Tinu, I sincerely apologize for the way you took my reply. What I
meant is lets not make the event look like a chapter hosted event, why
can't be en wp (unless some situation like Coimbatore happens. I
really have seen you guys working hard. A really clean site like the
current one doesn't come from nowhere. But, I felt moving it en wp to
Wikimedia.in will be of any great use. Bangalore wiki meet ups are the
places where I started from, and I never felt it's bad for the other
languages. I still think it's essential to have the meet ups in en wp.
Sent from my iPhone
On 10/02/2012, CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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.…
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(a)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.
>
> On 10 February 2012 14:53, Anirudh Bhati <anirudhsbh(a)gmail.com
wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
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>>
>> Subha
>
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