Multimedia:Meeting in Paris/Notes/Education and Outreach

Target Group Analysis

• People who never used Commons at all
• Wikipedians (who are unaware of the existance of Commons)
• Readers/Users of the Wikimedia projects
• Cultural Institutions
  • Museums
  • Libraries
  • Archives
• Educators
• Photographers and other multimedia creators

What the target groups want to get out of Commons

• Use
• Re-use
• Upload

Problem Analysis

• Wikimedia Commons is not visible enough on Wikipedia (see Polish Wikipedia)
• There is no good explanation about what free licences are
• Lack of information about what inspires us to use free licences (e.g. convincing case studies)
• There is too much information
• We need to explain why we do things like we do it (e.g. why is collecting meta data important?)
• The help (as one of the main functions on the main page) is not visible enough (overkill of useless information)
• Commons is not perceived as an independent project (note: controversial)
• The communication with the user is mostly aggressive / impersonal tone (bots)
• Some of the people who are the public face of Commons are not friendly enough, but are very active and hard-working members of the community (nasty-but-diligent-guy-problem) -- worse on Commons than on other projects, because there too few places for reflective communication (like in WikiProjects)
• People don't now enough about exciting projects on Commons (Atlas etc.)

Slogans (brainstorming)

• "Commons – a great way to share something with the world!"
• "View the world from different angles!" (with different pictures of the same item, taken by different photographers)
• "See how your picture helps educating people!"
• "Universal access to culture"

Solutions / Proposals

education / outreach related

• "Welcome bar" on top of the page for new users (see http://stackoverflow.com/)

• Introduction video about a) what Commons is, and about b) the usage of Commons (how to use, re-use, upload). (See the Google Chrome introduction page for example)

• Enticement materials ("10 reasons why you should contribute to Wikimedia Commons", "pictures make the difference")

• Wiki seminar about communication with other users / conflict resolution

• Leaflet for Museums

• Leaflet for Libraries / Archives

other noteworthy ideas

• "Did you like this picture? See more pictures of this type…"

Limits of outreach / educational initiatives

• As soon as the nasty-but-diligent-guy appears, all efforts are in vain

Criteria for good Commons-related educational / outreach materials

• positive tone (what you can do instead of what you can't)

• attractive materials (for the target group photographers)

• should capture what is fun on Commons

• simple, understandable language

• keep everything simple, not too much information, focus on the most important points

• should direct the reader to more detailed information

• the right mix between fact-based and inspirational

Target specific positioning messages (museums, libraries, archives)

Museums

• Contextualization ("access for your target market")

• Taking the content to other places

• Engagement (the amount of time people spend with your collection)

• The more the museums are visible online, the more people can be activated to visit the museum

• Re-assurance: "Nothing can replace the real thing"

Libraries

• Wikipedia is a knowledge repository (common mission)

• The power of volunteers:
  • Case study I: OCR – Wikisource adds value to the full text search
  • Case study II: Wikimedians check and improve your metadata (authority records)

• Wikipedians giving classes: "How Wikipedia works" (both for the general public and the library staff) / Broaden the demographics of the users

• Case study: multilingualism, annotation, disambiguation (Sj)

• Case study: Jeffdelonge (Wikimedian who saved a collection while he was a library intern)

Archives

• Preservation
  • materials are accessible online (and can take less damage)
  • the data is available somewhere else

• Metadata can be reviewed and improved (Case studies: Federal Archive) (wisdom of crowds)

• Case study Durova

All

• Wikimedia's mission

• Wikimedia is an international, non-profit organization

• You can focus on your job, while we are doing the low-level work

Arguments against a partnership

• "the integrity of the collection" (ruining the reputation)

GLAM Next steps

1. Identify a person in your organization that is responsible for the project
2. For further information see: …
3. Contact the local chapter

Additional information for Chapters

• The most common pitfalls
  • content terminology "content liberation" (see w:en:WP:GLAM)
  • not pitching the right level
  • copyright fear
  • not being explicit about the amount of work / not being clear enough about the whole project
  • disrespect ("we know it better than you" / being dressed in t-shirts / not respecting the work of the last decades)
  • knowing whom to send (is the person qualified to do the job? does the person talk the same language?)

• The most common objections
  • commercial use of my stuff
  • anyone can do anything with it?
  • we want to be attributed / we don't want to be associated with a different (e.g. vandalized) version
  • but it's already free on our website / why do you have to upload it to Commons?
  • why do you need a high resolution
  • control of my stuff (I can't delete etc.)
  • (Also see wmuk:Cultural_partnerships/Content_partnerships#Drawbacks)