Hi All,
New editors across Indic Wikipedias often face problems while editing for which need they help. However, most don't know where they can ask questions or get clarifications as they are usually unfamiliar with village pumps or mailing lists or even talk pages on basic editing. Many existing editors want to help new editors and could appreciate a central place where they can meet and help new editors. India Program has started a pilot to support the Odia community's help desk, Chatasabhahttp://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:%E0%AC%9A%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%9F%E0%AC%B8%E0%AC%AD%E0%AC%BE. (Incidentally, "Chata" means student and "Sabha" means community, in Odia.) This pilot will build on the community's existing efforts - and seeks to provide a structured way of designing and running a Help Desk. It takes learning from English Wikipedia's Tea Househttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Teahouseas well as other experiences on Help Desk and similar services.
The Help Desk that is being piloted is user friendly, has guidelines to provide simple answers to new editors and tries to manage the work load of existing community members by providing ready answers to frequently asked questions. The user friendliness of the Help Desk is in the form of being able to ask questions without getting stuck on Wiki markups as well as illustrated answers to some questions.
I have put a page on meta which has the pilot designhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Community_building_using_help_desks. Eventually, we would like to help other Indic languages build similar Help Desks. Please do provide your feedback on the talk pagehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Community_building_using_help_desks .
Best