Hello all,

As you know, Google and Wikimedia Foundation collaborated to work on bridging the knowledge gap, and support the growth of Indic language Wikipedias through Project Tiger. The effort started in 2018, with the first Tiger pilot, and continues with running the current Tiger 2.0. As part of Project Tiger 1.0 pilot, 50 Chromebooks, and internet stipends, were given as support to experienced and deserving Wikimedians, in order to help eliminate any obstacles that editors may face due to technology or resources. As part of the community consultation carried out to evaluate the Tiger pilot, and to better inform the planning of Tiger 2.0, one community feedback was about Chromebooks and their usability, and the fact that using laptop machines, would have been a better option. As per community feedback, Chromebooks haven't been the most efficient or most familiar to communities, and so exploring the purchase of laptop devices has been considered, as an adaptation and localization, for Tiger 2.0. The India pilot consultation informed the decision of hardware support for Tiger 2.0 in India, and was also inspiring to focus on local community preferences and adaptations in different countries where the overall project GLOW https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_GLOW is running. Hence this year, Wikimedians selected for support, (which was initially named Chromebook support) will get ACER laptops, to help them quickly start editing, instead of investing time, while onboarding a new device.We hope it will be more efficient for Wikipedians. Moving forward, we will get more effective feedback or suggestions from communities about important aspects. Communities’ responses are most important for growing a movement. As mentioned, different countries and communities running GLOW, are as well making their localized decisions about the best hardware support to provide to the community, so that GLOW support is more relevant.

Our sincere apologies as the process is getting late but the hardware support will be provided soon.