Making wikis count Information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Bruning/flossk2010

Speaker: Kim Bruning

Standing in for Gerard Meijssen today
"Home base": English wikipedia.
Also work on small wikis from time to time.

Today's talk

Take home message: Editing Wikipedia is fun, and it helps out your community too! (So please come and edit! :-)

Plan: Start out explaining what wikipedia is for and how to get more users, then I'll answer specific questions. I'll provide links to all the sources and places you can go to on this wikipage, so you can look things up later!

Status of wikipedias in Kosova

Having a wikipedia in a particular language helps preserve that language, and allows people to learn about the world in their own language.

Currently Gheg is eligible to have its own wikipedia. Some work still needs to be done.

Gheg in incubator: description page | front page

Of course, we already have an Albanian wikipedia. Of course, you are welcome to edit that wikipedia too!

Albanian wikipedia

Statistics

Gheg wikipedia is still in incubator.

The Category of Gheg pages in incubator currently lists 46 pages . Possibly not all Gheg pages are currently in this category.
All the core messages for mediawiki have been translated, so people can use the software in their own language translatewiki.net statistics

Albanian wikipedia is live and doing ok, currently with 27639 content pages at time of writing, and 192 active users.

Wikipedia is Fun and Informative

What articles are MOST informative, to most people?

Articles that people actually read!

Background information to the news
Background information about sports
Information about sex.

A way to build informative articles

Select a local paper and take subjects from all sections.
Small wiki-articles (but with lots of links) are good when starting out.
Red links are your friend!
As a next step, people can start filling in the topics at the red links.

Also

Interwiki links help to draw readers from other wikipedias
Google can help you find more information
News is always interesting!

Your Pictures, Your Illustrations, Your Articles

Use your own pictures, from your own surroundings, as much as possible
Share them on Wikimedia Commons

In this way, you share your culture world-wide.

Children will copy your articles, and use your pictures
Translate articles about your country and culture to the English Wikipedia, so more people can find them (Don't forget to interwiki!)

Fun is serious business!

Fun is the greatest motivator
Fun builds a community
Shared fun and satisfaction will make you come back!

Be welcoming to new users

Obvious thing is Obvious: If you want new users, make them feel welcome!

share tips and tricks
teach them how to use the wiki (mentoring, tutorials)
Be tolerant of their mistakes. Give them time to be stupid and grow up.

Where to go from here?

Localize mediawiki and other related software at translatewiki.net
Collaborate widely, share skills widely.
Use IRC, Skype, Mailing lists.
Consider the benefits of having your own chapter.

Questions?

(You can add them here during the talk, if you have a laptop with you . ;-)

Some people want to know how to edit a wiki?

Well, it's really simple. Click edit, and type. That's not so hard.

So the english article on Kosova is spelled Kosovo.