Ravishankar <ravidreams@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for these great suggestions Ravi. 

1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.

Yes this is very important. Infact I already mentioned this in my second point (attracting newbies) This is what I wrote:

We must also look at both newbies to editing as well as existing English Wikipedia editors who have inclinations and abilities on Indic languages. Remember that many Indic editors initially started off in English Wikipedia and we must actively seek them out. I know some communities - like Marathi - who look for editors who have Marathi sounding names or edit Marathi/Maharashtra centric topics and quietly invite them to contribute to Marathi Wikipedia.

As we can see already few language communities understood the importance of reaching out to users with English wikipedia experience.

2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.

Yes this is very very important for the growth of Indic wikipedias. In the previous reply to Arjuna I mentioned about the involvement of Social organizations. That will directly or indirectly help Indic wiki projects. One immediate example I can show from ml wiki project is the free licensing of LDF keralam, Kerala State Electricity Board, and Dutch in Kerala website. All those became possible since friends of Wikipedia or community members were ready to talk to people outside wikipedia about the importance of such landmark decisions.

3. Developing the sister projects.


A very valid point. Many Indic languages have rich cultural heritage. There are rich litereacry works in most of them. No need to mention about the rich vocabulary. We have lot of things to do at least in Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote. Infact from the example of Tamil and Kannada we have seen the efforts put by community to develop wiktionary. Remember in Kannada, Wiktionary project is  active even more than Wikipedia. Also in Malayalam and Sanskrit wikisource is very active. So some communities already understood the importance of sister projects. Infact what I found is, we can use sister wiki projects also (especially wikisource and wiktionary) to develop a wiki community for  a language. 

Networking with state and central governments, various educational institutions, social organizations, and so on are required to grow Indic wikipedia projects. As mentioned before some extra effort and leadership role from some community members of each language is required to grow the community and wiki projects for any Indic language.  

Thanks for providing all these suggestions. All these important suggestions will help us as we try to help various indic language wiki communities.

Thanks
Shiju





On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Shiju,

Thanks for the excellent analysis on Indic Wikipedia communities.
 
When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
  1. Editor retention
  2. Attracting newbies
  3. Community communication
  4. Community collaboration and
  5. Community celebration
Based on Tamil Wiki experience, I would like to add few more key points that can make a difference:

1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.

While small communities should not enforce all en wiki practices and rules as such, active participation of people having English Wikipedia experience is a great plus. They can help implement the best practices, clarify on wiki procedures, help in technical aspects and act as ambassadors for the local wiki. Throughout Tamil Wikipedia's growth, we have had such contributors who made immense difference to the project. It is this context, I emphasize that awareness about Indic Wiki for people visiting en wiki should be increased.

2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.

Not everyone can contribute to Wikipedia directly even if they know how to do it. But they can still support the cause of Wiki. Efforts should be made in getting friends in blogosphere, technosphere, media, academia and the Government (if possible). These people can be of great help in outreach and other logistical help.

3. Developing the sister projects.

For small communities, developing Wikipedia to a useful stage ( 100K articles of decent quality) is a very long term and intensive process. But, with some meticulous planning, the sister projects like Wiktionary, Wikisource can be scaled with less effort. When these projects grow, they in turn bring visitors and contributors for Wikipedia. They will also serve as a reference source for citations and vocabulary. This is one solution for the chicken and egg problem of building content to get contributors Vs having contributors to build content. This is also one are where formal entities like WMF and the chapter can help the community to network with academic and government institutions and secure the content in appropriate license.

Ravi


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