KidzSearch Encyclopedia:Big Weekend
The Big Weekend is an informal event held over a weekend that focuses editing on a particular topic. The basic idea is to get a group of editors working together to increase and improve articles. Being informal, there is no need to "register", or to commit to anything. You can do as much, or as little, as you have time for. The topics for the Big Weekend are broad enough, so that everyone can find something of interest to write about.
A Big Weekend needs to be long enough to allow editors from around the world to take part within their own time zones. The times also need to be flexible enough to allow articles to be completed. Experience from the first two Big Weekends showed that a time period of about five days was quite suitable.
The success of a Big Weekend can be measured by the number and quality of edits made to the target topic. Other edits, such as to relevant templates and categories, linking etc., also add to the success of the weekend. All relevant edits help, so some editors may be part of a big weekend without even knowing. At the moment the edits have been manually counted. This was easy when the target was to create new articles, much harder when it was adding to existing articles. The adding of a "code" such as "BW" in the editing summary made the counting easier. The focus needs to be on article creation and improvement, not on lists or edit counts. As there is no prize or glory, a rough total count is fine to measure the success. And one edit is one more than there was at the start, so success is easy.
This article's talk page is a good place to plan the next Big Weekend.
The Big Weekends
| № | Dates | Name + Acronym | Description and overview | Coordinator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oct 20–26 | Biography Weekend | The task was create articles from the Deaths in 2011 list. Over the weekend there were 48 new articles on biography created. Some were short bio-stubs, but many were more extended. This involved 15 editors and one IP. | Peterdownunder |
| 2 | Nov 25–30 | Capital City Weekend (CCW) | The task was to make sure the SEWP had articles on all the world's capital cities. These included ancient and provincial capitals too. Over the weekend there were 394 edits to capital cities and related articles. | Peterdownunder |
| 2012 | ||||
| 3 | Jan 20–23 | Big Airport Weekend (BAW) | Seventeen editors made 388 edits on airport-related articles. Extensive improvements were made on coverage of airports around the world with emphasis on the United States, Australia, and Japan. | Racepacket |
| 4 | Feb 18–20 | Big Artillery Weekend (BARW) | Seven editors made 319 edits on artillery related topics, and created 38 new articles and four new categories. The range of articles covered everything from Mons Meg to the Death Star | Peterdownunder and Shakinglord |
| 5 | March 24–25 | Big Bridge Weekend (BBW) | Six contributors created 20 new articles and 13 new categories in a context of 309 changes in bridge-related articles. New categories included bridge types such as steel, concrete, wooden, stone, etc. Some work was invested in the list of articles every Wikipedia should have. | Horeki |
| 6 | April 20–22 | World Heritage Sites & National Parks (BWH) | Over the weekend nine editors made 35 new articles and at least 432 edits. Much work was done on categories, infoboxes and tables, as well as article content. Three contributions were exceptional: Horeki and Creol each made over a hundred edits, and Peterdownunder created 17 new pages. Thank you all. | Macdonald-ross |
| 7 | June 8–10 | Big Red Link Weekend (BWR) | This weekend will concentrate on creating new articles with a preference to those listed at Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have/Expanded however all new articles will be considered. Fixing newly created articles will also count. 'Newly created' means articles created on the weekend. 6 editors made 65 new articles | Kennedy |
| 8 | July 20-23 | Big Olympic Weekend (BOW) | 5 editors made 22 articles and 145 changes. | Tbennert |
| 9 | Aug 10-13 | Big Space Weekend (BSW) | 10 editors made 42 new articles and 294 changes | DJDunsie |
| 2013 | ||||
| 10 | Aug 24-26 | Big Forests Weekend (BFW) | Six editors made 36 new articles, 8 redirects and 152 edits. | Reception123 |
| 2014 | ||||
| 11 | Apr 26-27 | Big Lakes Weekend (BLW) | Five editors made 37 articles, 9 redirects and made 129 edits to pages | Reception123 |