[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Odia (Oriya)

[Ramesh N G]

Odia wikipedia is one of the shining example of how really active
wikipedians can make the the growth of wikipedia.
The outreach programs which they have conducted has shown the results in
the last 15 months.

User:Rameshng



On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Shiju Alex <shiju at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Today I am sharing you the summary of discussions I had with Odia wiki (
> http://or.wikipedia.org/) community. It is available here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011
>
> Odia is a shining example of how a wiki project can be revived and build a
> community around it, if few wonderful users with a vision for building free
> knowledge in their mother language arrive in their mother language wiki.
>
> Odia wikipedia was started in 2002. In fact it is one of the first Indic
> language wikipedia. Nothing much had happened in Odia wiki till 2010
> December. But the progress made by Odia wiki project (
> http://or.wikipedia.org/) during the past one year is note worthy and it
> is an example that can be replicated in some of the inactive Indic language
> wikipedias. Odia was having just 600 articles (which were created over the
> past 8 years) and no active users at the start of this year. Now 10 months
> later, it has close to 1600 articles and 10 active users. The online and
> offline outreach initiatives took by Odia wiki community for building the
> community is showing positive result.
>
> I was actively involved in the community building for Odia wikipedia. I
> still remember the day (2011 January 15) when I introducted Odia wikipedia
> and Odia tying tool (developed by Junaid) to an Odia speaker (Ashuthosh
> Kar) during Wiki X celebration at Bangalore. Through him very soon we got a
> wonderful wikipedian (Subhashish) who is leading the efforts for Odia wiki
> now. Initially Subhasish and I used to meet at my home and work on the
> basic things for Odia wiki. I remember us working on the Odia wikipedia
> logo, FAQ booklet, Translate wiki, and so on. Soon Odia got more members to
> the team through the few Odia wiki workshops happened at Bangalore. Along
> with workshops, Odia wikipedians translated the FAQ booklet to Odia and
> took efforts to integrate the Odia typing solution to Odia wikipedia. Later
> with the support of Dhanada Mishra (the chairman of Human Development
> Foundation (http://www.hdf.org.in/)) and a young student Odia wikipedian
> Srikanth Kedia a wiki workshop is conducted at Bhubaneshwar. Odia
> wikipedians from Bangalore are doing an excellent job and now many of them
> are participating in Wikimedia India chapter activities also.
>
> Odia wiki community is effectively making use of various social networking
> sites to reach out to Odia speakers.
>
> Odia wiki project picked up not because Odia has got huge speaker base,
> high literacy among Odia speakers, access to computers, or any thing else;
> it become active only because it has receieved the right volunteers who
> have passion and vision of developing a wikipedia in their mother language.
> We need similar volunteers for each Indic language wikipedia.
>
>
> Requesting you to place your comments on the talk page<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011>
> .
>
>
> Regards
> Shiju
>
>
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