User:Bluerasberry/2014 wiki partnership pitch

I wrote this text in 2013 to describe a program in which I would give Wikipedia training to schools, libraries, and similar institutions between 2014-2016. The text is outdated. I kept this in a Google Site. There is no option for archiving there. This might be junk text, but then I reconsidered because maybe this text could have some historic value for demonstrating what someone in my position thought about Wikipedia outreach for that time. Now I know that none of this makes sense, and none of this text can work for outreach. Each section here was a separate page in the Google Site.

Right now I think that it is not possible to do Wikipedia outreach except by having a person to person conversation with someone. People who are not interested will not respond to this kind of text, and the people who would join will ask for more information with the most brief prompting.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  20:42, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Bring Wikipedia to your class!


Everyday, millions of people search online for health information to answer questions such as -


 * Should I give my daughter antibiotics for her runny nose?
 * Could my headache be a brain tumor?
 * When should I get my first colonoscopy?

Like it or not, Wikipedia entries frequently are presented by search engines when people seek information on common issues, and many people use Internet search as their first source of health information.

To learn more about how the public uses Wikipedia to get health information and guide their healthcare thoughts and decisions, as well as how students and professionals in all health-based fields can contribute to these entries to make sure they are accurate and understandable, I am offering professors and students the opportunity to tour Wikipedia in an editing project to fit your schedule.

My name is Lane Rasberry, and I am the Wikipedian-in-Residence at Consumer Reports. As someone who shares Consumer Reports’ mission of empowering consumers to become better informed about decisions they make, I edit Wikipedia health content to ensure that it is current, accurate, and science-based. On behalf of the Wikipedia community and Consumer Reports, I would like to invite any professor or class focusing on health topics in New York state – where I live – to participate in a Wikipedia Editing Assignment as part of their coursework. This can include medical, dentistry, nursing, public health, and pharmacy schools – and more.

A few more details:
 * For those in New York state, I will try to appear at your class in person.
 * Qualitative data shows that both students and professors enjoy this!
 * This will not change any traditional learning goals, but will offer insight into a popular communication medium.
 * Assignments will come to life more than usual, as students will create information that will actually be read and used by the public.
 * Students (and instructors!) who already use Wikipedia benefit from insight into its source and the “behind-the-scenes” workings.
 * Future health professionals will benefit from gaining an understanding into where their patients get their information and what they are learning once they get there.

If you’re interested, contact me at lrasberry@consumer.org for an appointment to chat. Participating classes can institute this as part of a one-day event or part of regular coursework, with a commitment similar to writing a research paper. Thousands of classes have participated in Wikipedia projects since 2011, and various levels of support are available for your class. If you are in New York state, I would personally like to visit you to give you a tour of Wikipedia and support all students who would like to contribute to a highly consulted health publication covering all health topics that the general public reads about online.

Bring Wikipedia to your library!
The Wikipedia community continually seeks partnership and collaboration with libraries. As an encyclopedia Wikipedia's strength is in summarizing topics, but for more information, Wikipedia directs its readers elsewhere. Historically Wikipedians have sought to increase access to library resources and to complement traditional publication and information sharing models with new ways of referencing sources and suggesting further reading.

My name is Lane Rasberry and I am a Wikipedian-in-Residence at Consumer Reports, a nonprofit media organization based in Yonkers. I am available to talk with local librarians about Wikipedia.

If you are a librarian in New York City or Westchester, then I might personally be able to present at your library. We would start with a presentation on Wikipedia and follow with a discussion of how Wikipedia has been used to complement library programing and local interests. If there is ground for collaboration then I could assist in co-hosting some Wikipedia event with library staff, hopefully to complement some existing local program.

To discuss this, contact me and let's talk by voice or video. In general, for a first round in-person presentation to librarians, I would present then we would discuss the following:


 * What is Wikipedia?
 * How is it developed and by whom?
 * To what extent is information in Wikipedia subject to quality control?
 * In what ways is the information in Wikipedia connected to broader media resources, including library resources?
 * What precedents exist for collaboration between Wikipedia and local libraries?

After this initial discussion, should it happen that any librarian wishes to consider incorporating Wikipedia as an aspect of library programing, there are various options for doing so. Typically, a library will host an event at which the librarians make media resources available around some theme, and guests are invited to participate in a Wikipedia "editathon" at which they summarize and publish information from those sources in Wikipedia while citing the original sources.

As with my other work at Consumer Reports, I favor health-related topics, but I am always happy to talk with librarians in any context.

Since 2010 hundreds of classes and student groups have participated in the Wikipedia Education Program, which is a program to assist students in contributing to Wikipedia while meeting traditional learning objectives. A brief voice or video chat is probably the fastest and easiest way to determine if a Wikipedia collaboration meets your schedule and needs. Typically, any student group with time to meet can find a way to participate. For every student group the ideal partnership with Wikipedia is different, but here are some common models for collaboration:


 * One-time workshop

Students and a Wikipedia facilitator meet for 2 hours for a Wikipedia presentation followed by an editing tutorial and actual Wikipedia editing.

The following commitments are required for this to work:


 * Students provide a space where people can meet with wifi
 * Students advertise the event
 * 5-20 students show up at the appointed time; with more attendees more planning is required
 * Students should have access to computers
 * A Wikipedia facilitator presents Wikipedia for 10 minutes, then there is a 10 minute Wikipedia tutorial, then for the rest of the time students edit Wikipedia with assistance.

Ideally, events like this work better if students bring some facts from a reliable source the event. The goal will be to share information in Wikipedia and cite the reliable source. These events are called "editathons" in Wikipedia slang. The minimum time commitment for this is 5 hours from one student partner - one hour to reserve a place to host the event, one hour to advertise the event, two hours to be present at the event, and one to do follow up including receiving the report of event outcomes from the Wikipedia facilitator.

Expansion - Edithons can be part of a series, or they can be half or full-day drop-in events, or they can be part of a conference or other event, or they can be in a Wikipedia student club.

In the course integration model any course which has a research and reporting assignment replaces it with a Wikipedia publishing assignment. This means that students still do the same research, but instead of writing a report only for the professor, the students add content to Wikipedia and the professor reviews what happens there. When this is done, it typically consumes 90-120 minutes of class time, with half of that being Wikipedia discussion and half of that being discussion about the quality of the health information students are sharing on Wikipedia. The syllabus typically requires parts of four class periods.
 * Integration with a class


 * Week one - Introduction to assignment with Wikipedia facilitator presenting
 * Week three - Due date! Students should have contributed content to Wikipedia, and students in the class begin to read and comment on each others' work
 * Week five - Note follow up - after contribution is made, students get feedback from Wikipedia community (anyone can edit) and their classroom peers, because everything was published live
 * Week seven - Resolution and reflection - in response to the criticism at 3, students have corrected any mistakes or clarified any confusing points

This model can happen in as few as four weeks if there these points are done weekly, or may be stretched through the term to give more time for research and reflection depending on the depth of the assignment. Note that the time commitment is determined by the depth of student writing and research, and not by the time committed to Wikipedia specifically. To follow up on this, the Wikipedia facilitator follows up with the professor and class with reports on metrics and impact, including the number of articles edited, words added, and the number of times anyone anywhere in the world read the articles which the students developed.

Each of these sessions might take 30 minutes. This much is enough for a thoughtful experience, but might be stretched with less engagement over a longer period of time or more engagement in a shorter time. Following the course I report metrics back to the organizers and professor. The minimum time commitment for this is 2 hours total class time, 6 hours of homework per student (1 Wikipedia, 2 research, 1 writing, 1 reviewing others, 1 follow up), 2 hours per iteration of the professor reviewing students' work (1 iteration is sufficient), 1 hour sometime later to review metrics, if desired.

Expansion - If the class integration is successful then the professor can repeat the exercise in other classes or continue to watch impact reports and the outcomes of any class.

Tour health info
Schedule a one-hour online video tour of Wikipedia with Lane Rasberry, Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports! This tour is fun for anyone who wants to know how Wikipedia works!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Consumer_Reports_logo.png Together we will visit some of Wikipedia's health articles explore the production infrastructure which has produced them. Even for persons not specifically interested in Wikipedia, this can be an introduction to the culture and practices around crowdsourced online volunteer projects. See how non-profit community-generated social media in action! Meet people who volunteer to write reference works for fun! In joining a tour there is no further commitment, but your feedback on our work would be welcome!

Wikipedia is a highly consulted source of information. Because of Wikipedia's popularity, persons who are interested in online communications may wish to understand how Wikipedia is influencing the field in which they conduct their outreach.

If you would like to learn more about Wikipedia for whatever reason, and you have some affiliation either to the work of Consumer Reports or health education, please contact me, Lane Rasberry (lrasberry@consumer.org), to schedule a one-hour video presentation and chat. The presentation is 10-15 minutes, and the rest of the hour is filled with live demonstrations on Wikipedia in response to questions. I am in New York, and EST office hours are best, but weekends and evenings are options too.

For more information, it really would be best to talk by voice and video. But if you want to read more, then consider Why Wikipedia?

Why Wikipedia?

 * If you have information to share...
 * and if your information meets Wikipedia guidelines for inclusion into an encyclopedia article...
 * and if traffic reports for Wikipedia show large demand for your information...

then you should consider sharing it through Wikipedia.

Who reads Wikipedia? Most people who use the Internet to seek information read Wikipedia. Search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo! preferentially direct users to Wikipedia articles when they exist. Wikipedia articles are among the most popular sources of information on the topics they cover. Since Wikipedia is a public communication platform, anyone who is a stakeholder in the quality of a given Wikipedia article is welcome to share information there, so long as they do it with community approval and in compliance with community guidelines.

Stakeholders in sharing information which is covered in any Wikipedia article might consider whether they could efficiently serve their audience by integrating their information into a given Wikipedia article. For example, someone who wishes to share information about ovarian cancer screening might put that information in the Wikipedia article for "Ovarian cancer" because it receives more than 65,000 pageviews a month from people who have requested information about ovarian cancer. As this traffic is consistent and predictable, doing this would get the information to additional audience of who requests this information 780,000 times per year.

There are also reasons why people should not contribute to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a public space, so anyone who is trying to leverage its online real estate and volunteer base to promote a commercial message or one-sided point of view is not welcome. Anyone contributing information to Wikipedia should do so mindfully of community guidelines to maintain a neutral point of view and advance the mission of creating an encyclopedia.

In the field of medicine, sometimes organizations have messages to share. For example, a health campaign called Choosing Wisely encourages organizations to produce lists of evidence-based health messages which they would like for people to have on request. These messages are being integrated into Wikipedia articles along with citations to the scholarly medical journals which back them. As an example of what can be done and what the impact might be, here are some project estimates:


 * 70 Wikipedia articles were identified as appropriate targets for development with health information from this campaign
 * 2-5 sentences were derived from the source information and inserted into these Wikipedia articles
 * considering all of these articles, the media traffic for each of them has been about 30k monthly. 30,000 times 70 health articles means that these messages of broad general interest from established health authorities are every month reaching at least 2 million people requesting general health information on the topic.

If this kind of targeting and delivery is equivalent to other kinds of outreach, the described Wikipedia development could be considered a competitive value in terms of reach, investment costs, time commitment, and duration.

If you have a subscription to BMJ, read my paper "Wikipedia: what it is and why it matters for healthcare". Persons without a subscription can email me for a copy.

Schedule with Lane
Hello! If you would like to meet with me then please check my calendar and email me your proposal a time to meet. I live in New York and am ready to present 10 am - 4:30 pm EST Monday through Friday. If you want a tour of Wikipedia's health content then spending an hour together is best. I will send you a link to a virtual conference space where we can meet on video with screenshare so that you can see my screen as we look at slides and Wikipedia pages. My email is lrasberry@consumer.org.

For more information about what I do, please follow the links to the left, starting with the top one.


 * {Lane's Google Calendar here, showing daily schedule)