Don’t Turn Me into Petunias: Confessions of a Wikimania Program Reviewer

Hi, I am KITAMURA Sae, a Wikimedian from Japan. This year, I worked as a program reviewer of Wikimania for the first time. I have been active in Wikimedia for 14 years and had attended two Wikimanias before, but I had never been involved with it as a staff member of the organizing team. There are twelve tracks for applications, and I reviewed proposals in the GLAM track. It was a valuable and interesting experience for a Wikimedian, and I can’t help talking about it to other fellow Wikimedians, although I had to keep it a secret until the review process completely finished and the results were notified to all the applicants. Now that Wikimania 2024 is over, I would like to talk about my experience as a program reviewer.

Since transparency, or openness, is an important factor in the Wikimedia Movement and the theme of this year’s Wikimania in Katowice, in this article I will explain what kind of criteria I used to evaluate Wikimania applications as a reviewer. All the reviewers are required to be fair and unbiased, but both this year’s applicants and potential applicants to future Wikimanias may wonder how each reviewer evaluates proposals. Disclosing part of the criteria will help future applicants to write better proposals. Indeed my criteria may differ from other reviewers’ criteria, but in order to support future applicants, I will tell you some of my secret (!) criteria without touching confidential information.

1. Make It New

This criterion is shared by all the reviewers and perhaps regarded as one of the most important one: new ideas are more welcome than those previously presented elsewhere. You may not want to listen to similar presentations multiple times, especially when the previous presentations were recorded and published online, such as on YouTube or project websites. If you have done a similar session in a previous regional Wikimedia conference, you have a smaller chance of being accepted at Wikimania. Whether sessions are accepted or not largely depends on how important or interesting the proposals are, but something completely different always makes people get interested.

This criterion is also applied for the ‘update on the project’s progress’ type of sessions. The ‘update on the project’s progress’ type of session makes reviewers wonder whether we really need an update on a certain project every year at Wikimania. If you are planning to organise a session with the same members as the one held at previous Wikimedia conferences, avoid that. Especially in my track, GLAM, groups of museum- and library-affiliated Wikimedians tend to organise sessions with similar members every few years in order to reinforce the partnership between their institutions. This type of proposals, however, may make a reviewer, at least me, feel like a bowl of petunias in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: oh no, not again. Endurance makes you stronger, but newcomers and new ideas should be given more opportunities. Don’t turn reviewers into petunias.

2. Well-defined Projects before Personal Experiences

This is my personal criterion for lecture/panel-type sessions: lectures or panels about well-defined projects are given priority to those about just sharing personal experiences with no further development. Indeed sharing personal experiences is vital to our community, but lectures and panels about them tend to be unfocused, unless the experience of the speaker is extremely unique. Meetups, collaborative workshops, roundtables, posters, and reginal meetings would be more suitable for sharing personal experiences of Wikimedians. Choose the right session type most suitable for your talk.

If you prepare a proposal of lectures or panels on certain project, be as specific as possible. Write the purpose, scope, and outcome of your project clearly, and if possible, provide a link to the project page. Imagine that you need to explain a new idea to reviewers who know nothing about your project. Lengthy but vague explanations do not inspire interest of reviewers, for brevity is the soul of the wit. If you would like to organize a panel, please confirm speakers before applying. You don’t have to emphasise the importance of your project, for everyone does it. Write more about what kind of contribution your project would make to the Wikimedia Movement, and reviewers will understand how important or interesting it is.

3. As Different As Possible

This is my criterion, and other reviewers may not agree: week-long conferences like Wikimania should provide participants with different experiences every day. If a conference is abundant in similar sessions, participants will be bored. In addition to differences in topics and approaches, it is also desirable to have as many sessions as possible from different regions and cultures. I think Wikimedians must certainly love difference to the point of naming the movement’s official blog Diff.

In my opinion, the GLAM track in this year’s Wikimania didn’t have enough variety. There was only one application involving East Asia in the GLAM track, while it was a popular track with many interesting applications. The session about East Asia was not accepted, although I shared a note pointing out the fact among reviewers. On 6 August at the Silesian Museum, during the GLAM Global Meetup one day before the official kickoff of Wikimania 2024, some participants mentioned that the attendees are overwhelmingly European and North American. If GLAM events at Wikimania need more diverse attendees, conference organisers should take reginal factors into consideration before their program decision.

Maybe I disclosed too many secrets. Other program reviewers may be dissatisfied with this article. If so, I hope that other reviewers will share their experiences in our community to improve the review process of Wikimania, and that more interesting proposals will be submitted to future Wikimanias. I would also like to thank all the fellow members of the program review team, who were great and hardworking.