Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/WikiProject report

WikiProject report

Lessons From Another Wikipedia: Czech WikiProject Protected Areas

By Mabeenot and Chmee2

WikiProject news

News in brief

• The March Copy Editing Drive and the Move to Commons Drive are in full swing
• The Teyler's Museum in the Netherlands is sponsoring a contest from now until May with real-world prizes as part of the Teylers GLAM project

Polish for WikiProject Protected Areas

Percentage of protected areas with photos in particular districts of the Czech Republic after an one-year duration of WP Protected Areas; green ticks indicate a 100% coverage

Dactylorhiza majalis in natural monument Vojovická draha. Image taken as result of grant target on protected areas

Iris sibirica in natural monument Novoveska draha

Participants of the grant are also documenting different types of environmental management as help with building of anthills.

Also famous tree are target of this WikiProject, this one is in Český Těšín.

Pulsatilla pratensis, image taken by student as a result of cooperation with the Charles University

This week, we ventured outside our Anglophone bubble to see whether WikiProjects thrive on other Wikipedias. With dozens of language versions from which to choose our first foray into non-English WikiProjects, we started with the Czech Wikipedia's innovative WikiProjekt Chráněná území (WikiProject Protected Areas) which covers protected areas of the Czech Republic and surrounding areas. Started a little over a year ago, WikiProject Protected Areas has incorporated social media, classroom projects, partnerships with NGOs, automated article creation, and initiatives to categorize articles, unite nomenclature, and add geographic coordinates. The project has contributed a large collection of images to Commons and even produced a distributed a concentration game. We interviewed the project's founder, Chmee2, who also wrote the following summary of the project's work:

Dozens of language versions are being written by enthusiasts who struggle to create a viable equivalent to the English Wikipedia – both for readers and editors. Czech Wikipedia is one of these, having exceeded 200,000 articles last year. The other Wikipedia versions are not only a source of valuable content that one can translate to enrich articles of his language version; often, the Wikipedia versions can share something that crosses the language barrier much more easily: an idea. Today, we would like to introduce you a Czech WikiProject that specializes in protected areas in the Czech Republic.

In comparison with other WikiProjects, the aim of WikiProjekt Chráněná území (WikiProject Protected Areas) is not only to improve the encyclopedic content and to gain new photos. We have set a long-term goal to attract readers so that they become editors of Wikipedia themselves. The need for new editors is one of the main challenges all Wikipedia language versions face. Nowadays, the Internet offers loads of opportunities to self-realize through writing. To maintain the growth, Wikipedia has to offer such interesting projects that readers will be convinced to start contributing.

WikiProject Protected Areas was established just a bit more than a year ago. Since that time, it has gone quite a long way: from revising preexisting entries (uniting their nomenclature, sorting and categorising the content, adding GPS coordinates) and the robotic article creation (so as to make a writing of articles as easy for new editors as possible) to the creating of a comprehensive category tree on Wikimedia Commons. As of January 2012, our project has achieved 2,300 articles of various quality but always with a usual content and a standardized appearance. This has proved to be quite a milestone because, as our activity began to show in recent changes and in community discussions, more and more experienced editors joined our project. However, Czech Wikipedia is just a small project with as few as 80-100 active editors. Thus, it was a question of time before all editors interested in nature and environment took part in our project. It reached a peak and further efforts to gain more members ended in vain.

We have soon realized that there are just not enough Wikipedians willing to help us. Editors were overloaded with lots of other interesting projects and it was getting harder and harder to intrigue them in this particular one. We had to find an another way to attract new members. The most straightforward solution was to look for them outside Wikimedia projects, in public - so as to find new people and convince them to contribute. However, this meant that we had to learn how to successfully address the public. The environment of Wikipedia is not the best place for an advertisement, not to mention emotions these approaches can cause in the community. Fortunately, the Internet now offers an easy-to-use platform: the social networks.

Social networks represent an easy and effective way to share information with readers, i.e., potential editors. They enable a unique opportunity to find your target group and supply them with news on whatever topic you like, while simultaneosly giving background information about how Wikipedia works. This lead us to establish fan sites on two major Czech social networks (Facebook and Google+), that have gained about 400+ fans so far (the number steadily grows). We regularly write about latest good articles, new photos of protected areas or other interesting stuff from the field of environmentalism. Simultaneously, we explain how Wikipedia works, and, moreover, we motivate the fans to actively contribute to Wikipedia. We keep reassuring them that contributing to our online encyclopedia is very simple and beneficial. We do our best to assist those who decide to contribute, either by giving help of by correcting their work. And, indeed, our effort slowly bears fruit. Together with our fans, we have been able to correct several mistakes, gain new pictures of previously unphotographed protected areas and establish contact with other groups that have similar goals (such as the Czech GLAM initiative).

Nevertheless, social sites are not the all-powerful key to success of a WikiProject. It is crucial to actively grow in more directions. This was the reason why we decided to cooperate with the sector of education. In the beginning of winter term 2011/2012, we set up a project with a renowned Institute for Environmental Studies at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science. Our WikiProject has organised a seminar during which the students were supposed to contribute to Wikipedia. An overall number of 30 students picked one protected area each, improved the corresponding article and took pictures of it. In the end of the term, the Czech Wikipedia was enriched with 30 high-quality articles mainly about Czech protected areas, but also including the Finnish Kevo Protected Area and Kobuk Valley National Park in Alaska. Apart from the encyclopedic content, the students submitted dozens of photos of previously unmapped protected areas. The students have played an active role during the seminar; this has proved to be a key to high quality results. However, the retention of students on Wikipedia is questionable, as they often ceased to contribute after they handed over their assignment. However, in couple of years, these students will be members of different social groups and taking wide range of jobs. But whenever they come, they will remember good memories about us and knowledge, how Wikipedia works. It might help us in the future open different doors and keep our good name alive.

We also exploit other ways of addressing potential editors - by attending conferences, giving lectures or offering leaflets. A small game for people of all ages is an example of an unusual method of telling about our mission. Together with other authors and using some pictures from Wikimedia Commons, we created a concentration game about the protected areas. The leaflet of the concentration game also included our logo and a text that explains how to contribute to Wikipedia and what our WikiProject aims to accomplish. We printed 3000 pieces of the game; many important environmental institutions helped us to distribute it (Krkonoše Mountains National Park Administration, Czech Union for Nature Conservation). Currently, we are working on a short movie about our efforts and organising open-air workshops with botanists (to improve our abilities in this area). We try to be active in every possible way and we want the public to hear about us. We believe that this is the way to attract new Wikipedians, thus enabling further development of the Wikipedia, instead of just writing articles on our own.

How does this project compare with other projects on the Czech Wikipedia?

In my humble opinion, we are the most successful WikiProject on Czech Wikipedia, as there are other successful WikiProjects (for example WikiProjekt Kosmonautika) but they mainly target on encyclopedic content and do not reach for new editors. On the other hand, I understand that content production is important for Wikipedia and I really appreciate the work of all WikiProjects that we have. However, I enjoy the diversity of activities in our WikiProject: we write articles, take pictures and attract new editors to join us!

Has your project taken inspiration from any other projects?

It partly builds on the WikiProject Photographing established by me (user:Chmee2) in 2007. There I learned that it is possible to gather quite a big group of Wikipedians under one "flag" if you offer an interesting topic. However, at that time, we were not able to outreach from Czech Wikipedia and attract people outside Wikipedia projects. Therefore I established this new project that gives us this opportunity. It must be a project with an interesting content not only for Wikipedians, but also for travelers and photographers. Our project has a lot in common (by having similar targets) as the worldwide GLAM movement, however, we had to walk most of the paths ourselves.

What can other projects learn from your experiences?

Mainly the methods how we connect with our readers and share our problems and success stories with them. We use fan pages on Google+ and Facebook to discuss with them and to get their feedback. It helps us to make our WikiProject better and more friendly for them and attract them to participate too. I already saw several Facebook fan pages from different Czech projects (such as Czech GLAM, Ambassador program, FČO) that probably follow our experience on social networks. Honestly, I am proud that we have served as an example and that we mark new ways for other Wikipedians!

Please share the successes and setbacks of using social media like Facebook and Google+ to promote the project. How frequently do you post updates? Have you been able to recruit new editors from social media websites?

I try to post updates every day and sometimes even several posts per day if I find something interesting or important. With these posts, I do not target only on Wikipedia projects because I think we have to offer interesting content in order to attract new fans (= potential new editors). For this reason I also share news and videos from other sources and I just generally try to build of community of people interested in the environment. We can than add some information about Wikipedia or some of our challenges associated with our WikiProject to a much wider society of fans. And yes, we were able to encourage several people to join Wikipedia (though often only as one-time editors), who then mainly upload images of protected areas, memory trees or some interesting plants and animals that we were missing on Wikipedia. It usually is only a small and short-time help, but we really appreciate it. Unfortunately, I can not report on any new long-time editor who would join Wikipedia because of the Facebook/Google+ fan page, but I strongly believe that this is only a question of time.

What limitations have you encountered in using the various social media websites? Do you think other projects could use social media to attract attention and improve articles?

The main limitation is that people are afraid of editing Wikipedia ("press the edit button"…) and that we are not able to show them the editing of Wikipedia face-to-face. The other point is that you never know what will the reaction to your post be. Will they be interested in it? Also, it is necessary to look for new posts from different topics. It is absolutely unthinkable to post the same link to one article every day. In a couple of days, it would be terribly boring for fans, so you have to be innovative. Despite all these disadvantages I strongly recommend that other projects use social networks as well because that way, you can easily reach Wikipedia readers and introduce them to our dreams, goals and stories about us.

What was the greatest benefit you saw from conducting the university seminars? What lessons have you learned from the classroom project that you can use to improve seminars for future semesters?

The greatest benefit for me was the opportunity to talk directly to students in the class, discuss their written articles, and provide a prompt feedback. Students also highly appreciated that they can ask about Wikipedia rules and that I corrected articles after they had written them. What really surprised me was the fact that students had invested more time to their task because they had known that their work would be read by other Wikipedia readers. It was clear that positive motivation and explanation of all the task steps were crucial to assure high-quality articles. This is because students became more self-identified with their work. What to do better next time? We must be more strict about the presentation timing. They will not be allowed to drag time during real conferences; students have to learn to plan their time.

How did your project create relationships with real-world institutions like the Krkonoše Mountains National Park Administration and the Czech Union for Nature Conservation?

Well, we tried to use non-official ways via social networks, e-mails and memory games which we printed. Most of the important institutions manage their fan pages on Facebook or, at least, some staff members have accounts. I commented on their posts several times with some additional info and links to our articles on Czech Wikipedia. Later, I wrote them e-mails or messages on social networks with an offer that we have printed a memory game about the protected areas and we are freely distributing it to everybody (including them if they like). They agreed because it was kind of a present, and because Wikipedia is non-profit (as widely known in the population). Now, we have a good reputation in these institutions and it will be probably easier to negotiate with them in future. It is also great that people from these institutions provide us with contacts to other governmental organisations. This way, we received access to an official photo archive of Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic and we are negotiating terms of cooperation and acceptance of the content.

Has aligning the project with these institutions caused any point of view concerns or political complications?

Because our partners are NGOs or government organisations focusing on nature protection, we do not have problems with political issues or POV accusation. However, I cannot rule out that it will not happen in future.

Have you contributed to projects in other languages of Wikipedia like the English Wikipedia's WikiProject Czech Republic or French Wikipedia's Projet République Tchèque? What difficulties have you faced trying to translate articles from Czech to other languages and the other way around? What can be done to improve collaboration between different languages of Wikipedia?

I cannot speak for others, but I tried to post some posts to talkpage of WikiProject Czech Republic with an offer that I can produce images from the Czech Republic, however without response. Penetration of our WikiProject Protected areas into the English Wikipedia is low, but this is probably because of a little significance of Czech protected areas for most foreigners. However, our activity deeply affected Wikimedia Commons because of a deep re-categorization of all protected areas and production of a whole new category system. I also transferred this system to English Wikipedia and as an experiment, I tried to translate one short article about a protected area (Řežabinec a Řežabinecké tůně). A very positive thing for us is that editors from the Slovak Wikipedia are translating our content very widely! My main problem in translation from Czech to English is that because of a low significance of these articles on English Wikipedia, nobody polishes my Czenglish (although that would be very welcome). How to improve cooperation? A crucial step is to make cross-wiki templates because it is not easy to remember two sets of them. As a second idea, a group of editors from English Wikipedia should be established that would be interested in Czech protected areas because, than, translation of our articles would be much faster and easier.

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Wow, a really good interview - the best since I'm following SIGNPOST. One of the main problems I have with the enwp Wikiprojects is that mostly they are dead and/or have only ~2-5 active users. I think we should start considering to remove (at enwp) many of these projects. mabdul 15:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for positive feedback, I really appreciated that it mights be inspiration for others too! :) --Chmee2 (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought this was a great interview, too. With regards to Mabdul's comment, however, I must protest that deleting less active Wikiprojects is not going to make them more active, just make it impossible for them to recover from what might otherwise be a temporary malaise. Abyssal (talk) 00:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikiprojects are also handy, I find, for collecting similar articles together and assessing them by quality and importance - it seems that most of the unassessed articles haven't been assigned to any wikiprojects. In a sense, they're categories with collaboration. Brammers (talk/c) 12:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.

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