Dear Wikimedians,
It gives me immense pleasure to announce that CIS-A2K
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K> is implementing its new model of
working - CIS-A2K version 2.0. This model takes on board many of the
criticisms that have been made of our work so far.
We will be eliminating the role of Program Director in this version, and I
(from July, 2015) am the person at the Centre for Internet and Society in
charge of programming under the WMF grant. Nirmita Narasimhan (from this
month onwards), Policy Director will be assisting me. This will result in a
reduction of the budget.
As part of this version 2.0, CIS-A2K would try to engage communities
towards an in depth analysis of community engagement, and take A2K
programme closer to the community by contracting Program Associates (PA).
Each of the five focus language areas(FLAs): Kannada, Konkani, Marathi,
Odia and Telugu will have one PA each working from the city or town where
most of the community members operate. This will help CIS-A2K understand
the language community more closely and work in accordance with needs of
the community. Thus avoiding duplication of resources and bringing focus to
the activities organised. The PAs will be directly managed and be held
accountable by members of each language community who will assign any work
they want to be done. CIS-A2K team will provide an additional layer of
supervision and oversight. This will reduce need for CIS staffers to travel
from Bengaluru for every event/activity.
In addition, the existing employees at CIS-A2K would now be working for all
the five FLAs in a more specialized role as follows:
Pavanja <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pavanaja> : Would be
responsible for creating movement resources such as handbook, tutorial
videos, etc, and shall plan for creation, printing and distribution.
Rahmanuddin
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%B9%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AE%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D>
: Would operate as technical liaison person.
Subhashish <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish> : Will help
Wikipedians create blogs on Wikimedia blog and report all events happening
around, along with media publication and coverage of events organised by
the communities and A2K team.
Tanveer <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lahariyaniyathi> : Would be
responsible for all insitutional partnerships and content donation
activities. Communities are encouraged to get in touch with Tanveer if they
want any specific institution to be explored for Wikipedia activities.
This will enable the above core A2K team members to have multiple touch
points with the FLA Wikimedia communities. Unlike the previous model where
a single Programme Officer was solely responsible for activities for a FLA.
Abhinav
<https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF:Abhinavgarule>
and Tito Dutta <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Titodutta> would be
Program Associates and will be working on Marathi Workplan and policy level
discussions respectively.
We have ensured that the PA selection process is done by community
consensus.
Announcements were sent out on the FLA Wikipedia village pumps in the 2nd
and 3rd week of August.
A community nomination was expected to set the process rolling, but with
multiple people applying, A2K team asked the applicants to translate some
of the important movement resources documents (These were handbooks
regarding Editing Wikipedia
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Editing_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf>,
Illustrating Wikipedia
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illustrating_Wikipedia_brochure.pdf>,
GLAM handbook
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMUK_GLAM_booklet_2014.pdf>, Free
licenses handbook
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Introduction_to_free_licenses_2010-11-27_%28web%29.pdf>and
so on) to assess the applicants understanding of Wikimedia projects.
The translations sent by the participants were put up for community members
to review (these were uploaded by candidates on
commons.wikimedia.org). The
reviews did not offer any decisive inputs regarding finalising PA position.
It was also felt based on visit and conversations with Telugu Wikipedia
community members, that a selection committee should be constituted for
selecting PA for each language.
*Telugu -*
Telugu announcement was made on 19 August, Candidate A applied on 20
August. As this was the only application, the application deadline was
extended to 15 September and an announcement in this regard was put out on
7 September on Telugu Wikipedia village pump. Candidate B and Candidate C
submitted their applications on 26 September and 28 September respectively.
Mr. Ravi Vyzasatya, Dr. Rajsekhar and Ms. Sujatha were part of the
selection committee. Selection committee members and their profiles:
*Ravi Vyzasatya*: Mr. Ravi Vyzasatya with username వైజాసత్య is one of the
earliest Telugu Wikipedians and sysop on Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu
Wiktionary. He has been a Wikipedian for more than 10 years. His areas of
interest are research articles, biographies of personalities. He is
instrumental in creation of village articles on Wikipedia using his bot,
which has created close to 24,000 articles on Telugu Wikipedia. He also
proposes rules and policies on Telugu Wikipedia. By profession he is a
researcher with expertise in Molecular Biology, Immunology, Cell Biology.
*Rajasekhar*: Dr. Rajasekhar, username Rajasekhar1961, has been a Telugu
Wikipedian for over 8 years and is a bureaucrat & sysop on Telugu
Wikipedia, sysop on Telugu Wikisource and Telugu Wiktionary. He was one of
the senior most Wikipedians with interest in wide range of areas like
Biology, Telugu language, Yoga, Telugu personalities, Medicine and
Transportation. He is a pathologist by profession. Interesting thing is
that he has turned his lab into Wikipedia help centre and has provided his
phone number publicly for anyone to call and know about Wikipedia.
*Sujatha*: Ms. Sujatha Thummapudi, username T.sujatha, has been a Telugu
Wikipedian for over 9 years and is a sysop on Telugu Wikipedia, Wiktionary
and Wikisource. She has been writing articles on spirituality, religion,
places and so on. She was part of the Lilavathi's daughters project and
lead the project in Telugu. She, along with her husband Mr. Sriramamurthy
garu has been actively working in Te Wiktionary, Te Wikipedia and Te
Wikisource as well.
Mr. Ravi Vyzasatya asked the three candidates two questions and the
candidates answered the same on Tewiki village pump. Later A2K team asked
the selection committee to send us their decision.
The selection committee for Telugu came to a consensus and selected Mr.
Pavan Santhosh as the candidate for the post of PA for Telugu for a period
of 3 months on trial basis. If the performance is satisfactory during this
period, we can continue with him. His profile is given below:
*Pavan Santhosh* <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pavan_santhosh.s>:
He has been a very active Telugu Wikipedian with more than 16000 edits to
his credit and has worked extensively to improve content and quality in
Telugu Wikipedia, Wikisource & Wiktionary. He was the joint secretary of
the committee that organized the 11th anniversary of Telugu Wikipedia. He
has been an Individual Engagement grantee from Wikimedia Foundation for the
project “Making Telugu content accessible”. He has organized and
co-organized many meetups, events and outreach programs.
* Kannada -*
The announcement for PA was made on Kannada Wikipedia village pump on
August 12, It was postponed twice to 15 September and 15 October. The
decision was given by selection committee in last week of October.
Selection committee members and their profiles:
*Tejas Jain (*User:Teju2friends*): *Software engineer by profession. Has
been an active Kannada Wikipedian since 2007. Has more than 4500 edits in
Kannada Wikipedia, about 250 in Kannada Wiktionary, about 35 in Kannada
Wikiquote. He has also contributed to other Wikimedia projects. He has
written useful scripts. He has participated in many Kannada Wikipedia
events, meetups and conducted outreach programs.
*Harish M G (*User:M G Harish*): *Software engineer by profession. Has been
an active Kannada Wikipedian since 2006. He has more than 2700 edits to his
credit in Kannada Wikipedia, about 105 in Kannada Wikiquote. He has been an
administrator of Kannada Wikipedia. he has written useful scripts. He has
participated in many Kannada Wikipedia event, meetups and conducted many
outreach programs.
*Vikas Hegde (*User:Vikashegde*): *Software engineer by profession. Has
been an active Kannada Wikipedian since 2009. He has nearly 800 edits to
his credit in Kannada Wikipedia and about 35 edits in Kannada Wikiquote. He
has also contributed to other Wikimedia projects. He has been the major
contributor to some projects in Kannada Wikipedia. He has participated in
many Kannada Wikipedia events and meetups. He is also a well known Kannada
blogger and written some useful blogs about using Kannada in IT.
The selection committee has agreed to appoint Mr. Ananth Subray for a
period of 3 months on trial basis. If the performance is satisfactory
during this period, we can continue with him. Here is a profile of Mr.
Ananth Subray. As he is a student, he would be employed as an intern.
*Ananth Subray* (User:Ananth subray): Mr. Ananth Subray is a 2nd year BSc.
(PCM) student at Christ University, Bengaluru. He has been part of the
Wikipedia Education Program in the university from last 2 years. Having
been recommended by the faculty and his other fellow batch-mates, he also
helped us to run the Wikisource activities for the Education Program for
the junior batches in his university. Ananth is fluent in Kannada, Hindi
and Telugu apart from English. Even though new in the Wikimedia community,
Ananth has been a fast learner and is active as a Wikimedian. He has
participated in the Mediawiki Train-the-Trainer programme conducted by
CIS-A2K this year.
* Konkani*
The Konkani Wikipedia community has selected Ms. Melissa Simoes as the
consensus candidate to become the next PA for Konkani. Here is her
profile.
*Melissa Simoes (User:Melissa Simoes on
gom.wikipedia.org
<http://gom.wikipedia.org>)*: She is a graduate and has a degree in
education. She has worked as teacher in a high school at Goa. She has been
a very active Konkani Wikipedian and has contributed whole heartedly to
Konkani Wikipedia. She had important contribution in making Konkani
Wikipedia go live. Writing poems is one of her hobbies.
* Odia *The announcement for Odia Wikipedia PA was made on 14th August, but
was postponed to 10th October as one of the previous selection committee
members requested that he would want to apply for the post. A new selection
committee was formed. The selection committee gave their decision on 1
November.
Selection committee members and their profiles
*Mrutyunjaya*(User:MKar): most active Wikimedian in the Odia Wikimedia
community so far. Admin on Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource. Been active
in building the "WikiTungi" (Odia Wikimedia user group) in Nalconagar where
he has brought many Wikimedians onboard. Active in conducting community
surveys, designing and implementing WikiProjects and WEP; discussion and
content acquisition for Wikisource from many authors.
*Shitikantha Dash*(User:ଶିତିକଣ୍ଠ ଦାଶ): OR WT admin, active in WP and WT.
created over 100K words by using a 1930 lexicon, created an encoding
converter for Shreelipi Oriya font-Unicode conversion. MWTTT participant
and active tech contributor in OR WM community. Currently pursuing MTech in
Rourkela, Odisha.
*Harihar Prasad Satapathy(**User:Hpsatapathy)*: Works in the court at
Rayagada. Active since 2014 on OR WP and EN WP. The articles he created
about Rayagada distt. been the highest no. of articles ever created about
any distt. on OR WP.
The selection committee has agreed to appoint Mr. Sailesh Patnaik for a
period of 3 months on trial basis. If the performance is satisfactory
during this period, we can continue with him. Here is a profile of Mr.
Sailesh Patnaik. As he is a student, he would be employed as an intern.
*Sailesh Patnaik*(User: Saileshpat): Mr. Sailesh Patnaik is a Mechanical
Engineering student at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. He has been active in
Wikimedia Movement from last three years. He is also involved and
coordinating with CIS-A2K from 2013 for the growth of Odia Wikipedia and
strengthening the community. He is already handling the social media
accounts and outreach programs for Odia Wikipedia.
Hope the Wikipedia communities in India will continue to guide us and hold
as accountable with their feedback and criticism during A2K version 2.0 so
that we can continue to evolve and change the programme.
Best wishes,
Sunil
Ph: +91 9611100817