Subhashish, I guess you have got it wrong.
Since you had asked me this off-list earlier and I was unavailable to comment, let me clarify your doubts here.
The intention to move the meetup pages to
wiki.wikimedia.in is to not to increase the popularity of the "chapter wiki", but to keep the meetup and academy pages in a centralized space for most of the Wikimedia activities in India. Request to not fall into assumptions.
Please note that I personally started contributing aggressively to
wiki.wikimedia.in even before I became a member of the chapter let alone a board member. We hosted the India Community newsletter "WikiPatrika" on
wiki.wikimedia.in because we believed in a centralized space for all Wikimedia activities in India.
There was an increasing misconception that Bangalore Wikimeetups is essentially becoming a English Wiki-meetup, because of its existence on English Wikipedia. You must have seen your request to create Coimbatore Meetup page on en.wiki was rejected and was instead created on meta, so that it more neutral to Tamil editors. [1]
The first Wiki meetup in Bangalore , which Jimbo Wales attended was primarily an English Wikipedian meetup in 2006. [2]. When I started the regular meetups in 2009 , I followed suit to create a page on English Wikipedia only [3]. But over time, at least a few of lndic language Wikipedians, have told that it is becoming a primarily English Wikipedia Meetup due to event page on en.wiki and also the contents of the talks. There is another school of thought that it should be hosted in Kannada Wikipedia, as it is happening in Bangalore. I don't see even a single meetup page hosted on Commons, the Wikimedia repository, as you say.
The other option was to move to meta, ( Like London Meetups [4] ) but awareness of meta wiki in India is very less. You might have also noticed that other meetups around the world are moving away from being hosted on en.wiki [5]. The other problem is to orally publicize the meetup pages to others. Definitely
http://en.wikipedia.org/WP:MBL42 is less confusing than
wiki.wikimedia.in/Bangalore. I am trying to see if we can redirect
wikimedia.in/Bangalore to
wiki.wikimedia.in/Bangalore so that it will be more helpful for many.
The
wiki.wikimedia.in is an Indian Wikimedia Community wiki ( although it hosts lots of chapter information for the public),
editable by anyone. There is an another restricted members wiki at
members.wikimedia.in . Anyone can create an account on
Wiki.wikimedia.in . The reason why editing was restricted to only email confirmed registered users, was to prevent spam. It take less than 30 sec to create an account and get the email confirmed on
wiki.wikimedia.in . In spite of this, me , Gautam ,Naveen and Tanvir ( not even an Indian) are fighting daily with blocking spam bot accounts, which are creating hundreds of accounts and spam pages every month. If we have enough volunteers to fight spam on
wiki.wikimedia.in , I see no problem is making it editable for non-registered users. Feel free to volunteer and help us.
Last, no body is forcing anyone to move to
wiki.wikimedia.in. Let the local communities decide.
Please understand that I am not forgetting your great contributions to Bangalore community and meetups. We are sincerely thankful for your great efforts and still cherish them... We deeply miss you in Bangalore.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
Notes
1)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2012-February/006820.html
2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore1 3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore3
4)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/London 5)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Meetup_list
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi
<psubhashish@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 with Anirudh.
I completely understand that the chapter need to reach people, but the goal is bring more active editors and not increasing popularity of the chapter.
An article in en wp has more visibility and users can easily sign up, the question which will arise in a newbie is:
- Do I need to become a member of Wikimedia India to sign up for this event or edit Wikipedia?
- Just because the chapter is located in Blore, all the academy which involves participation of chapter members are posted in a Wiki page which shows "source" instead of "Edit"?
IMHO pls post the academies in a single place (en wp) will be the best place, if it is for a language then let that be in the language WP, else if it's for commons then let it be in Commons.
I think it would be a good idea to keep the English Wikipedia updated as well. That is likely to attract the attention of those contributors who are not as deeply involved with Wikimedia India.
Thanks,
anirudh
Subha
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