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Wikimedia India Chapter : December 2011 Report
by CherianTinu Abraham 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

Cross-posting to other lists. Kindly excuse if you have already received this via another mailing list. Regards Tinu Cherian Head of Communications, Wikimedia India Chapter http://wiki.wikimedia.in/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Naveen Francis <naveenpf(a)wikimedia.in> Date: Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:39 AM Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter : December 2011 Report To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Dear all, Greetings from Wikimedia India !!! We are delighted to present the last monthly Wikimedia India report of the year 2011, almost a year after the chapter received the formal recognition from the Government of Karnataka on 3 January 2011. The journey so far wasn't easy, but we appreciate your continued patronage , support and participation. *Organisational Updates* *Formation of Task Forces:* As announced earlier, with the objective of increasing the engagement and participation of the members of the chapter actively in various initiatives, the India chapter has come up with focused Task Forces for coordinating and driving various chapter activities [1]. There are two types of Task Forces - Project Task Forces and Operations Task Forces. The Project Task Forces are focused on growing the Wikimedia projects. The Operations Task Forces are critical functions to enable the Project Task Forces and the Chapter in growing the movement. The operations group consists of Administration, Fund raising, & Communications. The Projects task force consists of City and Langugage SIGs and Special Projects. The new task forces will be led by the following people: - Anirudh Bhati, Head, Fundraising. - Arun Ramarathnam, Chair, Special Projects. - Srinivas Gunta, Head, Administration. - Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Chair, City and Language Special Interest Groups. - Tinu Cherian, Head, Communications, PR & Media Relations. *Membership:* The Chapter membership stands at 190 members as of 31 December 2011. *Donations:* Total donations received in Dec 2011 - INR 700 Average donations in Dec 2011 - INR 350 *FCRA:* Our application for FCRA prior permission under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act with the Government of India is still pending. An official from the Home Ministry has visited Arjuna Rao Chavala, President. *Internet Relay Chat(IRCs):* >From time to time, Wikimedia India conduct planned online IRC chat sessions. The Dec 17, 2011 was anchored by Arun with the focus on Chapter City & Language Special Interest Groups. [2] *Board Meetings:* The Chapter Executive Committee had two Tele-conference meetings in the month of December (dated 07 Dec and 14 Dec, 2011). The Wikimedia India chapter and Wikimedia Foundation had one joint co-ordination call on 21 Dec 2011, which was attended by Arjuna Rao Chavala, Arun Ramaratnam, Naveen Francis, Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Tinu Cherian, Anirudh Bhati, Asaf Bartov and Hisham Mundol. The summary of the joint coordination call was shared earlier [3]. Community City and Language Special Interest Groups City and Language Special Interest Groups are a mechanism to engage the diverse interests of members across India. The objective is to grow the wiki projects in their areas of interest by reviewing the status, planning and executing events of interest through growing the community involvement. The leadership of these groups is part of the extended leadership of the Chapter. The Wikimedia Chapter is proud to announce the appointment of the next batch of City and Language Special Interest Group Chairs [4] as given below: *City* - Delhi SIG - Noopur Raval (noopur [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Bangalore SIG - RadhaKrishna (Arkrishna [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Mumbai SIG - Kundan Amitabh (kundan.amitabh [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Pune SIG - Mandar Kulkarni(mandar.kulkarni [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Kolkata SIG - Kalyan Sarkar (kalyan [at] wikimedia [dot] in) *Languages* - English SIG - Ashwin Baindur (ashlin [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Kannada SIG - Omshivaprakash H L (omshivaprakash [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Marathi SIG - Mahitgar (mahitgar [at] wikimedia [dot] in) - Telugu SIG - Rahimanuddin Shaik (rahimanuddin [at] wikimedia [dot] in) The current sign-ups of Members for the SIGs are as follows: *City Special Interest Groups* City Members Bangalore 10 Delhi 2 Mumbai 3 Pune 6 Kolkata 2 *Language Special Interest Groups* Language Volunteers Bengali 1 English 15 Hindi 1 Kannada 3 Marathi 4 Malayalam 8 Nepali 1 Odia 3 Sanskrit 2 Telugu 3 Events A round-up of Wikimedia events and initatives around the nation is as follows. - *Wiki Academy @Jaya Engineering college * ( 10 Dec 2011) : The first Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering college, Chennai,[5] was organized by the Wikimedia chapter and co-hosted by Jaya FOSS Club. Odia Wiki Chair & Chapter member, Subhashish Panigrahi explained basics of Wikipedia, how it is edited by millions of volunteers, how Wikipedia is exclusively encyclopedic and kind of articles and notability of articles in Wikipedia, how Wikipedians communicate and form community, and organization of Wikimedia foundations and active projects. Then he took the audience through active editing by signing up, searching for articles, choosing articles to create. Then he demonstrated about creating an article by using the Edit toolbar, citing the text by searching the web and uploading and adding pictures in articles. The editing session was followed by a Q & A session. Hisham Mundol, Consultant, Wikimedia Foundation India Programs, connected with the audience via Google Hangout. Hisham interacted with the audience by giving a talk about the nature of the event, few details about Wikipedia, WMF and Chapter and foundation are trying to do in India. He answered questions raised by the audience. Nitika Tandon , Consultant, Wikimedia Foundation India Programs, later explained about the India Education program (IEP), how it functions and the student-teacher-foundation collaborations through the education program. The photos of the event are available here [6]. - *Coimbatore 1st Meetup*( 10 Dec 2011) : The first Kovai (Coimbatore) meetup [7] was held at KGISL Campus, Saravanampatti, Coimbatore. The Meetup was organised by Srikanth Ramakrishnan (User:Rsrikanth05) and User:Sodabottle. - *Bangalore Wikimeetup 40* ( 11 Dec 2011) : Around 11 people attended the 40th Wikimeetup in Bangalore [8]. The Bangalore SIG Chair, RadhaKrishna presented a talk on the experiences on WikiConference India 2011 and WikiAcademy events in IT companies. Experiences of Wiki Academy in Jaya engineering college and way forward was shared by by Subhashish Panigrahi. Plans regarding Wiki Eleven in January 2012 was discussed. The photos of the event are available here [9]. - *Wikipedia Meetup1 Salem*( 11 Dec 2011) : A Wikimeetup was organised at Salem, Tamil Nadu, [10] by Tamil Wikipedians Sodabottle and Surya Prakash. - '*Wikipedia Takes Kolkata /Kolkata Photo Walk* (18 Dec 2011) : A Photo Walk was organised in Kolkata, West Bengal [11] by Kalyan Sarkar (Kolkata SIG Chair), Jayanta Nath (Bengali SIG Chair) and Biswarup Ganguly. Around 437 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as a part of this initiative.[12] - *GLAMcamp Amsterdam * Noopur Raval ( Delhi SIG Chair and GLAM enthusiastic) attended GLAM worskop in Amsterdam, hosted by Wikimedia Nederland. [13] - *Wikipedians participation in CMDA IT Expo , 2011*: Indian Wikipedians participated in the annual CMDA IT Expo 2011, Pune.[14] The stall were manned by Sudhanwa Jogalekar ( EC member), Mahitgar ( Marathi SIG Chair), Ashwin Baindur ( English SIG Chair) , Hisham Mundol and Nitika Tandon ( WMF India Programs), and Campus Ambassador (IEP) volunteers. - *Malayalam Wiki-Academies:* Malayalam Wiki-community organised two Wiki-Academies in Kerala in the month of December at Alappuzha ( Dec 13) and Kollam (Dec 31). The Alappuzha (2nd Wikiacademy) held at St.Joseph Vanitha College was led by Adv. T.K Sujith, Adv. M.P.Manojkumar and Akhil Krishnan. The Kollam (4th Wikiacademy) held at Govt. Higher Secondary School, Anchal West, was led by Kiran Gopi ( User:Kiran_Gopi) , Faud A.J. ( User:Faudaj) , Kannan Shanmugam ( User:Fotokannan)and Sugeesh ( User:Sugeesh) Other News - A new initiative named *"Featured Wikimedian* was started on the public wiki of Wikimedia India. Every month, one Indian wikimedian will be featured. [15] - * Tamil Wikimedia contest*: The Tamil Wikimedia community has organised an international contest to get more photos, videos and audios related to Tamil, Tamilians and Tamil culture to the Tamil Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. [16] (themed “Eluthu mattum arivanru” or “Knowledge beyond text”) . The Tamil Wikipedia Community and the Wikimedia Foundation have jointly sponsored a prize money of $850 (with nine prizes) for winners. (The first, second and third prizes are $200, $100 and $50. Three prizes of $100 each are for those uploading the maximum number of quality entries. A special prize of $150 is for media files on traditional Tamil arts and crafts. Winners would be announced on March 15, 2012 and they would get certificates with their entries displayed on the front pages of Tamil Wiki projects. The contest (, November 15, 2011 to February 29, 2012) is open to all and is on Facebook [17]. - India Wikipedians Sengai Podhuvan , Karthik Nadar and Aniruddha Kumar joins Jimmy Wales among others in the *Wikimedia Fundraising 2011 banners * [18]. - *New Mailing lists* are created for Gujarati Wikipedia[19], Assamese Wikipedia [20], GLAM India [21] and India related content on English Wikipedia & related projects. [22]. Milestones & Anniversaries * December 2011* [23] 25 - The Tamil Wikipedia<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Ta:&action=edit&redlink=1>has reached 1,000,000 page edits. - The Urdu Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur:> has reached 10,000 total pages. 21 - The Malayalam Wikipedia<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Ml:&action=edit&redlink=1>has turned 9. 18 - The Bengali Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bn:> has reached 2,000 entries, as a user adds over 1,300 entries for Malagasy words in 5 hours. 16 - The Bihari Wikipedia<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Bh:&action=edit&redlink=1>has reached 100,000 page edits. 9 - The Sanskrit Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sa:> has reached 100 entries. - The Urdu Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur:> has reached 5,000 entries. 5 - The Marathi Wikibooks<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=B:mr:&action=edit&redlink=1>has reached 1,000 registered users. 4 - The Kannada Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kn:> has reached 150,000 entries. Media Coverage - 28 Dec : Financial Chronicle : Wikipedians say Indian govt should ease copyright curbs<http://www.mydigitalfc.com/knowledge/wikipedians-say-indian-govt-should-eas…> - 27 Dec : Ahmedabad Mirror : " Ahmedabad to go Wiki with your clicks" <http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/article/2/2011122720111227022617405d732bc46/…> - 24 Dec : The Economic Times : "Wikipedia enlists Indians to be the standard-bearers for its fund-raising efforts"<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/wikipedia-enlists-indians…> - 18 Dec : The Hindu : "Creative Commons: the licence to evolve"<http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article272537…> - 16 Dec : The Hindu : "Contest to add files to Tamil Wikipedia gathers steam"<http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2719118.ece?textsiz…> - 1 Dec : Tech Marathi: मराठी विकिपीडिया संपादन – अवघड की सोपे?<http://techmarathi.com/?p=1243>( Marathi) We look forward to your continued support and active participation. Best, On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India) Naveen Francis Secretary Notes: - 1) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Announcements/Call_for_participation_of_Members_in… - 2) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Dec_17,2011 - 3) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Announcements/Chapter-Foundation:_Co-Ordination_Ca… - 4) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/City_and_Language_SIG_subcommittee_chair - 5) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Jaya_Engineering_College - 6) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jaya_Engineering_College_Wiki_Ac… - 7) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore/Coimbatore1 - 8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore40 - 9) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangalore_Meetup_December2011 - 10) http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SALEM1 - 11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Kolkata - 12) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Takes_Kolkata - 13) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_Amsterdam - 14 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-December/006135.… - 15) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Category:Featured_Wikimedian - 16) http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest/en - 17) http://www.facebook.com/tawmc - 18) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011#A_Parade_of_Appeals.21_Dece… - 19) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-gu - 20) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-as - 21) http://lists.wmnederland.nl/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wlm-in - 22) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en - 23) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Milestones_and_Anniversary _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

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[Translators-l] Help in translating Wikimania scholarship page
by Anirudh Bhati 17 Jan '12

17 Jan '12

For your information. anirudh ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jessie Wild <jwild(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 12:49 AM Subject: [Translators-l] Help in translating Wikimania scholarship page To: translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Hi everyone! I'm not sure the proper procedure for this, but is there a way we could get some volunteers to help translate the WIkimania scholarship page? http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships As English aptitude is critical for maximum benefit from the event, the application is all in English. But we like to have the information page available in multiple languages, so that people can be 100% clear on the details of the program, and what they will be "judged" on. Thanks for your help -= please redirect me elsewhere if this was an inappropriate avenue :) Jessie -- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation * _______________________________________________ Translators-l mailing list Translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translators-l

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[Wikimedia-BD] SOPA protest - Bengali Wikipedia placed a banner, what about other Indic language wikis?
by Anirudh Bhati 17 Jan '12

17 Jan '12

FYI. For those interested. Thanks. Yours sincerely, Anirudh Bhati +855 975 529 803 Skype: anirudhsbh ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tanvir Rahman <wikitanvir(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 6:52 PM Subject: [Wikimedia-BD] SOPA protest - Bengali Wikipedia placed a banner, what about other Indic language wikis? To: Wikimedia India list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia BD List <wikimedia-bd(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikipedia BN List <wikipedia-bn(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "Wikimedians in and from West Bengal, India" <wikimedia-in-wb(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hello everyone, Just to let you know that Bengali Wikipedia [1] has placed a banner on their site notice protesting SOPA and PIPA. Maybe other Indic language Wikipedias can take similar initiatives or maybe they have taken one already? If so, share with us! In the mean time, I have an translation request for you. Maybe you have read Sue's letter [2] to the community about the blackout. I invite you all to translate that letter in your language. Since we have little time (less than 17 hours), we need be prompt. See the translation request on Meta-Wiki [3] and start your translation. Get yourself up and let your people know in your language! Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia [1] bn.wikipedia.org [2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF/English_Wikipedia_… _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-BD mailing list Wikimedia-BD(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd

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Delhi Wiki Meetup on the 2012 January 15
by Shiju Alex 07 Jan '12

07 Jan '12

Dear All, Delhi Wikimedians are planning to meetup on *2012 January 15* to celebrate the 11th Anniversary of Wikipedia. The details of the meetup can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Delhi/Delhi5. Please sign up<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Delhi/Delhi5#Signed_up> . Shiju Alex

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Fwd: Birthday of Indic language wikipedias
by Shiju Alex 04 Jan '12

04 Jan '12

Dear All, The below message is about the birthday of Indic wikipedias and the birthday of Hindi wikipedia is on *July 11*. The first edit in Hindi wikipedia had happened on *2003-July-11<http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1> * which means Hindi wikipedia will celebrate 9th anniversary in 2012. Thanks Shiju Alex ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shiju Alex <shiju(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 6:04 PM Subject: Birthday of Indic language wikipedias To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Dear Indic wikipedians One of the aspects that was raised during the discussions with almost all Indic language wiki communities was the need to build existing communities, motivate existing community members, attract new community members by increasing awareness of projects and communities, and to celebrate all the possible occasions. I have a suggestion that can contribute to all of these in some manner. The suggestion is to celebrate the anniversaries of Indic language wikipedias. And as you might agree, the first edit date of a wiki is the best * anniversary* that a community can celebrate. I have collected information for the birthdays of each Indic Wikipedia. This is the day on which the first edit happened on the respective language wikipedia. (The *Indian Standard Time* is used while recording the date and time). I am listing those days below for your reference, *Indic Language wikipedia* *Birthday/Anniversary (Date of first edit)* *Number of active editors* *Assamese* <http://as.wikipedia.org/> *June 02 (2002-June-02) <http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 10 *Nepali* <http://ne.wikipedia.org/> *June 03 (2002-June-03) <http://ne.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 13 *Punjab <http://pa.wikipedia.org/>i* *June 03 (2002-June-03) <http://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 3 *Malayalam* <http://ml.wikipedia.org/> *December 21 (2002-December-21) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 93 *Kannada* <http://kn.wikipedia.org/> *January 12 (2003-January-12) <http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 20 *Bhojpuri* <http://bh.wikipedia.org/> *February 21 (2003-February-21) <http://bh.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 0 *Hindi* <http://hi.wikipedia.org/> *July 11 <http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1> (2003-July-11) <http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 55 *Kashmiri* <http://ks.wikipedia.org/> *July 26 (2003-July-26) <http://ks.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=5>* 1 *Tamil* <http://ta.wikipedia.org/> *September 30 (2003-September-30) <http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=5>* 85 *Marathi* <http://mr.wikipedia.org/> *October 20 (2003-October-20) <http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 44 *Gujarati* <http://gu.wikipedia.org/> *December 09 (2003-December-09) <http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 11 *Sanskrit* <http://sa.wikipedia.org/> *December 21 (2003-December-21) <http://sa.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 16 *Sindhi* <http://sd.wikipedia.org/> *December 26 (2003-December-26) <http://sd.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 5 *Bengali* <http://bn.wikipedia.org/> *January 27 <http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=6> (2004-January-27)<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=6> * 52 *Urdu* <http://ur.wikipedia.org/> *January 27 (2004-January-27) <http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=2>* 15 *Odia (Oriya <http://or.wikipedia.org/>)* *January 29 (2004-January-29) <http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 10 *Telugu* <http://te.wikipedia.org/> *January 29 (2004-January-29) <http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 32 *Pali* <http://pi.wikipedia.org/> *July 29 (2004-July-29) <http://pi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>* 0 *Newari* <http://new.wikipedia.org/> *October 01 (2006-October-01) <http://new.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=4>* 1 *Bishnupriya Manipuri* <http://bpy.wikipedia.org/> *October 01 (2006-October-01) <http://bpy.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=2>* 2 This list is available in meta also. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_… I recommend that we use these anniversary dates to do the following - Organize a small wikiconfernce or some other major event for the respective language wikipedia - Organize community meetups to celebrate this - Coincide community events around these meetups (such as outreach sessions, photo events, or launching specific WikiProjects) - Invite press to these meetups and use different platforms to spread word about respective language wikipedia. >From the above table we can see that *Assamese* is the first Indic language wikipedia, and 4 Indic language wikipedias will celebrate *10th anniversary* this year (2012). :) So it is time to get prepared for the celebration. Happy Birthday Celebrations! Regards, Shiju Alex India Programs of Wikimedia Foundation

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Hisham about SHUBHA
by damodar vinayak bale 23 Dec '11

23 Dec '11

Dear friend, It was interesting to read about Shubha's working about Wikimedia.I am from Margao-Goa and would like to welcome Shubha,to Goa at my place,as and when he has time at his work schedule.He and you Mr. Hashim,are welcome.Pl. contact me at 'dvbale@ rediffmail.com'for communication. yours sincerely, D.V.Bale, Margao-Goa.

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Welcoming Subhashish Panigrahi
by Hisham 22 Dec '11

22 Dec '11

[cross-posting to reach pan-India; apologies if you have got it from some other mailing list.] Hi Folks, As you might be aware, the Consultant, Team Support position is to be filled as part of the India Programs team. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004251….) I am really pleased and excited to announce that Subhashish Panigrahi has agreed to join as Consultant, Community & Program Support. Some of you might know Subhashish (or Subha as he's also called.) He is all of 23 and a wonderful Wikimedian from Odisha. He has a BE in Biotechnology from Sapthagiri College of Engineering, Bangalore. He has worked for about 1 1/2 years in business development and is currently based in Bangalore. He's been an active Wikimedian since a friend of his attended a Wikipedia 10th event in Bangalore in January and told Subha about Wikipedia. Subha then spent considerable time - quite a bit of it in Shiju Alex's living room apparently :-) - learning about Wikipedia. Since then, he's been on fire! He's helped the Bangalore community organise the monthly meet-ups, been a central figure in building community & momentum for Odia Wikipedia and has conducted outreach programs for Odia projects back home in Odisha as well as in Bangalore. He's also been helping out other projects and communities; a couple of weekends ago he was in Chennai conducting a WikiAcademy there. He is a fantastically inspiring example of a complete outsider being welcomed into the family, having his hand held in his growth as a newbie, charging forward taking responsibility & ownership and then spreading his skills & knowledge to others. He is also one of the sweetest human beings I have ever met. He is a perfect example of the Wikimedia Dream. His interests (outside of Wikimedia) are cooking, graphic design and handwriting analysis. (I bet most of you who know Subha don't know that last bit about him. So the next time you see him, show him your writing and get him to reveal your deep dark secrets!) He has also been involved with campaigns for social work during the floods and cholera outbreak in Odisha and been involved with a Odisha community organisation, eOdissa.com. Originally, the Consultant, Team Support position (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs#Team_S…) was to manage the back-end aspects of India Programs (basic accounting, basic personnel management, office administration, travel support, expense statement management, logistics support for the community, etc.) I have been looking at the actual work load involved and I do not think this is a full time role. The functions listed are essential and need to be done - but there is an opportunity to improve the richness of the position and it's value to the community. I'm therefore proposing that the Consultant, Team Support be redesignated to Consultant, Community & Program Support. I envisage this position to have about 1/3 of time spent on the back-end work listed above but 2/3 of time can be very productively utilised supporting community efforts - such as helping community building & outreach and supporting community-led initiatives. An important consideration I have for this redesignation is after looking at the specific skills that Subha brings to the table; I want to make sure that he has the required space to realise his potential and to support the community and movement. Subha will of course continue to pursue his personal voluntary work for and as part of the Wikimedia community. The one question that he emphasized during the selection process was whether he would retain the flexibility to continue to pursue his personal passions on Wikimedia; the answer he got was a loud Y-E-S!!! :-) I'm delighted to have another community member joining the team. He'll formally start in Delhi on January 9th 2012. Do join me in welcoming him. Warmest Regards, hisham

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Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011
by Shiju Alex 16 Dec '11

16 Dec '11

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 crystalized. 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_…>, Hindi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Tamil<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Telugu<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Kannada<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Nepali<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Malayalam<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Marathi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Odia<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Sanskrit<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Bengali<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, and Gujarati<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>.) 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/Opinio…>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-…>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_… Regards Shiju Alex India Programs Team of WMF

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Indian Language wikipedia Statistics – 2011 October
by Shiju Alex 12 Dec '11

12 Dec '11

Dear All, I am sharing the statistical report of Indian language wiki projects for the month of 2011 October. It is available here. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-… Some interesting facts that I discovered this month are: - Nearly *4.3 crore* readers are there for all Indic language wikipedias! This number is huge and increased by nearly 1/3 in just 1 month! So Indic wikis has huge reader base. - Marathi wiki community has increased its active editor base by nearly 33% in just 1 month. - Sanskrit wikipedia has been amongst the shining stars of *all* Indic language wikipedias in terms of adding new articles (12 new articles every day in October) and edits per article (nearly 18 edits across all articles, old and new.) You can find more interesting facts from the report at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-… Shiju

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First Hindi WIkipedian Meetup in New Delhi
by mayur 08 Dec '11

08 Dec '11

विभिन्न विकिपीडीया परियोजनाओं जैसे तमिल, मलयालम इत्यादि की भांति हिन्दी विकिपीडीयनस का प्रथम मिलन समारोह निम्न पते एवं समय पर विकिमीडीया फाउण्डेशन द्वारा आयोजित किया जा रहा है। सभी हिन्दी विकिपीडियनस से अनुरोध है कि हिन्दी विकि के उत्थान हेतु आवश्यक चर्चा हेतु इसमें अवश्य भाग लें- पता:-Top Floor, G-15, Near Hauz kauz Market, New Delhi समय:-रविवार, दोपहर ३ बजे से ५ बजे तक तारिख २७-११-२०११ (Sunday, 3pm-5pm, 27-11-2011) सभी विकिपीडियनस इसके लिये सादर आमन्त्रित है

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