Philippe Beaudette, the director of community at Wikimedia, explains how Wikipedia uses various methods of persuasion to build a legion of volunteers to help edit their articles.

1. How to Motivate Legions
of Volunteers
Philippe Beaudette,
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

2. How to Motivate Legions
of Volunteers
…or, how I got volunteers to do my dirty work so that I
could retire to a desert island and drink daiquiris.
Philippe Beaudette,
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

3. Meet the legion

4. The Life of
Malleus
• 18 years old
• 5’ 6” tall
• Secure a letter of
recommendation

5. The Life of
Malleus
• 25 year tour
• No marriage
• No Rome

6. The Life of
Malleus
!
• Retirement with:
• Citizenship and
• Pension or
• Land

7. Lessons from
the year
XLVIII
!
Tools
Fully prepared
Professional, with skilled
coworkers

8. Image courtesy http://theroadchimp.com/tag/legions/.

9. What do we learn
from the Romans?

10. conscription + might
( _____________________
)
work X mercy = community
???
PROFIT!

11. NOT what the Romans were telling us….
conscription + might
work X ( _____________________
Xmercy ) = community

12. Lessons from
the year
XLVIII
!
Tools
Fully prepared
Professional, with skilled
coworkers

13. Gladius
• Primary, short sword
• 5 sections, forged together
• Ornate blade
"Uncrossed gladius". Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

14. Know how users interact

15. Know how users interact
Betweenness

16. Know how users interact
X

17. Know how users interact

18. Know how users interact

19. Know how users interact

20. Know how users interact

21. What makes it go?
Uses (free) Gephi and a standard LAMP* stack
!
so:
• it’s cheap to put up,
• and our code is free to use.
* Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP

22. http://haithams.github.io/community_visualization/

23. Lessons from
the year
XLVIII
!
Tools
Fully prepared
Professional, with skilled
coworkers

24. Scotum
✓ Leather
✓ Light enough to be carried
in one hand
✓ Metal center works as an
auxiliary punching
weapon.
✓ Use retired around 3rd
Century AD

25. Some @$!&&%# tortoise!

26. You shouldn’t be without

27. You shouldn’t be without
Know who your community is,
and know about them.

30. DO NO HARM

31. At a minimum, you should know…
Name (or unique identifier)
!
and
!
Contact info

32. At a minimum, you should know…
The details of
your contact
with them.

33. Lessons from
the year
XLVIII
!
Tools
Fully prepared
Professional, with skilled
coworkers

34. Different people
require different
and
points

35. Desire paths
The Great Lawn

38. Reader
Article writer Vandalism Patroller Image uploader
Administrator Commons Admin
Advanced
Permission
Governance
Global
administrator
Board of Trustees
Staff

39. Reader
Article writer Vandalism Patroller Image uploader
Administrator Commons Admin
Almost all of these points are
both an entry and an exit point.
Advanced
Permission
Governance
Global
administrator
Board of Trustees
Staff

40. Career pathing - even for
volunteers - is vital.
Humans need progression to thrive.

41. Why do we care about
the Romans?

42. …while rome burned.

43. Rome splits

44. New invading cultures

45. The next billion users

46. What will they look like?

47. Where will they live?

48. How will they access?
6 Billion!!!
208 Million

49. So how do you support her?

50. A truly disruptive force.

51. And finally: a shameless plug

53. Community Advocate
• Assist in building relationships with Wikimedians
• Handle difficult discussions and situations
• Explain details and context as appropriate to the situation and needed to promote
effective resolution, mutual understanding and healthy communication
• Keep up with and report on key developments in the Wikimedia movement
• Collaborate with Wikimedia project contributors and users intensively and publicly
• Coordinate with other staff to ensure on-call coverage for emergencies 24/7
http://bit.ly/WMFCAjob

54. "Wikimedia logo family complete-2013" by various people; Derived from: File:Wikimedia_logo_family_complete-2012.svg and File:Wikivoyage-Logo-v3-icon.svg. Via Wikimedia
Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_logo_family_complete-2013.svg#mediaviewer/File:Wikimedia_logo_family_complete-2013.svg

55. “Automate
yourself out
of a job”
–The best advice I never got