WikimediaIndia-l

wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

4714 discussions

Popularising this list
by BalaSundaraRaman 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

Hi all, In the last meetup, some wikipedians felt that this list and several coordination avenues for Indian Wikipedias get perceived as only for English Wikipedia. To clear this misconception, we decided on the following course of action: 1. Popularising this list in all wikimedia projects (not just Wikipedia) across all Indian languages. I request Jyotis to use his shiny steward tools for this. 2. Meetup announcements etc. shall also be popularised similarly with a home in meta and simultaneous mirrors in wikis. Tinu, please take note of it. Once we have a good representation, we ll forward important announcements to the respective language lists and village pumps, duly translated. Sundar

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Why Wikipedians are the Weirdest People on the Internet ?
by CherianTinu Abraham 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

A must watch video on a presentation by a Wikipedian, Steven Walling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEkF5o6KPNI Regards Tinu Cherian

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Cricket articles on Marathi Wikipedia, other meaningless inflation of article counts
by YellowMonkey 15 Mar '10

15 Mar '10

I don't know who to talk to about it specifically, but there is some problem with the cricket articles on the Marathi Wikipedia; perhaps it is indicative of a wider trend Lots of English wikipedia Australian cricketer articles have Marathi interwikis more than any other language. But going to all of them, they consist of three parts *Stub message *Empty infobox *The same five words as following उदाहरणादाखल सचिन तेंडुलकर<https://mail.google.com/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8_%E0%A4%A4…>हा लेख पहा. The wikilink goes to Sachin Tendulkar, judging by the photo I went to the Marathi article on Len Hutton, and clicked on the cat http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%97:%E0%A4%87… Presumably this is the cat for English cricketers? I randomly clicked on about 15 of them and all of them have the same sentence. The same thing happens on teh Australian, NZ and South African cats by following the interwiki, about 800 articles appear to be completely empty or more useless than a substub. -------- Whoever did this, all they are doing is meaninglessly inflating the article count with articles that are all but empty except for an irrelevant comment about Sachin Tendulkar. They may think it makes Marathi Wikipedia look better on the article count rankings, but it is only likely to make it look like a farce, especially if this is widespread. It may trick a few admins in other Wikipedias into being impressed and generate some fake prestige, but there is also a chance that anyone who might use/contribute might consider the WP to be a joke, or people from other projects who bother to take a look will think that the culture of the Marathi project is to fraudulently inflate themselves with misleading statistics I checked another Indic wp with the random function and saw a very substantial minority consisting of empty section headers cut and pasted around the place, although the depth ranking is very high. The depth can be gamed very easily, but it doesn't do anything useful except for false bragging and probably harm in the long term Can someone who knows Marathi deal with those cricket articles please. Thanks

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Marathi is now also done
by Gerard Meijssen 14 Mar '10

14 Mar '10

Hoi, The localisation for the Marathi language is now also complete ... Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu and Urdu are now complete as far as the localisation is concerned. A mobile main page has been designed for Bengali and Malayalam. I have been tweeting when a new language has completed all 25 messages. A lot of blogging is going on about mobile Wikipedia at http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/search/label/mobile. And finally, a good place to start localising is http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikimedia_mobile I thank Harish for completing both the Hindi and the Marathi localisations. I find the results of the drive towards better support for mobile Wikipedia really inspiring.. Thanks, GerardM

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Wikipedia Bangalore meetup - Talk by Liam Wyatt
by Arun Ram 14 Mar '10

14 Mar '10

Dear all, You may already be aware of today's Wikipedia meetup at Bangalore from the posts on this list. It is has been our ongoing endeavor to use the meetups to connect and share experiences of wikipedians. In one of our earlier meetups we had tamil wikipedians presenting at our meetup remotely. That attempt worked out pretty well and it threw open newer ideas. Today we will be taking that even further. We are going to be having Liam Wyatt (Witty Lama for many) - active wikipedian from Sydney present at our meetup. This talk has also been listed at the meetup page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore12 For a list of our previous meeups, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore Liam will be speaking on the topic - GLAM WIKI event and Wikipedia Australia chapter activities. *A brief introduction of Liam:* Liam is a Sydney free-culture advocate<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_movement> , blogger <http://www.wittylama.com/blog/> and leader in the Wikimedia community for greater sustainable collaboration with the cultural and education sectors both within Australia and globally. When not volunteering for the Wikimedia movement he works atAustLII <http://www.austlii.edu.au/> and formerly at the Dictionary of Sydney<http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/www/html/7-home-page.asp> managing copyright. Liam is the Vice President of Wikimedia Australia<http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia> and co-host of the WikipediaWeekly podcast. He is the current UNSW university medallist in History for his thesis "The Academic Lineage of Wikipedia ". Recently he convened the world's first conference for the cultural sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to discuss ways of sustainably collaborating with Wikipedia - "GLAM-WIKI <http://glam.wikimedia.org.au/>: Finding the common ground". See you all at the meetup. You can join the meetup remotely too. Please the meetup page for instructions. regards Arun www.twitter.com/arunram

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter
by Shahid Akhtar 13 Mar '10

13 Mar '10

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Praveen Prakash <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> wrotem> wrote: K. Then who is Kiruba Shankar?  What was the election process & criteria? How many people involved in that? Why all these process were hidden? Why even Hindi not informed? This is what I'm wondering about too! I think this process should be more inclusive and transparent! Who decided the list of founding members (Signatories) mentioned on this page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA#WIKIMEDIA_INDIA? And how was this list decided? How come Gautam K John (who is self-admittedly not involved with Wikipedia) was invited to be a founding member, but someone like User:Bhadani was not? Why is some like HPN who has not made even 100 edits in 2009 and 2010 to English, Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedias combined together is at the forefront of this initiative, but some of the most important contributors from Indic wikipedias are not even a part of this? I'm all for a Wikimedia India chapter, but it should be a group of all the people who are actually part of the Wikipedia community! It should not be a bunch of politicians that want to be face of Wikipedia to the Indian media without having made any substantial contributions to Wikipedia. Wikimedia India will receive thousands of rupees in donations. We need trusted people who are representative of the pan-India Wikipedia community to handle it. If this is a group of people who are meeting in Bangalore for wining and dining, this should be named "Wikimedia Bangalore" chapter, not "Wikipedia INDIA" chapter! Best regards Shahid

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Indian language Wikipedias - Statistical report - 2010 February
by Shiju Alex 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

Hello All I have compiled the statistical information of the Indian language Wikipedias for the month of *2010 February*. The report is available at https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4hBi4hJ-5mnZmMxYzFhNTYtZWU5Yy00ZTAwLT… The data for this report is taken from the statistical analysis of all the WikiMedia wikis prepared and maintained by Erik Zachte (Website: http://infodisiac.com/). The statistics is available at http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm. The data for this report is collected on the last day of the month. That is, the statistical data for the month of 2010 January is collected at 2010 January 31 23:59 PM GMT. The information of the following Indian language wikipedias is included in this report. - Assamese (http://as.wikipedia.org) - Bengali (http://bn.wikipedia.org) - Bhojpuri (http://bh.wikipedia.org) - Bishnupriya Manipuri (http://bpy.wikipedia.org) - Burmese (http://my.wikipedia.org) - Gujarathi (http://gu.wikipedia.org) - Hindi (http://hi.wikipedia.org) - Kannada (http://kn.wikipedia.org) - Kashmiri (http://ks.wikipedia.org) - Malayalam (http://ml.wikipedia.org) - Marathi (http://mr.wikipedia.org) - Nepali (http://ne.wikipedia.org) - Nepal Bhasha/Newari (http://new.wikipedia.org) - Odia (Oriya) (http://or.wikipedia.org) - Pali (http://pi.wikipedia.org) - Punjabi (http://pa.wikipedia.org) - Sanskrit (http://sa.wikipedia.org) - Sindhi (http://sd.wikipedia.org) - Sinhala (http://si.wikipedia.org) - Tamil (http://ta.wikipedia.org) - Telugu (http://te.wikipedia.org) - Urdu (http://ur.wikipedia.org) I know that some of the above languages are not spoken in present day India. Even though my focus is on Indian language wikipedias, I have included all the languages from Indian Sub continent. One of the main reason is that all the above languages belong to the same language family (either Aryan or Dravidian). I have divided the report into two different sections. 1. Statistical report of Wikipedias 2. Localization status of Mediawiki software Following are the different topics covered under each section. Wikipedia Statistics *Article statistics* - Number of Articles - Number of Edits - Break up of edits - Edits per article - Average size of an article (bytes) - Database size (in Mega Bytes) - Percentage of articles with size greater than 500 bytes - Percentage of articles with size greater than 2000 bytes (2 kilobytes) *User Statistics* - Number of active wikipedians - Page views per month (All figures in Lakhs/month) - MediaWiki Localization Statistics Media Wiki Localization status (percentage) This month onwards I am dividing the languages into 3 groups based on the number of articles. Following are the groups and the languages that fall under each group. Group 1 (More than 10,000 articles) - Nepal Bhasha/Newari - Hindi - Telugu - Marathi - Bishnupriya Manipuri - Tamil - Bengali - Gujarathi - Urdu - Malayalam Group 2 (More than 1,000 articles) - Kannada - Sanskrit - Nepali - Burmese - Sinhala - Pali - Bhojpuri - Punjabi Group 3 (Less than 1,000 articles) - Odia (Oriya) - Kashmiri - Sindhi - Assamese See the PDF at https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4hBi4hJ-5mnZmMxYzFhNTYtZWU5Yy00ZTAwLT… details. You can make your own analysis and conclusions after going through each topic in the PDF. I may publish my analysis in my blog after some time. Last month's analysis is available here http://shijualex.blogspot.com/2010/02/indian-language-wikipedias-statistics… The question for this month is : Question for 2010 February: *Which is the first Indian language Wikipedia that has crossed 10,000 articles milestone?* Support your answer with sufficient references. Please reply to this mail so that we will have fruitful discussion regrading this topic. I hope this initiative will improve the interaction between different Indian Language Wikipedias and wikipedians. We (Malayalam Wikipedians - http://ml.wikipedia.org) are maintaining a similar comparison study of the major Indian Language wikipedias for the past two years. This study has helped us to understand the status of Malayalam Wikipedia as compared to other Indian Language Wikipedias. I hope this report will help other Indian language wikipedias also. Let me know in case there are any issues. Regards Shiju Alex

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiMeetup - Bangalore -12
by CherianTinu Abraham 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

Oops. The correct date is* March 14th, Sunday. * Sorry for the confusion. Thanks Anirudh for pointing it out. Regards Tinu Cherian On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:03 PM, anirudhsbh (wiki) wrote: > 10:03 PM anirudhsbh: Hi Tinu. Did you mean that the meet up would be on > March 14, or March 12 (that is, tomorrow)? >

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 18
by Sainu 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

I wish to attend the meeting. What are the procedures for this? (Any registration needed) Sainu CEO CYBROSYS Technologies Sent from my BlackBerry® Bold -----Original Message----- From: wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:50:25 To: <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 18 Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikimediaindia-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: WikiMeetup - Bangalore -12 (CherianTinu Abraham) 2. Re: WikiMeetup - Bangalore -12 (CherianTinu Abraham) 3. Clarification, Apology and Plans. (Kiruba @ Kiruba.com) 4. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (Shahid Akhtar) 5. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (Gautam John) 6. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (Srikanth Lakshmanan) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:38:11 +0530 From: CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiMeetup - Bangalore -12 To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <3b6306b91003110808q17f85e15q9aa350a6ca9bf02c(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Since there was no consensus, we are keeping the date as same on march 12 Please try to come. Regards Tinu Cherian On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 2:44 PM, CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com>wrote: > Based on the request, I have created a poll at * > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore12*for both the dates. > *Please vote before march 8th *so that the logistics and other stuff can > be planned. > > Regards > Tinu Cherian > > > On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 5:13 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> +1. >> >> On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline(a)gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore12 >>> >>> I suggest to reschedule this wiki meetup to* March 21*. The reason is, a >>> long weekend is coming during the March second week since Ugadi<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugadi>is falling on March 16 (Tuesday). >>> >>> Many Wikians might travel to their home town during that time. >>> >>> >>> Shiju >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list >>> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l >>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> Regards >> Srikanth.L >> http://j.mp/SrikanthL >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list >> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20100311/… ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:14:41 +0530 From: CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiMeetup - Bangalore -12 To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <3b6306b91003110844x19f41f89oe509c951470b831e(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Oops. The correct date is* March 14th, Sunday. * Sorry for the confusion. Thanks Anirudh for pointing it out. Regards Tinu Cherian On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:03 PM, anirudhsbh (wiki) wrote: > 10:03 PM anirudhsbh: Hi Tinu. Did you mean that the meet up would be on > March 14, or March 12 (that is, tomorrow)? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20100311/… ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:26:05 +0530 From: "Kiruba @ Kiruba.com" <kiruba(a)kiruba.com> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Clarification, Apology and Plans. To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <f27636d31003112056y3bc1e702me0bff8950587c023(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hello team, Its great to see that there has been some concrete efforts to establish the Indian Chapter of Wikimedia Foundation. After many years of repeated efforts, its good to see that we are close to fruitition. There is a strong team with diverse background and rich involvement in Wikipedia working on this. While I was initially part of this effort, I'm no longer involved with the formation of the foundation. There are times I overran myself in the assumption that Foundation formation time could happen sooner and assumed I'd be part of the board and hence a Director (designate) without realizing the really long gestation period it takes to set up the foudation or the confusion it would cause. In this regard, I apologise to the entire Wikipedia India community. I will continue to be associated with helping out with Wikipedia outreach and the concept of Open Knowledge on a personal level. This year, I'll help in organizing Creative Commons Salon (bringing in artists who believe in open creativity), Wikipedia Academy ( to teach people who interested in contributing but dont know how) and WikiCamp (an unconference that will aim to tap into the concept of collective wisdom using wikis, and not just Wikipedia). I recently published a book 'Wikipedia : A beginners' Guide' which is completely on a CC license. I seek help in translating this into mulitple Indian languages and freely distribute this to school libraries in towns and villages. Any help in this regard would be highly welcome. All these activies are done as a volunteer without assuming any formal positions and look forward to contributing actively. I can be reached at 98415 97744 and at Kiruba(a)Kiruba.com. Thanks in advance. -- Regards, Kiruba Shankar Cell: +91-0-98415 97744 Email: Kiruba(a)Kiruba.com Personal Blog: http://Kiruba.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/kiruba Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/kiruba -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20100312/… ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: 12 Mar 2010 07:17:04 -0000 From: "Shahid Akhtar" <mohd.shahid_akhtar(a)rediffmail.com> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter To: <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Message-ID: <20100312071704.1497.qmail(a)f6mail-144-200.rediffmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Praveen Prakash <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> wrotem> wrote: K. Then who is Kiruba Shankar?  What was the election process & criteria? How many people involved in that? Why all these process were hidden? Why even Hindi not informed? This is what I'm wondering about too! I think this process should be more inclusive and transparent! Who decided the list of founding members (Signatories) mentioned on this page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA#WIKIMEDIA_INDIA? And how was this list decided? How come Gautam K John (who is self-admittedly not involved with Wikipedia) was invited to be a founding member, but someone like User:Bhadani was not? Why is some like HPN who has not made even 100 edits in 2009 and 2010 to English, Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedias combined together is at the forefront of this initiative, but some of the most important contributors from Indic wikipedias are not even a part of this? I'm all for a Wikimedia India chapter, but it should be a group of all the people who are actually part of the Wikipedia community! It should not be a bunch of politicians that want to be face of Wikipedia to the Indian media without having made any substantial contributions to Wikipedia. Wikimedia India will receive thousands of rupees in donations. We need trusted people who are representative of the pan-India Wikipedia community to handle it. If this is a group of people who are meeting in Bangalore for wining and dining, this should be named "Wikimedia Bangalore" chapter, not "Wikipedia INDIA" chapter! Best regards Shahid -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20100312/… ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:04:20 +0530 From: Gautam John <gautam(a)prathambooks.org> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <b7b2abbc1003112334t2243be6et90b9f79f4f8a445a(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hello Shahid and Praveen: > Who decided the list of founding members (Signatories) mentioned on this page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA#WIKIMEDIA_INDIA? And how was this list decided? How come Gautam K John (who is self-admittedly not involved with Wikipedia) was invited to be a founding member, but someone like User:Bhadani was not? It's a fair point you raise. The group arose out of those who had shown a previous communicated interest in being part of a local chapter formation. It wasn't a secretly selected group but one that came together basis a common and communicated cause. As for me, yes, I am not a Wikipedian and I accept that criticism. However, if I may make a point. An organization needs representation not just from within its own community but also from those outside who share the vision and the philosophy. > I'm all for a Wikimedia India chapter, but it should be a group of all the people who are actually part of the Wikipedia community! It should not be a bunch of politicians that want to be face of Wikipedia to the Indian media without having made any substantial contributions to Wikipedia. Would you say that of everyone who has been so kind as to spare immense amounts of time and put in much effort to get it to this stage? > Wikimedia India will receive thousands of rupees in donations. We need trusted people who are representative of the pan-India Wikipedia community to handle it. Yes. It will. Which is why we need you and everyone else in the community to hold the organization accountable. There have been previous efforts at getting this organization started - the need of the hour was getting it up and running. I think it'd be great if we could do that. Thank you. Best, Gautam ________ http://social.prathambooks.org/ ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:20:02 +0530 From: Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <60f4e09a1003112350y6039266ctcc1e2934baa1264d(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Shahid Akhtar < mohd.shahid_akhtar(a)rediffmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Praveen Prakash <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > K. Then who is Kiruba Shankar? What was the election process & criteria? >> How many people involved in that? Why all these process were hidden? Why >> even Hindi not informed? >> > > This is what I'm wondering about too! I think this process should be more > inclusive and transparent! > > I'm all for a Wikimedia India chapter, but it should be a group of all the > people who are actually part of the Wikipedia community! It should not be a > bunch of politicians that want to be face of Wikipedia to the Indian media > without having made any substantial contributions to Wikipedia. > > Wikimedia India will receive thousands of rupees in donations. We need > trusted people who are representative of the pan-India Wikipedia community > to handle it. > > If this is a group of people who are meeting in Bangalore for wining and > dining, this should be named "Wikimedia Bangalore" chapter, not "Wikipedia > INDIA" chapter! > *My Few paisas.* As to my understanding after reading the MoA, there are no special privileges to founding members apart from not requiring to "apply for membership".[Authors can clarify if my understanding is not right] I suppose there would be an election after the formation and only the elected persons will have additional privileges than a normal member. So in that sense, who starts it really doesn't matter. I dont know why people are cribbing its secret / closed group when meta was up all the while. Did anyone make a point to edit any of the meta pages and was it left undiscussed / discarded? No one stopped anyone from doing that. Trust is not measured in terms of edit count.Showing up on the day and commitment in real world is also required and I guess the people who signed the MoA did that. I agree with pan-India comment but again elections would happen I guess and as i already mentioned "founding members" dont get any extra privileges. Probably some clause can be added to include regional / linugual EC members.I would add that right away to discussion page. Sorry i take the wine and dine comment too seriously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MBL is not about wine and dine. Please go through the pages to see what was going on the meetings. -- Regards Srikanth.L http://j.mp/SrikanthL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20100312/… ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l End of Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 18 ************************************************

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Wikimedia India Chapter
by Achal Prabhala 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

Brother Shahid, thanks for your comments, but for the record (and for any other Indian Wikipedians who want to get things off their chest like he did) please direct your criticism at me in the future, not the folks who have worked incredibly hard over the last year to fashion the bye-laws you see on Meta. I've been on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation since its inception, towards the end of 2006. Like you, I'm an admirer and supporter of the mission of Wikipedia, and of the work of the Wikimedia Foundation. Over time, and with much subsequent interest from various people within Wikimedia, it became clear that the lack of an Indian chapter was an obstacle. An obstacle for Wikipedians like you; an obstacle that prevented people in India from doing everything they could to help Wikipedia grow. As there were several Wikipedians who wanted to form a chapter but were seemingly unable to, between 2008 and 2009, I contacted anyone who had previously expressed an interest in setting up an Indian chapter. These are people who had interacted here on WikimediaIndia-l, and also on meta, or who had written in to Cary Bass at the Wikimedia Foundation in his capacity as volunteer coordinator. The folks whose names you now see on the Indian chapter bye-laws are those who stepped up from among a vast list to give roughly one year of their time - a couple of hours a day, several hours a week, to make this happen. Was the process perfect? No. But was it a fair process, given the options and constraints? Yes. Is the group of people that drafted the MoA perfectly representative of the Indian Wikipedian community? No. But are they as representative as was possible? Yes. Personally (and everyone who has been associated with the Indian chapter will agree) I don't believe we have enough Wikipedians from North India, or North-East India; I also don't believe we have enough female Indian Wikipedians on board. This is a pity; but this is also an opportunity, as long as it's stated upfront - as I have in several emails to this list before - for both increasing membership to the chapter from specific regions and from women, and for reconstituting the legally required stewards of this process from time to time with appropriately representative members. I appreciate you pointing out the flaws. But I don't appreciate you assuming that no one had considered these flaws before. And I would appreciate you participating in a manner that can correct the imbalances that exist in the ensuing Wikimedia India chapter, now and later. The process, as you will understand, is complicated and there have been several ups and downs. ChapCom (the Chapters Committee) has stringent requirements; Indian tax law is complicated and rigorous to say the least. This process also required money to host people from various different cities in one place for a meeting, to hire an accountant, to get constant legal and tax advice - and the organisation that stepped up to fill this gap is a new and vibrant non-profit called the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org). We're now at that lucky stage when our rules comply with everyone concerned. What the rules need, however, is your input. Now, while I appreciate your concern and criticism, can I ask you in turn, why it is so easy to lash out with no restraint and so hard to actually contribute positively? I don't see your input on the India strategy (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/India). I can't see your input on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_India/MoA). And this is despite numerous messages, announcements and entreaties for contribution. Everything I've written here in this email, I've written before to WikimediaIndia-l, so this is not new, but you don't seem to have been reading your messages. And you must start doing so. There are several thousands of Wikipedians in India who want to help, and not all of them are prolific editors, indeed some of them help in other ways, and we should welcome them all, while realising the invaluable role that editors play in making this thing we love. You are scaring them away - and I am pointing this out because I don't think you want to; you wouldn't be on this list if you didn't want to help make Wikimedia better. I ask that you please join us in this exciting new phase for Wikimedia in India. Like you, I plan to apply for membership of the society as soon as the India chapter commences, and like you - I hope - I plan to submit my ideas on what the India chapter should do. Perhaps we will even meet in person. I'm actually very fond of wining and dining, and it would be my pleasure to show you some hospitality in the Wikimedia way: I promise to buy you a plate of idlis and a glass of water the next time we're in the same city. Best wishes, Achal

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