Wikipedia for 55+

Everyone knows about the aging population of countries in Europe, North America, Japan, and others. There are more and more older people, they have a knowledge base, their own opinions, and free time. However, they often primarily share their knowledge through social media. Wikipedia would welcome active seniors to join the community and contribute to creating high-quality, free knowledge.  An anonymous survey of participants in the Ukrainian online Wikiconference 2024 showed that only 8% of the community was aged 50-59, and the 60+ group had a very low rate.

Involving older people in Wikimedia projects is a mutually beneficial partnership. It can enrich the lives of older individuals and enhance the online encyclopedia. But how can we effectively encourage their participation?

Beginning

The idea of involving older people in editing Wikipedia came to me last year . And after attending Wikimania 2024, where I met many of my peers from around the world, I revisited the idea. As an older woman who began contributing to Wikipedia in October 2021, I have personally experienced the transformative power of this platform. I am confident that involving older people in Wikipedia can be equally beneficial for them.

I understand the problems of people who did not study information technologies at school when they edited Wikipedia or added photos to Wikimedia Commons for the first time. Since 2005, I have been trying to catch up with younger colleagues in using ICT in school lessons, independently mastering a personal computer and the Internet, and it was really difficult. Over time, I still managed to be at a sufficient, and in some issues, at a high level. But when I started editing Wikipedia three years ago, I was quite overwhelmed by the unfamiliar interface, editing panel, and menu placement, etc., and most importantly, by the fact that “I have to learn again!” However, with persistence, I was able to reach a sufficient level of proficiency. Now, as I consider sharing my experiences with others, I am not intimidated by the challenge.

Use the experience of others!

To understand where to go in involving older people in Wikimedia projects, I first familiarized myself with the experience of foreign-language wiki communities. It turned out that this direction was developed by many Wikipedias over the years, and now there are excellent results in Wikipedia Romania, Wikipedia Nigeria, Wikipedia Czech Republic and others. Ukrainian Wikipedia has also started work in this direction, a training was held in Lviv. Analyzing the results of the projects, areas of work, format and topics of the meetings, the experience of the Czech program “Seniors Write Wikipedia” was chosen.

I presented the search results at the Wikiconference in October 2024. It turned out that this topic interests the Ukrainian Wiki community, ideas and suggestions were expressed during the discussion of the speech. NGO Wikipedia Ukraine supported idea of creating a project to involve older people based on the model of the program “Seniors Write Wikipedia” of the Czech Wikipedia. This program has several areas of activity and is based on courses developed by Jan Sokol, a Czech philosopher, politician and translator, honorary member of Wikimedia Czech.

Course Implementation

At first, I started translating materials for the Czech course “Seniors Write Wikipedia”, thanks to which the Czech Wikipedia has trained more than 700 students since 2013. The course has 6 classes of 2 hours each in offline mode.  In parallel, the organizing committee of the project “Wikipedia for 55+” organized enrollment for the course and the search for a place to hold classes.  It is worth noting that the conditions for enrollment in the course were age, namely 55+, and the ability to use a personal computer, the Internet, and the Microsoft Word word processor at a sufficient level. 14 people aged 55 to 74 wished to study on this course, but not all were able to get to the classes. A place was found for the weekly classes in the Oles Honchar Poltava Regional Library. Classes began in early November 2024 in the Digital Education Center of the library, where everyone had a comfortable workplace with a laptop, and presentation material was shown on a large screen.

The course classes were held in a mixed format: lecture-explanation and practical work. For each lesson, I prepared a presentation with explanations and tasks for consolidation. A Viber channel was also created, through which constant communication took place, where educational materials and tasks, interesting facts, answers to questions, etc. were added. During the lessons, the course students got acquainted with the features of navigating Wikipedia pages, created a user page, edited articles, downloaded a template and pictures, created a text in a draft and formatted it, translated an article, etc.

A tour of the library was held for the course students, during which they were introduced not only to the structure of the institution, but also to its project activities. After the tour, the technology of teamwork was used in the lesson to edit an article about the library.

The difficulty of teaching people of the older age group is that they know computer technologies at a low level, so many terms and actions are not clear to them, and they really have to learn all this. In addition, the Wikipedia interface is also not familiar to them: many links, panels, menus. One of the common inconveniences is small text. We tried to change this, but when the page is zoomed in, some elements of the editing panels or menus disappear, leaving icons without an inscription. It is clear that all this will change with constant editing, the main thing now is to help them. In addition, older people are very worried about “the correctness of my actions”, so it is not easy for them to click the “Save” button. They hesitate, and, unfortunately, often choose inaction. At the last session, the course participants were given certificates of completion and gifts.  But we did not say goodbye. We will meet online once a week to consolidate the course material, for consultations and to show off our achievements.

Summary

The Wikipedia editing course for older people was held. Each of the students got acquainted with Wikimedia in 6 lessons, wrote an article, and some more than one. In the future, we plan to participate in the Wikimarathon 2025. The organizing committee of the Wikipedia for 55+ project plans to develop this direction. Currently, a search is underway for regional trainers. For me, it was a good experience! I would like to note that teaching older people is very different from teaching children at school! There is no “teacher-student” relationship here, only cooperation in transferring knowledge