Wikiml-l December 2011

wikiml-l@lists.wikimedia.org

24 participants
18 discussions

വിക്കി കോൺഫറൻസ് ഇന്ത്യ 2011 - മലയാളം വിക്കിസമൂഹത്തിന്റെ പരിപാടികൾ
by Shiju Alex 25 Jun '12

25 Jun '12

ഇന്ത്യയിലെ വിവിധ ഭാഷാവിക്കികളിൽ പ്രവർത്തിക്കുന്ന വിക്കിമീഡിയർ നവംബർ മാസം 18,19,20 തീയതികളിൽ ആദ്യമായി മുംബെയിൽ ഒത്തുകൂടുക ആണല്ലോ. ഇതിൽ പങ്കെടുക്കുന്നതിനുള്ള സ്കോളർഷിപ്പിനായി ഇതിനകം നമ്മളിൽ മിക്കവരും അപേക്ഷിച്ചു കഴിഞ്ഞു. എന്നാൽ സ്കോളർഷിപ്പ് വഴിയോ, അല്ലാതെയോ മുംബെയിൽ കൊൺഫറൻസിനു എത്തിയാലും വിക്കികോൺഫറൻസ് നടക്കുമ്പോൾ ഏറ്റവും പ്രധാനം അതിലെ പരിപാടികൾ ആണു്. കോൺഫറൻസിലെ പരിപാടികളിലൂടെ നമ്മുടെ വിക്കിസമൂഹത്തിൻന്റെ വിവിധ പ്രവർത്തനങ്ങളും, പദ്ധതികളും, ഭാവി പരിപാടികളും, നേരിടുന്ന പ്രശ്നങ്ങളും പ്രതിവിധികളും ഒക്കെ മറ്റ് ഭാഷാവിക്കിപ്രവർത്തകരുമായി നേരിട്ടു പങ്കു വെക്കുന്നതിനള്ള സുവർണ്ണാവസരം ആണൂ് ലഭിക്കുക. ഇങ്ങനെ കോൺഫറൻസിലെ പരിപാടികൾക്കായി ചെറിയ രൂപരേഖ സമർപ്പിക്കുവാൻ ആഗസ്റ്റ് 1 മുതൽ ആവശ്യപ്പെടുന്നു എങ്കിലും ഇതു വരെ മലയാളത്തിൽ നിന്ന് യോഗ്യമായ പ്രസെന്റേഷൻ ഒന്നും തന്നെ വന്നിട്ടില്ല. ആകെ ഇന്ത്യൻ ഭാഷകളിൽ നിന്ന് മികച്ച പ്രസെന്റേഷൻ പ്രൊപ്പോസൽ വന്നത് തമിഴിൽ നിന്ന് മാത്രമാണൂ്. ഇന്ത്യൻ വിക്കികളിൽ ഏറ്റവും സജീവമായ വിക്കിസമൂഹം ഉള്ള മലയാളത്തിൽ നിന്ന് മികച്ച പരിപാടികൾ വിക്കികോൺഫറൻസിൽ ഉണ്ടാകേണ്ടത് അത്യാവശ്യം ആണു്. അതിനായി കോൺഫറൻസിൽ പങ്കെടുക്കാൻ ഉദ്ദേശിക്കുന്ന എല്ലവരുടേയും അടുത്ത് നിന്ന് മികച്ച പ്രൊഗ്രാം പ്രൊപ്പൊസലുകൾക്ഷണിക്കുന്നു. അത് സമർപ്പിക്കാനുള്ള താൾ ഇവിടെ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participa… മികച്ച പ്രൊഗ്രാം സമർപ്പിക്കുന്നവർക്കും പരിമിതമായ വിധത്തിൽ സ്കോളർഷിപ്പ് നൽകുന്നുണ്ട്. അതിനാൽ ആദ്യത്തെ വഴിയിൽ സ്കോളർഷിപ്പ് കിട്ടാത്തവർക്ക് മികച്ച പ്രോഗ്രാം പ്രൊപ്പോസൽ സമർപ്പിക്കുന്നതിലൂടെ വിക്കികോൺഫറൻസിൽ സംബന്ധിക്കാൻ സ്കോളർഷിപ്പ് കിട്ടും. ഓർക്കുക നിങ്ങളുടെ പ്രോഗ്രാം പ്രൊപ്പൊസൽ സമർപ്പിക്കാനുള്ള അവസാന തീയതി ആഗസ്റ്റ് 30 ആനു്. അവസാനതീയതിക്കു മുൻപായി http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participa… വിക്കികോൺഫറൻസിൽ സംസാരിക്കാനുള്ള നിങ്ങളുടെ പ്രസെന്റേഷൻ സമർപ്പിക്കുക. ഇതിനെക്കുറിച്ച് എന്ത് സംശയം ഉണ്ടെങ്കിലും എനിക്കെഴുതുമല്ലോ. ഷിജു http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participa…

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വിക്കിപീഡീയയുടെ പൂമുഖം - മൊബൈൽ ദൃശ്യം
by Akhil Krishnan S 31 Dec '11

31 Dec '11

മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയുടെ പൂമുഖം മൊബൈൽ വേർഷനിൽ കാണുന്നതിന്റെ രണ്ട് സ്ക്രീൻഷോട്ടാണ് ഇതിനൊപ്പം അയക്കുന്നത്. (ഓപ്പറ മിനിയിലും ആൻഡ്രോയ്ഡിന്റെ വെബ്‌കിറ്റധിഷ്ഠിത ബ്രൗസറിലും കാണുന്നത്) കുറച്ചുനാൾ മുൻപ് വരെ സ്വാഗത ഫലകവും തിരഞ്ഞെടുത്ത ലേഖനവും ചിത്രവുമടക്കം മികച്ചൊരു താൾ കിട്ടിയിരുന്ന സ്ഥാനത്താണ് ഇപ്പോൾ ശൂന്യമായ ഒരു താൾ കാണുന്നത്. കവാടം:പ്രധാനതാൾ (മൊബൈൽ) നോക്കിയിട്ട് പ്രശ്നമൊന്നും കണ്ടില്ല. (അതോ എന്റെ കണ്ണിൽ പെട്ടില്ലന്നോ?) സുനിലേട്ടനോട് മുൻപ് ഈ പ്രശ്നം സൂചിപ്പിച്ചപ്പോൾ അദ്ദേഹം ഒരു ബഗ്ഗിട്ടതായാണ് ഓർമ്മ. മറ്റ് താളുകൾക്കൊന്നും പ്രശ്നമില്ല. ഉടൻ തന്നെ ഈ പ്രശ്നം പരിഹരിക്കുമെന്ന പ്രതീക്ഷയോടെ Regards , Akhil Krishnan S

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[WMIN-Members] Wiki Academy @ Cochin University of Science and Technology
by Naveen Francis 29 Dec '11

29 Dec '11

Hi all, Anilkumar KV <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anilankv> and Sivahari<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sivahari>has volunteered to facilitate the WikiAcademy in Cochin University of Science and Technology. Students has registered their names in the page<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Cochin_University_of_Science_and_Tech…> . Ditty Mathew <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dittymathew> has helped to organize the event. Please do spread the word !! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/WikiAcademyCUSAT.pdf And please help mentoring new wikimedian's registering in the website . Thanks, naveenpf

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പരിഭാഷ
by സുനിൽ (Sunil) 23 Dec '11

23 Dec '11

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/FAQ/ml ഇത് കുറച്ച് പരിഭാഷപ്പെടുത്തിയിട്ടുണ്ട്. കൂടെക്കൂടാം, തെറ്റുതിരുത്താം.

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Welcoming Subhashish Panigrahi
by Hisham 22 Dec '11

22 Dec '11

[cross-posting to reach pan-India; apologies if you have got it from some other mailing list.] Hi Folks, As you might be aware, the Consultant, Team Support position is to be filled as part of the India Programs team. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004251….) I am really pleased and excited to announce that Subhashish Panigrahi has agreed to join as Consultant, Community & Program Support. Some of you might know Subhashish (or Subha as he's also called.) He is all of 23 and a wonderful Wikimedian from Odisha. He has a BE in Biotechnology from Sapthagiri College of Engineering, Bangalore. He has worked for about 1 1/2 years in business development and is currently based in Bangalore. He's been an active Wikimedian since a friend of his attended a Wikipedia 10th event in Bangalore in January and told Subha about Wikipedia. Subha then spent considerable time - quite a bit of it in Shiju Alex's living room apparently :-) - learning about Wikipedia. Since then, he's been on fire! He's helped the Bangalore community organise the monthly meet-ups, been a central figure in building community & momentum for Odia Wikipedia and has conducted outreach programs for Odia projects back home in Odisha as well as in Bangalore. He's also been helping out other projects and communities; a couple of weekends ago he was in Chennai conducting a WikiAcademy there. He is a fantastically inspiring example of a complete outsider being welcomed into the family, having his hand held in his growth as a newbie, charging forward taking responsibility & ownership and then spreading his skills & knowledge to others. He is also one of the sweetest human beings I have ever met. He is a perfect example of the Wikimedia Dream. His interests (outside of Wikimedia) are cooking, graphic design and handwriting analysis. (I bet most of you who know Subha don't know that last bit about him. So the next time you see him, show him your writing and get him to reveal your deep dark secrets!) He has also been involved with campaigns for social work during the floods and cholera outbreak in Odisha and been involved with a Odisha community organisation, eOdissa.com. Originally, the Consultant, Team Support position (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs#Team_S…) was to manage the back-end aspects of India Programs (basic accounting, basic personnel management, office administration, travel support, expense statement management, logistics support for the community, etc.) I have been looking at the actual work load involved and I do not think this is a full time role. The functions listed are essential and need to be done - but there is an opportunity to improve the richness of the position and it's value to the community. I'm therefore proposing that the Consultant, Team Support be redesignated to Consultant, Community & Program Support. I envisage this position to have about 1/3 of time spent on the back-end work listed above but 2/3 of time can be very productively utilised supporting community efforts - such as helping community building & outreach and supporting community-led initiatives. An important consideration I have for this redesignation is after looking at the specific skills that Subha brings to the table; I want to make sure that he has the required space to realise his potential and to support the community and movement. Subha will of course continue to pursue his personal voluntary work for and as part of the Wikimedia community. The one question that he emphasized during the selection process was whether he would retain the flexibility to continue to pursue his personal passions on Wikimedia; the answer he got was a loud Y-E-S!!! :-) I'm delighted to have another community member joining the team. He'll formally start in Delhi on January 9th 2012. Do join me in welcoming him. Warmest Regards, hisham

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Fundraising 2011/Sengai Letter/en
by Shiju Alex 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Sengai_Letter/en ഒരു ഇന്ത്യൻ എഡിറ്ററുടെ അഭ്യർത്ഥന കൂടി പരിഭാഷയ്ക്ക് വന്നിട്ടുണ്ട്. ഈ ബാനൽ ഇന്ത്യയിൽ നിന്നുള്ള സന്ദർശകർക്ക് വേണ്ടി മാത്രമാണു് പ്രദർശിപ്പിക്കുന്നത് എന്ന് കേട്ടു. അതിനാലാവണം അത് ഇന്ത്യൻ ഭാഷകളിലേക്ക് മാത്രം പരിഭാഷ ചെയ്താൽ മതി എന്ന് തീരുമാനിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നത്.

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Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011
by Shiju Alex 16 Dec '11

16 Dec '11

Dear All, Apologies beforehand for a rather long and winding mail - but there is so much that I want to say. I want to share how my thoughts are being crystalized. I want to try and cross-pollinate ideas from some Indic language communities across to all communities. I want to reach out and ask your views and suggestions. I want to understand how best we can help each community in a manner that is most appropriate to that community. I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory discussions with a host of community members from across Indic language communities. I have shared these for 12 languages (Assamese<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Hindi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Tamil<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Telugu<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Kannada<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Nepali<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Malayalam<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Marathi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Odia<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Sanskrit<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, Bengali<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>, and Gujarati<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…>.) I haven't (yet) got any response from 7 other communities (Bhojpuri, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhisnupriya Manipuri, Pali, and Sindhi). At the very outset, I want to thank all of you who took time out and shared your experiences and thinking. It has been really useful and I hope you found it is as productive and constructive as I did. The purpose behind this exercise was to hear, learn, and understand the evolution of the various communities - and to therefore suggest ideas going forward. I urge everyone to go through all the other languages (even if they are not personally involved in those specific communities) because there are learnings for everyone from everywhere. I have been reflecting on the various insights and inputs and ideas I have got from all these folks as well as subsequent discussions on mailing lists and talk pages. Here are my initial thoughts. CommunityIt sounds like a self-evident and very basic thing but the single biggest priority for all communities (even relatively bigger ones like Tamil and Malayalam) is community building. What has struck me from the various language communities is that everyone agrees that this is very much required but very few are aware of what needs to be done or how it needs to be done. I wanted to share some thoughts about this. 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 I would like to detail what I mean by each of these. 1. Editor retention: Like most language wiki communities we also have an editor retention issue in all Indic language communities. This is particularly an area of concern for us considering the fact that all our Indic language communities are really tiny and community buiding efforts in Indic wikis are very less. A dramatic case in point is Kannada where active editor numbers (that is, editors who do at least 5 edits a month) have declined from 25 members to just 9 members over the past 10 months. It is essential that all of us reflect on why this is happening and what can be done to avoid it in future and to resurrect lapsed editors. Existing editors and old editors understand our projects and community and can play a huge role in community building and project quality improvement. Many times, they have become inactive because of changing personal priorities. However, sometimes, they leave because they are no longer excited by the projects. The lack of interest in a project or users not feeling proud about a project might be due to multiple reasons. Some of the reasons that old community members shared with me are poor quality of articles (driven by BOTs and Google translation project), dominance of wiki by one or two members, the huge amount of clean up and other administrative tasks required, and so on. We must reach out and welcome these editors back and we must encourage them to do what they love doing most - editing articles and making them regain their pride and ownership over their articles and projects. We must foster an environment that welcomes old editors back and gives them the space to follow their passions. 2. Attracting newbies: Attracting newbies is the only way our communities and projects can grow. I have to be honest and say that none of our language communities have achieved critical mass. According to me unless a project has 500 or more active editors, it can never be said to be in a state where organic growth is secured and momentum is ensured. Attracting newbies requires impactful outreach. By impactful, I mean outreach that is done frequently and to as a large a group of potential newbies as possible. However, it also means that we need to be much more systematic about how we do outreach. This covers everything from identification of the most appropriate target audience as well as doing outreach in a manner where we don't scare off newbies by information overload. We must make sure that our outreach sessions adequately convey the passion and love for our projects that we feel while working on them. Also, we need to critically look at how we reach out to attendees of outreach sessions (after the sessions) as well as other newcomers and see that we are providing an adequate helping hand to them. The Nepali community - though tiny - does very well in terms of posting personal talk messages to welcome new folks, having FAQs spaces and problem boxes, etc. - all with the objective of supporting newbies. All Indic languages are at a state where every single newbie should be identified and reached out to and given intensive help and warmly welcomed to the community. 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. Another aspect, and I am sure is this a bit of a controversial statement, but can we get few existing Indic editors to reduce their emphasis on editing and divert their time on outreach. (I know Tamil, Odia, and Malayalam communities are already doing this. But this needs to be replicated in other languages also). It is really tough and not everyone might have the interest to do outreach but the best outreach can be done by existing community members. However, as we know, volunteer time is limited. This is a challenge because what we love doing most is editing - but the reality is that the greatest need of the hour, and the area where we can contribute maximum, is attracting and training and supporting newbies. We should also look at digital outreach - by which I mean look at the existing internet activities in Indic languages (blog, facebook, google plus, and so on) and see if we can get newbies from there. For instance, many Indic languages have very active blogging. Can we reach out to bloggers and ask them to contribute to our projects, or at least evangelise about our projects and invite their readers to read Indic projects and contribute to them? Can we similarly look at social media like facebook and twitter to promote our Indic projects? 3. Community Communication: Community communication is an area which varies by community. There is a direct co-relation between the health and growth of the community and the inclusiveness, intensity, and warmth of the communication amongst that community. Community communication takes place on mailing lists, village pumps, meetups, and so on. With the exception of Malayalam and Bengali mailing lists, and to a lesser extent, Tamil, Odia, Mumbai, and Pune mailing lists, most others are virtually non-functional. Having said that, many village pumps are active across language communities. It really doesn't make a difference whether the communication is on mailing lists or village pumps. However, it is of paramount importance that it happens somewhere. Anywhere! To that extent, I encourage everyone to be more active wherever they are more comfortable - but ideally in public spaces like village pumps or mailing lists. Reach out and ask for help or suggestions. Offer advice or inputs. Simply be friendly and accessible. Just talk! Community meetups are happening but not as frequent as one would like and with very limited attendance. Often, it is just 3 or 4 people who meet up everytime. Nothing wrong with that per se. Meetups are voluntary and the majority of wikipedians are happy to edit in the privacy of our homes and not meet up with others but even in this situation, we can and should be encouraging more people to attend meetups. People will attend meetups more regularly if they find them productive and inspiring. Too often, the feedback from community members has been that they don't find meetups useful or they find them dominated by 1 or 2 individuals. It is essential to have 1 or 2 individuals with the drive and hard work to organise meetups - but it is equally important that meetups are not centred exclusively around these 1-2 people but more about what the larger group want. How about meetups where all we do is spend an hour or two just editing a few articles? How about meetups where we plan a newbie outreach program involving everyone in the meetup? How about a meetup where that meetup is run by those folks who usually never speak up and that the entire meeting is devoted to what they are interested in? It is alarming when one looks at the situation in some Indic communities where there is virtually no communication at all amongst community members. It leads to a very cold and impersonal environment - which is not healthy to foster growth. Like plants and flowers, communities too need breeze and air and water and food and activity and earthworms and manure. 4. Community Collaboration: When I consider community collaboration, I think of 2 things. The first is ownership and the second is editing. On ownership, it is really critical that every one of us as individual community members believe and are made to believe that we own our projects. Every project is owned by all members of that community. Equally. We should all become more proactive in enforcing this ownership - whether it is in terms of coming up with initiatives or proactively participating in community discussions - whether it is about technical matters or content elements or community aspects. Every single individual counts and every single individual's voice must be encouraged. On editing, something that drives all of us is the thrill of collaborative editing. Wikipedians love it more than anything else to work together on an article and make dramatic improvements to it. Of course it happens even now, but this is something that we need to encourage much more and participate more actively in. This can be done in varied ways - but ideas like Collaboration of the Month or Editathons or whatever other idea should be organised. One can start with a handful of people working on a few articles - but one must try as hard as one can to make larger scale mini-events around this basic idea. It will help build personal relationships, project ownership, and drive community bonds. 5. Community Celebration: Lastly on the community aspect, let us bring some magic back to the community. Let us start celebrating successes - no matter how small. Let us start taking goals - no matter how seemingly unambitious. Let us spread cheer all around when we meet these objectives. Let us start publicly celebrating over the profiles of new or active editors (Tamil wiki community is already doing this)- whether because they are 12 years old or 80 years old or whether their article counts are 100 or 10,000! Let us celebrate when our wiki cross a major milestones, Let us celebrate when one our community member does some marvellous things for wiki. Let us celebrate when community able to engage in a relationship with state government... There are many reasons to celebrate. Let us celebrate all those and build the sense of pride about their projects among our community members. The most powerful fuel in our engines is passion - and we need to get more of it in our veins. ProjectsThere is a constant debate of what should come first - article count or article quality? I don't think there is an answer to this that is equally applicable across all projects and communities. I had strong convictions on this based on my past experience with Malayalam wiki projects - which have been reinforced after my initial discussions with Indic Wikimedians from across the country. In this regard, I wish to share a provocative statement about bots. Bots can and should be used to do repetitive tasks (like adding categories) because that reduces wasting volunteer time - which is limited and precious. However, the use of bots for article creation is something that I would strongly discourage. The current state of Newari wikipedia (which has nearly 70,000 articles but zero active editors) reinforces my argument. The argument for using bots for article creation is that it provides placeholders for editors to start working on these articles. While there is some merit in this argument, the problem is that this kind of artificial intervention means that the volume of work required to improve quality far outpaces the community strength. It is like a sportsman using steroids. It is not natural or healthy. It results in large numbers of very poor quality articles - which are of such a basic nature that it might be better not to have them in the project. (For example, if the only information about a town is that "Abc town is in Abc district which is in Abc state and the population is 12345 according to the 2001 census", this article is so weak that it cannot honestly be said to exist.) If a project has thousands of these kind of articles, the whole project will be regarded as being of poor quality and will put off readers.) More fatally, if a project has thousands of such bot entries, it doesn't inspire editors to contribute - but instead makes them disillusioned because they feel that so many articles of such bad quality that they just give up on where to start! There are many who feel that, for example, Hindi wikipedia has been adversely impacted by the overusage of bots. Another very important aspect I want to address is the kind of policies we adopt for Indic projects. Too often, tiny projects and communities are adopting too many of the policies of English Wikipedia. The policies of English wikipedia have evolved over years as English Wikipedia grew in community and article size. These policies are suitable for English Wikipedia given the size and breadth of its community. My view is that many of these are not appropriate for the current state of most Indic projects and communities given that the community sizes are 60,000 for English and ~25 for the average Indic community. If English Wikipedia policies are indiscriminately adopted, results in the feedback that I am seeing from many Indic editors that they are spending too much time doing "administrative" tasks like categorisation and not getting enough time for basic core editing. Let me elaborate. Something like NPOV is central to our overall philosophy. This cannot and must not be diluted. However, even if I take the larger Indic Wikipedias, it really is not such a major issue if the categorisation is currently weak. The focus has to be to build articles quality and content, and not necessarily having all the content neatly slotted into categories. Of course, something like categorisation is good, but not at the cost of article quality. I want to make an even more provocative suggestion. Verifiability is really really really important to all our projects. However, if one looks at how English Wikipedia evolved in the early days, it started with editors just adding content. Over a period of time, other editors came in and added and improved citations. Even today, as a recent Signpost article mentioned, there are 2.5 lakh articles in English Wikipedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Opinio…>that don't have references. We should encourage editors to write, write and write! References will follow. Let us not chase away editors because we want every article to be perfect in a 20,000 article project. Of course we want quality but let us take it in stages - and let us prioritise what is most important to begin with. I think many editors would find it incredibly satisfying and inspiring and motivating to start and edit new articles, and they might get it 80% right. This will attract a much bigger community within which there will emerge a new generation of editors who love to add detail and citations. ReadershipOne of my big discoveries I had was to see the total size of readership. I have often contemplated the Catch 22 situation of Indic language Wikimedians - where there is no awareness of the projects so there is no readership and even where there is readership, readers are not satisfied because of a low number articles or poor quality of articles. Conversely, editors don't find adequate motivation and satisfaction because they believe there are too few readers for their contributions. I often wondered how we would approach this problem - and which we should address first. I used to think that we should first focus on community building and article quality - and that readers will automatically follow. To that extent, I used to think that we shouldn't worry about readers because they will inevitably follow content. The fact that last month, we had more than 4 crore readers for our Indic language wikipedias<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-…>means that the dilemma of what we need to do is no longer valid. We have readers. Lakhs and lakhs and lakhs of them for each Indic language wiki! We now need to focus singlemindedly on community building and project quality. As internet penetration and mobile data access increase, we will get even more Indic readers. We don't need to do anything to attract readers. However, we need to do *everything* to keep them coming back by increasing article count while religiously maintaining and increasing article quality and size of community. I would love to hear your thoughts and views on these suggestions. The next stage of my work is going to be to speak directly with various communities in village pumps itself. I will try and make these as relevant and specific to individual communities - and also to share some ideas which have relevance across similar communities. For instance, some ideas will be similar to all communities with less than 25 active editors. I also want to try and identify potential areas of support that India Programs could work closely with communities on. The idea is to support community across languages. We would like to identify a very limited (1 or 2) pilots of a very controlled nature (in terms of scale) that we would like to collaboratively design with respective communities. Given the efforts that will be required in any pilot (even if it is of a relatively small scale), we believe that there needs to be a certain basic level of community size and collaboration to be able handle such pilots. I will be sharing this mail on the various local language / local town mailing lists as well as the respective language village pumps. I look forward to hearing your views. I placed the content of this mail in metawiki also. It is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_… Regards Shiju Alex India Programs Team of WMF

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വിക്കിപഠന ശിബിരം - ബെംഗളൂരു..
by Ramesh N G 12 Dec '11

12 Dec '11

എല്ലായിടത്തും വിക്കിപഠനശിബിരങ്ങൾ ആവേശപൂർവ്വം നടക്കുന്ന സ്ഥിതി, ബാംഗളൂരിലും പഴയപോലെ ഒരു ചിന്ന പഠനശിബിരം നടത്തണ്ടേ?

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Indian Language wikipedia Statistics – 2011 October
by Shiju Alex 12 Dec '11

12 Dec '11

Dear All, I am sharing the statistical report of Indian language wiki projects for the month of 2011 October. It is available here. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-… Some interesting facts that I discovered this month are: - Nearly *4.3 crore* readers are there for all Indic language wikipedias! This number is huge and increased by nearly 1/3 in just 1 month! So Indic wikis has huge reader base. - Marathi wiki community has increased its active editor base by nearly 33% in just 1 month. - Sanskrit wikipedia has been amongst the shining stars of *all* Indic language wikipedias in terms of adding new articles (12 new articles every day in October) and edits per article (nearly 18 edits across all articles, old and new.) You can find more interesting facts from the report at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-… Shiju

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വിക്കി കാമ്പസ് പഠനശിബിരം - സെന്റ്ജോസഫ്സ് കോളേജ് ആലപ്പുഴ
by Adv. T.K Sujith 08 Dec '11

08 Dec '11

ആലപ്പുഴയിലെ ഒരു കാമ്പസില്‍ വിക്കിയെ പരിചയപ്പെടുത്താന്‍ അവസരം കിട്ടിയിട്ടുണ്ട്.... ഡിസംബര്‍ 13 ന് ഉച്ചയ്ക്ക് 1.30 മുതല്‍ മൂന്നുമണിക്കൂര്‍ ലഭിക്കും. ആലപ്പുഴ സെന്റ്ജോസഫ്സ് കോളേജിലെ മലയാള വിഭാഗമാണ് സംഘാടകര്‍.... വിക്കിയില്‍ ചെസ് കളിക്കാരെ എത്തിക്കുന്ന Mp Manojkumar<http://www.facebook.com/manojkumarmano>സഹായം വാഗ്ദാനം ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ട്..എത്താന്‍ കഴിയുന്നവര്‍ അറിയിക്കുമല്ലോ... -- Adv. T.K Sujith | *അഡ്വ. ടി.കെ സുജിത്* Alappuzha, Kerala | *ആലപ്പുഴ, കേരളം* 09846012841

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Wikiml-l December 2011