Submissions/Why support of young Wikipedians can make a change

This is an Open submission for Wikimania 2017 that has not yet been reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Submission no. 2126 - C6

Title of the submission

Why support of young Wikipedians can make a change

Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion): roundtable discussion

Author of the submission: Freddy2001, DerHexer

Language of presentation: English

E-mail address: freddy2001wikipedia.de

Username: Freddy2001, DerHexer, Kenny McFly

Country of origin: Germany

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): none

Personal homepage or blog: "Hey, mach mit!" - getstarted.wmflabs.org

Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal): Wikipedia just turned 16. With the majority of active editors participating in the projects for many years and only few efforts in engaging minors with Wikipedia, the average Wikipedian is no longer in their twenties. Accordingly Wikipedia does not only lack female editors but also young editors who grew up in a more sophisticated technological field that can push Wikipedia to the next level. Hence we do need more pupils and young people who are still open for new hobbies they can engage in.

Since 2007, the German Wikipedia has a club for young Wikipedians called „Jungwikipedianer“. Currently it has about 35 to 40 underage members, who help each other with writing new articles or improving existing ones, for example those with cleanup templates, or who compete in image contests. But mainly they discuss topics related or unrelated to Wikipedia, on the project’s talk page, on IRC, WhatsApp, and beyond. For staying in the loop they have a weekly newsletter. Everything they do relates to supporting other, but they actually aren’t very integrated in the German community in general. In 2015, a dozen of young Wikipedians met for the first time in real life and in 2016 they organized a three day meetup to discuss about new strategies to find new volunteers for the Wikimedia projects.

With input from several conferences like the Wikimania 2016, the German WikiCon or the Dutch WCN we could develop strategies how to work on this problem. In this presentation, we want to present some of our results and new strategies to get new volunteers for the Wikimedia Projects.

What will attendees take away from this session?: Ideas and new ways how to engage new volunteers

Theme of presentation

WikiCulture & Community

For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?: intermediate, advanced

Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long): 25 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes, got full scholarship

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

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This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

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