Dear All
I wanted to share with you an update on the work that Shiju[1] is doing on Indic languages[2] as part of India Program.[3] A guiding principle for the thinking and efforts of our team is that community building should be the most essential aspect of all the work that we do. In the context of small Indic communities, Shiju has been working to try and identify the various elements that need to come together to foster community building. This update is about the Community Building pilot[4] that was run for the Assamese community. For context, community building means different things to different people and in fact there was a very interesting post[5] that Shiju put out that articulated his thinking on this and, hence, our priorities.
The results of these efforts have been outstanding
number of editors on Assamese Wikipedia has increased to 31 in April 2012 (from 18 in December 2011 and just 10 in November 2011.)
number of Wikiprojects increased to 6 (from a situation where there were no reasonably active ones in December 2011- and including 5 Wikiprojects independently conceptualised and managed by the community)
average monthly edits on Assamese Wikipedia increased to about 5000 in April 2012 from around 3000 in November 2011
There are 5 key factors that are responsible for this remarkable growth
Strong communication. This started with Shiju building personal connections with Assamese editors and then encouraging them to communicate with each other on-wiki, online and in meet--ups and outreach sessions.
Initial push. Shiju visited Assam in January where he spent time in 2 towns with 7 of the most active community members, who also conducted 2 outreach sessions. This visit has proved to be really useful because it helped to energise the community and also helped to establish a personal relationship between Shiju and these editors (and also, amongst the editors themselves.)
Encouraging collaboration. Wikiprojects and outreach are really useful to galvanise a community and helped build personal equations. It's wonderful to see the increase in Wikiprojects and
Building capacity & confidence. In all the work that has been done for the Assamese community, the endeavour has been to build capacity. For instance, support was given to get basic outreach material including FAQs prepared and outreach sessions were guided by Shiju. It's inspiring to see the Assamese community now take things to a whole new level and plan out an ambitious 10th anniversary.[6]
Healthy environment. This is the last - but probably the most essential point - and it is something I want to call out because it is what will help or severely hinder the abilities of individual communities realise their dreams and potential. The reason why the Assamese community is making such wonderful steps forward is because there is
a set of editors with the right level of initiative and motivation
a strong sense of co-operation and good spirit amongst the editors
an extremely welcoming approach to new editors
None of this would have been possible without the efforts of every single Assamese community members. In the early days when Shiju started off, he was interacting with Bishnu, Dipankar, Gitartha, Jyoti & Prabhakar - who helped organise the first meet-ups and outreach sessions. Thanks to their efforts, a list of thank-yous would now be 31 strong! Thank you and congratulations to all of you!
To the Assamese community, I wish you the very best for your 10th anniversary.[6] There are exciting plans including your photo contest and your article contest and the meet-up and the outreach session. I know that you are doing most of the event largely independently (with Noopur[7] providing media assistance for the 10th anniversary and an India Chapter[8] grant[9] supporting you.) This is the true signs of a community that is coming of age. There are tremendous opportunities in outreach to get new editors, initiatives like your article & photo contests to improve content and in proposed projects like offline to make transformational changes in the community.
With regard to the way forward for India Program, the pilot design page[4] on meta[3] has now been updated. The next steps are going to be to see how we can adapt or build on these experiences with other communities, and as we move to other communities, do them in a more scaleable manner.
To all community members - across languages across India - if you did want any help in any aspect of community building, please feel free to reach out to Shiju[1] at shiju(a)wikimedia.org. Please also do add comments or ideas or suggestions you might have to the Community Building Pilot's talk page.[10]
hisham[11]
Notes
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shiju
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Community_…
[5] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-December/005813.…
[6] http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/05/16/ten-glorious-years-of-assamese-wikipedi…
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Noopur28
[8] http://wikimedia.in/
[9] http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Grants/Photo_and_Article_Competition_and_Wiki_Work…
[10] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Commu…
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hisham
Hi All,
The 46th Wikipedia Wikimeetup at Bangalore (
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL46) was conducted in a new Venue, at the
Alcatel-Lucent office in Manyata Embassy Tech Park. This new venue, which
is in Northern side of Bangalore, is intended to gather more north side
wikipedians in the future. This is different from our regular venue
Wikimedia India Chapter office ( CIS building), where we were hosting most
of our previous Wikimeetups of Bangalore. We plan to rotate the venues at
the different corners of Bangalore in the future so as to attract more
interested people.
This meetup was just after 2 weeks after the special meetup 45, which Barry
& Hisham attended. The venue was new and it announced on short notice too,
Nevertheless it was good to see 5 Wikipedians attending this meetup, the
first meetup at the new location.
We initially tried to have Google-Hangout, but due to technical
difficulties, we were not successful. Hence Arjuna Rao, who tried
connecting with us remotely couldn’t participate further.
We were happy to meet the Telugu SIG chair Rahmanuddin, who had recently
relocated to Bangalore :)
We discussed about the feasibility to submit a bid for Bangalore city as
the venue for the WikiConference 2012.
We discussed the various approaches that are needed to cater to different
spectrum of people in Bangalore through Wiki Academies. Also, it was
suggested the use of about MiFi devices at WikiAcademies & meetups, where
there may be lack of internet facilities at the venue.
Tinu Cherian said that he is working on creating a separate namespace for
WikiAcademies & Wikimeetups on wiki.wikimedia.in, that allows anonymous
edits, thereby avoiding the need to register for an user account for people
to sign up for the event.
We also proposed the introduction of (person-independent) mail addresses
like bangalore(a)wikimedia.in; telugu(a)wikimedia.in etc) to contact
experienced Wikipedians who can ready to help.
Our Bangalore Meetups are incomplete without the photos sessions, so don’t
miss them :)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bangalore_Meetup_May_2012_17.16.43.j…http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangalore_Meetup_May_2012
We would also like to thank Alcatel-Lucent for giving us this beautiful
conference for the meetup.
Our next monthly meetup (47th) is on June 10, 2012.
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiMeetups/Bangalore/Bangalore47https://www.facebook.com/events/294049667355329/
--
Thanks & Regards,
RadhaKrishna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
Next Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup on 10th June
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL47
Hi All,
We had a very successful Bangalore Meetup 45 on 29th April (
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiMeetups/Bangalore/Bangalore45). Yes, it is the
FORTY-FIFTH meetup in the city - which is quite extraordinary by any
standards anywhere in the world!!!
As is unique and special about Bangalore meetups, we had participation from
multiple communities - in this case Kannada, Telugu, English, Sanskrit and
Tamil.
In total, we had 13 people attending, including Barry from WMF.
We wanted to share some tips on how we conducted the meet-up this time -
which you might find useful as you conduct various meetups.
a) We invited folks one-on-one, in addition to the posts on the mailing
lists.
b) At the start of the meet-up, after the introductions, we asked people
why they have come to the meet-up - and aligned the meet up accordingly to
address the question "What do you want to gain from today"
c) We made sure that EVERY single person talks. Near the 3/4 mark of the
meetup, we stopped everything and reached out to the quiet folks and got
them to talk - and they had SO MUCH to say!!! Don't let any one person or
any one topic monopolise the discussion.
d) Discuss specific next steps. Folks get energised when you talk about
specific next steps. The ideas we got were so inspiring: wiki summer camps
for students, Kannada GLAM, Telugu digital outreach model, Sanskrit
education program!
e) Make it fun! We laughed throughout the meetup!!!
Coming now to the specific things we discussed, here’s a summary of the
various discussions
a) Kannada Wikipedia spoke about the Translation Enhancement project - and
the challenges they were facing getting new users. It was discussed on how
we can try and use the Kannada wikipedia facebook group - which now has
nearly 1800 followers - to see if we can attract new or retired users to
Kannada Wikipedia project. This will also require a basic FAQ to be
updated for Kannada and maybe even an outreach presentation.
b) Another discussion was to explore GLAM or a school project in Kannada.
It was also suggested that we can explore a Wikipedia summer camp - as so
many students are now on summer holidays. (This is an idea that will have
relevance across the country and across communities.)
c) Wiktionary continues to have potential in Kannada - and indeed other
languages - and we should explore ways of promoting participation. This is
an area where we did not have any specific ideas and we welcome all
community members who might have some insights to share them for us - and
for other communities. Wiktionary (and Wikisource) are great ways for
folks to get introduced to our communities and projects (because they are
relatively easy to contribute to.)
d) A school project was also discussed in Sanskrit - involving 11th-12th
standard - and we should have some discussions around this. There are many
students studying the subject in these years and we must try and explore
how we can encourage them (and their teachers) to incorporate Sanskrit
Wikipedia as part of their teaching programs. It will help energise the
Sanskrit community and projects - and will make Sanskrit learning so much
more fun. Wikisource was discussed as a high-potential project. Nitika
and Shiju from India Program will be in touch with the Sanskrit community
to see how this can be done
d) All of us discussed with the Telugu community members about their
ambitions to get newbies into their community and the challenges they are
facing and it was suggested that an exploration should be done if we can
try a digital outreach pilot can be done for Telugu. The basic idea would
be to have a notice on Telugu Wikipedia that progressively invited those
interested in learning about Telugu to click through to pages which would
have a basic outreach presentation as well as FAQs (all in Telugu) and
encourage them to edit.
e) Shiju, Nitika & Noopur will be in touch with Kannada, Sanskrit and
Telugu communities to help out on these initiatives.
The meeting concluded with a group picture - which is available at this
link:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/WikiMediaBangaloreMonthl…
See you in next month’s meetup.
--
Thanks & Regards,
RadhaKrishna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
Next Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup on 13th May
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL46
Only this.
will round robin all the available venues (four corners + center) going
forward.
Best Regards,
Radhakrishna
On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 7:23 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.ghoda(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this going to be the venue for all future meetups or only this one?
>
> On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 5:24 PM, RadhaKrishna Arvapally <
> arkrishna(a)wikimedia.in> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>>
>> Please join the Bangalore Monthly meetup 46 on this weekend. Please note
>> the new Venue. Hope this will bring-in more North Bangalore Wikipedians !
>>
>> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiMeetups/Bangalore/Bangalore46
>>
>>
>> *Date:* : Sunday, *13-May-2012* *Time:* 3:00 PM IST
>>
>> *Venue:*
>> Alcatel-Lucent <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent>,
>> Silver Oak,
>> Manyata Embassy Tech Park,
>> Nagawara Village,
>> Outer Ring Road,
>> Bangalore-92
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Thanks & Regards,
>> RadhaKrishna
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
>> Next Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup on 13th May
>> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL46
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
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>
>
--
Thanks & Regards,
RadhaKrishna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
Next Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup on 13th May
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL46
Hi,
This is in continuation to the discussion topic yesterday in Bangalore
Meetup.
It will be good if a new wikipedian gets a personalized help.
Please let me know if you are ready to mentor anyone. I shall link new
requests to you.
existing members also can be mapped to this n/w. So if we need a help, we
can reach our mentor. If he can't answer something, he can take it to his
mentor.
--
Thanks & Regards,
RadhaKrishna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
Next Wikimedia Bangalore Meetup on 13th May
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL46
