Hi Shiju,<br><br>Thanks for the excellent analysis on Indic Wikipedia communities.<br> <div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects: </span><ol>
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<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Editor retention</span></li>
<li style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">
<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Attracting newbies</span></li>
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<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Community communication</span></li>
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<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Community collaboration and </span></li>
<li style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">
<span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Community celebration</span></li>
</ol></div></blockquote><div>Based on Tamil Wiki experience, I would like to add few more key points that can make a difference:<br><br><b>1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.</b><br>
<br>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.<br>
<b><br>2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.</b><br><br>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.<br>
<br><b>3. Developing the sister projects.</b><br><br>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.<br>
<br>Ravi<br></div><br></div>