Discussions/New ways of engaging
The Discussion Room is a space for open and facilitated discussions at Wikimania. Participation of the audience in the session is critical, because there are no speakers, and there is no expert panel!
You can find a full overview of the discussion topics on the Discussion Room main page. Please note: there is limited seating available, and we're not saving any seats! Please be on time, but feel free to join during the midway break between two discussions.
Practical facts
- Topic
- Going beyond the edit button, innovative ways of engaging people in our projects
- Date & Time
- Saturday 25 June, 14.00 - 14.40h
- Notes
- https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wikimania2016-discussion4a
- Facilitator
- FloNight
- Venue
- Primary School
Format
The Discussion Rooms host discussions with a specific style:
- Discussions of 40 minutes each;
- Clearly defined topic for each discussion, related to Wikimedia;
- Aiming to reach pre-defined goals during the discussion;
- Discussions take place in English;
- Discussions are moderated by a facilitator;
- There is no audience as everybody is expected to participate in discussions, and everybody is audience;
- Key lessons and points are documented live on etherpad, and may be processed later;
- Each discussion will come with a single recommendation of maximum 120 characters.
Each discussion targets specifically online Wikimedia projects, it lasts 40 minutes and it starts with a short 2-3 minutes introduction.
To set the tone of our discussions, we have three rules:
- Focus on YOU. We are interested in discussing and triggering individual action, things people can personally do and change to improve our Wikimedia projects and movement. We trust the discussion can be much more interesting if we do not focus on what others should do ("the others", Wikimedia chapters and Wikimedia Foundation).
- Be constructive and polite. Disagreements animate discussions and they can allow us to unfold all issues related to a topic. Let's avoid personal attacks, let's consider that we have different backgrounds and let's aim at making everybody comfortable in sharing their legitimate point of view.
- Be short and on topic. Let's create space for everyone to express his/her opinion.
Introduction
In what ways might we find new ways of engaging the public in Wikimedia's mission, beyond asking people the click on the "Edit" button? It's time we talked openly about ways to engage folks where they live -- on mobile devices and social media platforms. What if we could encourage the use of wikilink syntax outside of Wikipedia, so that Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat would support direct linking to Wikipedia? How might we use people's social media networks to refer articles or editing tasks to others? In what way could Wikipedia use the notification layer to keep people informed?
(This discussion topic is based mostly on the proposal: 'Innovative Ways of Engaging the Public in the Wikimedia Movement')