New subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Updates from the Global Tamil Wikimedia Community

8 Dec 2015

Hi,

We have some exciting updates from the Global Tamil Wikimedia Community.

We have partnered with Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA), an autonomous
institution established by the Government of Tamil Nadu. Wikimedia Chapter,
India is acting on behalf of the *Global Tamil Wikimedia Community *to
facilitate this partnership.

* In August 2015, The *Government of Tamil Nadu made an announcement in the
State Legislative Assembly* *that it will be partnering with Wikipedia and
will work to release various resources under Creative Commons licenses.*
Please check page 91 in the *policy document* available on the web here
<http://www.tn.gov.in/documents/dept/17> (also attached in this mail).

* Tamil Wikipedia registered *251% increase in editors* who made at least
an edit in November 2015. It jumped from 331 to 1165 in a month. During
this peak, Tamil Wikipedia became the most active Wikipedia in the world
having less than 1,00,00 articles. This was made possible because of Wikipedia
training camps <https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4t34> in various districts for
school teachers organized by State council for Education Research and
Technology <http://www.tnscert.org/>. This training was organized with *zero
cost* for Wikimedia resources in 32 districts of the state and *1500+
school teachers* were trained to contribute to Wikipedia, Wiktionary and
Wikimedia Commons. 9 Tamil Wikipedians under the coordination of
User:Parvathisri travelled across the state to conduct these training
programs.

Though we know from movement learning that new user retention will be an
issue, we have won partners like these who will continue to repeat this
training every year as part of the ICT curriculum for teachers.

Though Wikipedia in Education
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education> program runs in over 70
countries, we believe this is the first time a systematic training program
has been organized for the teachers. We have now formed a WhatsApp group to
guide the most active teachers turned Wikipedians.

* Tamil Wikimedia also *added 10,400+ articles*
<https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4u75> of around 10 kb each *adding 104
megabytes of data* to article namespace. User:Neechalkaran worked on this
extensively. This was made possible as the government made its statistical
records accessible on our request and we engaged a bot with community
consensus to create these articles. We see this as a model in convincing
other governments to release data in a similar fashion so useful
information like these can be added to all language Wikipedias. This bot
and data can be used to create articles in other languages as well
(especially English) and we look forward to working together.

See also:

** October 2015 stats <https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4qg7> for Tamil Wikipedia

** November 2015 stats <https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4t60> for Tamil Wikipedia

** State wide Tamil Computing Clubs in universities and colleges*

The TN government is kick-starting Tamil Computing Clubs across all
colleges and universities in the state. Starting this September 2015,
inauguration programs for these have been conducted in Madras University,
Anna University, Madurai Kamaraj University, Salem Periyar University,
Karaikudi Alagappa University. 1000s of students and teachers from at least
400 constituent colleges have participated in these programs. Growing
Wikimedia projects will be one of the focus areas for these clubs. A
dedicated session was allotted to Wikipedia outreach in these events and we
worked along with the Free Software Foundation, Tami Nadu to drive home the
message of Free Culture movements.

** Wikimedian in Residence*

User:Info-farmer will be working as a Wikimedia in Residence at TVA until
March 2016. Through this we expect to add more content to Tamil Wikisource,
bring policy changes and more GLAM partnerships.

** Tamil Wikipedia stall in Madurai Book fair*

Tamil Wikimedians operated a stall in Madurai book fair
<https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4nzr> for 10 days. The stall was arranged free
of cost and 8 different Wikipedians helped to run it. This helped us gain
widespread press coverage and awareness. User:Srithern, User:எஸ்ஸார்,
User:எஸ். பி. கிருஷ்ணமூர்த்தி and User:Dineshkumar Ponnusamy played a major
role in this.

** Workshops*

We ran two workshops in August 2015. One focused in creating training
resources for outreach while the other focused in encouraging writers and
media professionals to contribute to Wikipedia. User:Rsmn and
User:Selvasivagurunathan m helped coordinate these efforts.

A MoU <https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4o7x> regarding this has been written and
approved by the community on wiki <https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4ros>. From
the genesis of this partnership, all discussions
<https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4ka9> (see also the archive
<https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/4s3m>) and activities have been done on wiki.
We recommend this as *a best practice* whenever a MoU is signed as this
reiterates that the local Wikimedia community is the primary stakeholder of
Wikimedia projects and ensures full trust and cooperation from them.

User:Thamizhpparithi Maari, User:Mayooranathan, User:Natkeeran,
User:Sundar, User:சஞ்சீவி சிவகுமார், User:Rsmn, User:Shanmugamp7,
User:Neechalkaran, User:Commons sibi, User:zsenthil, User:Kanags,
User:AntanO and numerous other contributors helped to forge this
partnership and conduct the activities.

*Press coverage:*

* On Tamil Wikipedia stall in Madurai book fair.

** The Hindu  - Into the world of books
<http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/events/madurai-book-fair-a-platform-for-budding-writers/article7607862.ece>

** Dinamalar - புத்தக கண்காட்சியில் 'தமிழ் விக்கிபீடியா'
<http://www.dinamalar.com/district_detail.asp?id=1335688>

** Dinamani - தினமணியில் செய்தி
<http://epaper.dinamani.com/581552/Dinamani-Chennai/06-09-2015#page/8/2>

** The Hindu - Tamil Wikipedia invites articles
<http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/tamil-wikipedia-invites-articles/article7627180.ece>

* On Tamil Computing Clubs

** Times of India - 1 lakh Tamil articles to come up on Wikipedia
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/1-lakh-Tamil-articles-to-come-up-on-Wikipedia/articleshow/48842690.cms>

General:

* Wikipedia on massive drive to increase Tamil content
<http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-wikipedia-on-massive-drive-to-increase-tamil-content-2123004>

* The Hindu - தமிழுக்குள் விக்கிப்பீடியாவை நுழையுங்கள்!
<http://tamil.thehindu.com/general/education/%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%AE%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%B4%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%B3%E0%AF%8D-%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%AA%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%AA%E0%AF%80%E0%AE%9F%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%AF%E0%AE%BE%E0%AE%B5%E0%AF%88-%E0%AE%A8%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%B4%E0%AF%88%E0%AE%AF%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%99%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%B3%E0%AF%8D/article7654967.ece>

* Nakkeeran - வல்லுநர்கள் பங்களிப்பு அதிகரிக்க வேண்டும் -
விக்கிப்பீடியர்கள் வேண்டுகோள்
<http://nakkheeran.in/Users/frmNews.aspx?N=149980>

We thank Tamil Virtual Academy, Wikimedia India and the Wikimedia
Foundation who offered extensive support and guidance throughout these
activities.

We are excited to share these updates with the larger community. Stay tuned
for more updates and details from us.

Ravi