In
http://www.wikimedia.org.au//wiki/Proposal_talk:2014_Annual_Plan#Proposal <http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Proposal_talk:2014_Annual_Plan#Proposal> Tony1 also suggests instructional videos to reinforce edit training and/or to replace it. He asks is "is it too ambitious"? Because of the WMF's enthusiasm for metrics, it does drive our thinking towards "low-hanging fruit" projects. Edit training workshops are a good example of this "low hanging" fruit problem. We know we can run a certain number of edit training sessions, we know that with the help of our GLAM partners, we can probably get a certain attendance, we know that attendees seem to enjoy their day of edit training (based on feedback forms) - so that's a nice measurable success for a nice project that we should keep doing. Could we put the effort instead into instructional videos? Obviously instructional videos could potentially reach a massive international audience, far greater than maybe the 100-200 people we can train each year through workshops, but maybe they would be absolutely zero downloads/views. So the risk/return profile of videos is much higher (we can both succeed and fail more spectacularly) than for edit training. Also we struggle to find volunteers among WMAU members and the Australian WP community for our edit training workshops as our library partners like to run these events on weekdays (incompatible with people's work lives). Would we find it more-or-less easy to get people to prepare instructional videos which they could at 3am in their pyjamas if they wanted? I don't know. What are the relative costs? Well, edit training generally has travel costs, but we'd probably need to spend some money on professional tools for making instructional videos (screen-capture and video-editing software) and perhaps some training on how to use them effectively. So what do we do? Low-risk/return edit training workshop or higher-risk/return edit training videos? Of course in the ideal world of infinite resources we can do both, but we don't live in that world ("everything costs something" as my former Vice-Chancellor used to say). Aside. In regard to edit training in any form, we have a practical problem in relation to the progressive rollout of increasing functionality of the visual editor. This impacts on our existing edit training workshop materials (slides and manuals) and would impact on the preparation of videos. But my question here is more philosophical about the risk/return model of what we do. Kerry
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