actions:
- On Wikidata and Commons most content workflows can be made into micro actions -- because describing an image or Wikidata item with additional statements is tightly scoped. Campaigns and editing events on these projects have less likelihood of meeting resistance from experienced community members.
- WikiQuote and Wiktionary both have more limited units of content creation -- so are often easier to write instructions for. Recently campaigns like<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Women/SheSaid" target="[object Object]"> SheSaid</a> have been rapidly adopted by organizers because they are easy to contribute to as .
- WikiSource’s main unit of contribution (proofreading a single page of text) is simple to turn into a competition or game. With this in mind, Proofreading events have been common on WikiSource, and are easily accessible for new contributors (<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_proofreading_contests" target="[object Object]">documented here</a>).