08-08, 16:00–16:25 (Poland), Warsaw (20+24)(interpretation)
Language: English
To ensure multiple generations of volunteers can sustain our projects into perpetuity, we want to drive existing and new people to contribute. The Wikimedia Foundation has created a set of "volunteer archetypes" to help answer why different people on the internet volunteer, and explore opportunities to grow Wikimedia communities by appealing to their various motivations.
I'll share the initial "V1" volunteer archetypes and outline how they may be used to grow and nurture participation.
In the Annual plan for FY24-25, multiple teams at the Foundation are focused on one of the key pillars of our strategy: to nurture multiple generations of volunteers into the future [1].
In April 2024, a project led by Product Design and Design Research began – to create a "V1" set of Volunteer archetypes [2] aimed at helping to answer the question "Why should I volunteer?" and articulate a clear value proposition for different kinds of online volunteers to start and continue to spend their time and efforts contributing to Wikimedia projects specifically.
In this talk, I'll share the initial set of "V1" volunteer archetypes created, and outline the different ways they may be used to grow and nurture participation.
Outcome:
Attendees of this session are able to start exploring how to use archetypes in their community growth initiatives. They will be invited to provide feedback to shape research and development of a V2 'stable' version of volunteer archetypes moving forward.
[1] “Volunteers” scope
Volunteers on Wikimedia projects can mean content editors, admins, stewards, bot writers, dev contributors, event organisers, etc – anyone spending free time participating in growing or shaping the content on our projects.
In the context of this work, we want to be aspirational and seek to include volunteers beyond those who are already on our projects – people who participate in creating and shaping content of any online space. For example, this may include Google Maps reviewers, iNaturalists, Reddit moderators, etc.
[2] Archetypes are a higher-level, more aspirational version of user personas used to develop products and features that better serve our audiences through a lens of user motivations and goals. This work aims to help establish a common language or story for different Foundation teams to determine and align on what volunteers to focus our efforts to grow and nurture.
Session recording: https://youtu.be/E6YnrJs8cYs?t=22318
In sharing our early findings and process so far with volunteers, the hope is that we can incorporate input and feedback to refine and inform how this project can be refined, changed, and extended.
We hope any initial insights shared in the presentation may inspire ar resonate with community efforts to increase and retain different types of participation in Wikimedia projects.
What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?* –Everyone can participate in this session
How do you plan to deliver this session?* –Hybrid with some participants in Katowice and others dialing in remotely
What other themes or topics does your session fit into? Please choose from the list of tags below. –Collaboration, Product development, Storytelling
Product (User Experience) Design
Wikimedia Foundation
Design researcher at the Wikimedia Foundation
Lead UX Designer and Wikimedia Foundation