Greetings Everyone,
This is a small report about the Wikipedia
Workshop<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Workshop/Delhi_Workshop_…
at
BVCOE<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Vidyapeeth%27s_College_of_Eng…
on
14th March, 2012.
Rishab Arora (User:
Spacetime29<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Spacetime29>)
student of BVCOE is an Open Source enthusiast and developer. Its only
because of him that we were able to organize this workshop during their
technical fest gCON 2012.
The main motive of the workshop was to explain participants about the
basics of Wikipedia, Community participation, 5 Pillars, Anatomy of the
articles followed by hands on basic editing session.
It was conducted in two sessions. About 30 participants were present for
the first half. Most of the participants were from BVCOE and rest were from
other engineering colleges in NCR. Before starting the session,
User:Hisham<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hisham> asked
participants about their expectations from the session. They replied with
questions like: How Wikipedia works, How can they contribute, Content
verifiability etc. So, he began with introducing Wikipedia, who edits
Wikipedia, 5 Pillars, few Wikipedia policies, importance of providing
references etc. In between, some students asked interesting questions about
adding references. Then, we moved on to actual editing and taught basics of
editing. User:Nitika.t <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nitika.t> also
told female participants about India WikiWomen's
Edit-a-Thon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/India_WikiWome…
.
After that, we asked uninterested participants to feel free and leave the
sessions and invited only the interested one's to remain present for the
second half. We informed them about the session that it'll be more
interactive and detailed hands on editing session where we'll make sure
that everyone present should make at least an edit. So, we left with only
10 students (33%). With everyone's choice we selected the article on Chole
Bhature <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chole_bhature> to go with. Everyone
present made their account (few had already created before coming)
and edited the article. Some started with correcting spellings, adding
references, creating sections and went to reorganizing content. They asked
questions like what would happen if more than one person is editing the
same article simultaneously. Feeling of elation can be seen on their faces
after making first edit.
I'd really like to thank Rishab for helping us in organizing the session.
Cheers,
Piyush Aggarwal