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Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:53:51 +0530
From: ashwin.baindur@gmail.com
To: wikimedia-in-en@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-in-en] Status report : COTM - Dec 2011

Hello friends,

Its (high) time for the Collaboration of the Month. Lets have a look at what we achieved in these COTMs.

Last month we had restarted the COTM and decided to take up just two considering that fewer members were taking interest in it. The one's selected were :
* [[Mullaperiyar dam]] &
* [[Manmohan Singh]]

During the period under question, Mullaperiyar Dam was the more active of the two. We had 267 edits from 62 contributors. This was good from the point of view of COTM. The COTM was a success in this case as the dam article improved substantially:
* Improved lead.
* Improved material in Infobox
* New image on irrigated area by Captain of Hope.
* Some POV trash removed/rewritten.
* Dispute points clearer now.
* Improved references.
* Article sections were restructured.
* History of its construction improved.

Is it ready for GA? No, there are number of content issues. The article is not stable. Unless some passionate editor really gets down to sift through all the dispute points, ensure that they are written well in context, NPOV and with a timeline, it is not complete from substance point of view. In parts of TN, Pennycuick, the builder of the dam, is idolised and busts of his can be found in the countryside. This fact (with reference) and an image is also needed imho. Someone who is a civil engineer needs to vet the article to ensure whatever is written makes engineering sense. However, the article reads much better now.

The top five editors (excluding self) of Mullaperiyar Dam during 01 December 2011 to the time of writing this email were:
* Jponnoly   - 51 edits
* Rsrikanth05 - 32  edits
* NortyNort - 19 edits
* 67.189.169.9 (anon) - 14  edits
* Captainofhope - 11 edits

To encourage contribution, the first three registered users have been awarded a Barnstar for taking time and effort to participate. Captainofhope also gets a barnstar both for his edits and the new diagram created.

Thumbs down point - the previous month's edits were even more - 348 in November 2011. Main reason, due to interest generated by Prad2609 and RSrikanth05, Wikipedia editors started editting the article in right earnest and over a hundred edits are in the last week of November (Prad2609 was a significant contributor to those already mentioned). Also, the dispute itself was in the news and saw attention form angry editors on both sides. Considering the heat with which the dispute raged irl, the article was relatively serene in December. :)

MANY THANKS TO ALL WHO CONTRIBUTED IN MULLAPERIYAR DAM COTM (Yes, I'm shouting!)

Manmohan Singh was a different story. Perhaps people did not like his stance in the Lokpal Bill, but there were only 43 edits of which 14 were by User:AroundTheGlobe, who gets a barnstar for dogged determination. The article was cleaned up but overall the effort the community put into the article was not enough and it was not much improved.

So FAIL for this COTM!

In the next post, I shall be discussing the proposal  for next month's COTM.

Warm regards,

Ashwin Baindur
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