Hey folks
The next India Program IRC (2nd for April) is scheduled for Thursday 19th
April at 9 p.m. IST. Do join us using this link:
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.
We'll be discussing Outreach, Communications and Education in this one.
Here is what we plan to discuss this time:
*Outreach*
Over the past few months we have conducted several outreach sessions and
have been able to curate outreach standard presentation decks, best
practices and tips. Now we want to assist community members in
adopting/adapting these to conduct effective outreach sessions in their
respective cities/languages. We'll be soon working on 2 aspects for
increasing the number of outreach sessions we are doing on Indic languages
but we need your help on this:
1. Start translating outreach supporting documents to Indic languages - To
start with we want Indic language community members to help us translate
outreach documents and presentations to Indic languages.
2. Create opportunities for Indic outreach - We have been mailing/calling a
lot of institutes to organize a Wikipedia session (see list
here<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Corresponden…>)[1]
in their regional language but we have not able to get as many outreach
sessions as we'd like since they feel more comfortable corresponding in
their own regional language. We want help from Indic langauge editors who
are interested to do more outreach in their regional languages/cities to
help us reach out to these institutes.
I'd request all the Indic language editors who want to help us out on
either of the two points mentioned above to show up on the IRC or write to
us offlist since we'll be discussing ways of doing effective outreach in
regional languages.
*Communications:* *Wikipatrika:*
6 communities (Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali,Odia, Telugu ) have
already created Wikipatrika pages on their respective Wikipedias. The new
template for Wikipatrika is up
here<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2012-05/Community_News>.[2]
In tomorrow's outreach, we could discuss ideas and suggestions to make
Wikipatrika more useful. We could also discuss any problems that community
members maybe facing.
*Communications:* *Odia Social Media pilot:*
As proposed earlier,
here's<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media>[3]
the social media pilot to support the Odia community members. The end
result of this pilot is to attract more newbies and introduce them to the
Wikiverse. This pilot is to try out effective messaging strategies to use a
platform like Facebook optimally and try to recruit more editors to the
Odia Wikipedia. The most important nuance is that we have built a draft
social media messaging strategy and plan to work closely with the Odia
community to implement it - through the community members. We hope to
discuss this plan and get your inputs on it.
As always, the first 45 minutes will be focused on these and the last 15
minutes will be open to any other topic.
Hope you all can join us.
(For those who can't join, the logs will be put up the next morning at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/IRC_meeting_2012-04-19
Thanks
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Corresponden…
[2] http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2012-05/Community_News
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media
--
Noopur Raval
Hey folks,
The Tamil Wikimedia Contest organized by User: Sodabottle and other members
of the Tamil community recently got over. As you are all aware, it
generated over 15,000 media files and got over 250 new contributors to
Commons. A detailed report was published at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Tamil_Wikimedians/TamilWiki_Media_Con…
There's also a blog post that we've been working on that takes a peek at
TWMC behind the scenes with inputs from the organizing team. It might be
really useful to any community planning to conduct a similar events in
future. You can read the post here:
http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/04/17/postcard-from-the-tamil-community/.
It's a great story of how an off-the-cuff conversation between 2 editors
resulted in a massive community wide initiative - with participation of the
Tamil community (and other communities) from across the world, the kind of
intense efforts, the use of technology enablers and last - and most
certainly not the least - some fantastic images (a sample of which can be
seen at http://www.tawp.in/r/33zx) - which have now been used to create or
improve articles (6122 on Tamil Wiktionary, 1659 on Tamil Wikipedia and
more).
Do go through the story and add comments. Please also share it with
others. Don't forget to use the images to improve articles on your
Wikipedia! (They are all available on Commons at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:TamilWiki_Media_Contest)
I am thankful to Natkeeran for the wonderful story idea and to Sodabottle,
Logicwiki and others for your inputs, insights and times!
Regards
Noopur
--
Noopur Raval
Hi Folks
Reminder about the IRC today (9pm IST on Thursday April 5th) Do join us using this link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.
Here is what we would like to discuss today - which we shall do for the first 45 minutes and then throw it open for 15 minutes for any other topics that anyone wants to discuss related to India Program.
You may have noticed that we are increasing our emphasis on Wikisource. Please see Shiju's post on using simple technology to support digitazation (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Digitization_o…) and Noopur's story of the Gujarati Wikisource (http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/04/04/realizing-the-dreams-of-communities-3-y…)
In addition, Shiju has been engaged with other communities on how to start or accelerate their respective language Wikisources.
Wikisource has some very important characteristics that make it attractive.
It's a (relatively) easier way for newbies to start contributing than the respective Wikipedia
It's a great way to reach out to language lovers - and love for a language is an important motivator for contribution (on this and other projects)
There is a much lower gender gap on Wikisource, and it's easy for a wider age group to contribute
It's more "accessible" as an entry point to newbies because it has less policies than other projects
It's can act as a gateway to other projects
In today's IRC, we'd like to talk through the work that's happening on Wikisource by many communities, discuss best practices and provide a channel of support for anyone interested in joining the project from any language.
Speak soon.
hisham
Cross posting. FYI.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Noopur Raval <nraval(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 5:29 PM
Subject: [Blog]: The source of Gujarati Wikisource
To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
As you might have read earlier, the Gujarati Wikisource was launched
recently on March 27th and is now active with 1000 articles and 1 book
already. As part of the story telling series, here is the wonderful
story<http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/04/04/realizing-the-dreams-of-communities-3-y…>of
a a journey that started with one member who filed the request to
create Wikisource, 2 members who joined in for their love of Bhajans, and
gradually a group of 6 members who helped reach the 1000 article mark.
The passion and enthusiasm of the Gujarati community members for their
language is very motivating, especially to all Indic Wikipedians who strive
for the same cause. This story will also interest those communities
interested in starting a Wikisource of their own. Most importantly, it
shows the power of individual community members and how community
collaboration is so magical and constructive!
Thank you,
Regards
Noopur
[1]
http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/04/04/realizing-the-dreams-of-communities-3-y…
--
Noopur Raval
--
Noopur Raval