2020 updates[edit]
Despite the pandemic, the year has been marked by quite a bit of activity and some new welcome initiatives too. 2020 also marks the first year since the Wikipedians of Goa User Group was approved, in mid-2019. We have seen growth of the Wikipedia visibility in Goa and growth of Goa's visibility on the Wikipedia. We hope that this trend can be sustained and see further growth. Some initiatives from the last year or so:
- The Discoverer, Isidore Dantas, Konknni Mogi and other volunteers have been working assiduously on the Konkani Wiktionary project, which aims at building an open and sharable Konkani dictionary in cyberspace. A Wiktionary workshop and meet-ups were held at St. Xavier's College, Mapusa in May and December 2019. Since they had been meeting their monthly targets in the incubator to keep the project current, the Language Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation approved the project on 27 March 2020. The Konkani Wiktionary moved to its newly-created site on 21 May 2020. The Wiktionary has over 2300 entries as of November 2020. Congratulations!
- SerTanmay, YourTara, Julius and team have launched and started the Wikipedia Weekends initiative on WhatsApp. This is a small group (currently about 14 members) of coordinators, planners and active networkers who plan and undertake activities of interest to wider groups and individuals in Goa.
- On October 17, 2020, the Wikipedia Weekends organised an hour-long Google Meet event focussing on Wikimedia Commons and the hows, whys of sharing content there. Some 26 interested members participated and stayed with the event through much of it. We are hoping this will result in more relevant photographs being shared on and from Goa.
- On October 18, 2020 (Sunday), another Wikipedia Weekend event was held online, focusing on editing the Wikipedia. Over two dozen enthusiastic participants took part.
- Fredericknoronha's contribution was acknowledged with his selection as the Wikipedia Editor of the Week recognition on March 29, 2020.
- To build wider relevance about Goa on the Wikipedia, and greater interest in Goa for the Wikipedia two initiatives were built offering ambitious overviews related to the world of w:music and w:animal rights respectively. These are: List of bands in Goa and Animal welfare and rights in Goa It is thought that these issues would not only highlight issues important to the region of Goa, but also promote more Wikipedia-awareness in Goa itself.
- To promote the relevance of the Wikipedia at the grassroots in Goa, a collaborative project is being undertaken to build and promote Wikipedia pages for every village in Goa. This will mean creating (or improving) for some 340+ villages here. Fredericknoronha has undertaken to take responsibility for the villages of the sub-district (taluka) of w:Bardez, and currently about seven out of 43 villages are remaining to be created.
- WGUG has been encouraging photo enthusiasts, artists and other creative persons to share photos and other material via the Wikimedia Commons. Alongside is a digital artwork by AngFerrao, a Goan artist, caricaturist and cartoonist, who shared her sketch of newly-elected w:President Joe Biden.
- Goan expat artist Dom Martin has also donated a copyright-free sketch on Sita Valles, a locally little-known Goan figure until an entry from the Portuguese Wikipedia got translated into English and her very unusual story got a lot of attention here.
- Keeping in mind Goa's multilingualism, efforts are being made to work among different language groups. Besides English and Konkani, the Wikipedia in Marathi, Portuguese and other languages is also relevant to readers in Goa, and this has been kept in mind. Potential contributors to different language groups are invited for events here, while online interaction is conducted with the PT (Portuguese) Wikipedia members through email and also a couple of their groups on Telegram.
- Newer Wikipedians have been encouraged to feel at home by encouraging them to work on themes and topics which they feel strongly about. Some such initiatives have resulted in the significant improvement of pages devoted to villages such as w:Raia and w:Nachinola, both prominent villages in Goa, undertaken by LaughingJoe and Sharbelle, respectively.
- Appeals were publicly made via Facebook and other digital fora in the case of Raia for the sharing of photographs related to the area. This not only build greater awareness about the work done by the Wikipedia locally, but actually led to the contribution of a number of suitable photographs, which have also been used on the relevant page.
- There is an acute yet challenging need to promote the Konkani Wikipedia http://gom.wikipedia.org which has been facing difficulties due to a lack of sufficient volunteers, and a possible gap between techies and language experts. It is hoped that the overall attempts in promoting Goa-related content could also promote some growth in the Konkani Wikipedia, though more clearly needs to be done on this front.
- Efforts have also been underway to build visibility for the Wikipedia, and its approach of creating shareable knowledge, within the Goa region. YourTara has helped take the message to the media through timely press releases and updates. The newspapers have also shown an interest in understanding initiatives undertaken by the WGUG to build a better Goa presence on the Wikipedia.
- One issue we sometimes face is a difficulty in convincing some English Wikipedia administrators about the importance of Goa-related issues which we see as important. Being a small society, which has long lacked an active media and online media (except more recently), finding suitable citations even for locally-important issues and institutions or individuals can be a challenge.
- Efforts were made to encourage people to contribute to the Wikipedia fundraising drive.
For WGUG
Fredericknoronha