---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arjuna Rao Chavala <arjunaraoc(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: [WMIN-Members] Thank you
To: wmin-members <wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com>
Hi Sowmyan,
I am sorry to know about your decision to quit as the Executive Manager of
the Chapter. I express my sincere thanks for your contributions to
Chapter activities for over 1 year and three months, juggling various types
of roles, some of which you might have wished for more appropriate staff
or support. I am sure this has been of great help to the geographically
distributed Executive committee with diverse set of experience, membership
and the community at large in strengthening and growing the Wikimedia
movement in India.
The award by the FDC on WMIN's Annual grant request with significant cut,
would have disappointed many in the India Wikimedia movement. As some of
you may know, though I was a member of FDC, I was not party to the
decision as I had to recuse myself because of my membership and
involvement with the Chapter. Though, it might have hurt you personally,
I urge you not to feel that way, as many members and community under
the leadership of Executive Committee contributed to the process and so
many factors are usually weighed by the FDC in making the decision which
has been upheld by the WMF Board.
WMIN has faced so many challenges in its more than 5 year history
(including the time before its formation) from so many fronts. Thanks to
the support of community, well-wishers, Wikimedia foundation, WMINmembers
and fellow chapter stakeholders, it has moved forward on the path of
growth and had several achievements at national and regional levels. I am
sure that even the present challenge would be met squarely by the EC with
the active support and involvement of all.
At this juncture, I would urge the EC and you to consider all the options
with involvement of members and community as appropriate so that an
action can be finalized which will serve the best interests of the
movement.
Sincerely
Arjuna Rao Chavala
On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 4:07 PM, Sowmyan Tirumurti <tsowmyan(a)wikimedia.in>wrote:
> Dear Members,
>
> I have decided to relinquish my role as the Executive Manager of the
> Chapter, and had communicated this to the EC some time back. I guess they
> did not quite like it and hence have in turn not let it out. Considering
> that I stand by the decision, and mails requesting grants and expectations
> of responses on these have been coming in from members of the community, I
> feel this must be made public.
>
> The Foundation has offered a grant of about Rs 33 lakhs for 2014 under
> FDC. The Chapter had made a request for an amount about 4 times of this.
> The grant request apparently did not inspire FDC and they have held that
> the Chapter may not have the capability to administer any larger amount. At
> 80% growth over the previous year, they seem to feel the Chapter has
> already been given a massive growth path and should be happy with this.
> Given the low grant amounts we received in the past, this 'massive' 80%
> growth does not mean much. It does not pay for salary for 2 people (as
> planned), an office, and the mandatory quarterly face to face EC meetings
> and associated travel.
>
> Regulatory norms put a cap at 40% of the grant value on these overhead
> expenses. At a grant value of 33 lakhs, the total over heads can only be
> 40% of 33 lakhs, amounting to about Rs 13 lakhs. This level means, we go
> back to one more year of passive funds administration without much Chapter
> driven events. An accountant / volunteer helping in disbursements of funds
> against requests generated organically would be the model we have to adopt.
> We will still need an office to comply with regulatory requirements. EC
> travel may be some what uncertain when new elections bring people in
> farther parts of the country. By standing down I would be helping the
> Chapter in a small way to manage the expenses within the available grant.
>
> I feel guilty of having been a burden on the chapter for a year. We did
> not know our grant limited future will be so limited and my time was spent
> imagining grander possibilities for a brighter future and sharing them
> internally. The earlier EC dreamed big, and initiated my engagement though
> as a part timer. I was to become a full timer from April 2013. This was
> postponed by mutual consent with the current EC, as we expected the FDC
> grant to provide for it. The FDC provides for this in principle, but not
> yet by the value. So it is time to stop this wasteful engagement.
>
> I also feel guilty of not having lived up to the expectations of the
> members. The practical rejection of the new grant request (what else can we
> call it when what is approved is nearly 25% of what was sought) is also a
> factor for which I must take the blame. If the proposals did not appear to
> be impressive, were considered to have wasteful elements, was considered to
> have been built on inflated costs given the Indian context, and the chapter
> is seen as incapable of handling any thing larger, and none of the
> arguments in our discussions were accepted, I have to accept defeat,
> because I influenced the EC towards this proposal. The Chapter deserves an
> employee who can be more imaginative, and confidence inspiring. I am sorry
> I failed the Chapter.
>
> Many of you supported the Chapter's grant request during the appeal stage.
> Some of you were truly participative in making suggestions for the
> proposal. I think you for this. At the same time, I also wish there had
> been a much greater participation from members in formulating the
> proposals. There is a time and space for every comment. It was bit
> disappointing to see people who did not share any constructive suggestion
> in the chapter pages come and make negative remarks in the meta pages. FDC
> staff seemed to latch on to the later, without any further examination or
> clarification of the context. Things like this hurt. It is your Chapter.
> You have the opportunity to shape it through constructive debates for the
> formulation of policies. Negative sentiments cast a doubt that global
> community may not understand the same way as they are understood within
> India.
>
> I leave with the hope that the current grant may keep the Chapter active
> and in the next year it will find a better support. I thank you all for the
> cooperation extended to me. I am yet to complete some standard protocols.
> Recent membership addition related documentation is one of them. The delay
> has been due to my preoccupation with the FDC application. I want to assure
> you that none of the members for whom the membership card and receipt have
> not yet been physically mailed have been handicapped in their rights. The
> approved members were added to the opt in mail list. I will complete the
> dispatch of these documents, and closure of the grant report to WMF before
> end January 2014, when I cease to operate.
>
> I will be in touch with some of you as yet another social activity
> enthusiast.
>
> With warm regards,
> T Sowmyan
> Executive Manager,
> Wikimedia Chapter,
> Bangalore.
>
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Hi,
Last saturday Netha Hussain and I had an interesting experience conducting
a Wikipedia workshop at Startup Village <http://www.startupvillage.in/>.
Startup Village is a private-public not-for-profit business incubator at
Ernakulam, Kerala. They wanted to help us in spreading the word about
Wikipedia and editing it. The event page can be viewed
here<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Workshop/Kochi_Workshop_1>
.
The workshop was an eye opener of sorts for us. It started half an hour
later than planned, as most of the participants took longer to make it to
the venue. We had the usual hiccups like microphones not being available
and the internet connectivity being too slow. The connectivity affected the
pace of the workshop. We found it difficult to demonstrate the examples we
had. The biggest challenge was not technical but connecting with the
audience. We had tailored our content for a crowd with a programming
background. We had even conducted a mock session over phone in order to be
sure of the roles the two of us should assume. However, the audience turned
out to be diverse and largely not technical. Most of the participants did
not have a mobile device, so the hands-on session was not as fruitful as we
had anticipated it to be. We ended up lecturing more and demonstrating less.
The workshop was structured into two halves. The first half was an
introduction to wikipedia and the wiki markup. The second half was a gentle
introduction to the mediawiki API or how to write programs using javascript
to access content from wikipedia. When we broke up for lunch after the
first half of the session, around half of the audience left. The second
half had too few takers, there were people who had come back but we doubt
if it had any tangible impact. Our biggest learning from the exercise was
that it is very important to know the audience well in advance and
structure the content accordingly.
On the brighter side, we had interesting queries from a few participants
who were already acquainted with editing Wikipedia. Startup Village has
invited us to conduct similar workshops in future. A couple of participants
and the organizers wrote to us, thanking us for volunteering.
Thanks
Jeph
Hi all,
The Featured Wikimedian for January 2014 is Anirvan
Shukla<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anir1uph>from English
Wikipedia. His profile can be viewed here :
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Main_Page
Anirvan was nominated by Srikar
Kashyap<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Strike_Eagle>(User: Strike
Eagle) for the Featured Wikimedian status. If you know an
active Wikimedian who you think is eligible to be featured, please share
their username with me. I will take a short interview from them and get
their profile featured.
Apologies for the delay in updating this month's profile. I've been very
busy these days and I am finding it hard to update the featured profile
during the start of the month. Now on, I am planning to update the profiles
between day 10 and day 20 of every month, so that I can spend the first
week of the month fighting real-life deadlines :-)
Regards
Netha
--
Netha Hussain
Student of Medicine and Surgery
Govt. Medical College, Kozhikode
Blogs :
*nethahussain.blogspot.com <http://nethahussain.blogspot.com>
swethaambari.wordpress.com <http://swethaambari.wordpress.com>*
Hi All,
Thank you, Pranayraj for posting the grant request email.
I request the Chapter Executive Committee, Members of the Chapter and
Community to ask any questions they may have on wiki talk page or on the
email threads as per their preference.
I also would like to invite fellow Wikimedians to join us for the historic
Telugu Wikipedia Decennial celebrations in the beautiful city of
Vijayawada[1] on 15th and 16th Feb 2014.
Sincerely
Arjuna Rao Chavala
Telugu Wikipedian and Member of Advisory Committee for the Event.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayawada
On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Pranayraj Vangari <
pranayrajvangari(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Wikimedians
>
>
>
> First let me introduce myself. I am Pranayraj, Telugu Wikimedian for the
> past 1 year and I am currently acting as the Secretary of the Telugu Wiki
> 10th Anniversary Organizing Committee. <http://bit.ly/1fTOrFj>
>
>
>
> As many of you may know Telugu Wikipedia completed 10 Years on December 10,
> 2013. To celebrate this historic milestone, the Telugu Wiki Community has
> planned to meet over for two days during Feb 15 and 16 in Vijayawada.
>
>
> Please see our budget document here <http://bit.ly/1jrmlzp>.
>
>
> We have placed a request of total budget of Rs.6,62,100/- to WMIN chapter<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Grants/Tewiki10/Telugu_Wiki_Conference_2014>,
> WMF<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Rahmanuddin_-_Telugu_Wikimedians…>and
> CIS<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Requests>.
> A portion of this budget, Rs.2,00,000/- has been sought from the Chapter.
>
> We request the Chapter to consider our budget request and approve it at
> the earliest as the dates for the event are nearing.
>
> We also request the Chapter to provide us the fund in advance so that we
> could accommodate prizes(awards) and pre-conference expenses.
>
>
>
> We look forward welcoming you all at Vijayawada.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Pranayraj
>
> Secretary, Telugu Wiki 10th Anniversary
>
Hoi,
I have mentioned the "Reasonator" frequently on this mailing list and, I am
really happy to inform you that the latest version has some major
improvements.
When you look at the Reasonator page for Mahatma Gandhi in Malayalam [1],
you will see that the words in English are "red lined". This indicates that
there is no label in Malayalam. The pop up window for each item that is
referred to, prompts you to add the missing label.
In addition to this, when we know of an image in Wikidata, this pop up
window will show you a picture and the manual and automated description as
well.
In my mind everything that we can do technically to help you appreciate the
information has been done. It does take time for Reasonator to load. This
is however the same amount of time it takes for Wikidata to load its
pages.. Improvements in the speed of Wikidata are likely to benefit
Reasonator as well.
Thanks,
GerardM
PS PLEASE let me know what you think.. if it works for you.
http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/test/?lang=ml&q=Q1001
Dear Wikimedians
First let me introduce myself. I am Viswanadh, Telugu Wikimedian for the
past 7 years and I am currently acting as the President of the Telugu Wiki
10th Anniversary Organizing Committee [1].
As many of you may know Telugu Wikipedia completed 10 Years on December 10.
To celebrate this historic milestone the Telugu Wiki Community has planned
to meet over for two days during Feb 15 and 16 in Vijayawada. We have also
undertaken a series of On-Wiki and Off-Wiki activities. You can see all
program Details on this page [2]
On behalf of the Telugu Wiki community and on behalf of the Telugu
Wiki 10thAnniversary Organizing Committee, I take deep pleasure in
inviting you all
to join us in these celebrations. We are deeply interested in learning from
the experiences of other Indic communities and thus have decided to offer
20 travel scholarships to Wikimedians from across all language communities
of India. We have budgeted Rs. 2,000/- for each Wikimedian. Please register
yourself at this link [3]. Please see our budget document here [4].
Let me also take the pleasure in inviting the WMIN Chapter EC members for
the event. During our discussions over phone, Moksh has connfirmed that the
EC would join us in the celebrations at Vijayawada. It will be a great
opportunity to meet and interact with the majority of the Telugu Community
at this event.
The two day schedule for the event is still evolving but you can see the
progress here [5].
We look forward welcoming you all at Vijayawada.
Thank you,
Viswanadh
President, Telugu Wiki 10th Anniversary
[1] http://bit.ly/1fTOrFj
[2] http://bit.ly/19YAlNY
[3] http://bit.ly/1alZTYj
[4] http://bit.ly/1jrmlzp
[5] http://bit.ly/1f7yxlQ
how is Noopur Gujarati community member?
She has 24 edits on Gujarati Wikipedia.
http://toolserver.org/~quentinv57/sulinfo/Noopur28
From what I see she has managed to manipulate and pull strings within wikimedia to get herself featured everywhere from here to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/Noopur_Raval
there are so many more deserving people from India why not them?
Ankush
On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 1:28 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi <subhashish(a)cis-india.org> wrote:
Not to forget we also have Ganesh from Nepali and Noopur from Gujarati community featured! So, with Viswa and Netha 3 Indic language communities. Is that not amazing? :)
Congratulating all of you!
--
Subha
hi,
We had our twenty fifth meetup of the Mumbai Wikipedia community today at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. The venue was the place where we had our first meetup in September 2010 and hence was a nostalgic venue.
We had an attendance of 5 community members. We know that it was short notice but wish that more people had turned up. Our expenses for the meetup (coffee and pastries) were covered for by CIS-A2K. We are thankful to them for the same.
We reminisced our journey from the first meetup, through Wikipedia 10 celebrations, the WikiConference India 2011, the Wiki Women Workshop in November 2012 and acknowledged the role some of our members played in several national efforts like GenderGap, Wiki Loves Monuments, opening up the textbooks under an open license etc. We discussed some of the challenges we are facing in the movement in India today. We had lots of fun! I hope the pics will be uploaded onto the appropriate Commons category soon. We briefly considered programmes we'd like to take up in 2014 as a community.
Whilst we celebrate our 25th meetup, we'd like to reach out to all community members in Mumbai in thanking them for being part of an awesome community that has contributed so much towards growing the Wikimedia movement in India in their own ways. We hope you continue doing the same!
warm regards,
User:Prad2609
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email? - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
Hoi,
I blogged about calendars. The problem I face is that I am adding
statements to the calendars in use in India.. I have worked on the Nepali
and the Bengali calendar and, I find that in the English Wikipedia some
months are merged into one article.
What I want to know is if these months exactly are at the same time or not.
Many calendars have special days. It would make sense to have an item for
them as well. I assume that many of the Indian Wikipedias have articles for
such events. It will help when they are known to be part of a specific
calendar..
Are there people who can help me with this ?
Thanks,
GerardM