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First Hindi WIkipedian Meetup in...

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Shiju Alex

24 Nov 2011 24 Nov '11

6:54 a.m.

Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members, As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India Programs<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Pro…es>, I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic language wikipedians for the past few weeks. Yesterday I shared the summary of discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand the current situation of Assamese wikipedia. Thank you for the discussions and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page. Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions I've been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is available here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_… I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians because the community is relatively quiet in public forums. I'm really pleased to report that I was very pleasantly surprised by the broad-based, insightful, and constructive communications. Hindi community might be silent but they are active and full of powerful ideas. We have seen wonderful Hindi wikipedians like Anirudh in WCI. Even though the current community strength of Hindi wikipedia might not be good cosidering the huge speaker base of Hindi, I am sure the situation will change soon. Even if you are not involved in Hindi projects, I invite you to read this report because the points raised are applicable to all Indic languages. Personally, as someone who has been passionate about Indic languages for many years now, I found the discussions very educative and informative and thought-provoking. I have learnt a lot from these discussions and I hope you find them as useful as I have. I want to thank Hindi community for their time and their fantastic inputs. Remember most of the issues the Hindi editors raised are applicable not only to Hindi but for all the Indic languages. So it is important that other Indic language communities take lessons from it while building the community. As mentioned before, I've edited the discussions to protect confidentiality as well as to remove any specific personal comments. Inviting your active participation in these discussions (either on talk page or in the mailing lists). Warm Regards, Shiju Alex

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Shiju Alex

26 Nov 26 Nov

5:04 p.m.

New subject: Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Hindi

Some of the important points from the discussions with Hindi wikipedians are captured by Hisham<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_…11>. Thought of sharing that here also. *Motivators for joining Indic Language Projects* - Awareness mostly through search engines not through outreach or media - It's not been about parochial (sic) notions about preserving culture or a language or lofty ambitions about knowledge access; but about core Wikipedia basics of building a knowledge repository - Wanting to stay away from antagonistic, aggressive en-wp edit environment - Helping the Indic language project - as the number of volunteers were low (especially when compared to en-wp which has higher numbers of volunteers) *Community* - Very low community meet up attendance - Not finding meet-ups as they are currently run useful as the discussions are not engaging or relevant - Collaboration is weak (especially on articles) - and more about process *Activities* - Doing a lot of clean up after damage done by bots - Categorisation, copyvio clean ups - Perform a different role on Indic projects (a lot of support work instead of article content) as compared to their roles in en-wp (where they edit articles on subjects of interest) *Barriers* - Technical issues are not *such* a major challenge; though awareness that technical solutions exist is low. - Basic awareness of projects - Lack of reliable sources online *Suggestions* - Media coverage on Indic language media vehicles (e.g., local language newspapers, etc.) to build basic awareness of the very existence of Indic language projects as well as invitation to edit - Tie-ups with education system of various kinds (colleges, teachers, state government bodies, etc.) Shiju On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Shiju Alex <shiju(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Gunjan Verma

27 Nov 27 Nov

6 a.m.

New subject: Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Hindi

Thanks Shiju for compiling all this information. I have read through all the replies from diffrent editors. Some editors have mentioned that there is no "edit-war" and multiple edit for a single article or collabaration for a single article. Unfortunately this has not been going on recently however in the past there were several articles where more than 3 people would contribute constantly to bring it to a featured article level. Of course there were edit-wars and that too in good sense. Some examples are 1. http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%A8… 2. http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%B0 3. http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%BC%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%… Hope we can see the same days again. Regards, Gunjan On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Shiju Alex <shiju(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members, As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India Programs< http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…

I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic language wikipedians for the past few weeks. Yesterday I shared the summary of discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand the current situation of Assamese wikipedia. Thank you for the discussions and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page. Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions I've been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is available here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_… I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians because the community is relatively quiet in public forums. I'm really pleased to report that I was very pleasantly surprised by the broad-based, insightful, and constructive communications. Hindi community might be silent but they are active and full of powerful ideas. We have seen wonderful Hindi wikipedians like Anirudh in WCI. Even though the current community strength of Hindi wikipedia might not be good cosidering the huge speaker base of Hindi, I am sure the situation will change soon. Even if you are not involved in Hindi projects, I invite you to read this report because the points raised are applicable to all Indic languages. Personally, as someone who has been passionate about Indic languages for many years now, I found the discussions very educative and informative and thought-provoking. I have learnt a lot from these discussions and I hope you find them as useful as I have. I want to thank Hindi community for their time and their fantastic inputs. Remember most of the issues the Hindi editors raised are applicable not only to Hindi but for all the Indic languages. So it is important that other Indic language communities take lessons from it while building the community. As mentioned before, I've edited the discussions to protect confidentiality as well as to remove any specific personal comments. Inviting your active participation in these discussions (either on talk page or in the mailing lists). Warm Regards, Shiju Alex _______________________________________________ Wikihi-l mailing list Wikihi-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikihi-l

-- Gunjan No trees were harmed in the generation of this email. However, several trillion electrons were brutally inconvenienced

Shiju Alex

5:42 p.m.

New subject: Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Hindi

...

Unfortunately this has not been going on recently however in the past there were several articles where more than 3 people would contribute constantly to bring it to a featured article level.........Hope we can see the same days again.

Hope those days will be back soon. Strengthening the community by bringing back old experienced editors and retaining existing editors are the key. For that focus need to be shifted to that direction. I remember in 2010 January<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/indian-language-wikipe… wiki was having approximately 50,000 articles and 50 active users. Now 2 years down the line, we have more than 1 lakh articles<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wikip…r/>, but the number of active users is still 50. Considering the huge speaker base of Hindi, it should have at least 1000 active users now. As we can see from the responses of the editors, most of them are not happy with the results of google translation project or bot created articles. As one editor said" I think that the articles translated using machine translation tools should go under a rigorous review for style, quality and flow before being made 'live'. A number of articles have been created on Hindi Wikipedia with Google translation, but these serve no purpose. The style and the flow (and the English text in untranslated templates, references section etc.) render them of little interest to a native Hindi reader, and the unfixed errors render them useless to Google (whose interest is most probably lies in improving its algorithms and training its bots with good Hindi-language content). When other editors look at such an article, most of them think "Well, this article already has all the necessary content. There is no need for me to edit this." I think a thousand short, unreferenced and well-formatted articles are better than a million long, translated articles translated from English Wikipedia. Now it is duty of the community to address these concerns. As another editor said "I feel presenting a project as a high-quality project is important for attracting more contributors to it". The latest statistics also shows that readership for Hindi wikipedia<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wiki… shooting up. It is showing exponential growth for the past few month. So there is no lack of visibility or awareness for Hindi wikipedia. We should be able to convert at least a small percentage of our readers to editor. According to me, the key solution to address all the current issues is building the community. Shiju On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Gunjan Verma <vermagunjan(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

...

Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members, As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India Programs<

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…

I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic

language

wikipedians for the past few weeks. Yesterday I shared the summary of discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand

the

current situation of Assamese wikipedia. Thank you for the discussions and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page. Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions I've been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is available here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…

I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians because the community is relatively quiet in public forums. I'm really pleased to report that I

was

very pleasantly surprised by the broad-based, insightful, and

constructive

communications. Hindi community might be silent but they are active and full of powerful ideas. We have seen wonderful Hindi wikipedians like Anirudh in WCI. Even though the current community strength of Hindi wikipedia might not be good cosidering the huge speaker base of Hindi, I

sure the situation will change soon. Even if you are not involved in Hindi projects, I invite you to read this report because the points raised are applicable to all Indic languages. Personally, as someone who has been passionate about Indic languages for many years now, I found the discussions very educative and informative

and

thought-provoking. I have learnt a lot from these discussions and I hope you find them as useful as I have. I want to thank Hindi community for their time and their fantastic inputs. Remember most of the issues the Hindi editors raised are applicable not only to Hindi but for all the Indic languages. So it is important that other Indic language communities take lessons from it while building the community. As mentioned before, I've edited the discussions to protect

confidentiality

as well as to remove any specific personal comments. Inviting your active participation in these discussions (either on talk page or in the mailing lists). Warm Regards, Shiju Alex _______________________________________________ Wikihi-l mailing list Wikihi-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikihi-l

-- Gunjan No trees were harmed in the generation of this email. However, several trillion electrons were brutally inconvenienced _______________________________________________ Wikihi-l mailing list Wikihi-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikihi-l

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Gunjan Verma
Shiju Alex