An account creation and login process that is simple and pleasurable to use is a must-have for engaging more contributors to Wikimedia projects. On just Wikipedia’s English-language version, more than 3,000 people sign up for an account on an average day. These interfaces are often the first time a new editor interacts with the site, beyond consuming content.

We’re happy to announce that, starting today, users of all Wikimedia projects will be able to try a new look for our account creation and login. For about a week, we’re asking all Wikimedia volunteer editors to give the update a try and help us spot any nagging bugs or errors in translation. We’ll then enable the new forms as the default on all our wikis.

The new account creation (mockup)

Help test the new forms

If you’re a current or prospective member of a Wikimedia community, we need your help. Please give the new interfaces a try, report bugs, or leave comments for us on your wiki’s preferred noticeboard.

We’re providing this week-long testing period–instead of simply rolling out the new interface with less advance notice–to get help making sure our localizations are correct and the interfaces will be bug free for the 800 or so wiki communities we support.

• See the new account creation form
• See the new login form

Both links above are to our largest and most active community, English Wikipedia, but if you’re a contributor to any other project, you can try out the new forms by simply appending &useNew=1 to either URL on your favorite wiki. You can also find more detailed, step-by-step testing instructions if you’re willing to go a little deeper with testing the forms.

How we got here

The new login (mockup)

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Editor Engagement Experiments team has been optimizing these forms, using weekly controlled tests to measure the impact of our new signup form and iterate on our ideas. (See our original announcement.)

Overall, the results of these experiments were encouraging. Using English Wikipedia as our proving ground, our most successful experiment gained around 800 additional signups over a two week period. The relative increase in conversion was 4 percent, from 28 percent to 32 percent of users successfully creating an account after visiting the signup page. The total number of new users gained will change based on seasonal trends. We also decreased the number of errors which held up users after they submitted the form by 14 percent.

This interface redesign marks the first time MediaWiki core (the platform shared by all our projects) is using the new form styles that we have experimented with in account creation, our new onboarding experience for Wikipedia editors, and in other features. The patterns we’re introducing via the new account creation and login, codenamed “Agora” by the Wikimedia Foundation design team, will now be able to be reused in a more standardized way by MediaWiki developers.

The redesigns we’re introducing to login and account creation are hardly radical. Simple use of typography, color and vertically-aligned form fields are not what could be called bold innovation in design. Nonetheless, we’re extremely happy to be releasing an experience that will make signing up and logging in less of a burden for the many contributors to Wikimedia communities, and thus enable them to create great, free educational resources.

Steven Walling,
Associate Product Manager

(This is a guest post by Ms. Netha Hussein, a Wikipedia contributor from India who regularly contributes to Malayalam Wikipedia, among other projects.)

March 2013 was a busy month for women Wikimedians in India, as we conducted various events, such as edit-a-thons and workshops to celebrate the presence of women in Wikimedia projects. The women Wikimedians, members of the Wikimedia India Chapter and the Access to Knowledge Team, brainstormed about the possible events, which we wanted to conduct to encourage women to participate and to increase the quality of articles related to Indian women in Wikipedias in English and the Indian languages. We decided to conduct the workshops and meetups in various Indian cities, in addition to online edit-a-thons.

Women participants of the Wikipedia Workshop, Bangalore

We created a co-ordination page on English Wikipedia and added suggestions for articles to edit. We invited participants to join the edit-a-thon by spreading the word on mailing lists, social media networks and blogs. The Times of India published a feature about the event, which attracted many newbies to participate in it. We also created separate pages for offline events taking place in parallel, and we added a summary of the events to the main page. The participants of the edit-a-thon signed up on the co-ordination page, where we also added the details and status of Women’s History Month events happening in various Indian language Wikipedias.

The inaugural event took place on International Women’s Day (March 8) at Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa. Out of 100 participants who attended the event, 90 were female. Veteran Wikimedians Rohini and Nitika conducted a basic Wikipedia editing workshop. The event also set off the two-day long online edit-a-thon in which fourteen editors participated. Among those who participated in the program were homemakers, students and professionals. Rohini took charge as the Chairperson of the special interest group (SIG) for Gendergap at the Wikimedia Chapter India on the day of the workshop (March 8). She plans to conduct more workshops for women in the future.

Organizers subsequently held a series of events at two venues in Bengaluru and one in Ernakulam. Experienced Wikimedians Pavithra and Nikita Belavate led the workshops in Bengaluru. The workshop also served as an occasion for editors living in and around Bengaluru to meet. The Ernakulam event was aimed at increasing the participation of women in Malayalam Wikipedia and was led by Wikimedian Ditty Mathew. Around 40 women participated in the three edit-a-thons. A Wikipedia Academy with 9 participants was conducted in Hyderabad. Led by Anupama Srinivas, the last of all events took place on 30 March, 2012, in Chennai.

Nikita, who led the Bangalore event, said she was filled with happiness watching the exuberance in the eyes of women participants who edited and saved their edits live on Wikipedia. “This year’s Women’s History month makes me once again believe in the power of women and honing it by empowering them, Wikiwomenising them,” said Nikita.

Participants of the Bangalore workshop organized by FSMK

Vishnu Vardhan, the Program Director of the Access to Knowledge team, was with the WikiWomen throughout the editathon, connecting people, planning events and urging them to contribute. He encouraged his mother, wife and female cousins to contribute to Wikipedia.

“I wish more of us took the initiative of involving the women in our life to share their knowledge on Wikipedia and truly make the Wikipedias the sum of all human knowledge,” he said. Harriet, one of the key organizers of the women’s day events, believes that the Indian Wikimedia community has gained momentum in favor of bridging the gender gap because of this event. She urged the Indian community to follow this success and to increase the participation of women in the Wikimedia movement. Though she could not attend the events in person, she ensured her participation in the edit-a-thon by arranging the logistics, monitoring the coordination page and suggesting changes.

The events had good participation from men as well. Among the 14 participants who signed up on English Wikipedia, 5 were men. In Malayalam Wikipedia, 18 out of the 26 participants who signed up for the online edit-a-thon were men. Dileep Unnikrishan, a male participant of the edit-a-thon, and a fan of Wikipedia, participated in the Ernakulam event because he was curious to find out how Wikipedia works. With women participants, he edited three articles and found it exciting to “be a part of the movement that has brought about a knowledge revolution in the world. The best thing I noticed about Wiki is that it has a peer-to-peer way of organization, which makes it warm and welcoming to newbies like me,” said Dileep.

The Indian WikiWomen are planning to conduct similar events in the future to increase the participation of women in Wikipedia and its sister projects. We are hopeful we will bridge the gender gap in the Indian Wikimedia community by conducting outreach programs, increasing awareness about free knowledge programs among women and conducting action-oriented events targeting women.

Netha Hussain

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English

Friday, the 22^nd of March, was a different and exciting day at work as Wikimedia Sverige had its biggest edit-a-thon to date – with 47 participants! Also the participants and the topic of the event were something that we unfortunately don’t always connect to Wikipedia: that is, women and fashion.

Participants in the Wikimedia Sverige fashion editathon.

Wikipedia, as you might know, is very male dominated (only 9 percent of all editors are female!) and the topic of fashion is very poorly represented when compared, for example, to World War II. With this in mind this fashion edit-a-thon was the first in a series of fashion events that will take place around Europe in the following two years, coordinated by Europeana Fashion.

This edit-a-thon in Stockholm was organized in collaboration with Wikimedia Sverige, Europeana, the Nordiska museet, Europeana Fashion and the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. It was especially fun that the Nordiska museet and the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp, as part of the preparations for the edit-a-thon, released hundreds of fashion images to Wikimedia Commons! For MoMu this upload was their first time working with Wikimedia and using Wikimedia Commons.

In preparation for the event, we had organized a workshop about editing in Wikipedia with the fashion students so that the actual edit-a-thon could, after some short presentations, get right down to the business of writing fashion-related articles. To keep up interest, and blood sugar, we served snacks during the day, as well as a lunch. We also took breaks and got inspired with a guided tour of the Nordiska museets’s fashion exhibitions, such as one on the power of fashion Modemakt. In the end, the productive day came together with a mingle with wine and canapés.

Almost all the participants stayed until the mingle, and several didn’t leave until 8 p.m., when the guards wanted to close the museum. At that point the event had lasted for almost 10 hours. Many of the participants also came up to us and thanked us for a nice event, telling us how proud they felt when pressing save and publishing their first edits on Wikipedia. These are the things that make me most happy and proud about this event. The goal with an edit-a-thon is, after all, not just to get more articles, but to get more active editors to Wikipedia and to raise awareness of how Wikipedia works in society.

Of course it’s also interesting to know what the direct outcomes of the event were:

• We had 47 participants that registered their attendance at the Nordiska museet. Of these participants, a total of 30 were women (or 64 percent!)
• 23 new users created accounts, either at the edit-a-thon, or at the preparatory workshop. Some of the editors sat together and used only one account.
• Of the eight uploaded photos from MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp, four of these are used in Wikipedia. They are used a total of 12 times on various language versions.
• Of the 362 images uploaded from the Nordiska museet, 57(!) of the images are now used on Wikipedia. They are used a total of 72 times on various language versions.
• Ten new articles were created, from biographies to fashion photography and Sami costumes. In total, 67 different articles were edited during the day. Several participants also published their articles some days after the edit-a-thon.
• Articles were edited in eight different languages (Polish, German, English, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Russian and Italian). Most of the contributions were made to the English and the Swedish Wikipedia.
• 73 photos were taken during the edit-a-thon and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons! Could this be a new record from a single edit-a-thon?
• Also five images from the Nordiska museet’s library were scanned and uploaded and are now used in various articles.

We are very happy with the outcome and hope to arrange more fashion edit-a-thons in the future! Perhaps this could be one way of changing the enormous gender gap? We hope so.

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk), Project leader for the Europeana Awareness project at Wikimedia Sverige

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Español

Desde mediados de 2012, José Flores tenía la intención de que el movimiento Wikimedia llegara de forma activa a Puebla, una de las ciudades más relevantes de México por su desarrollo cultural y educativo, y poseedora de una riqueza histórica singular. Tras una planeación de varios meses intercambiando información con Wikimedia México, buscando patrocinadores y gracias al el entusiasmo de varias comunidades locales como Hackers & Founders Puebla y Puebla Capital del Diseño, el pasado 24 de marzo se realizó el Primer Editatón de la ciudad de Puebla.

El maratón de edición se realizó en el HUB Emprendedor, un centro de apoyo a emprendedores de creación reciente, ubicado en las instalaciones del Centro de Innovación y Diseño Estratégico Aplicado (Centro IDEA). Hasta ahí arribaron 25 personas con laptops en mano dispuestas a colaborar con Wikipedia. Luego de una charla introductoria por Carmen Alcázar sobre la filosofía detrás del movimiento Wikimedia y un taller de sintáxis wiki por Iván Martínez, inició el editatón que tuvo como temas propuestos fechas y lugares significativos de la ciudad de Puebla. Si bien no se alcanzó un gran número de artículos nuevos, todos los asistentes presionaron el botón “Editar” y dieron sus primeros pasos en Wikipedia en español.

“Es un poco extenuante, pero es reconfortante. Sentarte a trabajar y que lo que estás publicando lo van a leer miles o decenas de miles de personas y sobretodo a que estas contribuyendo al conocimiento colectivo en español (…) es poner un granito de arena y te deja muy buena sensación”, dijo al respecto José, un blogger de medios como The Huffington Post, director de proyectos de la agencia de medios Astrolabio y que fue el líder de la organización. “El proceso del editatón de Wikimedia México fue muy oportuno para adentrarse en el mundo Wiki desde cero, ya que te llevan de la mano al enseñar la filosofía detrás del proyecto. Mucha gente escucha Wikipedia, Wikimedia y no sabe de que trata”, comenta.

“Me dio mucho gusto ver a la gente que en tres o cuatro horas no se despegó de su computadora y clavados en una aportación que parece pequeña -en mi caso fue de algunos párrafos- pero que ya sumados si contribuye a Wikipedia”.

En opinión de José lo que hacen editatones es sembrar una inquietud, dejan en las personas una semilla que germina. “Al final todos los participantes se van con algo, no solo con un conocimiento técnico y no solo con una buena experiencia, se van con un interruptor encendido de que la próxima vez que entren a Wikipedia y vean un dato erróneo saben que ellos son capaces con ciertos métodos, herramientas y reglas de arreglarlo ellos”.

Al editatón de Puebla asistió público de todas las edades. Es el caso de Lilia Martínez y Torres, originaria de la ciudad de Puebla, fotógrafa e investigadora de fotografía mexicana del siglo XIX y XX. Ella escribió la biografía de Lorenzo Becerril, uno de los pioneros de la fotografía en México y del que es experta, ya que trabaja en el archivo de la capital poblana que lleva su nombre.

Luego de redactar el artículo de acuerdo a convenciones y presionar el botón “Grabar página”, le sorprendió “la inmediatez de que un artículo que ya tenía rato de venir escribiendo, en 20 minutos estaba en la red”, a diferencia de otros sitios en los que es más tardado hacer el proceso. Para Lilia, Wikipedia representa conocimiento inmediato en cualquier tema, de cualquier situación, aunque desconocía que el proceso implicaba no solo leer sino también publicar.

Lilia está dispuesta a seguir colaborando en La enciclopedia libre. “¡Cuidado y me enseñen algo! porque en adelante hay mucho que compartir”. Para ella el proceso de colaborar fue gratificante porque no sólo puede compartir, sino porque le hizo aprender de gente más joven a las que les es más familiar la enciclopedia.

José Flores y la comunidad local están dispuestos a que el movimiento Wikimedia crezca en Puebla, ya que en su opinión los últimos seis a nueve meses Wikimedia México vivió en la Ciudad de México una etapa de crecimiento explosiva y “sería bueno que esa onda expansiva llegue a Puebla, ya que la cercanía con la capital permitiría crear un nuevo núcleo funcionando aquí”. El se ha fijado como meta con la naciente comunidad que a finales de 2013 ya cuente con un proyecto activo haciendo eventos y estableciendo vinculaciones con el sector cultural y gubernamental. “Más que una posibilidad, habria que verlo como una obligación, que Puebla sea el siguiente gran paso en esta consolidación de Wikimedia México”, finaliza.

Ivan Martínez, Wikimédia Mexico

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Individual Engagement Grant Barnstar

Today we’re announcing the first round of Individual Engagement Grantees. The Wikimedia Foundation makes a variety of types of grants, many of which focus on groups and organizations. Individual Engagement Grants exemplify our commitment to increase support to individual contributors to Wikimedia projects, with a particular focus on making online improvements. These grants will support eight Wikimedians working individually and in small teams for 6 months to complete projects that benefit the Wikimedia movement, serve our mission and strengthen our communities.

For this pilot round, which began in February 2013, Wikimedians submitted over 50 ideas and drafts from around the world. WMF grantmaking staff narrowed these down to 22 complete proposals meeting the eligibility criteria for review.

18 Wikimedians formed a volunteer committee, with participants from 12 countries and from Wikimedia projects in 14 languages. Committee members reviewed each proposal carefully, scoring them against a rubric of pre-defined selection criteria and making recommendations based on available funding for this round. WMF grantmaking staff shared aggregated scores and comments with the community, while the committee continued its deliberations to finalize a recommendation to WMF to fund eight projects in total.

All eight projects have been approved for funding by the WMF. In examining the recommendations, we were struck by how varied these projects are in terms of grant size, project methodology and engagement targets. A central aim of Individual Engagement Grants is to foster innovation, with a particular focus on online impact. We think that innovative ideas and the skills that various contributors bring to Wikimedia projects can lead to better online environments for everyone, and we hope to learn a lot from these grantees about how we can support more of this across the movement.

The round 1 selected projects are:

Build an effective method of publicity in PRChina, led by Chinese Wikipedian User:AddisWang, funded at $350. Addis and a small team of volunteers based in mainland China will be experimenting with social media campaigns to grow awareness of Wikipedia in China.

Replay Edits, led by User:Jeph paul, funded at $500. Jeph is building a MediaWiki gadget that creates a visual playback of the edit history of a Wikipedia article, allowing users to see an article changing over time.

The Wikipedia Library, funded at $7500 and The Wikipedia Adventure, funded at $10,000, both led by User:Ocaasi. For the Wikipedia Library, Ocaasi will be building and consolidating partnerships with reference providers donating access to reliable sources for Wikipedia editors, and improving the systems for managing these programs. The Wikipedia Adventure is an on-wiki game that will be piloted on English Wikipedia using the Guided Tours extension to determine whether this type of interactive learning is an effective engagement strategy for new editors.

Consolidate wikiArS to involve art schools, led by Catalan Wikimedian User:Dvdgmz, funded at 7810 Euros. The WikiArS outreach program builds partnerships with art and design schools to teach students to create images for donation to Wikimedia Commons and for use in Wikipedia articles. This grant will support focused experimentation in the existing Catalan program’s models that can allow the initiative to scale and to be sustained as an international program.

Elaborate Wikisource strategic vision, led by Catalan Wikisource User:Micru and Italian Wikisource User:Aubrey, funded at 10,000 Euros. This project brings together the global Wikisource community and other stakeholders to define a vision for the project’s future. They’ll begin work on near-term goals that can be accomplished by volunteers on-wiki, and investigate paths forward for longer-term improvements to Wikisource.

MediaWiki data browser, led by User:Yaron K, partially funded at $15,000 in order to pilot the initial concept. Yaron’s project will create a framework to allow any user to easily generate apps or websites to browse sets of structured data that exist on Wikipedia and other projects running on MediaWiki.

Finally, we’ve provisionally approved an 8th project — MediaWiki and Javanese script, led by User:Bennylin, funded at $3000 — provided that a couple of dependencies can be satisfied. This project will provide technical support using a “train-the-trainers” model that teaches volunteers how to use Javanese script online, facilitating the transcription of Javanese texts to projects like Javanese Wikisource. The newly developed Universal Language Selector extension for MediaWiki makes the use of this script online increasingly possible.

The new grantees will begin work on their projects in the coming weeks and they’ll be sharing progress and learnings with us all along the way. Please visit their project pages for complete project information and updates.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this round!  We look forward to seeing even more of your ideas and input in preparation for round 2, which begins on August 1st.

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and the IEG committee

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Português

Voluntários do movimento Wikimedia e Wikimedia Foundation organizam primeiro mutirão no Brasil para e com as mulheres

Depois de conhecer a estrutura mínima necessária para criar um verbete em poucos passos, as (e os) participantes do encontro aprimoraram verbetes relativos ao feminismo, em comemoração ao Dia Internacional da Mulher

Conhecimento é poder: disso ninguém duvida. E embora a possibilidade de construir o conhecimento na maior enciclopédia do mundo – a Wikipédia – seja livre e aberta a qualquer pessoa, cerca de 91% dos editores são homens. Como fica, então, a perspectiva das mulheres nessa história?

Primeiro mutirão de edição da Wikipédia para e com mulheres

Para aproximá-las do universo “wiki,” os voluntários dos projetos Wikimedia, com o apoio da Wikimedia Foundation, organizaram uma oficina sobre a Wikipédia e os projetos Wikimedia e propuseram um mutirão de edição da enciclopédia em homenagem ao Dia Internacional da Mulher. Realizado em São Paulo, na tarde de 2 de março de 2013 no espaço The Hub, o encontro reuniu homens e mulheres que tinham algum interesse em colaborar com a edição de verbetes, mas ainda não haviam entrado em contato com a ferramenta.

Participaram do evento cerca de 15 pessoas, que discutiram os critérios para um artigo ser publicado na Wikipédia, as fontes que podem ser consideradas confiáveis e a dinâmica de edição colaborativa. Ao final da oficina, os grupos se dedicaram a aprimorar verbetes relacionados às mulheres e ao feminismo: “Direitos da Mulher” e “Grace Hopper” foram duas dessas contribuições.

“Os passos para a edição de um verbete são simples, e pelo que vi neste encontro qualquer pessoa pode aprendê-los rapidamente”, avalia Fernanda Campagnucci, da Ação Educativa, que editou o verbete sobre os direitos das mulheres – sua primeira colaboração ao projeto. “Mas vivemos em uma sociedade em que a distribuição de conhecimento é desigual e a tecnologia ainda é, muitas vezes, considerada um universo masculino. É com essa visão que precisamos romper”.

Para discutir e superar a ausência da colaboração feminina à Wikipédia, o movimento Wikimedia mantém uma página (Gender Gap) em que reúne informações, referências e ideias sobre o tema além de promover atividades como este mutirão. Com o objetivo de aumentar a participação de mulheres no projeto, novas editoras são encorajadas a participar das listas de discussão e comunidades online, como os portais sobre mulheres e feminismo.

O movimento Wikimedia no Brasil espera que a iniciativa em São Paulo sirva de inspiração para que voluntários de outras regiões do país ajudem o evento a tornar-se periódico em todo mês de março, ampliando o debate sobre a participação feminina na Wikipédia e diminuindo a barreira de gênero. Entre em contato com os voluntários da Wikimedia no Brasil, para saber mais informações. Todos são bem-vindos a participar e organizar os próximos eventos!

Fernanda Campagnucci (ONG Ação Educativa)
Traduzido por Tom e Cristiana Gonzalez

• Veja mais fotos do mutirão de edição com as mulheres

English

After learning the basics needed to create a Wikipedia article, the participants improved existing articles related to feminism, as part of a celebration of International Women’s Day

Knowledge is power: no one should doubt that. Although the possibility of contributing knowledge to the biggest encyclopedia of the world, Wikipedia, is free and open for anyone, about 91 percent of its editors are men. What, then, is the prospect for women in this story?

In order to engage women in the “wiki” universe, volunteers of the Wikimedia projects in Brazil, with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation, organized a workshop about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and proposed a joint effort for editing the encyclopedia in homage to International Women’s Day. The meeting took place on March 2nd at The Hub and gathered men and women interested in learning and practicing the editing of Wikimedia projects.

About 15 people attended the event, where they discussed the criteria for writing and publishing a Wikipedia article, the sources that may be considered reliable and the collaborative dynamic of editing. At the end of the workshop, the group dedicated themselves to improving articles related to women and feminism: “Women’s Rights” and “Grace Hopper” (“Direitos da mulher” and “Grace Hopper” in Portuguese) were two examples of such contributions.

“The steps for editing an article are simple, and from what I have observed in the meetup, anyone can learn them quickly,” said Fernanda Campagnucci, from Ação Educativa, who edited the article about women’s rights, her first contribution to the project. “But we live in a society where the sharing of knowledge is unequal and the technology is still often considered part of the masculine universe. It is this vision that we need to break.”

To discuss and overcome the lack of women collaborating on Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement maintains a page (Gender Gap) to gather information, references and ideas on the subject, in addition to promoting activities like this workshop. With the goal of increasing women’s participation in the project, new women editors are encouraged to join mailing lists and online communities.

The Wikimedia movement in Brazil expects that this initiative in Sao Paulo will inspire volunteers from other regions of the country to help the event become regular every March, extending the debate about women’s participation in Wikipedia and lowering the gender gap. You can contact the Wikimedia volunteers in Brazil to obtain more information. Everybody is welcome to participate and organize upcoming events!

Fernanda Campagnucci (NGO Ação Educativa)
Translation by Tom and Cristiana Gonzalez

• See more photos of the edithaton here

Teahouse First Birthday Badge

Teahouse was launched on Wikipedia one year ago, with the hope that building a warm and friendly community space for new editors to connect with experienced Wikipedians might help decrease Wikipedia’s gender gap. The goal was to measure the impact of a many-to-many support system targeted at newbies. Would inviting newcomers to participate in a welcoming, social learning experience encourage more of them to continue on their journey from making that first edit to their 1000th?

One year later, the data shows that Teahouse indeed has a positive impact on the new editor experience for English Wikipedia, and demonstrates some promise as a gender gap strategy. New editors who visit the Teahouse make nearly 3 times the number of edits to Wikipedia articles than a control group with similar early editing patterns. They edit twice as many articles. They have twice the number of talk page discussions with their fellow editors, and they return to edit Wikipedia every week for nearly twice as long.

But Teahouse is about people and experience as much as numbers, and so to celebrate Teahouse’s first birthday, we spoke with Teahouse hosts and guests to learn about what the project has meant for them and what it might signal for the years still to come.

Gtwfan52 is a Teahouse host who first started editing Wikipedia on the day the Teahouse launched. He was invited to visit the space by Rosiestep, a long-time Wikipedian and one of the first hosts who brought hundreds of new editors to participate in the project’s early days. Gtwfan52 remembers coming for help with the Goshen College article. “I asked for an honest critique. I got a great one. They offered constructive criticism and specific instruction on how to do some things I had no idea how to do. This was followed up by some copyediting from Teahouse hosts once I put the addition in the article, and finally, by a very encouraging “atta boy” from Sarah [Stierch] at the Teahouse.”

Sarah Stierch’s gender gap fellowship at the Wikimedia Foundation sparked the Teahouse project in collaboration with Teahouse team members Heather Walls, Jonathan Morgan and Siko Bouterse.  Sarah also served as Teahouse’s first host and maitre d’. Gtwfan52 reflects that “without Teahouse and especially the kind words from Sarah, I probably would be long gone.” Today, he has made over 11,000 edits to Wikipedia and gives back to the project by hosting. “Teahouse is always friendly, and completely adopts my Dad’s favorite saying, ‘The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.’”

Gtwfan52 now has his eye on the next generation of hosts-to-be. Among them is Anne Delong, a librarian and computer programmer who started editing just Wikipedia 2 months ago. She told us, “I am used to material that is logical and arranged according to a preset plan. Wikipedia is more like a village where the roads have grown in random directions because that’s where the first people happened to walk. The Teahouse helped me get past that until I could see the underlying infrastructure and the people that are gradually article by article pulling it toward a cohesive whole.” What does Anne wish for Teahouse’s birthday? “I hope that the Teahouse hosts keep up the good work, and attract more super-friendly people to help out. What goes around comes around!”

Over the past year, about 2000 questions have been asked and answered, 669 editors have introduced themselves, 1670 guests have been served and 867 experienced Wikipedians have participated in the project. 137 Wikipedians have served as hosts at some point during the year.

Edit counts by Teahouse visitors compared to control

Participants say the lively atmosphere of the space has been a key to its success. Host TheOriginalSoni said, “while most projects and groups had only one or two dedicated editors working endlessly to make things work, the Teahouse always had a steady stream of a bunch of cool and helpful editors who keep lurking around. Even when one of these editors is not here, there is always someone else to fill in.” Guest BeatrizBibi commented, “I’m glad to read words from real people, I always thought Wiki was about writing and reading alone.”

Last month was the most active month on the Teahouse so far: 46 active hosts answered 263 questions in the Teahouse, and 11 new hosts joined the project. Go Phightins! said, “I love it when a couple of hosts team up to answer a tough question and the proverbial light bulb goes off in the inquirer’s head.” Guest-turned-host Doctree agreed, “Yep, that happened to me. Thanks to Teahouse hosts, I began to really understand Wikipedia.”

What motivates these Wikipedians to give back to each other in the Teahouse, when there are so many other ways to spend their time? Gwickwire shared, “Teahouse enables me to empower other editors.” Yunshui reflected, “Helping new editors to build articles that meet the requisite guidelines and will improve Wikipedia is probably the most useful thing I can do here, and the Teahouse provides a tool to enable me to do just that.”

As Teahouse enters its second year, it continues to evolve. Ocaasi and Anyashy recently launched a new experiment with Teahouse badges, micro-awards to recognize hosts and guests for their participation. 11 different badges acknowledge contributions like asking a great question or giving a clear and helpful answer, and in total 250 badges have been given out so far.

To celebrate Teahouse’s first birthday, we’re giving out tasty cupcake badges, so, please drop by the Teahouse for a cup of wiki-tea and a birthday badge. In the words of Doctree: “The Teahouse is a model of civility and collaboration, an example of how Wikipedia should function. Keep up the good work…Wishing all a great Teahouse birthday. May there be many more.”

Jake Ocaasi, Wikipedia editor

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants

Valerie Juarez, FLOSS Outreach Program for Women Intern

Valerie Juarez joined the Wikimedia Foundation as a full-time intern through the FLOSS Outreach Program for Women, an initiative of the GNOME foundation. With internships available at several organizations, Juarez was immediately intrigued by the bug management/triaging position with Wikimedia, and contacted the project manager: Wikimedia’s Bug Wrangler, Andre Klapper. She received a “very welcoming response” from Klapper, who helped her develop a stellar application for the internship.

As part of the application process, she had to make an initial contribution. Lucky for her (not so much for the bug), Juarez “discovered a bug that blocked UploadWizard when using Internet Explorer”—something she is very proud of.

Juarez, a self-proclaimed “bug wrangler in-training,” applied to the Outreach Program for Women as a way to “shift into a more technical role and to learn new technologies,” she said. Since beginning her internship on January 2, 2013, Juarez has been extremely active, even hosting her first Bug Day on January 29. She explains, “Bug Days are important because it engages the bug management and developer communities, and we work to solve issues, which makes MediaWiki better.” Even though attendance was low, the group was able to triage about 30 reports, and have fun doing it.

She plans to host more Bug Days, triage bug reports, and develop a proposal for streamlining user feedback, such as bug reports, from multiple Wikimedia sources to the correct channels. “Wikimedia has a few feedback channels: Village Pumps for support, Request Tracker for operation issues, OTRS for email responses, and Bugzilla for bug tracking,” Juarez explains. “I will compare and contrast what other open source projects do with what Wikimedia does and make suggestions on changes that could benefit Wikimedia.”

As Juarez sees it, her internship is a win-win for both her and the Foundation. “I think internships like this allow women like me opportunities to grow, gain knowledge, and connect with a community. Organizations benefit by the contributions women provide to the projects themselves and the community.”

Internships like the Outreach Program for Women help reduce the gender imbalance within Wikipedia and the tech industry. She explains, “It’s important to have women participate in MediaWiki, Wikipedia, and open source projects in general because their perspectives are important—and not just women, but men and women of color as well. The absence of these perspectives affects the type of articles that get deleted, promoted, and even created. In MediaWiki and open source in general, a limited perspective can affect which software functionality is added, removed, or even considered.” She adds, “Wikipedia, which is intended for everyone, should not be created by only half of the population.”

Since beginning her internship, Juarez has learned a great deal from her mentors Quim Gil and Andre Klapper, and looks forward to making “meaningful contributions to the community” as she continues. “I hope my project will benefit MediaWiki, Wikimedia, and the community by streamlining the feedback that is received. I also hope to continue to contribute after my internship is complete,” she explains.

Juarez graduated Summa Cum Laude from Lamar University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics in December 2011. In the future she hopes to be “working in a technical position at a job that allows me to positively impact the world socially and technologically. I hope to still be working to attract more people (especially women) to computer science and technology careers.” While busy with her internship, she still finds the time to have a bit of fun in her hometown of Sour Lake, Texas—from playing video games and reading comics such as Batgirl and Wonder Woman to learning to sew a bed for her cat Midnight.

With every day of her internship, Juarez is learning how she can contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia and hopes others will join in as well, “I don’t think most people understand that they can contribute and make Wikipedia better. Like me, they don’t think they have anything to offer, but I’m learning that I can help. I hope other people will realize that too.”

Interview and profile by Alice Roberts, Communications Intern

By day, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight is a business administrator for a healthcare company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. By night, she studies diverse countries and cultures and posts her discoveries online for the benefit of anyone in the world. You see, Rosie is a prolific Wikipedia editor.

“At heart, I am a cultural anthropologist,” said Rosie, a prolific Wikipedia editor and content contributor who edits as User:Rosiestep. “Once I started college, I wanted to be a cultural anthropologist. I wanted to follow in the steps of Margaret Mead.”

As Rosie entered college, her desire to study cultural anthropology was checked by her father, who wanted her to be “a pharmacist or an accountant, something that a woman who would eventually get married and have children could do part time,” she said. “He was being practical.” Rosie went on to study business, eventually obtaining a Masters degree. Despite her college education, she still couldn’t suppress her desire to pursue her passion as a cultural anthropologist.

Then, several years ago, Rosie’s son Sean edited a Wikipedia article about a town in the Ukraine he was stationed in while working with the Peace Corps. “I’d never thought of actually making a contribution myself. I just figured other people were doing it,” Rosie said, “but when he said that, I thought it was fabulous.”

Later in the same year, Rosie searched Wikipedia for a group of books published by the Book League of America. While the publisher no longer exists, Rosie possessed an impressive collection of the Book League’s texts. She was surprised to find that there was no entry about the company on Wikipedia. It was then that she decided to contribute. “I thought, you know what, Sean edited Wikipedia, I bet I could do that too. Let me see how to do it. And so I tried to figure it out.”

Rosie had no way of knowing that this single contribution would eventually lead her to become the woman ranked with the highest number of Did You Know articles on English Wikipedia and the number four ranked Wikipedian in total (she has 697 DYKs and more than 67,000 edits).

“I edited and edited and edited, thinking you could just kind of keep doing this, just keep looking stuff up and keep writing,” she said.  “At some point, I started thinking wow, I’m building up a body of work here.”

This compulsion to edit is passed down from her grandmother, Paulina Lebl-Albala, the first president of the Yugoslav Association of University-Educated Women. Her grandmother was known for her work editing textbooks for the local university and for the translations she made of the German author Herman Hesse.“I feel this genetic pull to her,” Rosie said. “She edited textbooks, I edit Wikipedia. I feel this sense of connection with her. I think Grandma would be proud of me.”

Rosie finds inspiration in the example of her grandmother who became prolific in an area normally dominated by men. In turn, Rosie hopes that her example will inspire more women to edit Wikipedia. She admitted her shock at the ever-dwindling number of Wikipedia’s female editors. “I’ve read the statistics of how few women edit,” she said. “It needs more women.”

She hopes that other women will develop a similar love and passion for contributing to Wikipedia, that contributing to knowledge overwhelms the discomfort they may feel from the occasionally confrontational remarks made on their talk pages by male editors.

To Rosie, contributing to Wikipedia is important because it means that you are helping others receive what she describes as the “freedom of all knowledge on the planet.”

“I’m hooked.” She said,  “I’m addicted, I love to do this, I’m driven to do this.”

Wikipedia, she said, finally gave her the possibility of fulfilling her childhood aspirations. “Wikipedia has given me an opportunity to be that cultural anthropologist,” she said. “I study very interesting places and interesting people, and write all these articles.”

She continued, “I can’t not do this. I think there is a sense that I want my kids to be proud of me, to know that I am doing something that I think is really important.”

Profile by Zoe Bernard, Communications Intern
Interview by Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager