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Wikipedia Online Ambassadors serve as virtual mentors, advisors, and helpers to the professors and students who are using Wikipedia in the classroom. Their role is provide positive online help for students on how to edit Wikipedia and participate in the editing community. The Online Ambassador program is part of the larger Wikipedia Ambassador program, which is a crucial element of the Global Education Program.
The Online Ambassador program supports instructors and their classes, mostly at the undergraduate or graduate university level, where the classwork includes a requirement for the students to edit articles on Wikipedia. Online Ambassadors help students get started on editing Wikipedia and watch out that their first efforts are sympathetically reviewed, so that the students have a positive experience on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia Online Ambassador role is a volunteer (unpaid) position. The estimated time commitment is 3-5 hours per week, with variations throughout the academic term.
There are two types of Online Ambassadors (with different expectations and requirements): Level 1 Online Ambassadors, and Level 2 Online Ambassadors.
- Level 1 Online Ambassadors provide basic Wikipedia-editing support to students in the Global Education Program. Anyone interested in helping students virtually on Wikipedia-editing is eligible to apply for this role. Prior Wikipedia-editing experience is not required for this.
- Level 2 Online Ambassadors provide advanced Wikipedia-editing support to students in the Global Education Program. All experienced Wikipedians and current/former Level 1 Online Ambassadors are eligible to apply for this role.
See below for more details.
Important Note: You are allowed to be both a Level 1 Online Ambassador AND a Level 2 Online Ambassador at the same time if you want (just apply for both), but keep in mind that the time commitment is on average 3-5 hours per week for each role, so expect to put in twice that many hours if you would like to be both at once.
Level 1 Online Ambassadors will be paired up with particular classes in the Global Education Program, and are generally the first online point of contact for students who have Wikipedia-editing questions. Level 1 Online Ambassadors will provide basic Wikipedia support for students, via online means of communication. Areas they are likely to help with include:
- Simple formatting (bolding text, italicizing text, section headers and sub-headers)
- References/citations,
- Links
- Adding images
- Sandboxes
- Signatures
- Anatomy of an article
- How discussion pages work
- How edit history works
- Basic "Wikifying" of articles
- Core Wikipedia policies and guidelines
- Did You Know nomination process
- Many more .
The Global Education Program will provide training (mandatory) for all Level 1 Online Ambassadors.
Using email, Wikipedia discussion pages, IRC (chatroom), and/or other virtual means of communication, Level 1 Online Ambassadors are expected to:
- Answer students' questions about how to edit Wikipedia (basic skills);
- Explain the basics of how Wikipedia works to students;
- Monitor students' work on Wikipedia and provide feedback on student articles, to make sure that students' writing aligns with Wikipedia's core guidelines and policies;
- Identify opportunities for Did You Know nominations and help students with the nomination process;
- Welcome students to the Wikipedia editing community; to the extent possible, make sure students' experience on Wikipedia is positive.
Level 1 Online Ambassadors are also expected to:
- Participate in the Online Ambassador orientation;
- Hold IRC (chatroom) "office hours" at a specified time every week;
- Direct advanced Wikipedia-editing questions to Level 2 Online Ambassadors.
- Passion for Wikimedia's values and mission;
- Experience helping other people over the internet;
- Ability to communicate in a friendly, encouraging and concise manner online;
- Ability to provide constructive, clear, and targeted feedback to people's work online;
- Knowledge about how to edit Wikipedia, or the ability and willingness to acquire this knowledge;
- Willingness and ability to respond quickly to discussions on-wiki or over email;
- Patience with people who have varying levels of computer literacy;
- Ability to explain complex technical information in a clear and easily understandable way for beginners.
Level 2 Online Ambassadors answer the advanced Wikipedia-editing questions that Level 1 Online Ambassadors might not know the answer to. In most cases Level 2 Online Ambassadors will communicate with Level 1 Online Ambassadors rather than directly with students (i.e. if a student asks an advanced question, Level 1 Online Ambassador will direct that question to a Level 2 Online Ambassador), although in some cases Level 2 Online Ambassadors will work directly with students through more complicated processes (like policy violations). Areas they are likely to help with include:
- Article rating on the Wikipedia scale
- Good Article / Featured Article nomination
- Thorough "Wikifying" of articles
- Helping students communicate with other editors (especially with hostile editors)
- Soliciting content feedback from WikiProjects / other editors for students' articles
The Global Education Program will provide training (mandatory) for all Level 2 Online Ambassadors.
Using email, Wikipedia discussion pages, IRC (chatroom), and/or other virtual means of communication, Level 2 Online Ambassadors are expected to:
- Answer questions about how to edit Wikipedia (advanced skills);
- Explain more advanced aspects of how Wikipedia works;
- Provide style/formatting feedback on student articles;
- Get other Wikipedia editors to provide feedback for student articles;
- Help students communicate with other Wikipedia editors; to the extent possible, defend students from hostile editors (within the limits of Wikipedia guidelines and policies);
- Identify opportunities for Good Article and Featured Article nominations - as well as for moving up the Wikipedia article rating scale in general - and help students with these nomination/review processes;
- To the extent possible, make sure students' experience on Wikipedia is positive.
Level 2 Online Ambassadors are also expected to:
- Participate in the Online Ambassador orientation;
- Actively monitor the Level 2 Online Ambassador queue, and promptly answer questions in the queue that have not already been answered.
- Hold IRC (chatroom) "office hours" at a specified time every week.
- Passion for Wikimedia's values and mission;
- Demonstrated track record of providing effective and friendly help for new editors on Wikipedia;
- Ability to communicate in a friendly, encouraging, and concise manner online;
- Ability to provide constructive, clear, and targeted feedback for people's work online;
- Patience with people who have varying levels of computer literacy;
- Ability to explain complex technical information in a clear and easily understandable way for beginners;
- Extensive experience with editing Wikipedia articles;
- Willingness and ability to respond quickly to discussions on-wiki or over email;
- Knowledge of the Did You Know, Good Article, and Featured Article nomination processes is a plus.
All Online Ambassadors - Level 1 and Level 2 - are expected to:
- Provide help and guidance to students in a timely manner, by being available over email, the Ambassadors IRC chat room, and Wikipedia discussion pages.
- Interact with all students, professors, Campus Ambassadors, and Online Ambassadors in a friendly and warm manner.
- Interact with all students, professors, Campus Ambassadors, and Online Ambassadors in a beginner-friendly manner, for example minimizing technical jargon and explaining only what students need to know to complete their assignments. Be patient with people who make "beginners' mistakes" on Wikipedia, and help them improve rather than scare them away. Remember: Online Ambassadors should simplify and demystify Wikipedia-editing for newcomers, not make Wikipedia seem intimidating.
- Respect and comply with professors' class plans. The only exception to this is if class plans absolutely clash with Wikipedia's core policies, in which case Online Ambassadors are expected to explain this to the professors in a friendly and respectful manner, and still leave the final decision regarding class plans to the professors. Remember: ultimately the professor is the person who will have final say over how the class and assignments will be structured.
- Keep in mind that students and professors may prefer to communicate in different way than you're used to - please respect their preferences if possible.
- Provide Wikipedia support, not subject matter support. While some knowledge of the subject area taught in class could be helpful, the role of the Online Ambassadors is to help students on Wikipedia questions, not help students with the subject content they're learning in class (that is the role of the professor!).
All Wikipedia Online Ambassadors will be expected to be available about 3-5 hours per week, on average, during a given academic term. Since the students follow an academic schedule, their involvement on Wikipedia will likely vary from week to week, so some weeks the students you're helping may be completely inactive on Wikipedia, whereas other weeks they may have a burst of activity that requires support from you.
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