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

[Ravishankar]

Hi Shiju,

Thanks for the excellent analysis on Indic Wikipedia communities.


>  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
>
> Based on Tamil Wiki experience, I would like to add few more key points
that can make a difference:

*1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.
*

While small communities should not enforce all en wiki practices and rules
as such, active participation of people having English Wikipedia experience
is a great plus. They can help implement the best practices, clarify on
wiki procedures, help in technical aspects and act as ambassadors for the
local wiki. Throughout Tamil Wikipedia's growth, we have had such
contributors who made immense difference to the project. It is this
context, I emphasize that awareness about Indic Wiki for people visiting en
wiki should be increased.
*
2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.*

Not everyone can contribute to Wikipedia directly even if they know how to
do it. But they can still support the cause of Wiki. Efforts should be made
in getting friends in blogosphere, technosphere, media, academia and the
Government (if possible). These people can be of great help in outreach and
other logistical help.

*3. Developing the sister projects.*

For small communities, developing Wikipedia to a useful stage ( 100K
articles of decent quality) is a very long term and intensive process. But,
with some meticulous planning, the sister projects like Wiktionary,
Wikisource can be scaled with less effort. When these projects grow, they
in turn bring visitors and contributors for Wikipedia. They will also serve
as a reference source for citations and vocabulary. This is one solution
for the chicken and egg problem of building content to get contributors Vs
having contributors to build content. This is also one are where formal
entities like WMF and the chapter can help the community to network with
academic and government institutions and secure the content in appropriate
license.

Ravi
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