Dear All,
2 weeks back I had informed the news of Assamese Wikipedians getting ready
for their first wiki
meetup<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2012-January/006599.h…>.
Last
week we had two wiki meetup-cum-workshops for the Assamese language
wikipedia. I got the opportunity to attend both these wiki meetups and meet
many wonderful Assamese Wikipedians. Here is a brief report about these
meetups.
As some of you might know Assamese wikipedia is the first Indic langiuage
wikipedia <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages>.
The first edit on assamese Wikipedia was happened on 2002 June 02 which
means Assamese wikipedia will celebrate its 10th Anniversary in next few
months. Even though wiki was created in 2002 nothing much had happened in
AS wiki till the beginning of 2011. If you look at the statistical report
for 2010<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/indian-language-wikipedias-2010-s…>you
could see that the number of articles on AS wiki was just over 300
during January 2011. And the number of active users was just 4. But in
2011 many things happened in wiki and many online outreach activities had
done by few community memebers which had resulted in the change of scenario
for AS wiki. Now AS wiki has more than 1100 articles and close to 20 active
users.
Even though AS wikipedia is in exitence for the past 9 years, only last
week (*2012 January 29* to be exact) Assamese wikipedians got an
oppurtunity to arrange their first wiki meetup. As an after effect of the
first meetup at Guwahati, second meetup also happened just after 3 days in
Tezpur. I am very happy to be part of both these meetups. here is a brief
report of the meetup (This report is based on the meetup reports created by
Assamese wikipedians* Jyothi*, *Bishnu*, and *Dipankar*)
*Meetup 1 - 2012 January 29 - Venue - Gawahati University Computer Science
Departmen*t
This was the first meetup of Assamese wikipedians and I am very happy to be
part of this historic meetup. Wiki page of this meetup is available in
Assamese wikipedia<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%…>
(in
Assamese).
The meetup started at 2:30 PM with the welcome speech by
Assamese Wikipedian Jyothi Prasad
(User:Jpnath008<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF:…>)
who was the main organizer of the first wikimeetup. After the welcome
speech computer science department HOD Dr. Anjana Kakati Mahanta
inaugurated the first wiki meetup. In the inaguaration speech she mentioned
that she is very glad that she could host the first wiki meetup of Assamese
wikipedians and extended support for future wiki meetups also. Then
User:Psneog<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF:…>
a senior Assamese Wikipedian and Asst. Prof at NIT Silchar, shared
his experience with the Assamese Wikipedia and his vision about the future
of Assamese wiki projects.
After that all the participants introduced themselves. Then User:
Gitartha.bordoloi<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF:…>
started
the Introduction to Wikipedia session. Some of the important points that
Gitaratha covered in this session are:
- What is Wikipedia?
- What is Wiki?
- History of Wikipedia.
- Introduction to Assamese Wikipedia.
- Present status of Assamese wikipedia
- Current status of Assamese wiki communoity
- Sister projects of Assamese Wikipedia, and so on
Then we started the editing session.
User:Jpnath008<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF:…>
explained how to approach Assamese wikipedia as a reader and how to search
for articles in AS wiki. He also showed how to open a new account. This
is demonstrated with the help of new user Amrit who created his account
during the session.
Then User:Simbu123<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF:…>
demonstrated
the users how to create an article in Assamese wikipedia and expalined the
basic wiki syntaxes. He also explained about the Narayam keyboard and how
to activate it and how one can write in Assamese script using the Narayam
typing tool.
This is followed by a question answer session. The queries are answered
by experienced Assamese wikipedians. Meanwhile all the guests were served
with tea and Assamese snacks like Tillpitha, Narikolor Ladu, Tilor Ladu,
Sirar Ladu, etc.
The first wiki meetup was wonderful. We finished this first historic meetup
of Assamese Wikipedians by 5 PM.
Around 35 people had attended this meetup. I am sure for the first meetup
35 attendees is a very big number. That itself shows how people are waiting
for these type of outreach programs across various regions of India.
Wiki page of this meetup page with more details are available in Assamese
wikipedia<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%…>
.
I would like to specially congratulate
User:Jpnath008<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF:…>
for
taking all the efforts to make this first meetup a reality. Also Users
Chaipu and Gitartha had helped very much to release the first edition of
the Assamese Wikipedia FAQ booklet. User Bishnu has helped to create the
Assamese wiki presnetaion. Thanks to all of them for making the first
meetup a success.
Few photographs from this meetup are uploaded to Commons. It is available
here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Assamese_Wikimedians_Meetup_Guwa…
*Meetup 2 - 2012 February 01 - Venue - Tezpur University Computer Science
Department *
The Meetup began at 11.30 a.m with the welcome speech by user Dipankar
Chetia. The CS Departmental Head of Tezpur University Utpal Sarma has also
attended this meetup. The welcome speech was followed by the introduction
of all the attendees. During the introduction the Assamese Wikipedia FAQ
booklets were distributed among the participants. Most of the attendees
were new to Wikipedia or to Assamese Unicode writing.
After Welcome speech and introduction, CS Department Head of Tezpur
University Utpal Sarma gave a short speech on the importance of Assamese
content in web and expanding the Assamese Wikipedia.
After this Dipankar Chetia gave a presentation on different Wikimedia
projects and present scenario of Assamese Wikipedia. The presentation also
provided a basic introduction of Assamese Wikipedia to the new people.
This is followed by a small editing session which is lead by Bishnu Saikia.
Bishnu did the editing session in the following order.
- Bishnu first showed the particptants how to approach wiki as a reader
and how to search for articles in Assamese wiki
- Introduced narayam typing tool that is integrated to Assamese wikipedia
- Explained the particpants the different compontents of a wiki page
(article page, discussion page, edit, page history, and so on)
- Invited one of the the participant and helped him to create a new user
account.
- Showed the basic wiki syntaxes. This is done by creating the new
article বৌদ্ধ
ধৰ্ম<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%8C%E0%A6%A6%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A7_…>.
following are the wiki sysntaes showed during this session.
- Bold/Italic
- heading levels
- Section editing
- Hyper linking
- Bullet list
- Numbered list
Bishnu handled the session so well and in a systemetic way so that users
are able to follow it easily. Bishnu also answered all the quries raised by
new users during this session.
After this a small session on the topic “Assamese Unicode writing and the
typing tools” by Pallab Pran Goswami (Editor of Assamese online Magazine
Nila Chorai) was also there. Few other participants like Dwijen Mahanta and
editor of online magazine Gonit Sora Pankaj Jyoti Mahanta shared their
thoughts regarding different aspects of Assamese Wikipedia.
In the Meetup it was decided that the active Wikipedians of Tezpur region
will soon form a Wikipedia (voluntary) group. They also decided
to organise a wiki workshop outside Tezpur university Campus very soon so
that more common people will be able to join the AS
wiki introductory session. The meetup ended with Tea and Snacks by 1 PM.
After the conclusion of the meetup some interested participants learned
about wiki templates and some other tools from Bishnu Saikia.
Special thanks to Dipankar for making all the arrangements for this meetup.
Total number of participants were* 78*. There were almost 12 active or semi
active (or non-active) AS wikipedians for the Meetup.
Wiki page of this meetup with more details is available in Assamese
wikipedia<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%…>
(in
Assamese).
Few photographs from this meetup are uploaded to commons. It is available
here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Assamese_Wikimedians_Meetup_Tezp…
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thank all Assamese wikipedians for these wonderful meetups.
Assamese wikipedians are wonderful (Forgot to tell Assam is beautiful :) ).
With many great users joined the project I am sure Assamese wikipedia is
going to achieve great heights. Soon AS wiki wiki celebrate its 10th
anniversary. I am sure community will have big plans to celebrate it.
Regards
Shiju
Hi Folks
One of the aspects that India Program constantly works on is that the the work that your team does for and with our community is based on clear objectives, robust design and relevant progress parameters.
India Program has / is / will be undertaking a series of pilots. Pilots by nature indicate that we try innovative things out sometimes, and we may or may not always suceed. We must be bold and try them out - but we must also carefully build these pilots out and measure progress. On the main India Program meta page, I've created a tab that links to a new sub-page called Pilot Designs - where I have published 3 of these pilot designs. More will follow as they are ready, or as we undertake new work, so do add the page to your watchlists.
Basic Community Building is the work that Shiju is doing with small Indic communities - in this case, Assamese. It will show what steps can be taken to build such communities - from communication to collaboration to outreach. This work is especially relevant to small Indic communities - but there are pointers even for larger communities (including English.)
Story-telling for Community Building is the work that Noopur just announced (and as illustrated by the profile on Netha) - where we want to celebrate the diversity and magic in our community.
Supporting Community Communications Initiatives (Wikipatrika) for Community Building is the initiative just announced by Noopur to support our community's newsletter, Wikipatrika. The attempt is to see how Wikipatrika can become more participative, richer in content and more regular in publication.
Do go through these. Do also add your comments on the respective talk pages.
The constant endeavor of all the work that we do is to help community members who want to take up the various initiatives that we are piloting (with them or with other community members.) Do go through these pilot designs and if you are interested in getting involved, or if you need clarification, or if you want support - please feel free to ask for it on the talk pages or offlist to any of us.
Best
hisham
Hi Folks
Reminder about the IRC later today (9pm IST on March 29th.) Join in using this link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.
As I had indicated earlier, what we will do going forward is to publish an opening statement - which is below. We'd like to have a rich discussion around these topics for 45 minutes and then throw it open for 15 minutes for any other topics that anyone wants to discuss.
There have been more than 22 outreach sesssions (English + some Indic languages) across India over the past 2 1/2 months. We have been working on constantly every component of outreach.
* Pre-session work - building supporting material (documents, presentations, handouts etc), evaluating different ways of conducting an effective outreach, using different ways to reach out to organisations with the proposal to conduct a session etc.
* Session work - adopting different techniques of doing outreach, how do we get participants more involved during the session, how to filter out the folks so that we do the editing session only with the genuinely interested participants, how to balance between practical and theoretical aspects of training, how much information to give out in one session etc.
* Post-session work - how do we provide editing support to the participants, how do we collect their contact information, how do we keep in touch with them on regular basis, how do we invite them to join other Wiki projects, how do we track their edit count - soon after the session, after 1 and 3 months of conducting the session etc.
We'd like to discuss these. In the IRC, the following will be covered:
* Indic Outreach: How can we do more outreach session in Indic langauges in particular? / Can regional communities work to translate supporting material? / How do we provide more support to different language communities to conduct these sessions?
* More Outreach: If we are doing 7 outreach session in one month right now is there a way of us doing 10 every month? / Can we find more community members who will be willing to conduct these session? / For community members who are interested to conduct outreach sessions but think they lack confidence - is there a way we can help them?
* Better Outreach: Can we find some volunteers who will be willing to "adopt" these newbies and give them support? .
I'd strongly encourage all those folks who have been actively involved in conducting these sessions over the past 2 months to join this IRC. It will be great if you could share your first hand experience with the wider community on what worked, what didn't, what we could have done better etc. I especially do want to ask Indic Wikimedians to join because we desperately need more outreach sessions in Indic languages.
We will also briefly address the early stages of the communications work - which are the storytelling and Wikipatrika support that was announced yesterday. Given it's early days on communications, I'd prefer this IRC stay largely focussed on outreach since there is so much to work through there.
See you all there!
Apologies for sending this note this morning and not last night as I had promised.
hisham
p.s. There is a (tiny) possibility that I might be slightly late but you'll all be in Nitika's safe hands. I shall try and my level best to be on time.
Dear all,
I'm writing with regard to Wikipatrika. For the folks who don't know, this
is the community newsletter which has come out twice (in September
2010<http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_India_Communi…>
& June 2011 <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2011-06>) It's a
really wonderful way documenting and celebrating the amazing work done by
so many community members across so many communities in the various
projects. It helps share ideas with and helps pick up ideas from other
communities.
I think Wikipatrika is something that could be more frequent - given the
range of activities across communities - and I'd like to support it. In
this regard, I approached all the editors who were involved in the previous
2 issues to ask their interest in bringing out the next one in end April
covering Jan - Mar 2012, and to see if we can make it more regular
(potentially every quarter.) 5 community members from different languages
have already offered to help. Another community member will setup a
template that all languages can use (on wiki.wikimedia.in)
I have also started reaching out to editors who might not have been
involved before, and hence this mail.
The template for Wikipatrika will be ready only by April 2nd week. In the
meantime, can I ask whoever is interested to create a page on
their respective languages wikipedias and start sharing stories and updates
on this page. I'd encourage everyone to write these in whatever language
they are comfortable in to begin with. (Once the template is set up on
wiki.wikimedia.in, these individual pages could then be posted there.) To
start off, you could start with the following sections (which I'm
illustrating using the
Bengali<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2011-06/Community_News/bn>
page
from a previous Wikipatrika), and just start adding content.
1. General overview
2. Bengali Wikipedia
3. Bengali Wikisource
4. Bengali Wiktionary
5. Bengali Wikibooks
6. News reports
7. Any other section(s) you want to add
Please do add as much as you want on
- Updates on the various projects
- Landmarks, birthdays, celebrations, events, conferences, etc between
Jan-Mar 2012
- Reports on outreach sessions conducted
- Links to meetups and where to find the next ones
- Please feel free to add sections that you think would be nice. I
could suggest "Featured Wikimedians" and "Featured Newbies" as examples.
Here
<http://This%20should%20go%20on%20India%20and%20Indic%20mailing%20lists%20%2…>is
how the Nepali community did it last time. After you set up the page,
please do post this on your respective village pumps or mailing lists and
any other forums so that all community members know. Please do share the
page with me (offlist) so I can help out too.
If you would like to help but are not sure how, or if you are facing any
kind of difficulties, please do not hesitate to contact me (
noopur(a)wikimedia.org)
Regards
Noopur
*Apologies for cross posting. FYI
--
*
Dear all,
To celebrate Women's History Month, I thought it would be really nice to
celebrate an Indian woman editor's story. A short story on User: Netha
Hussain was posted on the WMF
blog<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/27/wiki-women-joining-indic-languages/>
.
(Netha is an editor on Malayalam Wikipedia, has been involved in women
topics and recently coordinated the first women's
edit-a-thon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/India_WikiWomen%27s_Edit-a-Th…>
in
India.)
While I was preparing this, I was wondering if we could make story-telling
of this nature a regular feature, and see how it can support community
building. We could do a series of short profiles of editors - in the form
of stories - covering your life as well as your wiki journey. The intent is
to reflect the diversity of our community - language, age, profession,
projects. I am going to try and bring out at least one such story every
month - but we can always try and work on as many more as we can get.
I am already looking for new story ideas and would love to hear from
interested community folks. Here is how it works. I prepare a short set
of questions and points for the story and send it across to you. Once you
reply, I draft out a story and send it back for your approval. After we
make necessary changes to the draft, I can publish it. If you are ok, we
can also look at forwarding these stories to the local media as
well. Please do write to me at nraval(a)wikimedia.org and let's start working
on your story!
Don't forget to go through the Netha's
story<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/27/wiki-women-joining-indic-languages/>;
it's really inspiring!
Regards,
Noopur Raval
Dear Wikimedians,
Here is a small blog post about the digitization of books using DjVu (or
about using Proofread extension).
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/digitization-of-books-in-wikisour…
Post is also placed in metawiki at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Digitization_o…
Few Indic wiki source communities (Sanskrit and Malayalam) are using this
method extensively to digitize the books. Few other communities are not
aware about the use of such an extension. This post is just to share the
best practices from differenent Indic wiki communities.
Going forward I will be sharing these type of best practices and lessons
from various Indic language wiki communities. This is essential since in
most cases challenges, issues, and solutions are similar.
Shiju Alex
cross-posting to reach pan-community; apologies if you received it from other mailing lists already
Hi Folks,
One of the essential things that India Program needs to constantly work out is keeping the community informed of the work that we are doing - so that this work is clearer but also to help cross-pollinate ideas amongst a wider set of community members who might not have been engaged on specific village pump / talk page discussion or involved in particular activities (e.g. outreach events) or wikiprojects.
We used to have a monthly IRC with the community and India Program. (For those who are not familiar with IRC, it is an Internet messaging system similar to a regular chat room. It's very simple to use and you can join in by clicking on the following link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.) I have been remiss in conducting these for the past few months - and I'd like to make amends by restarting, with a couple of modifications.
a) I'd like to propose fortnightly instead of monthly. (I was wary of doing it any more frequently than monthly earlier because I didn't know if there would be enough on the plate to discuss. I have changed my mind now - because there is too much to discuss to cover in a single monthly session.) I'd like to propose that we do it in the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month at 9pm IST (which is GMT + 0530) - THOUGH NOT THIS MONTH - BECAUSE I HAVE MISSED THE TIMELINE. Just for March, we will do it on March 15th and March 29th (both at 9pm IST which is GMT + 0530)
b) I'd like to propose that we do it focussed on specific work streams instead of general. The reason I say this is that - as with many community meet-ups, folks will give time to attend a meet-up or participate in an IRC only if there is a topic of relevance to them. To that extent, we could do one IRC on Indic languages and one on Outreach & Communications. I'd start both the IRCs with a re-cap of India Programs activities for the fortnight (or so) prior to the IRC and forward from the IRC - and then we could talk about either Indic langauges or Outreach & Communications.
The March 15th one will be focussed on Indic Languages and the one on March 29th will be on Outreach & Communications.
Having said that, there is quite a bit of overlap on these topics - so feel free to join both. The more the merrier! Please do also invite anyone who is interested to know more about India Program or - even more importantly - interact with fellow Wikimedians interested in a particular activity to join in. (It's quite a lot of of fun {citation required} - and i've heard a rumour {citation required} that there was actually a romance that started on one of the IRCs...)
As always, the logs will be put up on meta for the benefit of those who can't attend and for the record.
I'll send a reminder on the day of the session and one 30 minutes before the session.
Thanks
hisham
FYI
Regards
JyotiPrakash Nath
SSL-Guwahati
+919864917706
----- Forwarded Message -----
>From: Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il>
>To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Sent: Sunday, 11 March 2012 9:29 PM
>Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] write articles about Teylers Museum in your language, get prizes
>
>The Teylers Museum in Netherlands holds a writing competition: You
>write articles related to the museum in your language, and if there
>are many of them and they are good, you get prizes. Details:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Teylers/Multilingual_Challenge
>
>Actually, it started in January and i only noticed it now, but there's
>still time until May, and it's a good opportunity to improve the
>quality, the diversity and the article count of the Wikipedia in the
>languages of India, so try it.
>
>--
>Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
>http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>“We're living in pieces,
>I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>
Please check if there any article regarding Rahul Dravid in As-Wiki.
Regards
JyotiPrakash Nath
SSL-Guwahati
+919864917706
----- Forwarded Message -----
>From: Srikeit <srikeit(a)gmail.com>
>To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Sent: Friday, 9 March 2012 2:29 PM
>Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Rahul Dravid
>
>
>Hi
>
>
>Now that Dravid has retired, we will be seeing a spike in editing of the articles. A lot of this may be highly emotional and the article may take a severe POV battering.
>
>
>I suppose POV monitoring and intervention would be more required on the Indic language Wikis where there may be fewer editing eyeballs.
>
>
>Request everyone to watchlist Rahul Dravid's article on all Indic language wikis.
>
>
>Regards--
>Srikeit
>
>
>_______________________________________________
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>To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>