Inspire Campaign promotes quality and visibility of content across Wikimedia projects

In early March, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the second Inspire Campaign, inviting community ideas on how to improve content curation and review processes in Wikimedia projects. This follows the first Inspire Campaign from last year focused on addressing the gender gap, which we’ll be reporting on in a future blog post.
Diversity of proposals
Over 100 ideas were submitted during the first phase of the campaign from February 28th through March 29th, and over 250 people participated by developing new proposals, endorsing ideas, offering feedback, and discussing issues. At this time, 12 of those proposals have been drafted or submitted as grant proposals.
Submitted ideas focused on several aspects of review and curation such as the use of maintenance tags, utilizing expertise in a subject area, training editors, and surfacing sources that are difficult to access. Thematically, ideas involved different approaches such as building and testing of new tools, outreach and training for specific audiences, and on-wiki project planning. Ideas were submitted in multiple languages, and proposals have involved people from all over the world.
Here are some examples of proposals submitted during the campaign:

• Wikipedia African Academy 2016: Development of a comprehensive training program for contributing to Wikimedia projects at multiple universities across seven African countries.
• A Better Interface for Maintenance Tags and Maintenance Tags Follow-up: Two ideas focused improving the system behind using and addressing maintenance tags.
• Simple English for Science Articles: An outreach initiative on the English Wikipedia to improve readability of scientific articles.
• Bookmarks with Cross References: Proposal to develop a personalized display of related articles that could have many uses for editors and readers, such as cross-referencing and research.

How to get involved
In the next phases of the Inspire Campaign, we plan to develop ideas that need funding into viable applications for Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) and Project and Event Grants (PEG). The second half of April will be an open period for community comments on formal grant proposals. Reviewing committees for IEGs and PEGs will then discuss ideas, and publish feedback on the proposal talk pages. The approved grants will be announced in June.
There are many innovative ideas that could use support from volunteers to help accomplish its goals. Regardless of funding needs, we’d love to see those ideas move forward. If there is an idea that interests you, consider reaching out to the idea creator directly, provide feedback, and offer to take a more involved role in these projects to turn them into grant proposals. Content review and curation are some of the most fundamental and valuable tasks across Wikimedia projects; this Inspire Campaign is an opportunity to form partnerships and initiate projects that have lasting outcomes on the quality and visibility of the content we create.
If you have questions about the campaign or the process behind it, you can post them here, or cschilling-at-wikimedia.org.
Chris “Jethro” Schilling, Community Resources
Wikimedia Foundation