[Wikimediaindia-l] Kannada Wikipedia meet-up of 25th December 2010

[Hari Prasad Nadig]

Hi all,

It was quite overwhelming to see loads of people joining in for the Kannada
Wikipedia meet-up beyond the expected numbers!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnadig/5290761488/

It was thought that less people would turn up given the difficulty getting
to the venue and more importantly the holiday season. But it turned out to
be a great day discussing Kannada Wikipedia and having some fun as well.

Most of the audience felt that everyone should do a bit more to improve
Kannada version, and the difficulty mainly was in the 'input method' for
Kannada and fonts.

There was this active set of several Wikimedians from Kannada wiktionary
(which has of late been faring quite well). Few people using Google
translator toolkit to add articles to Kannada Wikipedia were also present
from the host, inetFrame solutions. There was an interaction between
community members and this team on the translation process. Several doubts
were resolved and few issues were sorted out. It was decided that a
feedback/guidelines page would be put up on the Wiki for everyone using
Google translator toolkit or the Microsoft Bhasha tool including those that
were discussed today.

There was discussion about bringing back the weekly collaborations that were
happening once upon a time. Community members were also keen to know more
about using the Google kit to translate lengthy articles.

It was great fun discussing about translations and sharing some experiences
on Wikipedia. Several people added in their thoughts about translations and
about improving the overall quality of articles.

It was decided that work should be started on putting up videos to help
normal (non-techie) users edit Wikipedia. *[In fact, it would be a good idea
to start this for most of the Indian language Wikipedias - drop me an email
if any of you are interested in participating]

Some of them (especially some contributors who have been on and off on the
wiki due to several roadblocks they faced while editing) were keen to know
whether a PDF with hands-on FAQ (an e-book) could be readied in Kannada that
would help them figure out how to overcome the issues they face without
having to contact sysops or active editors who already have their hands
full. *[Any volunteers for this one? Again, we could do the same for all
Indian languages. Sharing what we've learned all these days editing
Wikipedia should be fun. Please enlist by dropping an email off the list.]

The participants were keen to have regular meet-ups of the kind that would
allow more interactions off-line to clear the doubts, help each other
clearing roadblocks in contributing.

More pictures here:
http://twitpic.com/3jejbl

http://twitpic.com/3jejnp

http://twitpic.com/3jdung

http://twitpic.com/3jdhfx

http://twitpic.com/3jddq4

The entire album of the event is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnadig/sets/72157625670383158/

Thanks to the inetFrame solutions who allowed us to use the venue for free
and for the tea.

Cheers,

-- 
Hari Prasad Nadig
http://hpnadig.net | http://twitter.com/hpnadig
http://flickr.com/hpnadig
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