Just thought I'd drop you a quick reminder invite to the IRC today
(Thursday March 3rd) at 8pm (IST) at #wikimedia-office
The broad agenda is to discuss
a) initial thinking on how to improve outreach
b) ideas and suggestions on how the Foundation can support existing and
proposed community initiatives
c) any other relevant areas
Looking forward to interacting.
Kind Regards,
--
/hisham/
*India Programs - Wikimedia Foundation*
mobile : +91 750 300 1971
skype : hisham.wikimedia
google talk: hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
FYI.
Sumana Harihareswara originally hails from Karnataka state of India.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rob Lanphier <robla(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 3:59 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Welcome, Sumana Harihareswara
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi everyone,
I'd like to welcome Sumana Harihareswara as a consultant helping out
with some tasks that we eventually plan to hire a Volunteer
Development Coordinator to handle. Specifically, she's going to focus
on our participation in Google Summer of Code, as well as helping plan
WMF's participation in the Berlin Developer meeting happening later
this year. This announcement is a little late in coming since she
already has a running start on this work, and I'm sure many of you
have already seen her on IRC (sumanah).
Sumana is currently also a writer and editor for GNOME Journal, a
blogger at GeekFeminism, and is a long time participant in open source
communities. She has worked at Collabora, Fog Creek Software, and
Salon.com, and contributed to the AltLaw, Empathy, Miro, and Zeitgeist
open source projects. She's written a weekly newspaper column and
has performed (and taught) stand-up comedy.
I can go on here, but you can learn much more about her on her website:
http://www.harihareswara.net
We're really excited to be working with her. Welcome, Sumana!
Rob
_______________________________________________
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Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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Renaming the subject so as to catch everybody's attention on this ..
-TC
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> A reminder to you that work has begun on assembling a list of articles
> suitable for a Wikipedia For Schools Offine Edition (Indian version). At
> present, its a one-man effort (namely, me). It is located here :
>
> http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Projects:_Wikipedia_for_Schools/Indian_version
>
> The immediate reason for this is that the present version is tailor-made
> for the UK schools curriculum. User Bozmo (creator of WPSOE) has indicated
> that about 300 articles extra have been added for this reason. User Bozmo
> has promised guidance to this project once the 2011 version will be released
> in a couple of months time. In the meantime, if anybody feels that some
> particular article on India should be added to the 2011 version, please
> contact Bozmo immediately.
>
> The aim of this endeavour is two-fold. The first is to have an Indian
> version tailor-made for our context and which will (hopefully) tackle all
> the issues you all mentioned in the recent thread. The second is - to have a
> framework of articles on Indian subjects. This list will help us to ensure
> that core knowledge will be developed and brought up in standard. The same
> list can be used to cross-check the articles in Indic-language wikipedias so
> as to prioritise content needing development.
>
> The methodology and progress are as indicated :
>
> 1. Prepare list of topics of the latest version of Wikipedia for Schools
> (SOS Children's Village Project version - html download). (Done)
> 2. Count them. (Done).
> 3. Check each section's topics for relevance and : (Yet to begin)
> * Delete articles pertaining to British/North American cultural
> contexts irrelevant to the Indian context.
> * Add articles relevant to the Indian context.
> 4. Prepare list of desired topics from a set of textbooks in CBSE and
> countercheck availability on Wikipedia for Schools - Indian version.
> 5. Get list counter-checked with the Learning Lab's semantic and
> phyllogenic web (proposed).
> 6. Get domain experts in each field to cross-check if any important topics
> left out.
> 7. During the process (steps 4 to 6) get peer review.
> 8. Censorship (as required).
> 9. If Wikipedia for Schools occupies less space, add articles. If Wikipedia
> for Schools exceeds size of DVD then trim number of articles.
> 10. Compile the offline version - humungous task.
> 11. Trial deployment.
> 12. Usability testing.
> 13.Release version 0.1.
>
> Comments and participation welcomed. All of you are requested to please
> contribute timely so that issues can be sorted out during the procedure
> rather than having to redo the work afterward. Since this is an Indian
> initiative on English Wikipedia, I am using this post to inform all of you,
> as has been suggested earlier - get the relevant language wikipedia
> community in the picture.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
>
>
Dear friends,
A reminder to you that work has begun on assembling a list of articles
suitable for a Wikipedia For Schools Offine Edition (Indian version). At
present, its a one-man effort (namely, me). It is located here :
http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Projects:_Wikipedia_for_Schools/Indian_version
The immediate reason for this is that the present version is tailor-made for
the UK schools curriculum. User Bozmo (creator of WPSOE) has indicated that
about 300 articles extra have been added for this reason. User Bozmo has
promised guidance to this project once the 2011 version will be released in
a couple of months time. In the meantime, if anybody feels that some
particular article on India should be added to the 2011 version, please
contact Bozmo immediately.
The aim of this endeavour is two-fold. The first is to have an Indian
version tailor-made for our context and which will (hopefully) tackle all
the issues you all mentioned in the recent thread. The second is - to have a
framework of articles on Indian subjects. This list will help us to ensure
that core knowledge will be developed and brought up in standard. The same
list can be used to cross-check the articles in Indic-language wikipedias so
as to prioritise content needing development.
The methodology and progress are as indicated :
1. Prepare list of topics of the latest version of Wikipedia for Schools
(SOS Children's Village Project version - html download). (Done)
2. Count them. (Done).
3. Check each section's topics for relevance and : (Yet to begin)
* Delete articles pertaining to British/North American cultural contexts
irrelevant to the Indian context.
* Add articles relevant to the Indian context.
4. Prepare list of desired topics from a set of textbooks in CBSE and
countercheck availability on Wikipedia for Schools - Indian version.
5. Get list counter-checked with the Learning Lab's semantic and phyllogenic
web (proposed).
6. Get domain experts in each field to cross-check if any important topics
left out.
7. During the process (steps 4 to 6) get peer review.
8. Censorship (as required).
9. If Wikipedia for Schools occupies less space, add articles. If Wikipedia
for Schools exceeds size of DVD then trim number of articles.
10. Compile the offline version - humungous task.
11. Trial deployment.
12. Usability testing.
13.Release version 0.1.
Comments and participation welcomed. All of you are requested to please
contribute timely so that issues can be sorted out during the procedure
rather than having to redo the work afterward. Since this is an Indian
initiative on English Wikipedia, I am using this post to inform all of you,
as has been suggested earlier - get the relevant language wikipedia
community in the picture.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Happened to jump into this blogpost by Shiju Alex "*Releasing Wikipedia CD –
few concerns*"
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/releasing-wikipedia-cd-few-concer…
Thought it might need a larger discussion in the Wikicommunity.
Here are my take on same :
1) Releasing Wikipedia CD for School and school children needs larger review
of content. Not all content on Wikipedia may be suitable for children. If
any such controversy occurs on content on Wikipedia to children, we may risk
a very bad reputation and possibly permanent ban of them from schools.
2) If we have releasing a Wikipedia on a particular language, it is always
good to take the Wiki-community along. They will be more than happy to help.
Please go through the blogpost and share your thoughts
Regards
Tinu Cherian
Hi,
Subhashish here from Odia (Oriya) Wikipedia. It is really sad that the
project for Odia (Oriya) Wictionary was initiated and and again closed in
2007, probably then I was hardly aware about Wikipedia in Indian languages,
but sincere apologies for my ignorance. Hereby, I request all of you to help
me for a re-appeal for enable the Odia (Oriya) Wictionary project again.
Please give your opinion and ideas.
ସୁଭ ପା/Subhashish Panigrahi
www.subhashish.in
Congratulations and Best wishes to Santhosh Thottingal !
Regards
Tinu Cherian
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 10:49 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] New members of Language committee
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
I am glad to announce that Language committee is stronger for three
new members. By the time of getting their applications, the list is:
Ζαχαρίας Διακονικολάου (Zaharias Diakonikolau) (meta:User:ZaDiak)
* languages spoken: el, en-4, de-2, grc-2, pnt-1
* living in: Europe, Greece, Rhodes
* reason for inclusion: A couple of months ago Language committee
announced that it is searching for members from the [types of]
projects which don't have Wikipedia-like dynamics. Zaharias has passed
as an applicant from Wikiversity (he is admin at Beta Wikiversity and
bureaucrat at Greek Wikiversity). However, his qualifications go
further: he is actively working on creation, editing and promoting
projects in various Greek languages. Knowing that he is young, he will
be our long term investment, too.
Oliver Stegen]] (meta:User:Baba Tabita)
* languages spoken: de, en-4, sw-3 <small style="color:gray;">nl-1,
fr-1</small>
* living in: Africa, Kenya, Nairobi (from Europe, Germany)
* reason for inclusion: Oliver is a linguist who is working for SIL on
East African languages. We'll have one ultra-relevant expert in
LangCom thanks to Jon Harald Søby, one of the LangCom members, who met
Oliver in Nairobi.
Santhosh Thottingal]] (meta:User:Santhosh.thottingal)
* languages spoken: ml, hi-3, en-3, ta-2,
* living in: Asia, India, Chennai (Madras)
* reason for inclusion: Santhosh is a free software guru interested in
languages. He will help us in articulating projects for covering
language-related needs of Wikimedia projects.
I want to add one more point related to Santhosh. He has passed as a
LangCom member not because he is from India, but because he has
relevant expertise and right attitude. Although he speaks three Indian
languages, he has become a member of LangCom because he is a free
software guru interested in languages. Before Santhosh's application,
we would have been happy to see anyone with this qualification and
this attitude, no matter of location of birth or residence.
However, Bishakha's question and subsequent conversation helped, as it
gave impulse to Santhosh to submit the application. And that brings to
my mind that it would be good to pass the whole world periodically and
raise the geographical equality issue. And it is not a joke. That's
obviously giving people courage, or at least the idea, that they have
the same right to become members of any Wikimedia body, as any
Westerner has. Sometimes the qualifications won't be relevant for
particular position, sometimes they will.
_______________________________________________
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foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hi,
Just a quick update on recent Tamil Wiki outreach efforts:
In the last 60 days, Tamil Wikipedians conducted 7 workshops / meetups.
1. December 28, 2010 - Mattakkalappu, SriLanka. First organized Wiki meetup
in SriLanka where Tamil is an official language and has millions of Tamils.
2. January 15, 2010 - Chennai, India. On the occasion of Ten Wiki.
3. January 16, 2010 - Toronto, Canada. The city has Srilankan Tamil
population in lakhs. There were smaller / informal Tamil Wiki intros in this
city even before this. Two of the most active Tamil Wikipedians reside in
Canada.
4. February 6, 2010 - Chennai, India.
5. February 20, 2010 - Trichy, India.
6. February 20, 2010 - Puduchery, India. First Wiki event in this Union
Territory of India. Tamil is an official language here and has Tamil
population in Lakhs.
7. February 26, 2010 - Coimbatore, India. (Students only event)
The next workshop is planned for March 6, 2010 near Trichy, India.
Pictures from these events can be seen at the sidebar links at
http://bit.ly/gveSnh
Some thoughts:
* Malayalam Wikians had such series of workshops all over recently and that
was certainly an inspiration for us. And that is the reason we share our
experience now for others.
* First few workshops happened in 2009. It was hard to arrange and frequency
was less. But once we start doing, we learn things, share resources and get
more people involved.
* We can't expect that every new workshop will bring immediate editors. I
have seen people starting editing after they keep hearing about Wiki
everywhere and often. So, this can be approached like an ad campaign. No one
runs to shop after seeing the ad. But it works later. Infact, we got a very
active editor after he listened to the event's audio recording posted. He
was in Mumbai and the event happened in Chennai. So it is always good to
document the events as much.
* Besides attracting new editors, it helps build rapport among existing
editors. New editors who attend the event are delighted by the friendship /
collaborative spirit by other editors. This gives them a sense of ownership
/ belonging for the project and start editing more and taking part in
organizing future events. One of our most active editor now is an English
Wikipedian who participated in a Tamil Wiki workshop. In his own words,
after seeing people's happiness to have content in Tamil, he started editing
Tamil Wikipedia more.
* People want to see faces and hear words directly. They are convinced in
person even if we have the same FAQ in Wikipedia website. When we give the
demo, they also learn that it is not so easy to edit as they thought.
* People who attend these workshops get impressed and invite us to conduct
workshop in their colleges / city and they arrange the venue and other
resources too. So, even though arranging first few events may be difficult,
later more people help.
* Participating in bigger events like book fairs, internet fairs, FOSS fairs
can only give limited scope to introduce in a very basic way to fast moving
crowd. But it is a good opportunity for Wikimedians to network with key
people working in other knowledge forums and certainly helps in promoting
the Wikipedia brand. More on this later.
* 2010 is a significant growth year for us and the growth rate in terms of
daily edits, new editors, active editors has almost doubled in last 6
months. We believe that these workshops and other outreach efforts done
before helped us achieve this in some way :)
Ravi
Dear Folks,
I'm writing to update you on the community meets held last week. (I had
visited Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore along with Barry.)
First of all, thank you to everyone who came over. Appreciate your time
and also the educative, informative, engaging and wide-ranging
discussions we had. I look forward to carrying on these conversations
going forward. I also look forward to meeting up with the community
across a wider set of towns and cities.
I also wanted to share some initial thoughts that I had.
a) Communication
I think it will be useful to open a regular channel of
communication. My current thinking is that this could be in the
form of a monthly IRC, as well as periodic emails (probably once a
fortnight, but more or less frequently depending on relevance.)
Would be good to get your thoughts. Also, would 8pm (India time)
for 1 hour on the first Thursday of every month work well for the IRC?
In addition to the above, my contact details are the bottom of this
mail. Do feel free to reach out; I'd love to hear from you.
b) Outreach
A lot of the discussions that we had were centered around outreach
activities. There were 3 stories that I thought were particularly
insightful which I wanted to share with you.
* A 67 year old gentleman in Chembur (Mumbai) heard about
Wikipedia in Kannada from a Wikimedian. He started
contributing because he thought it would be an novel way of
spending his free time. He said that it now keeps him
occupied doing something that interests him - and it has
reignited his family's respect for him.
* A young student of Symbiosis in Pune said he discovered that
he could edit while playing an online computer game - when
some Japanese gamers told him how he could pitch in and
contribute articles on the game's characters.
* A young guy in Bangalore spoke about how a friend of his
attended the 10th do - and came back and told him that he
could contribute articles in Oriya. He's started contributing.
These 3 stories are familiar to many of you, and they are but 3 of
100s if not 1000s of similarly awesome tales. They are also
illustrative of the kind of impact that outreach has. Personally, I
found them both inspiring and thought-provoking. Here's what they
have triggered in my head. (...and I must confess I have more
questions than answers right now!)
* Outreach takes time and effort. Given that it conducted by
volunteers such as yourselves, there's always going to be
limits to how much you can be devote; you all have day
jobs/personal lives to lead. Therefore, how can we improve
the odds of impact? It starts of with saying every single
outreach activity must be regarded as precious and every
attempt must be made to help realize the fullest potential of
the initiative. If that's the philosophy, then how does one
better understand the audience and, therefore, calibrate
messages as appropriately as possible. (Also, and this is
from my personal experience in community mobilization and
outreach messaging, it's very easy to get tempted into
providing multiple messages. ...even more so when it comes to
Wikimedia when there are so many incredible stories to tell.
...but audiences very rarely take out more than 1 or 2 key
points.) /Given this, how does one identify and focus on these
key messages? For instance, should the message be different
when talking to IT versus arts students? Should the tone of
the message be different when talking to 18 years olds as
opposed to 30 year olds? Can outreach kits be developed? Can
these include some kind of capability building?/
* Outreach requires a feedback loop. Currently, while outreach
is happening frequently and widely, it is physically difficult
to stay in touch after the event. (I heard about an event in
Trichy where 65 people attended. It'd be physically
impossible for one or two individuals to regular communicate
with all of them.) /Is there a way that we can open some kind
of simple and low-resource channel to stay in touch with
people who have attended outreach meets. This feedback loop
could potentially include what message they took out from the
event, whether that got them going to start contributing (and
if not, why), and if they started, how things were going. Can
this be done online in some manner? How do the results get
shared with those who conducted the outreach?/
* Potential contributors are everywhere. They're not only in IT
colleges, though these are significant. Anecdotally, I
suspect there might be greater age diversity in the India
community as compared to the rest of the world (though I don't
currently have evidence for this.) One thing is for sure,
there's opportunity all over the place. For instance, any of
our population segment (e.g., 18-25, 25-35, 60+ etc.) are so
huge, they're bigger than many, many countries. /Wouldn't it
be really interesting to see how they can be reached out to,
and the relative results? Also, given the enormous potential,
what are high-scale, highly-scalable models that can be piloted?/
As I said earlier, I don't have answers to these but am excited
about working on making an attempt at articulating these.
c) Other Bright Sparks
I'm also sharing these examples I heard of because they are quite
remarkable.
* Some guys in Pune are pursuing an incredible goal of installing an
offline edition in every school in Pune. Mind-boggling given
there are 10,000 schools in and around Pune!
* A professor in Jadhavpur University has conducted a 2 day session
on editing Wikipedia for his students, and has now integrated
editing Wikipedia articles into the academic plan for his students.
d) Chapter Discussions
Barry and I met up with the Chapter and discussed how we can work
collaboratively for the community.
e) Next Steps
In terms of next steps, specifically with regard to outreach, I'd
like to study past outreach efforts with Wikimedians and
identify/design about 5 pilots that we can explore. I hope to
identify these pilots and flesh them out to the richest possible
extent in the next two weeks. I'm going to request anyone and
everyone to share examples that you think are relevant. More on
this in the IRC.
It'd be wonderful to hear your thoughts on these and any other aspects.
(btw, if you prefer to write to me directly, my email ID is
hmundol(a)wikimedia.org)
There's amazing opportunity for Wikimedia in India. I'm excited and
looking forward to serving the community to support taking Wikimedia
project to even greater heights.
Thank you for your time.
Kind Regards,
--
/hisham/
*India Programs - Wikimedia Foundation*
mobile : +91 750 300 1971
skype : hisham.wikimedia
google talk: hmundol(a)wikimedia.org