---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shiju Alex <shiju@wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 6:04 PM
Subject: Birthday of Indic language wikipedias
To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>

Dear Indic wikipedians

One of the aspects that was raised during the discussions with almost all Indic language wiki communities was the need to build existing communities, motivate existing community members, attract new community members by increasing awareness of projects and communities, and to celebrate all the possible occasions.

I have a suggestion that can contribute to all of these in some manner. The suggestion is to celebrate the anniversaries of Indic language wikipedias. And as you might agree, the first edit date of a wiki is the best anniversary that a community can celebrate. I have collected information for the birthdays of each Indic Wikipedia. This is the day on which the first edit happened on the respective language wikipedia. (The Indian Standard Time is used while recording the date and time).

I am listing those days below for your reference,

Indic Language wikipedia	Birthday/Anniversary (Date of first edit)	Number of active editors
Assamese	June 02 (2002-June-02)	10
Nepali	June 03 (2002-June-03)	13
Punjabi	June 03 (2002-June-03)	3
Malayalam	December 21 (2002-December-21)	93
Kannada	January 12 (2003-January-12)	20
Bhojpuri	February 21 (2003-February-21)	0
Hindi	July 11 (2003-July-11)	55
Kashmiri	July 26 (2003-July-26)	1
Tamil	September 30 (2003-September-30)	85
Marathi	October 20 (2003-October-20)	44
Gujarati	December 09 (2003-December-09)	11
Sanskrit	December 21 (2003-December-21)	16
Sindhi	December 26 (2003-December-26)	5
Bengali	January 27 (2004-January-27)	52
Urdu	January 27 (2004-January-27)	15
Odia (Oriya)	January 29 (2004-January-29)	10
Telugu	January 29 (2004-January-29)	32
Pali	July 29 (2004-July-29)	0
Newari	October 01 (2006-October-01)	1
Bishnupriya Manipuri	October 01 (2006-October-01)	2

This list is available in meta also.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages#State_of_Indic_Language_Projects

I recommend that we use these anniversary dates to do the following

Organize a small wikiconfernce or some other major event for the respective language wikipedia
Organize community meetups to celebrate this
Coincide community events around these meetups (such as outreach sessions, photo events, or launching specific WikiProjects)
Invite press to these meetups and use different platforms to spread word about respective language wikipedia.

From the above table we can see that Assamese is the first Indic language wikipedia, and 4 Indic language wikipedias will celebrate 10th anniversary this year (2012). :) So it is time to get prepared for the celebration.

Happy Birthday Celebrations!

Regards,

Shiju Alex

India Programs of Wikimedia Foundation