Dear All
I wanted to share with you an update on the work that Shiju[1] is doing on Indic languages[2] as part of India Program.[3] A guiding principle for the thinking and efforts of our team is that community building should be the most essential aspect of all the work that we do. In the context of small Indic communities, Shiju has been working to try and identify the various elements that need to come together to foster community building. This update is about the Community Building pilot[4] that was run for the Assamese community. For context, community building means different things to different people and in fact there was a very interesting post[5] that Shiju put out that articulated his thinking on this and, hence, our priorities.
The results of these efforts have been outstanding
number of editors on Assamese Wikipedia has increased to 31 in April 2012 (from 18 in December 2011 and just 10 in November 2011.)
number of Wikiprojects increased to 6 (from a situation where there were no reasonably active ones in December 2011- and including 5 Wikiprojects independently conceptualised and managed by the community)
average monthly edits on Assamese Wikipedia increased to about 5000 in April 2012 from around 3000 in November 2011
There are 5 key factors that are responsible for this remarkable growth
Strong communication. This started with Shiju building personal connections with Assamese editors and then encouraging them to communicate with each other on-wiki, online and in meet--ups and outreach sessions.
Initial push. Shiju visited Assam in January where he spent time in 2 towns with 7 of the most active community members, who also conducted 2 outreach sessions. This visit has proved to be really useful because it helped to energise the community and also helped to establish a personal relationship between Shiju and these editors (and also, amongst the editors themselves.)
Encouraging collaboration. Wikiprojects and outreach are really useful to galvanise a community and helped build personal equations. It's wonderful to see the increase in Wikiprojects and
Building capacity & confidence. In all the work that has been done for the Assamese community, the endeavour has been to build capacity. For instance, support was given to get basic outreach material including FAQs prepared and outreach sessions were guided by Shiju. It's inspiring to see the Assamese community now take things to a whole new level and plan out an ambitious 10th anniversary.[6]
Healthy environment. This is the last - but probably the most essential point - and it is something I want to call out because it is what will help or severely hinder the abilities of individual communities realise their dreams and potential. The reason why the Assamese community is making such wonderful steps forward is because there is
a set of editors with the right level of initiative and motivation
a strong sense of co-operation and good spirit amongst the editors
an extremely welcoming approach to new editors
None of this would have been possible without the efforts of every single Assamese community members. In the early days when Shiju started off, he was interacting with Bishnu, Dipankar, Gitartha, Jyoti & Prabhakar - who helped organise the first meet-ups and outreach sessions. Thanks to their efforts, a list of thank-yous would now be 31 strong! Thank you and congratulations to all of you!
To the Assamese community, I wish you the very best for your 10th anniversary.[6] There are exciting plans including your photo contest and your article contest and the meet-up and the outreach session. I know that you are doing most of the event largely independently (with Noopur[7] providing media assistance for the 10th anniversary and an India Chapter[8] grant[9] supporting you.) This is the true signs of a community that is coming of age. There are tremendous opportunities in outreach to get new editors, initiatives like your article & photo contests to improve content and in proposed projects like offline to make transformational changes in the community.
With regard to the way forward for India Program, the pilot design page[4] on meta[3] has now been updated. The next steps are going to be to see how we can adapt or build on these experiences with other communities, and as we move to other communities, do them in a more scaleable manner.
To all community members - across languages across India - if you did want any help in any aspect of community building, please feel free to reach out to Shiju[1] at shiju(a)wikimedia.org. Please also do add comments or ideas or suggestions you might have to the Community Building Pilot's talk page.[10]
hisham[11]
Notes
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shiju
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Community_…
[5] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-December/005813.…
[6] http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/05/16/ten-glorious-years-of-assamese-wikipedi…
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Noopur28
[8] http://wikimedia.in/
[9] http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Grants/Photo_and_Article_Competition_and_Wiki_Work…
[10] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Commu…
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hisham
Dear all,
Greetings! Here's an update on the Social Media pilot
program<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media>.
Just a small recap before I go on to the numbers.
*Why Facebook?*
Why we decided to go with Facebook at all is because potential new editors
are more comfortable and familiar with the channel. To illustrate, after
outreach sessions, we tried staying in touch with around 100 participants
using a combination of email and talk page messages and got just 3
responses. When we sent an invite to a Facebook page where they could get
help and inputs on how to edit, we got 300 signed up in less than 3 days.
Also, social media requires relatively lower investments of time and
resources from our community and many Internet savvy people are comfortable
using it. The Social Media program was started in order to effectively
utilize platforms like Facebook and community groups there (like the Odia
Wikipedia group, Kannada Wikipedia group) in order to engage more new
editors and give them basic lessons on editing.
However, running a Facebook group is very different from using Facebook for
personal updates. That's why after observing how these groups work and
interacting with a few editors who started these groups, we developed a
systematic 19 point guide that looks at various aspects of how to do use
Facebook effectively including aspects like discipline in messaging,
structuring the interactions, tone of messaging, selecting articles, being
cautious with Wikispeak etc. (Of course, it keeps in mind WP:NOTFACEBOOK.)
Here's a sneak peek into what we've been doing on two different groups:
1) You can also write on
Wikipedia<https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/>
This group was primarily started to give lessons in English editing.
Although all of us use social network sites, it is important to understand
that the way we interact on Wikipedia is very different from Facebook. This
is the gap we are trying to bridge through more deliberate messaging. As
mentioned in the detailed program
guide<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media#Pro…>,
we try and do regular editing sessions with fun, interesting articles that
have adequate space for improvement (therefore making it easier for new
editors to make their first edits.)
Through a series of 5 basic tasks like creating a username, correcting a
spelling mistake, adding a line of information, adding a reference and
adding an interwiki link, we try and get the user to make their first 5
edits in less than 10 minutes. Our initial experiments show promise and of
the 400+ members right now, over 30 users have participated in these
mini-editing sessions and have now edited for the very first time. (You
can see their usernames in the
doc<https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/doc/353268748054711/>on
the group; do note that are the names of 7 existing editors also on
that
list, who are the mentors.)
To cite examples, User:
Zamsam<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Zamsam>(a
young new editor) came to the group and wanted to create the article
on
cricketer Ajit Chandila <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Chandila>. Once
we helped him create the article, he started contributing to Chandila's
article and moved on to another cricketer, Manvinder
Bisla's<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manvinder_Bisla>article.
Similarly,
User:10gible <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/10gible>joined
us to edit the article on Lalu
Prasad Yadav <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalu_Prasad_Yadav> while
User:Neeasmaverick<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Neeasmaverick>edited
the article on his college, Jawaharlal
Nehru University <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru_University>,
Vicky Donor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicky_Donor> and Amul
girl<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul_girl>and
User:Saranshkataria<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Saranshkataria>edited
Aloo
Chaat <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloo_Chaat> and
Rasgulla<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasgulla>.
This could not have been possible without a group of wonderful mentors like
Debanjan, Karthik, Deepon, Sheel, Pratik and Harsh who volunteered and
constantly keep helping new editors. We had Skype calls and regular chats
just to ensure that we connect with new users in a way they find most
comfortable.
The first hurdle of getting new editors to do a set of basic tasks has been
crossed for some. The challenge going forward will always be is to sustain
the interest of these new editors and make them long term editors hopefully
by multiple editing sessions. That still needs to be figured out. Any
inputs, comments and help are welcome.
2) Odia Wikipedia group <https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki/>
This group caters to Odia Wikipedians as well as people who speak the
language and might be interested in knowing about Wikipedia. We used
similar techniques as above to expand the group conversations beyond
existing Wikipedians and encourage new editors to participate.
Once when an article on Handia <https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handia> (a
local beverage) was posted, a new
User:Swetapadma<https://or.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%A…>came
forward to contribute images. Since then, she has been contributing to
articles on Odia cuisine and adding images to articles on Tribes of Odisha.
User:Hellohappy<https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9…>edited
the article on Capital
High School, Bhubaneswar<https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_High_School,_Bhubaneswar>
.
So far almost 10 new users have joined in and made their first few edits in
the past month. Given the small size of Indic communities, this could be a
very effective way of encouraging newbies. This also helps because it
means that it filters in those who have Internet connectivity, are
passionate about the language and (in most cases) are familiar with typing
in Indic languages).
Again, this was done with the help of existing Odia Wikipedians like
Gorvachove, Mrutyunjay Kar, Gyanranjan Sahu, Suratha Parhi, Diptiman and
others.
*Challenges*:
Now that we've figured out a way of engaging so many new editors and
getting them to make their first 5 edits, the challenge is to integrate
them into our community and make sure they continue editing. Also, it would
be ideal to expand this initiative to other Indic and Wikipedia user
groups. (I am already working with the Kannada community and I know that
Wikipedia Club Pune has already been trying something similar). I would
like to invite all community members interested to write to me (
noopur(a)wikimedia.org) and then we can have a brief skype call and figure
how to implement it for your group.
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media
[2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/
[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media#Pro…
[4] https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediasupport/doc/353268748054711/
[5] https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki/
Regards,
Noopur
--
Noopur Raval
--
Noopur Raval
Congratulations to all Telugu Wiktionarians (...I did not know that word existed till now!)
Thank you, Tejas, for spotting someone asking for help, seeing there was something you could support, being bold and offering a hand - and making a great contribution!
...and to the (unnamed) en-wp editor who tried to help - I thank you for trying! ...you know who you are ;-)
This mail represents the very best of our community - a bunch of breathtakingly high-minded, incredibly bright, wonderfully talented folks who help each other out in pursuit of an inspiring common goal!
The Bangalore meetup [1] that I had the privilege of attending was fantastic - and I'm really pleased that there are tangible outcomes. I urge everyone on this list to read the report, if you've not already done so.
hisham
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-in-blr/2012-May/000635.html
On May 22, 2012, at 11:58 AM, Arjuna Rao Chavala wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Telugu Wiktionary launched Word Of The Day (WOTD) feature on its first page[1] yesterday. The series is featuring words as per the Telugu alphabet with today's word being COW (ఆవు). On behalf of Telugu Wiktionary community, I thank Tejas Jain, Kannada Wiktionarian (user page[2]) for all the tech help over three weeks in creating and fine tuning the templates for WOTD and also for updating the first page to give a new look.
>
> This feature has been a long felt need for Telugu Wiktionary and not much work was done due to lack of competent tech editors in Telugu after the initial roll out period of 2006-2009. During the recent special Bangalore meetup with Hisham and Barry, there was a good discussion around the needs of Indian language wikipedias. I, representing Telugu wikipedia and OmShivaprakash, Kannada SIG Chair shared the need for fixing the template problems. Hisham helped us connect with an English Wikipedia Editor with technology interest. I projected WOTD and Infobox India Jursidiction templates (translated into Telugu long time back) as the major need. However the said editor expressed regret as he is not comfortable with working on localised tempaltes. Tejas who happened to see the discussion offered to help out with WOTD as he has done a similar thing for Kannada. After two weeks of development and updates based on feedback, the feature is now released.
>
> Thanks to Hisham for interaction and followups which helped in getting us connect with Tejas.
>
> We need more of interactions offline and online among the various Wiki language communities (technical/content) to strengthen our projects serving information needs of people.
>
> Regards
> Arjuna Rao Chavala
> On behalf of Telugu Wiktionarians.
> [1] http://te.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B0%AE%E0%B1%8A%E0%B0%A6%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%BF…
> [2] http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%B8%E0%B2%A6%E0%B2%B8%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%AF:…
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Dear all,
I am very happy to tell you all that the third issue of Wikipatrika - the
community newsletter is finally out! You can check it here:
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2012-05
First things first, a humble acknowledgement to all the editors who helped
out with this issue of the newsletter. A special thanks to Gitartha (as),
Debanjan (bn), Karthik (en and mr), Pratik (en), DS Vyas and Sushant (gu),
Siddhartha (hi), Omshivaprakash (kn), Anoop, Kannan, Sreejith, Viswaprabha
and Shiju (ml), Abhishek (mr), Rajesh and Saroj (ne), Mkar and Srikant
Kedia (or), Abhiram (sa), Logicwiki and Shanmugam (ta), Arjuna and
Rahimanuddin (te). In other contributions, thanks to Srikanth R for
Commons, Logic, Santhosh, Achal for Free culture news and Tinu for Press
news.
This entire venture could not have been possible without Tanvir's constant
support with templates and tweaks. Forgive me if I have missed someone.
So, what has changed from last time? Since all the Wikimeetups are listed
on Wikipedia here and on the respective community pages, we've omitted the
section on events and meetups. Instead, we've added a section on* Featured
Interviews* which has a GLAM interview this time and the *EPOV* column
(Editor's point of view: INCOTM report).
The idea is to make Wikipatrika a supplement to the mailing lists and
village pumps and not replicate the same information in all places.
Hopefully, by the next issue, with more featured interviews, insightful
pieces from editors and free culture persons we will be able to achieve
that.
*The way forward: *
It's a proud moment to see the amount of activity that all our language
communities are involved in. We should definitely strive to make
Wikipatrika regular and hopefully get more editors to contribute. This is
one space where editors can express the dreams, visions and challenges that
their Wikipedia community faces. If you have projects you want to publicize
or successful projects that could be started in other communities, this is
the space to express your opinion! From next time onward, we will
coordinate Patrika on
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-newsletter *mailing
list*. I welcome you all to join right away and we can discuss ideas for
features, changing the format and more!
--
Noopur Raval
Dear all,
A quick update on Wikipatrika. Here's the current draft of the next issue
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2012-05/Community_News
As you can see, most of the sections have been updated with information on
events, meetups and Wikipedia news of our various language communities.
This time, we've also added an interview of a community member (Bpositive's
report on INCOTM) and an external interview (interview with a GLAM
Director) to make Patrika more informative and interesting.
Quite a few of you may already have contributed to this draft. The pages
for as, bn, gu, hi, en, kn, ne, or, sa, te and ta have already been
translated from the respective languages. There is also a Commons tab where
we can add information on various photo walks. The reason why I'm sharing
this update is for everyone else to add material that may have been left
out or any other details. Do remember that we are planning to release this
on May 10th so please do add your edits / sections by May 9th.
Also, going forward, we hope to coordinate the issue on the Wikipatrika
mailing list. So, I invite all those interested to join the Wikipatrika
mailing list here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-newsletter
Regards
--
Noopur Raval
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
Dear all,
Here's an update on the GLAM initiative at Crafts
Museum<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/CM> [1]
and an invite to an edit-a-thon.
There have been a number of meetings and conversations with the Director of
the Crafts Museum and the museum staff over the past few weeks to plan out
the project. In these meetings, we have explained what is Wikipedia, how
it is used, how it can be useful to the Museum, how can staff members
benefit if they edit and how can Indian handicrafts & handlooms benefit by
more and better content on Wikipedia.
A few things became clear very early on. The language of the project needs
to be primarily in Hindi because the staff members are most comfortable in
Hindi. Another point is that since they are all starting from the very
basics, we should set realistic targets like taking things 5 articles at a
time to begin with.
Two outreach workshops for the museum staff have now been conducted in
Hindi. These covered approximately 8-9 staff members - out of which 6 have
created usernames and started editing. It gives an immense sense of
satisfaction and inspiration to see that so many of them are excited by
this project and they edit voluntarily even after the workshop is over!
(In fact, the clear message sent by the Director was that it was not a
compulsory task - so all the folks editing are doing so out of choice!)
Check out the article on Crafts Museum (शिल्प संग्रहालय,_दिल्ली) in Hindi
Wikipedia<http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AA_…>!
[2]
The Hindi aspect is an important point to note because English would have
been the preferred language because it gives greatest audience and is the
most convenient for other language community (Indic and beyond) to use as a
foundation if they want to create / improve the respective articles on
their respective Wikipedias. In this case, I visualize articles primarily
starting off in Hindi, and then moving to English - and then onwards to
other languages. In fact, the project page has now been created here on
Hindi Wikipedia!<http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AA%…>[3]
The MoU has been signed with Wikimedia India Chapter - for which I'd like
to thank Arun and the EC. The MoU was also important because it formalizes
the taking of pictures of objects and their uploading to Commons. User:Yann
has already done a wonderful job as you can see on the Crafts Museum
project page here at the GLAM project page for Craft
Museum<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/CM>.
[1] User:Arag0n also came in last week and took some wonderful images that
we hope to see soon.
I am currently working with the Director to see how Craft Museum can
improve the infrastructure for its' staff and to figure out how best to
free up time for the museum staff to support this initiative.
There is an innovation that I have tried which I wanted to share because
many community members might find it useful - and it's got nothing to do
with GLAM! There have been a number of meetups and outreach sessions in
Delhi - after a long time. One challenge I was facing was how to keep
engaged with participants of meetups and outreach sessions - and to
constantly encourage them to edit. What I did was shift the meetup up
venue to Crafts Museum itself! Its fun to see new editors and museum staff
get surprised that many people are editing one article at the same time.
That's when they really experience the magic of Wikipedia. This is working
well and I will continue to work on it. The next step is to invite
existing Hindi community members to Crafts Museum - which should happen in
the next couple of weeks.
The next event that we are planning - which is also why I'm writing is to
invite you to an *edit-a-thon on April 21st at 14:00 hrs (IST) (08:30 hrs
GMT)*. This week, instead of the Delhi meetup, we plan to have an editing
session at the Museum itself. You can sign up here. [4] You can be
anywhere in India or the world(!) to join in - and you can choose to edit
in any language - including Hindi, English, any other languages (Indic or
otherwise!) We'll also be active on the *#wikimedia-in* IRC channel, tweet
about it from @crafts_glam and have started a Facebook
group<http://www.facebook.com/CraftsMuseumGlam>.
The museum staff and Delhi community members will be editing at the Museum
- but the museum staff will also be available to help out giving insights
and references for articles.
Really hoping to see all of you participate and make this a big success
across languages! :)
Thanks
Noopur
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/CM
[2]
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AA_…
[3]
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AA%…
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Delhi/Crafts_Museum1
*FYI. Sorry for Cross posting. *
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Noopur Raval <nraval(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 11:57 AM
Subject: [Blog]: Postcard from the Tamil Community
To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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
--
Noopur Raval