In 2023, I met TheAafi and Mrb Rafi through the Let’s Connect program. Then, we shot and published our Wikipedia 101 education set project for beginners in Istanbul.
Since I thought that this education set, consisting of a total of 10 videos, should continue, I individually designed my training set project for Wikipedia 201 education set for advanced users in Türkiye in the same year.
Road map
I first told my academics about my project to shoot the training set at the RGB Studios within the Faculty of Communication of my university (Istanbul Bilgi University). After receiving approval for the shooting of the project, I invited members of Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey to participate in the shooting. Volunteers who wanted to participate in the shooting contacted me by filling out an application form.
We came together with volunteer users (Adem, Kadı, Kurmanbek, Sadrettin and Zafer) and exchanged ideas about what topics they wanted to talk about. Then we started the shootings. After the shooting of 12 videos was completed, the videos were edited. Then, community member ToprakM completed the Turkish and English subtitles of the videos. On February 18, 2024, the videos were published on Wikimedia Commons and Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey YouTube channel.
What do participants think?
I asked the participants how they found the project and how they felt when they stood in front of the camera for the first time:
Since we are all volunteers at Wikipedia, our contributions can often be unprofessional. However, since the footage in the Wikipedia 201 project was prepared and edited in a professional studio, I can say that the quality of the videos is high. Until this project, I had only contributed to Wikipedia by writing and sharing the photos I took under free license. The video shooting process was a different experience for me. We always need projects that will motivate us on Wikipedia. If we accept the Wikipedia 201 project as a step, I believe that we will see more comprehensive projects in our Turkish Wikipedia community in the future and that such projects for the end user will strengthen our motivation in increasing the number of volunteers.
User:Sadrettin
I believe that Wikipedia 201 is a useful project in terms of providing information to users who contribute to the process of contributing to Wikipedia. Shooting the videos in a professional studio was also seriously beneficial. With these videos, all users will be able to learn how Wikipedia works in a very short time. Considering that making changes to Wikipedia may seem complicated to new users, I can say that it is an effective project in terms of eliminating confusion. I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who contributed to the project and wish our projects to continue.
User:Kadı
It gave me great pleasure to contribute to the Wikipedia 201 project, in which more detailed usages were conveyed in the phase after the Wikipedia 101 project. Doing this in a professional studio environment and doing these works together with the students there added extra value to this work. As we always explain in trainings, you can contribute to Wikipedia not only by writing encyclopedic articles, but also by making videos or organizing events.
User:Zafer
The project offered experienced users the opportunity to cover more in-depth and complex topics on Wikipedia. It also gave experienced users the opportunity to use Wikipedia’s more advanced features and improve their technical skills. One of the possible concrete outcomes of the Wikipedia 201 project is to contribute to the creation of more qualified and reliable content by providing training and guidance to experienced users, increasing their knowledge and editing skills. Being directly involved in the project was not only a good experience for me, but also helped us improve our presentation skills and increase our self-confidence.
User:Adem
As the creator of the project, Wikipedia 201 taught me a lot about project and risk management, in addition to producing content for Wikipedia. Although the design phase of the project is quite easy, we may experience technical problems from time to time when we start implementing it. For this reason, I learned once again what we should do when we experience such problems and that we should always have a plan B ready. In my future projects, I will continue to use the experience that Wikipedia 201 has given me in the best way possible.
User:Kurmanbek
Oxorca, who also took part in the editing process of this project and later started editing Wikipedia, wanted to express his opinions about the project as follows:
With the completion of the Wikipedia 201 project, we have published an important guide for users. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the project, especially the creator and executive of the project, User:Kurmanbek, and User:Zafer, who constantly supported us. I hope that Wikipedia 201 has been a project that creates value for all Wikipedia users, as it does for us. I hope that similar projects will continue, expand with face-to-face workshops with asynchronous guides, and that their impact will increase much more.
User:Oxorca
Results
With this project, a training set was created where users who cannot attend face-to-face or online Wikipedia events can always find answers to their questions. Thus, knowledge equality,1 which is the main pillar of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy, was achieved. Together with Wikipedia 101, 201 has become a corpus about Wikipedia’s Turkish language.
Footnotes
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