Hi Manoj Khurana, Thank you for your great feedback on how a novice contributor sees the Wikipedia environment in the Indian context.

However, despite the apparent learning troubles, I am sure that we will strive and conquer... :)

(On Sep 15th)

-Viswam

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 8:20 PM, Manoj Khurana hello@manojkhurana.com wrote:

Hi. I'm more active on Hindi Wikipedia. My observation is that many people who come from english wiki to local wikis tend to enforce quality too much. Its like forcing diet of a body builder upon a kid. This takes toll on new contributors who do have good intentions and may be groomed. Keeping in view the life-cycle thing, we have to compromise a little on quality till a critical mass is reached and enforce the quality slowly and steadily.

I've been here for last one year and i think hindi wiki is showing a steady growing trend. As far as new tech like tablets, smartphones are concerned, i feel they are helpful as local language typing apps are more easy to operate on tablets etc than on a pc. Regards. Manoj. On Jul 30, 2014 5:49 PM, wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:

...

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Today's Topics:

1. Declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias (Ravishankar)
2. Re: Declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias (ansuman)
3. Re: Declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias (Ravishankar)
4. Re: Declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias (ansuman)
5. Re: Declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias (Moksh Juneja)

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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 19:09:03 +0530 From: Ravishankar ravidreams@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias Message-ID: < CAF2QyrAJdrwtBRt2SEfPZg9rBiC50-r-WvM9e9_L5BP60z1OXA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hey,

I have been noting declining contributions across Indian Wikipedias for the last few months.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/telugu-wikiped...

triggered to write this mail.

This is my view on what's happening:

1. Most of the Indian Wikipedias have crossed 10 years. Many of the active

and first generation contributors are burnt out, taking a leave or have left for good. If you are not creative, intentional and consistent in your efforts to replenish and nurture the next generation, you will see a declining trend.

2. Malayalam Wikipedia which once had 30 contributors who made 100+ edits

a month registered only 10 such editors in May 2014. The last time they had activity this low was during May 2011. At the same time, their Wiki Source is registering a phenomenal growth. So, some resources could be split between projects too. This is a good reason to not start too many projects. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource should be good enough unless you have a huge community.

3. Focus on offline projects like events, celebrations. While they are

good, over doing can stress few active contributors. In my experience, every time after organizing some offline event, there is too much burn out and people return after months.

4. Things that plague all global Wikipedias - archaic editor, social media

distractions, increasing use of tablets / smart phones.

Future will be quite challenging :)

Ravi