Tuo kulttuuri Wikipediaan raport

Finnish: Tuo kulttuuri Wikipediaan -raportti

Bring Culture to Wikipedia editathon course was co-organised by Wikimedia Finland, Helsinki Summer University and six GLAM organisations. Its aim was to bring more Finnish cultural heritage to Wikipedia. The editathon gatherings were held at various organisation locations, where the participants get a ”look behind the scenes” – the organisations showed their archives and presented their field of expertise. The course also provided a great opportunity to learn basics of Wikipedia, as experienced Wikipedian Juha Kämäräinen gave lectures at each gathering.

The collaborating GLAM organisations were Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, The Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki City Library, The Finnish Museum of Photography, Yle Archives and Helsinki Art Museum.

Surveys

Preliminary Survey

The participants were asked to fill out a survey form before the beginning of the course. 11 people responded. 10/11 of the respondents felt that Wikipedia is useful tool for searching information. The majority used Finnish Wikipedia for search, although 4/11 also used English Wikipedia. On scale 1 to 5 (1=Not at all trustworthy...5=very trustworthy) 11/11 gave Wikipedia a score of 4/5. 5/11 of the respondents had not edited Wikipedia before the course. Those of who had edited, almost everybody (4/5) had created new article or edited an existing one. More knowledge requiring feats such as adding an image to an article or changing the category was familiar only to two respondents. Only one respondent had uploaded media to Wikimedia Commons. Problems had been caused by overlapping edits, mobile connection or if somebody had deleted added information. Preliminary expectations were congruent: majority was expecting to learn the basics and to visit the organisations. The possibilities offered by the culture organisations aroused interest in the respondents.

Final survey

Final Survey was responded by only 7 participants. One of them had not filled out the preliminary survey. All of the repsondents were still of the opinion that Wikipedia is useful for searching information. Wikipedia was still reagrded as trustworthy as before: 6/7 people gave rating 4/5. Based on the open questions, the trustworthiness actually increased, since the participants were now familiar with the peer review, source policy and administration.

"Adding information is surprisingly tardy and accuracy demanding process. Per se my conception of Wikipedia has not changed, but the course has increased my appreciation towards the wikipedians."

Half of those (2/4) of who responded to the preliminary survey and had not edited Wikipedia before the course intended to continue editing Wikipedia; half of them regarded it possible. Three thirds of them had editet Wikipedia outside the course gatherings during the course. Those who said they would continue editing Wikipedia were motivated by interesting topics, that aren't covered thouroughly, and the satisfaction they get from fixing deficiencies and adding information. They also appreciated the course more than those who only found it possible to edit Wikipedia afterwards. Motivation to continue would increase if there would be some sort of collaboration after the course. The most reawrding part of the course was the possibility to get inside to the "wiki world", learning new stuff through practise, visiting the locations of the GLAM organisations and meeting experts and wikipedians.

The question "how satisfied are you with the duration of the course?" caused most dispersion in the answers. On scale 1 to 5 (1=not at all...5=very much) 2/7 was very satisfied, 3/7 gave rating 4 and 2/7 gave rating 3. The participants were very satisfied with the arrangements and course materials (5/7). Many respondent proposed that the time reserved for teaching should be down scaled so that there would be more time for editing articles. One respondent also proposed home works. In general all the respondents were satisfied with the course.

GLAM survey

In addition to the two participant surveys we also did a final survey for the GLAM organisations. Organisation-specific answers are not shown here. Two organisations had plans to do media uploads to Wikimedia Commons and the course had a positive impact on those plans. Two organisations (SLS and Yle Archives) had already done media uploads. All of the organisations thought that the course was useful, especially in raising Wikipedia-awareness inside the organisation. Trying out Wikipedia-related event concept was also considered useful. As a development proposal was mentioned that there should be more time reserved for writing articles, as "only the surface was scratched". All of the organisations were interested in continuing Wikimedia projects in the future. Some had concrete ideas regarding content uploads and some were interested in to organising editathons in their locations.

GLAMs used on the average 20 work hours per gathering; in total the six organisations used 118 work hours. Yle Archives used 40 hours alone.

Metrics

Almost all of the most active new editors during the course gave their permission to use their edit history for Wikimetrics. Analysis was done so that edits were summed from all the gatherings alone. Because there was so little time for editing articles during the gatherings, the net sum of added bytes was quite low (70 424) as was the count of new articles (13). Net sum of added bytes during the course (including the edits outside the gatherings) was 194 830 and new articles 71. These stats are biased because of the experienced wikipedians. The new users who hadn't edited Wikipedia before the course added bytes during the course time (including edits outside the gatherings) 61 956 in total and created 22 new articles. The edits were focused on the gatherings, and only one of the new users have continued to edit Wikipedia notably after the course.

Gallery

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