Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Noopur, thank you for posting the report. I have a few questions for the India Programs team which I have listed under, would appreciate if you could respond: 1. How do you plan on scaling the Social Media pilot beyond your own networks? 2. Do you believe you can effectively create a mechanism for recruitment of editors through this project in a manner that justifies the cost and time involved? I am asking this because I noticed that you make serious attempts at trying to convince users to edit Wikipedia pages. 3. How many hours per week do you spend on the Wikipedia support group? To Hisham and the rest of the India Program team: I am still waiting for answers to these questions. They were asked with seriousness, and they deserve your serious consideration. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Even these answers would be interesting for me. Hope we get them soon. On 2 Jun 2012 11:04, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: Noopur, thank you for posting the report. I have a few questions for the India Programs team which I have listed under, would appreciate if you could respond: 1. How do you plan on scaling the Social Media pilot beyond your own networks? 2. Do you believe you can effectively create a mechanism for recruitment of editors through this project in a manner that justifies the cost and time involved? I am asking this because I noticed that you make serious attempts at trying to convince users to edit Wikipedia pages. 3. How many hours per week do you spend on the Wikipedia support group? To Hisham and the rest of the India Program team: I am still waiting for answers to these questions. They were asked with seriousness, and they deserve your serious consideration. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Dear all, Please find the responses inline On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Dhaval S. Vyas dsv...@gmail.com wrote: Even these answers would be interesting for me. Hope we get them soon. On 2 Jun 2012 11:04, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: Noopur, thank you for posting the report. I have a few questions for the India Programs team which I have listed under, would appreciate if you could respond: 1. How do you plan on scaling the Social Media pilot beyond your own networks? The Social Media Pilot does not run on our personal networks. However, given the interstitial nature of social networks, we might have mutual friends with people. Otherwise, most of these participants are people from previous outreach sessions and users who had 'liked' our various pages and activities but did not know what to do after that. Coming to the scaling bit, even outside the current network, I welcome you and all other Wikipedians to help us spread the word and even add a few friends of yours who might be interested in learning about Wikipedia. The next steps are to reach out to interest groups on social networks, such as - and this is purely by way of example - groups that are interested in railways or modern Indian art, etc and see if the profile of members of these groups is such that there might be potential new editors and explore if we can generate curiosity in these members to join our group. The work that has been done on Odia and already done (at least building the group, if not the more methodical approach to encouraging new editor) on Kannada point to the potential of interest groups. Kannada - for instance - already has 2000+ members. In both these cases, they drew members from people who were active or interested in language interest social groups (in these cases, the interest is the language itself.) Additionally, social media is being used in various ways by communities across India including the Assamese, Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam and we want to observe them, how they reach out to people, what works and what doesn't before we make more interventions. 2. Do you believe you can effectively create a mechanism for recruitment of editors through this project in a manner that justifies the cost and time involved? I am asking this because I noticed that you make serious attempts at trying to convince users to edit Wikipedia pages. There is a fine difference between convincing people to edit Wikipedia and going that extra mile to help them out. In my humble opinion if these are users who have previously liked various pages of ours and activities, the former is already achieved. However, if they lost interest or simply saw no new activity happening on the page, it is useful to tell them we are doing something new. Unlike physical outreach, we are able to resolve internet issues, barriers of consumption, familiarity and individual engagement. Remember how Anirudh and I answered Commons queries for the Ahmedabad photo walk? I am happy to say that of those we actually ended up meeting 2 (correct me if I am mistaken) long term editors. The major effort I put into social media was analysing the way the various Facebook pages were functioning, what were the challenges opportunities, how we could construct a set of guidelines and walking community members through these guidelines - which I detailed out as part of a very specific nearly 20 point plan here ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media#Process ) 3. How many hours per week do you spend on the Wikipedia support group? As is with the pervasive nature of social media networks and the stuff we do on them, there is no way you can tell the actual time spent. I also answers queries of people on Saturday and Sunday just because I want to help and that doesn't depend on my office timings. Similarly, as explained earlier, mentors come in and go out depending on their schedules. Going further though, we'd love to scale it to a point where only mentors can handle the group and actually make meaningful relationships with new editors. I invite you as well to join in as a mentor and would love to have a Skype call with you. Just to give you a sense of what all is happening on Communications simultaneously - I have worked on Wikipatrikahttp://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2012-05/Community_News, supporting the Malayalam conference, the Assamese 10th anniversary, the Kannada 10th anniversary, the Nepali 9th anniversary as well as stories that we have published for the Tamil media contesthttps://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/20/postcard-from-the-tamil-community/, the Gujarati Wikisourcehttp://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/04/04/realizing-the-dreams-of-communities-3-years-6-users-1000-articles-counting-the-source-of-gujarati-wikisource/(and Indic
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Greetings, fellow FB'ers!!
A couple of points. I mentioned this before on IRC, why is Social Media and
FB being used by the India operations? If this is an initiative by WMF, I
would have thought it could have been taken on from SF. Expert opinions
about Why Facebook aside, this pilot program doesn't seem to have
anything unique for the Indian context. It is still the same scatter
approach, get more people to 'Like', and between the mountains of, OMG,
lol, I like totally like Wikipedia. lol get them to make an edit. After
going through the numbers, there seems to be a conversion rate of 8% or
less with a total edits of less than 300.
Second, I understand that there might be 2 skill-sets involved here. But I
don't know how qualified Indian staff members, or even SF ones are, to take
on one-on-one teaching assignments like these. To the best of my knowledge,
SF staff for the most part avoid teaching assignments, which are done by a
handful of editors on staff. Most of the Indian staff member's editing
started after or a few months prior to joining WMF, and turned into
teaching within a month or two. In Noopur's case, I understand, that
teaching and editing might be two different skill-sets, but I don't know if
she possesses the other one either. She is without doubt qualified to Tweet
and FB ( lawd knows, I can't argue ;) ), but teaching others to edit? She
barely completed her first year editing, sometime last week I think, and a
lot of those edits were in the course of her job. I'm weary only because
this was one of the large problems with the IEP.
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 5:35 PM, Noopur Raval nra...@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear all,
Greetings! Here's an update on the Social Media pilot
programhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media.
Just a small recap before I go on to the numbers.
*Why Facebook?*
Why we decided to go with Facebook at all is because potential new editors
are more comfortable and familiar with the channel. To illustrate, after
outreach sessions, we tried staying in touch with around 100 participants
using a combination of email and talk page messages and got just 3
responses. When we sent an invite to a Facebook page where they could get
help and inputs on how to edit, we got 300 signed up in less than 3 days.
Also, social media requires relatively lower investments of time and
resources from our community and many Internet savvy people are comfortable
using it. The Social Media program was started in order to effectively
utilize platforms like Facebook and community groups there (like the Odia
Wikipedia group, Kannada Wikipedia group) in order to engage more new
editors and give them basic lessons on editing.
However, running a Facebook group is very different from using Facebook
for personal updates. That's why after observing how these groups work
and interacting with a few editors who started these groups, we developed a
systematic 19 point guide that looks at various aspects of how to do use
Facebook effectively including aspects like discipline in messaging,
structuring the interactions, tone of messaging, selecting articles, being
cautious with Wikispeak etc. (Of course, it keeps in mind WP:NOTFACEBOOK.)
{{Like}}
Here's a sneak peek into what we've been doing on two different groups:
1) You can also write on
Wikipediahttps://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/
This group was primarily started to give lessons in English editing.
Although all of us use social network sites, it is important to understand
that the way we interact on Wikipedia is very different from Facebook. This
is the gap we are trying to bridge through more deliberate messaging. As
mentioned in the detailed program
guidehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media#Process,
we try and do regular editing sessions with fun, interesting articles that
have adequate space for improvement (therefore making it easier for new
editors to make their first edits.)
Through a series of 5 basic tasks like creating a username, correcting a
spelling mistake, adding a line of information, adding a reference and
adding an interwiki link, we try and get the user to make their first 5
edits in less than 10 minutes. Our initial experiments show promise and of
the 400+ members right now, over 30 users have participated in these
mini-editing sessions and have now edited for the very first time. (You
can see their usernames in the
dochttps://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/doc/353268748054711/on
the group; do note that are the names of 7 existing editors also on that
list, who are the mentors.)
So, out of 400+ members, over 30 edited. This would have a conversion rate
of 8% or less, I believe. The total edits generated by this exercise don't
seem to exceed 250-300 edits, since the inception.
I wonder, don't workshops, or mid-size meetups have mostly the same
response generated without this much
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On 30 May 2012 17:43, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: A couple of points. I mentioned this before on IRC, why is Social Media and FB being used by the India operations? If this is an initiative by WMF, I would have thought it could have been taken on from SF. Expert opinions about Why Facebook aside, this pilot program doesn't seem to have anything unique for the Indian context. As always Theo, thank you for your incisive analytical insights. Assuming one were to use social media for outreach, how would you do it differently? Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: As always Theo, thank you for your incisive analytical insights. Assuming one were to use social media for outreach, how would you do it differently? Thank you. And you are Welcome. :) I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those social media experts. The community might have an opinion or two, if that approach was taken aggressively. Regardless, being located in SF, having an abundance of native-English speaking, social-media gadflies, puts the SF staff in a much better position to try these approaches, yet they never did it aggressively, in all the years I followed. The official twitter handles existed, but were rarely used to promote or do outreach in an aggressive manner, they have a moderate number of followers and links. I kind of appreciate that, it doesn't smell of desperation, makes certain things look reserved and official. I still wish they had slightly higher visibility and control over them, but that's jay's preference. Then comes the Indian staff, at the count of 4-5, I fail to see how re-inventing the wheel and venturing into a territory, better men didn't would be a smart approach. Is there something unique for FB within India? or a different platform that didn't exist universally, that might justify it. Does Social Media have to be a priority? You barely have a communications person writing emails, following up on meetings with the least bit of consistency, to have a quarter of the staff resources wasted on FB and twitter. I don't know who handles administrative work on staff, who handles reporting; the bulk of the official work and communications still appear to come from Hisham after almost an year. For example, I still recall the community meetings which were intended to become consistent and regular at one point, they just disappear for a few months, re-start and stop. There are other vital tasks that need to be performed at this stage by such a small team, rather than go into excursions in the wide world of social media. Regards Theo ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: As always Theo, thank you for your incisive analytical insights. Assuming one were to use social media for outreach, how would you do it differently? Thank you. And you are Welcome. :) I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those social media experts. The community might have an opinion or two, if that approach was taken aggressively. Regardless, being located in SF, having an abundance of native-English speaking, social-media gadflies, puts the SF staff in a much better position to try these approaches, yet they never did it aggressively, in all the years I followed. The official twitter handles existed, but were rarely used to promote or do outreach in an aggressive manner, they have a moderate number of followers and links. I kind of appreciate that, it doesn't smell of desperation, makes certain things look reserved and official. I still wish they had slightly higher visibility and control over them, but that's jay's preference. Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that chaps in SF have not concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative approach. Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful here as we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and exploring the new world that smartphones and 3g open out to them. These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about. Then comes the Indian staff, at the count of 4-5, I fail to see how re-inventing the wheel and venturing into a territory, better men didn't would be a smart approach. Is there something unique for FB within India? or a different platform that didn't exist universally, that might justify it. Does Social Media have to be a priority? You barely have a communications person writing emails, following up on meetings with the least bit of consistency, to have a quarter of the staff resources wasted on FB and twitter. I don't know who handles administrative work on staff, who handles reporting; the bulk of the official work and communications still appear to come from Hisham after almost an year. For example, I still recall the community meetings which were intended to become consistent and regular at one point, they just disappear for a few months, re-start and stop. There are other vital tasks that need to be performed at this stage by such a small team, rather than go into excursions in the wide world of social media. Regards Theo ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- j.mp/ArunGanesh http://j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On 30 May 2012 18:27, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those social media experts. Fair enough. That said, that is no reason not to try it in India or other specific locales, right? So long as it ties in to specific outcomes that WMF and WIP have lined up for the larger program - in this case, visibility for Wikipedia and driving new editors. at one point, they just disappear for a few months, re-start and stop. There are other vital tasks that need to be performed at this stage by such a small team, rather than go into excursions in the wide world of social media. There always are and sitting on the outside, it's hard for me to justify one over the other. That said, have the metrics they reported and based on the numbers Anirudh posted point to an engagement level that is on par with, better or worse than for the casual drive by editor? If better, than, IMHO, the question is whether that acquisition cost and time worth it over the medium term. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Hi, If the route through Social media is working, why not try it? During Tamil Wiki media contest, we found Facebook very useful for reaching online photographers community. I have also heard similar experiences from Malayalam Wikipedians for some of their outreach efforts. Ravi ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Hi Arun On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.comwrote: Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that chaps in SF have not concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative approach. Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful here as we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and exploring the new world that smartphones and 3g open out to them. These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about. Fair enough. And that might have been more of my point that this might not be the stage to boast about yet, along with de-prioritize social media for actual ground-level community work. Second, the metrics- acquisition cost and time spent as Gautam suggested are indeed more critical here. The metrics aren't hard to analyze, they were in the original email itself, instead of looking at retweets, number of likes or members, look at how many people edit, how many actually stick around. That was, what I went by at an acquisition/conversion rate of 8%. Third, as Ravishankar asks - if it is working why not try it? - it has been tried now, and it's not working so well, was my point. The entire result of the exercise could be imitated in a single workshop or mid-size meetup in 1 day. I am not saying it is not something to keep trying, but something not focusing on as a priority. This might be something to do in addition to regular activities, but not spend already limited resources on. The priorities might need to be re-aligned. That was more or less, my motivation. Regards Theo ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Just a brief note on the 8% retention rate of a pilot that is not yet two months old and has the potential for significant further refinement and improvement. This is a high retention rate based on data I've seen on general outreach events, where the rates of conversion to editing are very low (generally well below 5% in the analysis we've been doing in India since January), as many people have discussed on this list and elsewhere. The Wikipedia Education Program, where students have a rather deep introduction to Wikipedia, has seen a retention rate of only 4% after the end of the course.[1] [1] Report on recent research on Wikipedia Education Program in the Signpost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-02-27/Recent_research Best, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Theo10011 wrote: Hi Arun On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com (mailto:arun.plane...@gmail.com) wrote: Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that chaps in SF have not concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative approach. Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful here as we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and exploring the new world that smartphones and 3g open out to them. These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about. Fair enough. And that might have been more of my point that this might not be the stage to boast about yet, along with de-prioritize social media for actual ground-level community work. Second, the metrics- acquisition cost and time spent as Gautam suggested are indeed more critical here. The metrics aren't hard to analyze, they were in the original email itself, instead of looking at retweets, number of likes or members, look at how many people edit, how many actually stick around. That was, what I went by at an acquisition/conversion rate of 8%. Third, as Ravishankar asks - if it is working why not try it? - it has been tried now, and it's not working so well, was my point. The entire result of the exercise could be imitated in a single workshop or mid-size meetup in 1 day. I am not saying it is not something to keep trying, but something not focusing on as a priority. This might be something to do in addition to regular activities, but not spend already limited resources on. The priorities might need to be re-aligned. That was more or less, my motivation. Regards Theo ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org (mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org) To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Isn't it too early to comment on the retention rate. We should give it some more time right? -- Srikanth. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Barry Newstead (WMF) bnewst...@wikimedia.org wrote: Just a brief note on the 8% retention rate of a pilot that is not yet two months old and has the potential for significant further refinement and improvement. This is a high retention rate based on data I've seen on general outreach events, where the rates of conversion to editing are very low (generally well below 5% in the analysis we've been doing in India since January), as many people have discussed on this list and elsewhere. The Wikipedia Education Program, where students have a rather deep introduction to Wikipedia, has seen a retention rate of only 4% after the end of the course.[1] [1] Report on recent research on Wikipedia Education Program in the Signpost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-02-27/Recent_research Best, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Theo10011 wrote: Hi Arun On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.comwrote: Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that chaps in SF have not concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative approach. Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful here as we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and exploring the new world that smartphones and 3g open out to them. These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about. Fair enough. And that might have been more of my point that this might not be the stage to boast about yet, along with de-prioritize social media for actual ground-level community work. Second, the metrics- acquisition cost and time spent as Gautam suggested are indeed more critical here. The metrics aren't hard to analyze, they were in the original email itself, instead of looking at retweets, number of likes or members, look at how many people edit, how many actually stick around. That was, what I went by at an acquisition/conversion rate of 8%. Third, as Ravishankar asks - if it is working why not try it? - it has been tried now, and it's not working so well, was my point. The entire result of the exercise could be imitated in a single workshop or mid-size meetup in 1 day. I am not saying it is not something to keep trying, but something not focusing on as a priority. This might be something to do in addition to regular activities, but not spend already limited resources on. The priorities might need to be re-aligned. That was more or less, my motivation. Regards Theo ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: If the route through Social media is working, why not try it? During Tamil Wiki media contest, we found Facebook very useful for reaching online photographers community. During TWMC, engagement was built (liking and commenting) and people started contributing themselves(some posted on FB, later some moved to commons) after it reached a mass. Though it could have attracted some due to the $$ tag it had, I don't think everyone contributed due to it. People wanted their work to be seen by many and hence contributed photos. But yeah facebook gives huge numbers in terms of getting eyeballs / pageviews and spreading the word. I would soon be having *some* statistics of pageviews coming from facebook / twitter into Tamil wikipedia pages through tawp.in(Shorturl service Yuvi runs for Tamil Wikipedia whose logs I have access to), quick look already gave some surprising data. So we can't write off facebook / social media that easily but using them for teaching how to edit is completely different thing. I would look at numbers here in slightly different way. 400 people are part of a group. Facebook allows anyone in group to add anyone else into the group even without the person's acceptance. So this is kind of sending 400 invitations out for an outreach. On most of the messages many people in the group were prodded for attention (@mentioned) and on average 8% have replied and participated (made initial edits). This is akin to conducting the actual outreach. Rentention is something that needs to be seen after a few months if these users continue to edit voluntarily (having attended an outreach event). In all these, I probably don't like the prodding part (in real world I would compare it to shouting Wikipedia Wikipedia (like tea,coffee) outside the Wikipedia stall), *after most people know* that there is a stall (group). But am not sure how else it would be possible to attract attention of people on facebook (which is meant for connecting with friends primarily). On the challanges part, I would like to know, how it can be scaled beyond a person's network. Since people don't join the group by self, amount of people who can be reached is low and adding random people from friend's list into group isn't going to help. Theo, To be fair to OP(Original Poster) , I see the mail only as an update and didn't seem like any boasting was done. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Barry Newstead (WMF) bnewst...@wikimedia.org wrote: Just a brief note on the 8% retention rate of a pilot that is not yet two months old and has the potential for significant further refinement and improvement. This is a high retention rate based on data I've seen on general outreach events, where the rates of conversion to editing are very low (generally well below 5% in the analysis we've been doing in India since January), as many people have discussed on this list and elsewhere. The Wikipedia Education Program, where students have a rather deep introduction to Wikipedia, has seen a retention rate of only 4% after the end of the course.[1] I don't think those editors have been retained. You will find that all of them have made 5-10 edits on a single day (likely with considerable application of persuasion) and then stopped completely. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: On 30 May 2012 18:27, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those social media experts. Fair enough. That said, that is no reason not to try it in India or other specific locales, right? So long as it ties in to specific outcomes that WMF and WIP have lined up for the larger program - in this case, visibility for Wikipedia and driving new editors. This is something which has been discussed previously on Wikimedia related lists - Wikimedia projects and other social media networks are dissimilar services with a completely different purpose around communities. It goes without saying that they attract different sort of contributors looking to achieve different goals. I will not go on to further elaborate and reduce this to an academic discussion but will just conclude by saying that working on our projects is not akin to a social media experience and that it is highly unlikely that we will successfully leverage social media oriented programs to harvest contributors for our projects in a way that justifies the financial costs involved. Wikipedia has sufficient visibility on the Internet around the world and in India. I am opposed to spending the community's considerable monetary resources to run facebook groups for training newbies. As Salmaan expressed earlier, there are better qualified and trained individuals with substantial Wikimedia experience around the world suited to experiment with newer frontiers. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: There always are and sitting on the outside, it's hard for me to justify one over the other. That said, have the metrics they reported and based on the numbers Anirudh posted point to an engagement level that is on par with, better or worse than for the casual drive by editor? If better, than, IMHO, the question is whether that acquisition cost and time worth it over the medium term. I think there are likely to be positive outcomes of extended intervention with local communities in most cases. Here, it is not so apparent since the period of engagement with the community was limited. We find that the fantastic news about the increased activity among the Assamese Wikipedians is mainly a result of bot-like editing and creation of numerous redirects. However, I am not so pessimistic about the whole idea of engaging smaller Indic language projects, This can work specially with a proper Wikipedian like Shiju taking the lead, however, the projection of instant results like the email sent by Hisham suggests is not believable. Therefore, the question around acquisition cost and time is an important factor which should be carefully examined. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about. This is a fair suggestion, Arun. I'd think user experience is something which can be enhanced through engineering and software development rather than the current way of implementation. Noopur, thank you for posting the report. I have a few questions for the India Programs team which I have listed under, would appreciate if you could respond: 1. How do you plan on scaling the Social Media pilot beyond your own networks? 2. Do you believe you can effectively create a mechanism for recruitment of editors through this project in a manner that justifies the cost and time involved? I am asking this because I noticed that you make serious attempts at trying to convince users to edit Wikipedia pages. 3. How many hours per week do you spend on the Wikipedia support group?
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Thanks for sharing these results so far, Noopur! On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:57 AM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: snip As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those social media experts. The community might have an opinion or two, if that approach was taken aggressively. Regardless, being located in SF, having an abundance of native-English speaking, social-media gadflies, puts the SF staff in a much better position to try these approaches, yet they never did it aggressively, in all the years I followed. snip Speaking as one of those native-English speaking, social-media gadflies based in SF... :) I actually tried something similar during the Public Policy Initiative. I created a Facebook page and encouraged U.S. students participating in our program to like the page for help with editing and other insight into Wikipedia. I really struggled to get any students to actually use it, however. From the feedback I got -- and I've seen this echoed elsewhere in U.S. pedagogy journals and such -- U.S. students in general tend to view Facebook as a place to have fun, and don't want to use it for schoolwork or employment. That being said, I'm really glad to see this experimented with in places other than the United States. I think the early results Noopur shared from India and what we've seen with a similar Facebook group for the Cairo Pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program (in that case entirely volunteer-led) demonstrates that the results I saw are not applicable globally. I'm glad to see us experimenting with different ways of engaging local communities to edit Wikipedia, and I look forward to hearing more about these efforts as they mature in the future. LiAnna -- LiAnna Davis Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation http://education.wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885 x6649 lda...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:12 AM, LiAnna Davis lda...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thanks for sharing these results so far, Noopur! That being said, I'm really glad to see this experimented with in places other than the United States. I think the early results Noopur shared from India and what we've seen with a similar Facebook group for the Cairo Pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program (in that case entirely volunteer-led) demonstrates that the results I saw are not applicable globally. I'm glad to see us experimenting with different ways of engaging local communities to edit Wikipedia, and I look forward to hearing more about these efforts as they mature in the future. Having spent quite a bit time on the field doing user research on mobile technology use in India, I can vouch for its amazing reach here. I have been to desolate villages in kutchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutch_Districtwhere you will find people living in mud houses, intermittent power supply, smartphones with a 3g connection and sharing poetry with friends in their community on facebook. And these are people who have not even passed high school. These are amazing things happening in this country and now is a golden opportunity to capitalize on that to benefit the wikimedia movement. These are worthwhile experiments and I look forward to seeing a lot more in terms of innovative ideas to engage people and bring them together for a worthwhile cause. LiAnna -- LiAnna Davis Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation http://education.wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885 x6649 lda...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- j.mp/ArunGanesh http://j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
Dear all, Greetings! Here's an update on the Social Media pilot programhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media. Just a small recap before I go on to the numbers. *Why Facebook?* Why we decided to go with Facebook at all is because potential new editors are more comfortable and familiar with the channel. To illustrate, after outreach sessions, we tried staying in touch with around 100 participants using a combination of email and talk page messages and got just 3 responses. When we sent an invite to a Facebook page where they could get help and inputs on how to edit, we got 300 signed up in less than 3 days. Also, social media requires relatively lower investments of time and resources from our community and many Internet savvy people are comfortable using it. The Social Media program was started in order to effectively utilize platforms like Facebook and community groups there (like the Odia Wikipedia group, Kannada Wikipedia group) in order to engage more new editors and give them basic lessons on editing. However, running a Facebook group is very different from using Facebook for personal updates. That's why after observing how these groups work and interacting with a few editors who started these groups, we developed a systematic 19 point guide that looks at various aspects of how to do use Facebook effectively including aspects like discipline in messaging, structuring the interactions, tone of messaging, selecting articles, being cautious with Wikispeak etc. (Of course, it keeps in mind WP:NOTFACEBOOK.) Here's a sneak peek into what we've been doing on two different groups: 1) You can also write on Wikipediahttps://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/ This group was primarily started to give lessons in English editing. Although all of us use social network sites, it is important to understand that the way we interact on Wikipedia is very different from Facebook. This is the gap we are trying to bridge through more deliberate messaging. As mentioned in the detailed program guidehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media#Process, we try and do regular editing sessions with fun, interesting articles that have adequate space for improvement (therefore making it easier for new editors to make their first edits.) Through a series of 5 basic tasks like creating a username, correcting a spelling mistake, adding a line of information, adding a reference and adding an interwiki link, we try and get the user to make their first 5 edits in less than 10 minutes. Our initial experiments show promise and of the 400+ members right now, over 30 users have participated in these mini-editing sessions and have now edited for the very first time. (You can see their usernames in the dochttps://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/doc/353268748054711/on the group; do note that are the names of 7 existing editors also on that list, who are the mentors.) To cite examples, User: Zamsamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Zamsam(a young new editor) came to the group and wanted to create the article on cricketer Ajit Chandila http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Chandila. Once we helped him create the article, he started contributing to Chandila's article and moved on to another cricketer, Manvinder Bisla'shttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manvinder_Bislaarticle. Similarly, User:10gible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/10giblejoined us to edit the article on Lalu Prasad Yadav http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalu_Prasad_Yadav while User:Neeasmaverickhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Neeasmaverickedited the article on his college, Jawaharlal Nehru University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru_University, Vicky Donor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicky_Donor and Amul girlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul_girland User:Saranshkatariahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Saranshkatariaedited Aloo Chaat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloo_Chaat and Rasgullahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasgulla. This could not have been possible without a group of wonderful mentors like Debanjan, Karthik, Deepon, Sheel, Pratik and Harsh who volunteered and constantly keep helping new editors. We had Skype calls and regular chats just to ensure that we connect with new users in a way they find most comfortable. The first hurdle of getting new editors to do a set of basic tasks has been crossed for some. The challenge going forward will always be is to sustain the interest of these new editors and make them long term editors hopefully by multiple editing sessions. That still needs to be figured out. Any inputs, comments and help are welcome. 2) Odia Wikipedia group https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki/ This group caters to Odia Wikipedians as well as people who speak the language and might be interested in knowing about Wikipedia. We used similar techniques as above to expand the group conversations
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On 28 May 2012 17:35, Noopur Raval nra...@wikimedia.org wrote: Greetings! Here's an update on the Social Media pilot program. Just a small recap before I go on to the numbers. Nice to see that it's getting some traction. Don't forget that email is probably still the most powerful 'social media' tool. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
