Overview

The 2030 Movement Strategy lays emphasis on the need to focus attention on the equitable distribution of knowledge sharing opportunities across Wikimedia Communities around the world. Among the many initiatives, the Inuka Team is working on the Wikistories Project, which is focused on visual representation of content available on Wikimedia sites, and workflows that can serve contribution and discovery towards such content.

The goal of this project was to collaborate with Wikimedia Indonesia and gather feedback from Indonesian wiki editor communities (Indonesian, Balinese, and Javanese Wikipedias, etc...) on early concepts and designs for WikiStories, focusing on the experience of potential WikiStory creators, especially those from the existing communities of Wikipedia editors.

Overall feedback on the concept of Wikistories was positive, where all participants expressed their interest in creating Wikistories as a way to share their contributions to Wikipedia and Commons. Their goal was to share Wikistories on social media platforms to share facts about certain topics from Wikipedia articles in a short snackable format, with the hope that people would be interested in learning more about the topic by visiting the Wikipedia articles after experiencing the Wikistories. A number of design changes were made after the first round of sessions to address critical gaps identified in the first round. Overall, all participants preferred the Main (Creator) prototype over the Automated prototype because they enjoyed creating Wikistories where they had the options to select images and texts to express their creativity, highlighting the importance of creativity, personalization, and expression in the potential value proposition of Wikistories for creators.

Top High Level Takeaways:

Please see the final report for a full breakdown of results and recommendations for each of the concepts tested in research sessions. As for high-level takeaways, they can be organized into four categories: discovery, content, support, and ecosystem.

1) Discovery
Visibility and ease of discovery should be considered as the most important element. Further concepts to consider include the availability of entry points across wikis and other platforms (e.g. social media). Participants’ most-frequently-asked question was “Where will Wikistories be available?” They were curious to know if Wikistories would be available on Wikipedia (either on a Wikipedia article or via the Wikipedia mobile application), or if they would be available as a separate mobile application. Some participants would even like to see Wikistories linked to other social media platforms, where they could create a Wikistory directly from the social media application. While entry points to other wikis and social media platforms is beyond the scope of this research, it is clear that an obvious and persistent entry point would allow users to easily find Wikistories, and potentially attract them to curate more Wikistories.

2) Content
In general, participants’ expectations of Wikistories were similar to products on other social media stories. Some participants would like to create stories about current events, places that they were visiting, or things around them. For example, one participant created a Wikistory about public transportation because he saw a public transportation vehicle in front of him. Other participants created stories based on their topic of interests, such as culture, traditions, culinary arts, and many others. In these instances, their purpose in creating Wikistories was to present and introduce facts (that can be found in Wikipedia) to share with the general public. One participant mentioned that they would like to share one fact a day using Wikistories. The participants also created Wikistories based on topics they had previously edited in Wikipedia or topics for which they had contributed photos to Commons. However, there was one potential problem noted, namely the difficulty in creating Wikistories for certain topics, e.g. math, because it was hard to find relevant pictures.

3) Support
Participants questioned whether they could create a Wikistory that combined pictures and texts from different Wikipedia articles instead of only taking images and text from one Wikipedia article. For instance, one participant wanted to create a Wikistory about a dolphin and they would like to add facts from a Wikipedia article about dolphins and another article about mammals. Another participant was interested in creating a Wikistory about dances. They would like to add images from articles about several different types of dances, as well as texts that are relevant to the images (which would also come from different Wikipedia articles). The participants also had differing opinions on how many images one Wikistory should have. On average, participants would have around 5 images in one Wikistory, with a minimum of 1-3 images and a maximum of 6-10 images.

4) Ecosystem
Participants expected to share Wikistories, like Instagram Stories, with the expectation that their friends and followers would read their stories. They hope that by experiencing the Wikistories, more people would be interested in reading the full article and visiting the Wikipedia page. They also were concerned that if the Wikistory was only available on Wikipedia, it would not really be functional since people are already there to read the article, so they do not have the need to read the Wikistories again.