Wikimedia Ukraine's "wiki condensed milk" volunteer appreciation program: transcript

Key points

• Editing Wikipedia is often solitary, and editors rarely see that others appreciate their work.
• Newcomers and experienced editors get too little positive feedback, and virtual barnstars have not fully solved this.
• Wikimedia Ukraine identifies the most active Ukrainian Wikipedia users in several categories, including newcomers, and offers to mail them a package.
• Each package holds condensed milk, Wikipedia-branded souvenirs and a thank-you note, and there are separate awards for administrators, patrollers and bot operators.
• The program needs only a little money and a few hours of staff and volunteer time, and in 2022 it rewarded a bit less than 100 people.
• Some newcomers who received an award went on to become active editors and experienced community members.

Chapters

1. 0:00Why Wikipedia volunteers need appreciation
2. 1:42How the wiki condensed milk program works
3. 3:292022 results and impact on newcomers
4. 4:17Closing remarks and how to learn more

Full transcript

0:00Amazing. Now we're on to our next speaker. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Hi, everyone. My name is Anton. I am the program's coordinator of Wikimedia Ukraine. And today I will talk about Wikimedia Ukraine's Wiki condensed milk program as a case study in motivating volunteers and retaining newcomers. So the basic question behind my uh behind my talk today is how can we ensure that wikipedia volunteers are appreciated for their work because editing wikipedia is often a solitary job when you've done something really amazing such as uh writing a good article or proofreading an existing article it's not always appreciated by others and even if it is even if people are silently grateful for your work this appreciation is not manifested, you don't know that other people appreciate what you've done.

1:04So in other words, newcomers and experienced editors alike don't get enough positive feedback and they do get negative feedback when they've messed something up and even when they don't, even when they haven't. And, of course, there are different efforts to ensure that editors receive more appreciation. At Wikimania, we've had interesting presentations by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example, the growth team is doing some interesting work. There are obviously long-term community traditions like Virtual Barnstars, but the problem still exists and there should be more efforts to address it.

1:42And one case study here is Wikimedia Ukraine's Wikicondensed Milk program. So the basic concept, the basic idea is to identify most active users over the past months on Ukrainian language Wikipedia divided by several different categories including newbies and experienced users and then send them or offer to send them an actual physical package containing in condensed milk, which is an alternative to virtual burn stars in Ukrainian Wikipedia started as a virtual award, but then was taken offline by Wikimedia Ukraine.

2:21And condensed milk is a sweet dessert in Ukraine, popular in Ukraine, and as far as I've been taught in Asia also. So, we offer to most active users to send them a physical package containing real condensed milk, as well as Wikipedia-branded souvenirs, and a thank you note. You can see how this condensed milk looks like. we offer separate awards for functionary and technical work so we have categories for admin administrative work patrollers boat operators and so on because there of the work is especially not recognized enough often this program is quite simple and quick to make there are some material resources required but not a lot just a small amount of money for materials and postal expenses and a few hours of staff and volunteer time for organizing the process and in 20 this program has been running for many years now in 2022 we rewarded a bit less than 100

3:29people so 41 newbies and then 12 experienced users 12 patrovers a bit more administrators and a B2S bot operators. Here you can see some experiences, some feedback from people who didn't expect to get an award but were pleasantly impressed. And to sum it up, the impact of this program is showing, hopefully showing newcomers that the work is appreciated and giving an additional boost to experienced editors. And it's especially important for newcomers as we've seen that some of the people who received the work go on to become active editors and experienced community members months or years after that.

4:17Of course, this program is just part of much wider work. This program isn't big enough to resolve the big issues on Ukrainian Wikipedia, but it is a nice addition and powerful reinforcement for some people. Thank you so much. You can read this article published by Wikimedia Ukraine earlier this year to learn more about this program. And if you want to learn more or tell me about your work in this area, please reach out to me. You can find my contacts on the slide, my email address and my telegram handle. Thank you so much. He made it.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Wikimania 2023 - Plenary - 18 August - Lightning Talk - Motivating volunteers and retaining newcomers – case study of Wikimedia Ukraine’s “wiki condensed milk” program.webm by Wikimania 2023 (2023-08-18), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. The transcript, summary and chapters on this page are shared under the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.