Submissions/Wikipedia and beyond: Incentivizing the engagement for freely licensed material and projects

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Review no.

93

Title of the submission

Wikipedia and beyond: Incentivizing the engagement for freely licensed material and projects

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Workshop

Author of the submission

Nicole Ebber

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

nicole.ebber@wikimedia.de

Country of origin

Germany

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.

Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)

Can contests, prizes and money engage people in contributing to the Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects? We all are always looking for new and better ways to motivate people to contribute to Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Germany has tried different methods and I’d like to share and discuss our diverse experience. I’d like to talk about the pros and cons of money as an incentive. Also, I’d like to involve other chapters in the workshop and hear from their activities and experience. Together, we can develop new ideas and optimize the incentives for making our free projects and contributing to the commons even more attractive.

Three example projects I’d like to present and discuss:

Last year, we started WissensWert, the first German contest for Free Culture and Free Knowledge projects. With the support of up to 5.000 Euro each, we want to help great ideas to become outstanding projects. One of our main goals was to not only reach the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community but also show that we are ready to support other free projects. The contest was a great success, around 100 groups handed in their applications, we had a nice social media/blog coverage, got in touch a broader target group and now happily support and assist the realization of eight wonderful projects.

The Zedler-Medaille is a yearly contest where the scientific community (outside Wikipedia) is called to write new Wikipedia articles about scientific topics. The winners are awarded with a (sponsored) prize of 2.000 Euro and a medal, which is given out at a festive ceremony. Goal of this contest is to bring new (professional) authors in touch with Wikipedia and motivate them to take part in the process of free content creation. In fairness, we must admit that we never reached this goal: almost all participants were already part of the WP community; the number of submissions never crossed 30 articles. As of today, we are discussing new models, one is an “Award for Free Knowledge”, which would be given to projects, portals, groups in and beyond the WP community, who did a tremendous effort in supporting free knowledge over the past 12 months.

Again, another positive example is the community-driven contest Wiki loves Monuments, which achieved great success in the Netherlands in 2010. There was no money involved; but other (material) prices were given by sponsors.

Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)

People and Community

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

No

Slides or further information (optional)


Interested attendees

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You can help me prepare the workshop and add our ideas and experiences here: http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/incentives

  1. Vibhijain 16:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC) Good work Germans[reply]
  2. Sky Harbor 01:17, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Lodewijk 10:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Achnold 11:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Netzpolitik 15:59, 19 May 2011 (CET)
  6. In WM-IT I tried something like this some years ago, so I'm very interested... Nemo 21:37, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Geraki 05:54, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Thornet 15:42, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]