2014 Activity Plan/Extending Reach

Lead member of staff

Daria Cybulska

Indicative budget amount

£10,000

Description and overall rationale

We seek to target groups and individuals normally under-represented in our community, by supporting outreach projects aimed at increasing participation in the Wikimedia movement (especially amongst women, or involving any minority ethnic, LGBT, linguistic or other community in the UK). We are working with our community to find opportunities to increase participation from the relevant groups, and improve the content in the under-represented areas on Wikimedia projects. This is done through outreach activities, partnerships with particular outreach institutions, on-wiki initiatives (such as Wiki Loves Monuments). These activities have parallel aims of improving content and attracting more participation from the target groups.

Additionally, we are working with scientists, scholars, learned societies and funders to help experts improve targeted content areas of Wikipedia and its sister projects, bringing that expertise to the widest possible public, in the stream of work called Expert Outreach. Many scholarly societies are, like Wikimedia UK, registered charities whose mission includes informing and educating the general public. These common goals are advanced with internal training events, publications and public events. This work complements WMUK's partnerships with GLAMs and Education sector.

For 2013 programme, please see here.

Timelines - i.e. what happens quarter by quarter

Throughout year, with the focus on particular events in the calendar - e.g. Women's History Month (Q1), Black History Month (Q3).

Success criteria and Metrics - overall and quarter by quarter breakdown if relevant

Goals

Improving content and attracting volunteers:

• Themed/audience focused workshops - hold 4 training sessions. They will attract an average of 15 people each, 10 of whom will be new to editing. The programme succeeds in reaching people in target areas (wiki event page)
• Run editathons with the focus on improving the under-represented areas on Wikimedia projects - hold 4 sessions. They will attract an average of 10 people each, possibly from the community. Targeted topics on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons worked on (wiki event page)
• Run larger-scale initiatives (such as ‘Wiki Takes…’, “Wiki Loves...’ and other online projects) other than training sessions/editathons aimed at attracting new contributors, along the aims of Increasing Participation - 2-3 a year, involving 30 new contributors each (wiki event page)
• Expert Outreach - 1 expert training session delivered per quarter for 10 people new to Wikimedia (wiki event page)

Increasing awareness of the importance of extended reach:

• Majority of the editathons/workshops delivered are run in partnership with relevant institutions, e.g. Breast Cancer Care (wiki event page)
• Presence at relevant external diversity conferences and events - 2 a year. Partner with Wikimedia Diversity Conference if applicable (wiki event page)
• Expert Outreach - presence at 2 conferences a year; working relations with 5 scholarly or expert societies, e.g. AHRC, Cancer Research UK (contacts on office wiki)

Risks

• There continues to be insufficient take-up.
• We fail to reach the identified groups.
• Our capacity is too limited to deliver the projects needed.