FYI First Wikimedia community letter from India http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter_...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter_2010_September.pdf Thanks Tinu Cherian

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Achal Prabhala aprabhala@gmail.com Date: Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 6:15 PM Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Announcing the Wikimedia India Community Newsletter - Edition 1 To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Greetings,

On behalf of Shiju Alex, here is... the first ever edition of the Wikimedia India Community Newsletter. It's an incredible effort, and we're really glad to have something like this - congrats to all who helped with it.

Going forward, Shiju (and all of us) would appreciate help and participation. If you are a member of a Wikimedia language, or geography, or project that you feel isn't adequately represented, or if you'd like to help with design, proofreading and turning it into something that works like the Signpost - we'd appreciate hearing from you at:

wminewsletter@gmail.com or Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.com

At the moment, we're circulating the file in two pdf versions (one for viewing, one for printing) and this is the link to the file on Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter_...

Shiju will shortly find a way to design it in html, making it easier for everyone.

Cheers, Achal

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Releasing first edition of Wikimedia India Community Newsletter - 2010 September Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:56:06 +0530 From: Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.com To: <>

Dear All,

Our hard work for the past 2 months to release the first version of Wikimedia India newsletter is coming to an end today.

Please find attached the Print Quality PDF of the finalized version of Wikimedia India Newsletter for your reference. We are officially releasing the newsletter at 7:00 PM in the Bangalore Wikimeetup.

This newsletter is the result of the ideas, suggestions, and feedback that you had been provided by you during the last 2 months. Finally Indian wikipedia community has come together for a common purpose. This is just a starting. We have a long way to go.

Each language community (8 communities as of now) has helped by providing content about the respective language community. Some communities could not join as their communities are not strong enough to provide news to the newsletter. Hope they will join soon.

Let me introduce again the Indian Language Wikipedians involved in this effort (All are included in this mail thread). Here are they:

Bengali:

* Belayet Hossain * Jayantanth * Ragib Hasan

*English*

* Naveen PF * Srikanth Lakshmanan * Tinu Cherian

*Hindi:*

* Mayur Kumar

*Kannada:*

* Hari Prasad Nadig

Malayalam:

* * Praveen P . * * Raziman T.V . * * Simy Nazareth * * Shiju Alex * * Junaid P.V . * * Thachan makan * * Jacob Jose * * Rajesh V arma

*Marathi:*

* * Mahitgar * * Abhay Natu * * Sankalp Dravid

*Tamil:*

* * Mayoora Nathan * * C.R. Selva Kumar * * Ravi Dreams * * Sundar

*Telugu:*

* * Arjuna Rao C . * * Ravi Vyzasatya * * Veeven * * Sujatha Thummapud i * * Bhaskara Rao Chimakurthy * * Ravi Chandra Enagant

*Technical team*

* * Typesetting, template design, other tecnical support: Junaid P.V. * * Front and back cover page design: Rajesh Odayanchal

I know that not everybody knows each other. But you will be excited to be introduced to wikimedians working for other language wiki communities of India. Let this be a new begining. Sharing experience from different language wiki communities will surely help us (it is already helping us) to replicate the success stories and best practices in other wikis.

So we are done with the first release. So what next?

Eventhough we cannot think of a monthly newsletter now, we need to aim atleast for a quaterly newsletter. Taking this point in into account, we are proposing a list for regular content collation and newsletter coordination. This list will contain the core editorial team and two volunteers from each wikipedia. The volunteer nominations can be suggested by the respective wikipedia community.

The role of the volunteers from the language wikipedias would be to conduit for collating content on events, happenings and plans of those respective wikipedias. The community could choose to rotate these nomiees as they deem appropriate. Please send your queries regarding the mailing list to Arun Ram (arunram25@gmail.com mailto:arunram25@gmail.com).

Once again I would like to thank each one of you from various language communities for providing the community news.( from various language communities.)

Junaid P.V has done the type setting and the template design of this newsletter. Without his support and hardwork this newsletter would not have seen as it is today. Many days he was woking over night to fix various issues. Once again I thank him for being kind with me while I was sending repeated changes that I got from various language communities.

Rajesh Odayanchal has designed front and back cover pages.He specially created an Indian language map for this newsletter. Thanks to him.

Arun Ram has done the peer review of most of the language community news. Special Thanks to him.

Last but not the least, I specillay thank Achal Prabhala for the review, timely advice, and support. His advice has helped us to move forward when there were many roadblocks in between.

Thanks once again.

Thank you. Shiju Alex