Dear WikiMedians,
Mailing list of the wiki projects of a particular language can be used for
various purposes. For example, the advocacy of the wiki projects, reaching
the members who are not active in wiki, language related discussions, and so
on. Usually many members of a mailing list may not be regular visitors of
that Wiki. But they will be definitely interested to know about the
developments of the wiki projects of their language.
One of the main issue with the advocacy part of the Indian Language Indian
Language wikiprojects is the fact that, most of the Wikiprojects still does
not have a mechanism to reach the public. Many Indian Language wiki
communities still think that the interested users must come to their Wiki
and read through all the discussion pages.
But, we should remember that there might be many people outside wiki
community who are interested in the news related to the wiki projects of
their language. Even though they are not registered or active users in the
respective wiki projects, many of them would like to hear news about the
wiki projects of their language and share it with others. *For this, we can
use mailing list*. This is one of the most important way of reaching the
public.
But it is found that very less Indian Language Wikipedias have a mailing
list. Some existing mailing lists are not active or not used effectively. It
is surprising to notice that most of the Indian language Wikipedias didn't
mentioned about their mailing list in the welcome message (for the new
user), even though they have a mailing list. Many of them doesn't know that
they can create WikiMedia mailing itself for their language. (Some still use
google/yahoo)
A little research in Meta Wiki and on all Indian Language wikis, help me to
understand that at least the following languages have mailing lists. (But
many of them are not active).
- Hindi - WikiHI-l -
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikihi-l also
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/HindiWikipedia/
- Kannada - Wikikn-l -
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikikn-l
- Malayalam - Wikiml-l -
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiml-l
- Sanskrit - Wikisa-l -
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisa-l
- Tamil - Wikita-l -
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikita-l
- Telugu - WikiTe-L -
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikite-l also
http://groups.google.com/group/teluguwiki
- Marathi -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mr-wiki/
As you can see from the archives many of these mailing lists are not active.
I *request all Indian language wiki communities* to use mailing list
effectively to reach more users. This is one of the way by which you can
build the community. Also, it will help you to easily convey important
messages to the users of your language. It is found that the
announcements/discussions in the mailing list is used by many to discuss
about the wiki projects. This will help you to reach more people.
To create a mailing list for your language wikiproject, first have community
consensus (to show that community supports the idea) and log a bug in *
bugzilla <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/>*.
Please let me know if missed the mailing list of any Indian Language
wikiproject. I am planning to create a project page in MetaWiki to gather
all the important information about all the Indian language wikiprojects.
Shiju