Dear all,
Hope you are well and safe.
I am thrilled to reach out to you on behalf of the Communications
Department at The Wikimedia Foundation to share information about a new
short-term test campaign through which we hope to learn more about engaging
Indian digital audiences, primarily the youth.
Emerging from the Medium Term Plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019>,
this test is aimed at strengthening the awareness levels of Wikimedia, our
free knowledge mission, and growing affinity with our readers in India,
especially the youth.
Firstly, let us introduce ourselves- The Communications Department.
Communications <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications> is a Wikimedia
Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation>
department. The Communications Department performs a variety of functions
for the Foundation, such as building awareness of Wikimedia and its
projects, maintaining relationships with the media, producing content for
the Wikimedia Foundation website
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_web…>,
managing the community blog Diff <https://diff.wikimedia.org/> and
Wikimedia social media
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Social_media>
platforms, facilitating communications with Wikimedia communities,
informing research into emerging global audiences, developing creative
materials, and coordinating campaigns to engage new audiences for Wikimedia
projects like Project Rewrite
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Project_Rewrite>and Wiki
Unseen. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wiki_Unseen>
What is #KnowWithWiki all about?
This is a truly integrated effort where members of various teams within the
Foundation came together to develop a plan to engage young readers in India
in a manner that demonstrates the value of Wikipedia, highlighting the role
it already plays in helping them know their world better and promoting free
knowledge.
The problem: Wikipedia readership in India is high. It is currently ranked
#4 in website traffic in India with an average of approximately 2 pages a
visit. Unfortunately, according to a market research
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QHwaKUKJqxuzmfNx55KFlA-CBYPAKzMWmYP5heu…>
carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2020, only 31% of the Indian
internet users have heard of Wikipedia, and strikingly, only 26% of
internet users aged 18-24 years were aware of Wikipedia. The gap between
usage and awareness indicates that there is a large number of young people
who use Wikipedia and are not aware of us and therefore have no affinity or
value for it.
Why India?
Engaging young internet users and unaware Wikipedia readers to increase
affinity and perceived value is key to the sustained growth of Wikipedia
and all our projects. The Indian youth may be viewing or using our content
through different platforms e.g. seeing Wikipedia content through search
engines, but there is a lack of awareness among this audience that this
information comes from the efforts of our diverse volunteer community that
spends time and effort in curating relevant and reliable information on
Wikipedia and its sister projects.
We wish to engage with this very audience by providing them more relatable
examples on how Wikipedia plays/can play an active role in their efforts to
gather fact-based, researched information around worldly topics.
Furthermore, by capturing and studying data emerging from this test, we
will be able to learn, assess and improve our future engagements in the
country
Our Plan
Starting May 2022, we will be engaging Indian influencers under a
campaign #KnowWithWiki
& “Know Your World Better”
For this activity, we are collaborating with selected popular GenZ
influencers to showcase the relevance of Wikipedia among the younger Indian
audience in their daily lives. The primary platform of activation will be
on Instagram, which is a platform that has the highest number of users from
India, and has emerged as the most preferred social media platform2 among
Indian youth according to a 2020 study3. Instagram influencers will
highlight use of Wikipedia in their posts on topical content and social
awareness topics.
These influencers will release their own content on their Instagram handles
covering topics relevant to our target audience, while seeding references
of Wikipedia and the vast knowledge available on the online encyclopedia.
This will be complemented with our own social media channels sharing
content around the experiment, focussed towards the Indian audience. The
general public would be encouraged to follow and participate in the
campaign online using #KnowWithWiki.
Why are we doing this?
This activity follows the the successful completion of a similar activity
in South Africa- #WikipediabyUs, where we collaborated with South Africa’s
young creative community by giving them a platform to create informative
content based on Wikipedia articles. #WikipediabyUs, demonstrated young
creatives using Wikipedia to expand a topic of interest with their
audiences.
It is a part of our sustained endeavor to make deeper strides in learning
from different contexts on improving understanding of the Wikimedia
movement and its projects. We want to raise awareness about how Wikipedia
and the free knowledge movement is present in the daily lives of Indian
audiences.
This test would also enable us to tackle some of the misconceptions around
Wikipedia in the Indian digital space, via explaining how the Wikipedia
volunteer community creates and improves content on the platform based on
up-to-date, relevant and verifiable sources.
By engaging the 18-24 age group we aim to-
-
GET GenZ adults aged 18-24
-
WHO read Wikipedia
-
TO see Wikipedia as relevant
-
BY showing them how often they call on us to know and do more
How can you get involved?
You can create your own content on social media to describe how you use
Wikipedia in your everyday life to know your world and the things that
interest you better. Make sure you use #KnowWithWiki and #Wikipedia to add
to the campaign impact!
If you would like to know more and get involved or share any suggestions,
please reach out to me by email.
Thank you warmly for your time and interest.
On behalf of the Core Team- Khanyi, Mathoto, Olga, Rachit and Vidhu.
--
Khanyi Mpumlwana (they/she)
Creative Director
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
**Please excuse any brevity or typos, messages are often sent in a hurry*
Hello Everyone,
Hope you are doing well and are safe.
As you may know, I work in the Movement Communications team
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Movement_Communications> at
the Wikimedia Foundation as a Senior Movement Communications Specialist
(South Asia). In the last few months I have got the opportunity to get
familiar with many of our community members and look forward to working
closely. (Here is my Meta Page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RASharma_(WMF)>).
I am thrilled about sharing an incredible update with you- which I am sure
many of us have been waiting for-* Wikimania 2022!*
*Wikimania: The Festival Edition! *will be taking place on *11-14 August,
2022.* Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement’s annual conference celebrating
all the free and open knowledge projects made possible by the volunteer
community. The program will be multilingual, but this time with expanded
language support.
Furthermore, the Wikimania COT has announced the opening of *Affiliate
grants and individual scholarships:*
1. Wikimania 2022 will have a grants program for affiliates to fund the
organizing of Wikimania local events. These events could include local
meetups and watch parties, affiliate led sessions.
2. We are also offering scholarships for individual attendees to enable
their participation in Wikimania 2022. Scholarships can cover things like
childcare, meals, data packages and small hardware purchases.
*Deadline: 3rd June, 2022*
Click Here to know more
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/05/09/wikimania-2022-grants-and-program-sub…>
and
please feel free to reach out if you require any additional information or
support.
Let's bring the Wikimania 2022 Festival to life- together.
Best,
--
Rachit Sharma (he/him)
Snr Global Movement Communications Specialist, South Asia
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*We help everyone share in the sum of all knowledge. *
*We are the people who keep knowledge free.*
সুধী,
সকলের জ্ঞাতার্থে, কবিগুরু রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুরের জন্মবার্ষিকী (২৫শে বৈশাখ) হতে
মৃত্যুবার্ষিকী (২২শে শ্রাবণ) পর্যন্ত আগামী তিন মাস ধরে উইকিসংকলন প্রকল্পে
মুদ্রণ সংশোধন প্রতিযোগিতার আয়োজন করা হয়েছে। লিঙ্ক পাবেন এখানে -
https://bn.wikisource.org/s/h6t9
পরপর চার বছর ধরে পশ্চিমবঙ্গ উইকিমিডিয়া ব্যহাব্যরকারী দল এই প্রতিযোগিতা
সংগঠিত করে এসেছে। এই প্রতিযোগিতায় প্রথম ৫ জন বিজয়ীকে পুরস্কার দেওয়া হবে।
পশ্চিমবঙ্গে পুরস্কার পাঠানোর দায়িত্ব পশ্চিমবঙ্গ উইকিমিডিয়া ব্যহাব্যরকারী দল
এবং বাংলাদেশে পুরস্কার পাঠানোর দায়িত্ব উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ গ্রহণ করেছে।
আগ্রহীদের সক্রিয় অংশগ্রহণ কাম্য।
ধন্যবাদান্তে,
বোধিসত্ত্ব
পশ্চিমবঙ্গ উইকিমিডিয়া ব্যবহারকারী দলের পক্ষ হতে
Dear community members,
I would like to follow up on my previous emails (first
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedi…>
and second
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedi…>)
to you all and give you some more details about the upcoming Wikimedia
Foundation fundraising campaign in India.
As mentioned before, the fundraising campaign will have two components.
1.
We will send emails to people who have previously donated from India
2.
We will run banners for readers in India on Wikipedia itself.
The emails are scheduled to be sent between the 24th of May and the 23rd of
June. We are currently finalizing the different message versions. Samples
will be shared later.
The banners will be active on Wikipedia in India from the 31st of May until
the 28th of June. Prior to this, we are planning to run a couple of
pretests:
-
A three hour pretest today (3rd of May) between 9-12 UTC. So you might
see a banner or two around today.
-
A low traffic pretest between the 9th to the 12th of May. Low traffic
means that only 10% of readers will see test banners during this time.
This activity will ensure that our technical infrastructure works.
We have now uploaded some example banners to the meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/India2022campaign#General_infor…>
.
You can also use the meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/India2022campaign> to leave
feedback, suggestions, and questions. Please feel free to share this widely
and encourage anyone who is interested to engage there or via email with me
directly.
Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:
-
On the talk page of the India campaign meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/India2022campaign> or
the talk page of the fundraising team
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising>
-
If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a
phabricator ticket
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/?template=1188…>
-
If you see a donor on a talk page, VRT
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Volunteer_Response_Team> or
social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to
donate[image:
@]wikimedia.org
Thanks you and regards,
Julia
--
*Julia Brungs*
Senior Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>