[Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Rajesh Pandey]

Hi Shiju,
Thanks for sharing this. This is great. However the link for Nepali should
have been
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Nepali/Discussions/2011
which might have been misspelled.

Thanks Shiju for the excellent work.

Cheers,
Rajesh Pandey

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.ghoda at gmail.com> wrote:

> Excellent Shiju, very well written. I hope the community will learn a
> lot from your research and surveys and use them in a positive manner
> to ensure that our local indic Wiki projects are in as good health as
> English, French, Spanish, etc.
>
> On 12/16/11, Shiju Alex <shiju at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > Apologies beforehand for a rather long and winding mail - but there is so
> > much that I want to say. I want to share how my thoughts are being
> > crystallised.  I want to try and cross-pollinate ideas from some Indic
> > language communities across to all communities.  I want to reach out and
> > ask your views and suggestions.  I want to understand how best we can
> help
> > each community in a manner that is most appropriate to that community.
> >
> > I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
> discussions
> > with a host of community members from across Indic language communities.
>  I
> > have shared these for 12 languages
> > (Assamese<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Hindi<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Tamil<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Tamil/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Telugu<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Telugu/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Kannada<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Nepali<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Neplai/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Malayalam<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Marathi<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Odia<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Sanskrit<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Bengali<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > and
> > Gujarati<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Gujarati/Discussions/2011
> >.)
> >  I haven't (yet) got any response from 7 other communities (Bhojpuri,
> > Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhisnupriya Manipuri, Pali, and Sindhi).
> >
> > At the very outset, I want to thank all of you who took time out and
> shared
> > your experiences and thinking.  It has been really useful and I hope you
> > found it is as productive and constructive as I did.  The purpose behind
> > this exercise was to hear, learn, and understand the evolution of the
> > various communities - and to therefore suggest ideas going forward. I
> urge
> > everyone to go through all the other languages (even if they are not
> > personally involved in those specific communities) because there are
> > learnings for everyone from everywhere.
> >
> > I have been reflecting on the various insights and inputs and ideas I
> have
> > got from all these folks as well as subsequent discussions on mailing
> lists
> > and talk pages.  Here are my initial thoughts.
> >
> > CommunityIt sounds like a self-evident and very basic thing but the
> single
> > biggest priority for all communities (even relatively bigger ones like
> > Tamil and Malayalam) is community building.  What has struck me from the
> > various language communities is that everyone agrees that this is very
> much
> > required but very few are aware of what needs to be done or how it needs
> to
> > be done.  I wanted to share some thoughts about this.
> >
> > When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
> >
> >    1. Editor retention
> >    2. Attracting newbies
> >    3. Community communication
> >    4. Community collaboration and
> >    5. Community celebration
> >
> >
> > I would like to detail what I mean by each of these.
> >
> > 1. Editor retention: Like most language wiki communities we also have an
> > editor retention issue in all Indic language communities. This is
> > particularly an area of concern for us considering the fact that all our
> > Indic language communities are really tiny and community buiding efforts
> in
> > Indic wikis are very less. A dramatic case in point is Kannada where
> active
> > editor numbers (that is, editors who do at least 5 edits a month) have
> > declined from 25 members to just 9 members over the past 10 months.  It
> is
> > essential that all of us reflect on why this is happening and what can be
> > done to avoid it in future and to resurrect lapsed editors.  Existing
> > editors and old editors understand our projects and community and can
> play
> > a huge role in community building and project quality improvement.  Many
> > times, they have become inactive because of changing personal priorities.
> >  However, sometimes, they leave because they are no longer excited by the
> > projects.  The lack of interest in a project or users not feeling proud
> > about a project might be due to multiple reasons. Some of the reasons
> that
> > old community members shared with me are poor quality of articles (driven
> > by BOTs and Google translation project), dominance of wiki by  one or two
> > members, the huge amount of clean up and other administrative tasks
> > required, and so on.  We must reach out and welcome these editors back
> and
> > we must encourage them to do what they love doing most - editing articles
> > and making them regain their pride and ownership over their articles and
> > projects. We must foster an environment that welcomes old editors back
> and
> > gives them the space to follow their passions.
> >
> > 2. Attracting newbies: Attracting newbies is the only way our communities
> > and projects can grow.  I have to be honest and say that none of our
> > language communities have achieved critical mass.  According to me
> unless a
> > project has 500 or more active editors, it can never be said to be in a
> > state where organic growth is secured and momentum is ensured.
>  Attracting
> > newbies requires impactful outreach.  By impactful, I mean outreach that
> is
> > done frequently and to as a large a group of potential newbies as
> possible.
> > However, it also means that we need to be much more systematic about how
> we
> > do outreach.  This covers everything from identification of the most
> > appropriate target audience as well as doing outreach in a manner where
> we
> > don't scare off newbies by information overload.  We must make sure that
> > our outreach sessions adequately convey the passion and love for our
> > projects that we feel while working on them.  Also, we need to critically
> > look at how we reach out to attendees of outreach sessions (after the
> > sessions) as well as other newcomers and see that we are providing an
> > adequate helping hand to them.  The Nepali community - though tiny - does
> > very well in terms of posting personal talk messages to welcome new
> folks,
> > having FAQs spaces and problem boxes, etc. - all with the objective of
> > supporting newbies.  All Indic languages are at a state where every
> single
> > newbie should be identified and reached out to and given intensive help
> and
> > warmly welcomed to the community. We must also look at both newbies to
> > editing as well as existing English Wikipedia editors who have
> inclinations
> > and abilities on Indic languages.  Remember that many Indic editors
> > initially started off in English Wikipedia and we must actively seek them
> > out.  I know some communities - like Marathi - who look for editors who
> > have Marathi sounding names or edit Marathi/Maharashtra centric topics
> and
> > quietly invite them to contribute to Marathi Wikipedia.  Another aspect,
> > and I am sure is this a bit of a controversial statement, but can we get
> > few existing Indic editors to reduce their emphasis on editing and divert
> > their time on outreach. (I know Tamil, Odia, and Malayalam communities
> are
> > already doing this. But this needs to be replicated in other languages
> > also).  It is really tough and not everyone might have the interest to do
> > outreach but the best outreach can be done by existing community members.
> > However, as we know, volunteer time is limited.  This is a challenge
> > because what we love doing most is editing - but the reality is that the
> > greatest need of the hour, and the area where we can contribute maximum,
> is
> > attracting and training and supporting newbies.  We should also look at
> > digital outreach - by which I mean look at the existing internet
> activities
> > in Indic languages (blog, facebook, google plus, and so on) and see if we
> > can get newbies from there.  For instance, many Indic languages have very
> > active blogging. Can we reach out to bloggers and ask them to contribute
> to
> > our projects, or at least evangelise about our projects and invite their
> > readers to read Indic projects and contribute to them?  Can we similarly
> > look at social media like facebook and twitter to promote our Indic
> > projects?
> >
> > 3. Community Communication: Community communication is an area which
> varies
> > by community. There is a direct co-relation between the health and growth
> > of the community and the inclusiveness, intensity, and warmth of the
> > communication amongst that community.  Community communication takes
> place
> > on mailing lists, village pumps, meetups, and so on. With the exception
> of
> > Malayalam and Bengali mailing lists, and to a lesser extent, Tamil, Odia,
> > Mumbai, and Pune mailing lists, most others are virtually non-functional.
> >  Having said that, many village pumps are active across language
> > communities.  It really doesn't make a difference whether the
> communication
> > is on mailing lists or village pumps.  However, it is of paramount
> > importance that it happens somewhere.  Anywhere!  To that extent, I
> > encourage everyone to be more active wherever they are more comfortable -
> > but ideally in public spaces like village pumps or mailing lists.  Reach
> > out and ask for help or suggestions.  Offer advice or inputs.  Simply be
> > friendly and accessible.  Just talk!  Community meetups are happening but
> > not as frequent as one would like and with very limited attendance.
>  Often,
> > it is just 3 or 4 people who meet up everytime.  Nothing wrong with that
> > per se. Meetups are voluntary and the majority of wikipedians are happy
> to
> > edit in the privacy of our homes and not meet up with others but even in
> > this situation, we can and should be encouraging more people to attend
> > meetups. People will attend meetups more regularly if they find them
> > productive and inspiring.  Too often, the feedback from community members
> > has been that they don't find meetups useful or they find them dominated
> by
> > 1 or 2 individuals.  It is essential to have 1 or 2 individuals with the
> > drive and hard work to organise meetups - but it is equally important
> that
> > meetups are not centred exclusively around these 1-2 people but more
> about
> > what the larger group want.  How about meetups where all we do is spend
> an
> > hour or two just editing a few articles?  How about meetups where we
> plan a
> > newbie outreach program involving everyone in the meetup?  How about a
> > meetup where that meetup is run by those folks who usually never speak up
> > and that the entire meeting is devoted to what they are interested in?
>  It
> > is alarming when one looks at the situation in some Indic communities
> where
> > there is virtually no communication at all amongst community members. It
> > leads to a very cold and impersonal environment - which is not healthy to
> > foster growth.   Like plants and flowers, communities too need breeze and
> > air and water and food and activity and earthworms and manure.
> >
> > 4. Community Collaboration: When I consider community collaboration, I
> > think of 2 things.  The first is ownership and the second is editing.  On
> > ownership, it is really critical that every one of us as individual
> > community members believe and are made to believe that we own our
> projects.
> > Every project is owned by all members of that community. Equally.  We
> > should all become more proactive in enforcing this ownership - whether it
> > is in terms of coming up with initiatives or proactively participating in
> > community discussions - whether it is about technical matters or content
> > elements or community aspects.  Every single individual counts and every
> > single individual's voice must be encouraged.  On editing, something that
> > drives all of us is the thrill of collaborative editing.  Wikipedians
> love
> > it more than anything else to work together on an article and make
> dramatic
> > improvements to it.   Of course it happens even now, but this is
> something
> > that we need to encourage much more and participate more actively in.
> This
> > can be done in varied ways - but ideas like Collaboration of the Month or
> > Editathons or whatever other idea should be organised.  One can start
> with
> > a handful of people working on a few articles - but one must try as hard
> as
> > one can to make larger scale mini-events around this basic idea.  It will
> > help build personal relationships, project ownership, and drive community
> > bonds.
> >
> > 5. Community Celebration: Lastly on the community aspect, let us bring
> some
> > magic back to the community.  Let us start celebrating successes - no
> > matter how small.  Let us start taking goals - no matter how seemingly
> > unambitious. Let us spread cheer all around when we meet these
> objectives.
> > Let us start publicly celebrating over the profiles of new or active
> > editors (Tamil wiki community is already doing this)- whether because
> they
> > are 12 years old or 80 years old or whether their article counts are 100
> or
> > 10,000! Let us celebrate when our wiki cross a major milestones, Let us
> > celebrate when one our community member does some marvellous things for
> > wiki. Let us celebrate when community able to engage in a relationship
> with
> > state government... There are many reasons to celebrate. Let us celebrate
> > all those and build the sense of pride about their projects among our
> > community members. The most powerful fuel in our engines is passion - and
> > we need to get more of it in our veins.
> >
> > ProjectsThere is a constant debate of what should come first - article
> > count or article quality?  I don't think there is an answer to this that
> is
> > equally applicable across all projects and communities. I had strong
> > convictions on this based on my past experience with Malayalam wiki
> > projects - which have been reinforced after my initial discussions with
> > Indic Wikimedians from across the country.  In this regard, I wish to
> share
> > a provocative statement about bots. Bots can and should be used to do
> > repetitive tasks (like adding categories) because that reduces wasting
> > volunteer time - which is limited and  precious.  However, the use of
> bots
> > for article creation is something that I would strongly discourage.  The
> > current state of Newari wikipedia (which has nearly 70,000 articles but
> > zero active editors) reinforces my argument.
> >
> > The argument for using bots for article creation is that it provides
> > placeholders for editors to start working on these articles.  While there
> > is some merit in this argument, the problem is that this kind of
> artificial
> > intervention means that the volume of work required to improve quality
> far
> > outpaces the community strength.  It is like a sportsman using steroids.
> >  It is not natural or healthy.  It results in large numbers of very poor
> > quality articles - which are of such a basic nature that it might be
> better
> > not to have them in the project.  (For example, if the only information
> > about a town is that "Abc town is in Abc district which is in Abc state
> and
> > the population is 12345 according to the 2001 census", this article is so
> > weak that it cannot honestly be said to exist.)  If a project has
> thousands
> > of these kind of articles, the whole project will be regarded as being of
> > poor quality and will put off readers.)  More fatally, if a project has
> > thousands of such bot entries, it doesn't inspire editors to contribute -
> > but instead makes them disillusioned because they feel that so many
> > articles of such bad quality that they just give up on where to start!
> > There
> > are many who feel that, for example, Hindi wikipedia has been adversely
> > impacted by the overusage of bots.
> >
> > Another very important aspect I want to address is the kind of policies
> we
> > adopt for Indic projects.  Too often, tiny projects and communities are
> > adopting too many of the policies of English Wikipedia.  The policies of
> > English wikipedia have evolved over years as English Wikipedia grew in
> > community and article size.  These policies are suitable for English
> > Wikipedia given the size and breadth of its community.  My view is that
> > many of these are not appropriate for the current state of most Indic
> > projects and communities given that the community sizes are 60,000 for
> > English and ~25 for the average Indic community.  If English Wikipedia
> > policies are indiscriminately adopted, results in the feedback that I am
> > seeing from many Indic editors that they are spending too much time doing
> > "administrative" tasks like categorisation and not getting enough time
> for
> > basic core editing.  Let me elaborate.  Something like NPOV is central to
> > our overall philosophy.  This cannot and must not be diluted. However,
> even
> > if I take the larger Indic Wikipedias, it really is not such a major
> issue
> > if the categorisation is currently weak.  The focus has to be to build
> > articles quality and content, and not necessarily having all the content
> > neatly slotted into categories.  Of course, something like categorisation
> > is good, but not at the cost of article quality.  I want to make an even
> > more provocative suggestion.  Verifiability is really really really
> > important to all our projects.  However, if one looks at how English
> > Wikipedia evolved in the early days, it started with editors just adding
> > content. Over a period of time, other editors came in and added and
> > improved citations.  Even today, as a recent Signpost article mentioned,
> > there are 2.5 lakh articles in English
> > Wikipedia<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Opinion_essay
> >that
> > don't have references.   We should encourage editors to write, write
> > and write!  References will follow.  Let us not chase away editors
> because
> > we want every article to be perfect in a 20,000 article project.  Of
> course
> > we want quality but let us take it in stages - and let us prioritise what
> > is most important to begin with.  I think many editors would find it
> > incredibly satisfying and inspiring and motivating to start and edit new
> > articles, and they might get it 80% right.  This will attract a much
> bigger
> > community within which there will emerge a new generation of editors who
> > love to add detail and citations.
> >
> > ReadershipOne of my big discoveries I had was to see the total size of
> > readership.  I have often contemplated the Catch 22 situation of Indic
> > language Wikimedians - where there is no awareness of the projects so
> there
> > is no readership and even where there is readership, readers are not
> > satisfied because of a low number articles or poor quality of articles.
> > Conversely, editors don't find adequate motivation and satisfaction
> because
> > they believe there are too few readers for their contributions.  I often
> > wondered how we would approach this problem - and which we should address
> > first.  I used to think that we should first focus on community building
> > and article quality - and that readers will automatically follow.  To
> that
> > extent, I used to think that we shouldn't worry about readers because
> they
> > will inevitably follow content.  The fact that last month, we had more
> than
> > 4 crore readers for our Indic language
> > wikipedias<
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-october-2011/
> >means
> > that the dilemma of what we need to do is no longer valid.  We have
> > readers. Lakhs and lakhs and lakhs of them for each Indic language wiki!
> >  We now need to focus singlemindedly on community building and project
> > quality.  As internet penetration and mobile data access increase, we
> will
> > get even more Indic readers.  We don't need to do anything to attract
> > readers.  However, we need to do *everything* to keep them coming back by
> > increasing article count while religiously maintaining and increasing
> > article quality and size of community.
> >
> > I would love to hear your thoughts and views on these suggestions.
> >
> > The next stage of my work is going to be to speak directly with various
> > communities in village pumps itself.  I will try and make these as
> relevant
> > and specific to individual communities - and also to share some ideas
> which
> > have relevance across similar communities.  For instance, some ideas will
> > be similar to all communities with less than 25 active editors.  I also
> > want to try and identify potential areas of support that India Programs
> > could work closely with communities on.  The idea is to support community
> > across languages.  We would like to identify a very limited (1 or 2)
> pilots
> > of a very controlled nature (in terms of scale) that we would like to
> > collaboratively design with respective communities.  Given the efforts
> that
> > will be required in any pilot (even if it is of a relatively small
> scale),
> > we believe that there needs to be a certain basic level of community size
> > and collaboration to be able handle such pilots.
> >
> > I will be sharing this mail on the various local language / local town
> > mailing lists as well as the respective language village pumps.  I look
> > forward to hearing your views.
> >
> > I placed the content of this mail in metawiki also. It is here:
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Summary_of_initial_discussions_-_2011
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Shiju Alex
> > India Programs Team
> >
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>
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>



-- 
Rajesh Pandey
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