Wikimedia-BD

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Call for nominations! Steward Elections 2012
by Tanvir Rahman 15 Jan '12

15 Jan '12

Hello everyone, I am pleased to announce the beginning of Steward Election 2012 [1]. We are now taking nominations from eligible candidates. Interested candidates can check their eligibility and procedure to submit the nomination on the guidelines page [2]. We are open to candidate submissions till January 28, 2012, 23:59 (UTC). Questions to the candidates can be submitted until February 6, 2012, 23:59 (UTC). Guidelines about questioning can also be found on our guidelines page [2]. This time we are also arranging the confirmation of existing stewards [3]. But the confirmation will begin on February 8, and will finish on February 27, 2012. Please remember, the voting has not yet begun and will be not until February 8, 2012, 00:00 (UTC). We will poke you once again when the voting start. As you all know steward election is a global event, so we need help from volunteers to translate necessary pages into languages they speak. For those who want to help us out with translation, please see our translation portal [4]. And if you have any queries related to translation or anything related to the election, you can ask us on the talk page [5]. Alternatively you are free to poke us on IRC channel #wikimedia-stewards-elections. For those who are a little bit surprised to see another election in few months, I want to let you know that previous one (in September-October of 2011) was a special one which we arranged in need. This is the regular one to elect new stewards and to confirm existing ones. Please feel free to forward this e-mail to any list if you think it will be useful. :-) Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia (On behalf of the Election Committee.) [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012 [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Guidelines [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Confirm/2012/en [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Translation [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/Elections_2012

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Fwd: Please help with translate the 2012 Steward Election
by Tanvir Rahman 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

For your information. :-) For more, please see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Translation Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tanvir Rahman <wikitanvir(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 15:17 Subject: Please help with translate the 2012 Steward Election To: translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Hello fellow translators, Once again, we need your help with translating the 2012 Steward Election and confirmation pages. Primarily we need you to translate the following pages: 1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Introduction 2. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Guidelines 3. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Translation/CentralN… 4. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Steward_election_status 5. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Confirm/Introduction12 Some of those are already translated but may require updating and proofreading. Candidate submissions will begin in January 15, 2012. By that time we will start getting candidate statements and then we would also need to translate those statements. Voting will begin in February 8, 2012. You can keep this page on your watch list: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Statements. If you need any help with translations or anything related to the election, you are free to contact Election Committee members or Clerks on Freenode IRC channel, #wikimedia-stewards-elections. Alternatively you can use the talk page at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/Elections_2012 to ask questions. More update on translations will come into this thread with time. Feel free to forward this e-mail to any list you think might be helpful. On behalf of the Election Committee, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia

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correcting the name of our Mother Language from Bengali to Bangla
by Rahman Khan 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

Can the Wikimedia-BD members help spreading the Facebook Page "বেঙ্গলি" নয় "বাংলা", "বাঙ্গালী" নয় "বাঙালী" চাই বাংলাদেশে* *at http://on.fb.me/A0dW9Q and assist in correcting the name of our Mother Language in the world where it is mostly known as Bengali instead of Bangla. Thank you for your support. Rahman Khan John https://www.facebook.com/schemadyn

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Fwd: [WikimediaMobile] Fourth release candidate of the Wikipedia Android app
by Nasir Khan 10 Jan '12

10 Jan '12

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tomasz Finc <tfinc(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 4:14 AM Subject: [WikimediaMobile] Fourth release candidate of the Wikipedia Android app To: mobile-l <mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Greetings All, Looking at the finish line we have RC4 ready for you! Next time were going to call these betas :) Everyone has been doing a kick ass job squashing bugs and preparing for our app to be ready for Global Dev on 1/13/12. With this update you'll see updates for ICS (Android 4.0), language fixes, near by me updates, and more. For those that just want to get going: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/android/WikipediaMobile-RC4.apk (MD5 dae4c369a8abaae3ee514d0f8206a95a) Nightly's here: http://integration.mediawiki.org/WikipediaMobile/nightly/ (Google maps wont work as the app is not signed yet) Key points to test (mostly same as before) * Browse as you would normally do on WIFI, 2G, 3G, & no connectivity * Save an article that you're on and then load it as a saved page. Delete that saved page. ** Go into airplane mode and load the saved article. Follow a link * Open your browsing history and load a previous page * Tap 'near me' and browse articles. Move the map and tap 'redo search in this area' * Share a link with someone on twitter or facebook * Change your language preference in the Settings menu * Use a phone that is in a non-US locale to test other languages like: Hebrew, Japanese, Arabic, etc * Change the font size settings to 'Small' & 'Larger' * .. and whatever else you may want try out Items fixed or updated since RC3 * Wikipedia Android app is stuck when triggering 'Jump back to a section' from cache * Wikipedia Android app sometimes shows old home page * Jenkins marks automatic Android .apk builds as failure due to symlink already existing * Android app doesn't update locale when system locale changes * "Share" feature should send the canonical/desktop form of link instead of *.m.wikipedia.org * Regression: Wikipedia android app no longer shows history for viewed articles * PhoneGap app needs to show visual feedback when clicking the W 'home' button * Inter-wiki "Read in..." button graphic * Android app web view is very tiny on Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) emulator * Android app nearby me should allow user to redo search after map move * Android app 'cache' branch: crash during navigation * Android app 'cache' branch: keeps forgetting what page I left off on * Browsing history is not updated * "About" is always showing [[en:Wikipedia:About]] * App not usable on Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0 ICS with xhdpi display) * Navigating pages on Android 4 (ICS) tries to load about:blank in external browser * Saved pages open without markup fixes, in full window (breaking app) in Android 4.0 (ICS) * Android app should support (or always?) use HTTPS * Android app should not forget that its just done a near by me search if the location hasn't changed * Android app doesn't allow search when webview overlaps with an image * The "language" entry in the settings dialog is moving * After the language is changed the page content does not change * Wikipedia Android app doesn't surface disambiguation page for 'Go' * W goes to English home page, even when in another language * Search language is not in current language * Wikipedia Android should maximize touch surface are of near by me detail boxes * Current location in Nearby missing * Wikipedia Android app drops pins after tapping an article * Wikipedia Android app doesn't show pins after redo search until user taps the screen * Fix Wikipedia icon in Android app * Update to PhoneGap 1.3.0 * Wikipedia Android app name isn't localized * After using manage applications to "clear data" application won't restart * Give the site Main page a better title in history * Wikipedia Android app should have a better no search results page * Previous and next Nearby (map) article * Close Nearby view Known issues * Tapping the hardware search button dosen't always show a blinking cursor * Android 4.0 minor glitches: ** https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33615 off-by-one in menus ** https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33552 search bar doesn't expand in landscape mode Feedback page @ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileAndroidFeedba… (edit away) As before there are bound to be bugs but don't think that someone will file them for you. If you don't file it then chances are that we wont know its an issue. If your not sure of wether its a bug or not then come join us on #wikimedia-mobile (freenode) and we'll sort it out. thanks! --tomasz _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l -- Nasir Khan Saikat

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Fwd: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Fundraiser Concludes with Record Breaking Donations
by Belayet Hossain 05 Jan '12

05 Jan '12

Just in case you missed this. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wikimedia Fundraiser Concludes with Record Breaking Donations Posted by Jay Walsh on January 2nd, 2012 Our annual fundraising campaign reached a successful conclusion today having raised a record-breaking USD 20 million from more than one million donors in nearly every country in the world. It is our most successful campaign ever, continuing an unbroken streak in which donations have risen every year since the campaigns began in 2003. Read more here: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/02/wikimedia-fundraiser-concludes-with-re… -- Belayet Hossain http://www.facebook.com/bellayet http://twitter.com/bellayet http://bellayet.wordpress.com (Bangla) Knowledge is universal ...so share it. Hillel____ If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?

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Fwd: [Gendergap] Global perspectives on women and Wikimedia projects: Bangladesh
by Tanvir Rahman 26 Dec '11

26 Dec '11

FYI. :-) Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Laura Hale <laura(a)fanhistory.com> Date: Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 01:47 Subject: [Gendergap] Global perspectives on women and Wikimedia projects: Bangladesh To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects < gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org> In preparation for WikiWomenCamp and the sister conference open to people of all genders for discussing the gender gap (we'll get a name chosen and do a formal announcement soon!) , we're writing and asking for your assistance in writing about the involvement of and content related to women on Wikimedia projects from around the world. Today, we're looking at Bangladesh. If you can help improve this, please do. Many thanks to Tanvir, WM-BD's secretary, for providing insight into what is going on. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/FAQ/Perspectives/Bangladesh [image: Flag of Bangladesh.svg] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh> Bangladesh [image: people standing in a group wearing Wikipedia shirts]<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kite_flying2011_065.JPG> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kite_flying2011_065.JPG> A Wikipedia 10th Birthday celebration in Bangladesh Bengali Wikimedia projects have very few female contributors. Those that they do have do not contribute on a consistent, regular basis; they edit sporadically. In Bangladesh, women often attend events by the Chapter and others in the country. There are female participants who attend every meet-up. Most of the time, these are new faces and there is a problem in getting the same women to consistently show up to events in order to build up a regular base of active female participants. Currently Wikimedia Bangladesh <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh> has no female members in the board. The board is planning to find a woman from the country to be a a Bengali participant in at WikiWomenCamp in Argentina. In December 2011, there were 1,700 women of all ages from Bangladesh who were interested in Wikipedia on Facebook.[1]<https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/> 0.06% of all Wikipedia traffic comes from Bangladesh.[2]<http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryB…> Most editors in Bangladesh edit the Bengali Wikipedia but 91.1% view English Wikipedia. There are many articles about Bengali actresses on the Bengali Wikipedia. These articles were mostly created by male contributors. There is an effort by a Bengali editor to take the Bengali language article about Angelina Jolie<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%85%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%9E%…> to Featured. As of December 2011, there are zero featured articles about women on Bengali Wikipedia. There are two articles about female sport people: an athlete and a chess player. There are 10 articles about female film actresses from Bangladesh<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%B7%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%…>, 10 articles about female television actresses from Bangladesh, 3 articles about female Bangladeshi stage actresses and 13 articles about Bangladeshi singers. On Bengali Wikipedia, there are 4 articles about Bangladeshi social workers<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%B7%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%…>, 3 of whom women. The amount of women specific content in Bengali, and Bangaldeshi women content, is limited. The Bengali word for User is gender neutral; the name space does not indicate the gender of the user on Wikimedia projects. On English Wikipedia, there are 11 articles<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangladeshi_women_in_politics> women in politics, 4 articles<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangladeshi_feminists> about Bangladeshi feminists‎. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Category:Women%27s_basketball_teams> in this country on English Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Club_de_basket-ball_f%C3%A9minin> in this country on French Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:%E5%A5%B3%E5%AD%90%E3%83%90%E3%82%B9%…> in this country on Japanese Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's basketball teams in this country (he:קטגוריה:קבוצות כדורסל נשים<http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%94:%D7…>) on Hebrew Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's association football clubs in this country on Farsi Wikipedia (fa:رده:باشگاه‌های فوتبال زنان بر پایه کشور<http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%87:%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B4%DA%AF%D8…>). There are 0 articles about women's association football clubs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women%27s_association_football_clubs_…> in this country on English Wikipedia. There are 0 articles about women's association football clubs<http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%…> in this country on Russian Wikipedia. Bangladeshi women do not appear to be given much coverage on non-Bengali Wikipedia. This is for several reasons, including a lack of participation of women in certain categories, language issues that make it difficult to report on Bangladeshi women, and a general lack of interest in existing contributors in covering their issues. [image: group cutting a cake]<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10_years_of_Wikipedia_celebration_Chitt…> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10_years_of_Wikipedia_celebration_Chitt…> 10th Birthday celebrations in Chittagong In December 2011, according to Alexa, Wikinews was ranked the 17,538th most popular site in the country.[3]<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org> On Portuguese Wikinews<http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/n:P%C3%A1gina_principal>, there are no women active from this country. This may be a result of several factors, including the language and because Portuguese Wikinews only has an active editing community of five people, one of whom is a woman. A December 2011 search on English Wikinews for Women Bangladesh found 5 articles that mentioned both words.[4]<http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=women+Bang…> A December 2011 search on Spanish Wikinews for Bangladesh mujeres found 1 article that mentioned both words.[5]<http://es.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Especial%3ABuscar&search=Banglades…> A December 2011 search on Portuguese Wikinews for mulheres Bangladesh found 1 articles that mentioned both words.[6]<http://pt.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Especial%3APesquisar&search=mulher…> Bangladeshi women are absent on other projects connected to the Wikimedia Foundation. There is one woman who has contributed to the language incubator<http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page> who uses Bengali <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_language>. She made one edit and is the only Bengali speaker to make an edit on incubator. There are no bureaucrats, male or female, from Bangladesh on MediaWiki.Org.[7]<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat> In December 2011, according to Alexa, Wikibooks was ranked the 1,653th most popular site in the country.[8]<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikibooks.org> Some of the visitors are likely to be women. Bangladeshi women also do not appear to factor into the WMF's wider strategy to appeal to the region: During the December 2011 fundraising appeal, no Bangladeshis, men or women, were featured<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011#A_Parade_of_Appeals.21_Dece…> are part of the appeal. During the 2011 Summer of Research<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_Summer_of_Research_2011>, the WMF hired eight research fellows. Of these, only one was female, and she was from the United States. There were four males from American universities, The other researchers included men from a Japanese university, a Swiss university and a Canadian university. There were no research fellows, male or female, from this country. -- twitter: purplepopple blog: ozziesport.com _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

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Fwd: [Wikimediaindia-l] Christmas 2011 translatewiki.net Translation Rally
by Belayet Hossain 24 Dec '11

24 Dec '11

FYI... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Santhosh Thottingal <santhosh.thottingal(a)gmail.com> Date: 24 December 2011 08:56 Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Christmas 2011 translatewiki.net Translation Rally To: "Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia." < wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Translatewiki.net is is conducting a Translation Rally between 23 December 2011 12:00 UTC and 3 January 2012 24:00 UTC.. Among all users contributing 500 or more new translations to Wikipedia Mobile, Kiwix, MediaWiki core and MediaWiki extension used by Wikimedia, translatwiki.net will divide 1,000 Euro (approximately 1,308 US Dollar). The money comes from a grant by Wikimedia Nederland, the Dutch Wikimedia chapter and is facilitated by Stichting Open Progress. There were many winners from Indic languages last time. For more details please visit: http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:Rally-2011-12 -Santhosh _______________________________________________ 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 -- Belayet Hossain http://www.facebook.com/bellayet http://twitter.com/bellayet http://bellayet.wordpress.com (Bangla) Knowledge is universal ...so share it. Hillel____ If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?

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ই-মেইলের মাধ্যমে সাহায্য ও প্রশ্নের উত্তর পেতে উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের নতুন ই-মেইল আইডি
by Tanvir Rahman 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

সুপ্রিয় সুধী, গত শুক্রবার, ১৬ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১১-এ হয়ে যাওয়া মিটআপে অংশগ্রহণকারী স্বেচ্ছাসেবী ও শুভাকাঙ্খীরা সদ্যগঠিত উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের একটি ই-মেইল আইডির অভাবের কথা ব্যক্ত করেছিলেন। তাঁরা জানিয়েছিলেন, অনেকেই উইকিপিডিয়ায় সম্পাদনার ব্যাপারে অজ্ঞ, কিন্তু তাঁদের সাহায্যের প্রয়োজন, সেক্ষেত্রে ই-মেইলের মাধ্যমে সাহায্য চাওয়া তাঁদের জন্য সুবিধাজনক ও বেশি কার্যকর। এছাড়াও লিস্টে সাবস্ক্রাইব না করা থাকলে মেইলটি মডারেশনে আটকা পড়ে যেতে পারে, সেটিও একটি সমস্যা। এ সমস্যাগুলো মিটআপে উপস্থিত উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের বর্তমান সদস্যগণ বেশ গুরুত্বসহকারে নিয়েছিলেন, এবং শীঘ্রই একটি ই-মেইল ঠিকানা এ কাজের জন্য বন্দোবস্ত করার আশ্বাসও দিয়েছিলেন। আপনাদের সেই আবেদনকে সাড়া দিয়ে উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের এ কাজের জন্য নতুন একটি ডেডিকেটেড ই-মেইল wm-bd(a)wikimedia.org চালু করেছে। এ ই-মেইলে বর্তমানে আগ্রহীরা চ্যাপ্টার সংক্রান্ত যে-কোনো প্রশ্ন, অনুরোধ বা পরামর্শ জানিয়ে মেইল করতে পারেন। স্বেচ্ছাসেবীদের যদি সম্পাদনা সংক্রান্ত কোনো সাহায্যেরও প্রয়োজন হয় তবে তাঁরা সে সংক্রান্ত ই-মেইলও এই ঠিকানায় পাঠাতে পারেন। উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের সাথে সংশ্লিষ্ট ও নির্বাচিত স্বেচ্ছাসেবীরা এই মেইলগুলোর জবাব দিয়ে আপনাদের প্রয়োজন মেটাতে চেষ্টা করবেন। এক্ষেত্রে একটি বিষয় লক্ষণীয় যে, অধিক পরিমাণে ই-মেইল আসলে, প্রত্যেকটির জবাব দিতে কিছুটা সময়ের প্রয়োজন হতে পারে। তাই পুনর্বার ই-মেইল না করে ধৈর্য ধরে অপেক্ষা করার অনুরোধ। এছাড়াও যাঁরা এই ই-মেইল লিস্টে সাবস্ক্রাইব করা আছেন, এবং নিজের পরিচয় (ই-মেইল আইডি) প্রকাশে সমস্যা নেই, তাঁরা এই লিস্টে সাবস্ক্রাইব করে এখানেও তাঁদের প্রশ্ন রাখতে পারেন। বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ার জন্য আমাদের ডেডিকেটেড ই-মেইল লিস্টও রয়েছে, যার নাম: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-bn পরিশেষে সবকিছু এক কথায়: উইকিপিডিয়া বা উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ সম্পর্কে কোনো জিজ্ঞাসায় ই-মেইল করুন: wm-bd(a)wikimedia.org উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের মেইলিং লিস্টে সাবস্ক্রাইব করুন: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-bd বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ার মেইলিং লিস্টে সাবস্ক্রাইব করুন: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-bn মেইলিং লিস্টে যোগ দেওয়ার (সাবস্ক্রাইব করা) নিয়ম সম্মন্ধে জানতে দেখুন: http://www.list.org/mailman-member/node13.html উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের সাথে থাকার জন্য আপনাদের সবাইকে ধন্যবাদ। তানভির রহমান সাধারণ সম্পাদক উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ

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Re: [Wikimedia-BD] [Wikipedia-BN] ঘোষণা: উইকিমিটআপ ঢাকা ১১
by Air Based Express 17 Dec '11

17 Dec '11

সম্মানিত সুধী, আশা করছি আমিও এই উইকিমিটআপ ঢাকা ১১-এর কার্যক্রমে অংশগ্রহন করব. ভালো থাকবেন সবাই. ধন্যবাদ - এস এম হেমায়েত --- On Tue, 12/13/11, আব্দুল্লাহ আল মামুন রাসেল <joy.dtech(a)gmail.com> wrote: From: আব্দুল্লাহ আল মামুন রাসেল <joy.dtech(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-BD] [Wikipedia-BN] ঘোষণা: উইকিমিটআপ ঢাকা ১১ To: "Discussion list for Bangladeshi Wikimedians" <wikimedia-bd(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 9:24 PM Discussion list for Bangladeshi Wikimedians (wikimedia-bd(a)lists.wikimedia.org) is not on your Guest List | Approve sender | Approve domain

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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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