On Mar 29, 2012, at 11:27 AM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote:

Hi Hisham,
Could you also provide full links as reference like how Srikanth L suggested to Noopur yesterday? I cannot click through inline links when checking mails on my Nokia phone.

Full links updated next to hyperlinks in the mail forwarded below and I'm including them just below this line as well.

India Program: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program

India Program Team: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Team

Pilot Designs: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs

Basic Community Building: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Community_Building

Storytelling: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Storytelling

Wikipatrika: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Wikipatrika

Going forward, we will put the full links in the mails directly. A lot of folks are now accessing stuff directly on their mobiles.

The Story Telling and Wikipatrika initiatives that you list here as pilots were efforts undertaken by the Chapter. Instead of doing this seperately as a pilot, does not collaborating with the Chapter make more sense?

Absolutely on both. More than happy to. (On Wikipatrika, we have already spoken on this matter with the Chapter.)

Wikipatrika is going to need collaboration with a whole host of folks - and in the pilot design page, we've mentioned who all we will reach out to - and these include chapter CIGs / SIGs, for instance.

On story-telling, you're right again - and in fact, quite a few profiles are already there on the chapter site (http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Main_Page as well as http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Featured_Wikimedian/Archive). We're going to try and help accelerate this - and see if there are any modifications we can propose. Will speak to the Chapter on this.

I would also suggest including in the pilot design itself ways for the community to feel ownership of the project so that these projects would continue despite the Chapter or the WMF.

I love this point and the idea! That is exactly what we want. For the current pilot designs, please feel free to make suggestions. For future ones, we will publish them at earlier stages and welcome inputs into the design.

Let me also think through how we can start off pilot designs completely afresh. I'm thinking that we put out a problem statement about something that is important to the community, and then facilitate a ground-up community collaborative design for a pilot? Would be great to hear from anyone and on potential candidates in mind in terms of pilots? Throwing some ideas here

Digital outreach (or a contribution campaign, as it is sometimes called)
Similar to Wikiproject Medicine (currently underway in a few Indic languages), how about Wikiproject Software or some other subject (in other or the same communities)
Student Clubs (whether in English or in Indic languages)

hisham

On Mar 29, 2012 10:36 AM, "Hisham" <hisham@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi Folks

One of the aspects that India Program (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program) constantly works on is that the the work that your team (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Team) does for and with our community is based on clear objectives, robust design and relevant progress parameters.

India Program has / is / will be undertaking a series of pilots. Pilots by nature indicate that we try innovative things out sometimes, and we may or may not always suceed. We must be bold and try them out - but we must also carefully build these pilots out and measure progress. On the main India Program meta page, I've created a tab that links to a new sub-page called Pilot Designs (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs) - where I have published 3 of these pilot designs. More will follow as they are ready, or as we undertake new work, so do add the page to your watchlists.

Basic Community Building (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Community_Building) is the work that Shiju is doing with small Indic communities - in this case, Assamese. It will show what steps can be taken to build such communities - from communication to collaboration to outreach. This work is especially relevant to small Indic communities - but there are pointers even for larger communities (including English.)

Story-telling for Community Building (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Storytelling) is the work that Noopur just announced (and as illustrated by the profile on Netha) - where we want to celebrate the diversity and magic in our community.

Supporting Community Communications Initiatives (Wikipatrika) for Community Building (meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Wikipatrika) is the initiative just announced by Noopur to support our community's newsletter, Wikipatrika. The attempt is to see how Wikipatrika can become more participative, richer in content and more regular in publication.

Do go through these. Do also add your comments on the respective talk pages.

The constant endeavor of all the work that we do is to help community members who want to take up the various initiatives that we are piloting (with them or with other community members.) Do go through these pilot designs and if you are interested in getting involved, or if you need clarification, or if you want support - please feel free to ask for it on the talk pages or offlist to any of us.

Best

hisham