Dear all,
I'm writing with regard to Wikipatrika. For the folks who don't know, this
is the community newsletter which has come out twice (in September
2010<http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_India_Communi…>
& June 2011 <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2011-06>) It's a
really wonderful way documenting and celebrating the amazing work done by
so many community members across so many communities in the various
projects. It helps share ideas with and helps pick up ideas from other
communities.
I think Wikipatrika is something that could be more frequent - given the
range of activities across communities - and I'd like to support it. In
this regard, I approached all the editors who were involved in the previous
2 issues to ask their interest in bringing out the next one in end April
covering Jan - Mar 2012, and to see if we can make it more regular
(potentially every quarter.) 5 community members from different languages
have already offered to help. Another community member will setup a
template that all languages can use (on wiki.wikimedia.in)
I have also started reaching out to editors who might not have been
involved before, and hence this mail.
The template for Wikipatrika will be ready only by April 2nd week. In the
meantime, can I ask whoever is interested to create a page on
their respective languages wikipedias and start sharing stories and updates
on this page. I'd encourage everyone to write these in whatever language
they are comfortable in to begin with. (Once the template is set up on
wiki.wikimedia.in, these individual pages could then be posted there.) To
start off, you could start with the following sections (which I'm
illustrating using the
Bengali<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2011-06/Community_News/bn>
page
from a previous Wikipatrika), and just start adding content.
1. General overview
2. Bengali Wikipedia
3. Bengali Wikisource
4. Bengali Wiktionary
5. Bengali Wikibooks
6. News reports
7. Any other section(s) you want to add
Please do add as much as you want on
- Updates on the various projects
- Landmarks, birthdays, celebrations, events, conferences, etc between
Jan-Mar 2012
- Reports on outreach sessions conducted
- Links to meetups and where to find the next ones
- Please feel free to add sections that you think would be nice. I
could suggest "Featured Wikimedians" and "Featured Newbies" as examples.
Here
<http://This%20should%20go%20on%20India%20and%20Indic%20mailing%20lists%20%2…>is
how the Nepali community did it last time. After you set up the page,
please do post this on your respective village pumps or mailing lists and
any other forums so that all community members know. Please do share the
page with me (offlist) so I can help out too.
If you would like to help but are not sure how, or if you are facing any
kind of difficulties, please do not hesitate to contact me (
noopur(a)wikimedia.org)
Regards
Noopur
*Apologies for cross posting. FYI
--
*
Dear all,
To celebrate Women's History Month, I thought it would be really nice to
celebrate an Indian woman editor's story. A short story on User: Netha
Hussain was posted on the WMF
blog<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/27/wiki-women-joining-indic-languages/>
.
(Netha is an editor on Malayalam Wikipedia, has been involved in women
topics and recently coordinated the first women's
edit-a-thon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/India_WikiWomen%27s_Edit-a-Th…>
in
India.)
While I was preparing this, I was wondering if we could make story-telling
of this nature a regular feature, and see how it can support community
building. We could do a series of short profiles of editors - in the form
of stories - covering your life as well as your wiki journey. The intent is
to reflect the diversity of our community - language, age, profession,
projects. I am going to try and bring out at least one such story every
month - but we can always try and work on as many more as we can get.
I am already looking for new story ideas and would love to hear from
interested community folks. Here is how it works. I prepare a short set
of questions and points for the story and send it across to you. Once you
reply, I draft out a story and send it back for your approval. After we
make necessary changes to the draft, I can publish it. If you are ok, we
can also look at forwarding these stories to the local media as
well. Please do write to me at nraval(a)wikimedia.org and let's start working
on your story!
Don't forget to go through the Netha's
story<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/27/wiki-women-joining-indic-languages/>;
it's really inspiring!
Regards,
Noopur Raval
Dear Wikimedians,
Here is a small blog post about the digitization of books using DjVu (or
about using Proofread extension).
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/digitization-of-books-in-wikisour…
Post is also placed in metawiki at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Digitization_o…
Few Indic wiki source communities (Sanskrit and Malayalam) are using this
method extensively to digitize the books. Few other communities are not
aware about the use of such an extension. This post is just to share the
best practices from differenent Indic wiki communities.
Going forward I will be sharing these type of best practices and lessons
from various Indic language wiki communities. This is essential since in
most cases challenges, issues, and solutions are similar.
Shiju Alex
Interesting.. Thanks Jyothis & Theo for sharing this.
It is sad to see that a very inportant Wikipedia like Hindi-wiki is in such
a huge mess. Such issues occur when the communities are not strong & big
enough, which results in a few individuals having a free run. This is also
an important lesson for the newly emerging language Wikipedias, something
that needs to be watchful for.
-TC
:ccing Hindi Wiki list so that the Hindi community also responds.
On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 4:22 AM, Theo10011 <de10011(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 4:12 AM, Jyothis E <jyothis.e(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> Please note that hindi wikipedia's bureaucrats has been removed
>> temporarily for concerns over improper rights management, transparency of
>> the actions and possible privacy violations due to the rights that was
>> requested and implemented over the course of time.
>>
>> An RfC has been opened<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Userrights_on_hi.wiki>and all are welcome to comment.
>>
>
> Thanks Jyothis. This is really appreciated.
>
> This might also be relevant.
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Vibhijain_and_Mayur
>
> I'd like to invite chapter and community members who commented on the last
> RfC to take a look.
>
> Regards
> Theo
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
cross-posting to reach pan-community; apologies if you have already read this from another list.
Dear All,
I am pleased to announce that Noopur Raval ([User:Noopur28] has been selected as Consultant to the Wikimedia Foundation, and will support Communications for India Program.
This position will perform 4 key functions. Firstly, it will support communications with our community. This involves a regular set of updates (such as newsletters) as well as specific communication projects such as story-telling of local community initiatives (to document experiences, celebrate successes and cross-pollinate ideas.) This is not for day-to-day program communications - which is a core part of each of our responsibilities in the India Program team. Second will be to support media & PR for local community initiatives. The single biggest challenge here will to be get more Indic language media coverage to support community building efforts. This will be done directly with community members and also in co-ordination with the India Chapter's Communications Media & PR team. The third aspect is to build and expand existing community social networks (such as WikimediaIndia on facebook) and to help with the use of social networks to support community building. Lastly, there is untapped potential of using digital outreach - to augment existing physical outreach efforts. We need to (very, very carefully) explore if we can reach out to our large and growing reader base and inform, encourage and enable them to become editors using online channels and resources.
Noopur is a community member and has supported outreach activities (in Ahmedabad & Delhi), is a member of Delhi SIG of the Chapter, has participated in community collaborations like Collaboration of the Month and has been actively trying to start GLAM in India.
Noopur is from Gandhinagar and is graduating from JNU with a Master's in Arts & Aesthetics. She has a triple honors Bachelor's in Media Studies, Literature and Psychology from Christ College, Bangalore. She has interned with Radio Mirchi, Times of India and the Centre for Internet & Society (amongst others) - as well as done some teaching assignments. She is an active blogger (including for the India Art Summit, 2011.) She has published a novella and co-authored an anthology of poems, plays & short stories and has co-presented a paper on "Wikiwars" with [User:Srikeit.] She is also an amateur photographer and has contributed to Commons as well as other platforms.
The Communications position has taken a long time to fill. The initial call for selection was in September. I reported back to the community in December that I had failed to find the right candidate and hence the delay. There were a number of deserving candidates and this selection has taken time because of the need to find the most suitable profile for a complex role. This role requires the right mix of an academic foundation in communications, domain expertise as well as adequate familiarity with our community. It also requires adaptability and strong learning skills - because so much of what we are trying to do is pioneering. I am confident that she brings the right level of experience and competencies - and I'm very excited by the opportunity of making a step jump in the impact of communications for our community.
Do join me in welcoming Noopur. She will start on March 12 and will be based in New Delhi.
Best
hisham
Dear All,
I wanted to share interesting examples of what two Indic communities are
doing to reach out to speakers of respective language, record its editing
history, improve communication, increase motivation, and inspire
participation.
Tamil and Malayalam communities prepare an annual community report. The
2011 report of Tamil and Malayalam communities are available here:
- Tamil Community 2011 annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
- Malayalam community 2011 annual
report<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%…>
(Malayalam community's report
includes report of all Malayalam wiki projects (Wikipedia, Wikisource,
Wiktionary, Wikiquotes, and Wikibooks)
Tamil community is maintaining the annual report from the year 2005.
Following are Tamil communiy's report of previous years
- Tamil Community 2005 annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
- Tamil Community 2006 annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
- Tamil Community 2007annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
- Tamil Community 2008 annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
- Tamil Community 2009 annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
- Tamil Community 2010 annual
report<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…>
Malayalam community published previous years report in its mailing list.
But from 2011 Malayalam community also started recording its annual editing
history in wiki itself.
(The above reports are not available in English since its aim was to
communicate to the respective language speakers. It will be good if some
volunteers translate it to English so that rest of the world can read and
understand what happened in the respective wikis)
Personally, I think these reports serve multiple purposes.
- It help the current active community to share with the larger
community (including retired or not current active editors) all the many
things that individual volunteers are doing - which gives a sense of
momentum to a community.
- It help the community to reach out to the rest of the language
speakers and tell them about what is happening in their respective language
wiki
- It allows other community members to learn from others' experiences -
and also provides a contact point for any queries they might have.
- It is very useful for media / PR - because it gives a tangible story
for the press which is newsworthy and uplifting
- it documents the editing history of community every year
My main objective behind sharing this is that I know most communities don't
do this. My guess is that many of them don't know that such a thing is
possible. Another concern that you might have is whether there is enough
to fill into an annual report. I think if you just step back and think of
all the many things that are happening in your communities, you would be
amazed by how much is actually taking place. Even if it has not happened
historically, the increased activity in India over the past few months
should reassure you that there is so much to write about. In this context,
I would specifically call out the wonderful activity levels of Assamese,
Marathi, Nepali, Odia and Sanskrit as just 5 illustrations of communities
which have load of stories to share.
If you are interested and need some help, please feel free to ask me and I
will help out.
Happy Reporting!
Shiju Alex