[Wikimediaindia-l] Minutes of Pune Wikipedia Meetup 18th Sept. 2010

Wed Sep 22 06:46:32 UTC 2010

Hi,

That was great summary to read. On a lighter vein, it seems en.wiki needs
some "encouragement/focus" in Marathi land, i couldn't see it being
discussed at all, but for translation.

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:01, Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia <
mahitgar at yahoo.co.in> wrote:

> Dear Wikimedians ,
>
> Thank you all for the overwhelming response to the 2010 Sept 18th Pune
> Wikimedia meetup. 17 people had attended this meet. Special thanks to HOD &
> staff of Women’s Studies Centre, University of Pune and visiting media and
> open source movement fraternity for their active participation and guidance.
>
> Mr Vijay Sirdeshpande (Mahitgar from Marathi wikipedia) and Ms Bishakha
> Datta (trustee, Wikimedia Foundation) jointly chaired the meet . Ms. Datta
> introduced herself . She talked about Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia
> Foundation’s plans in India, the Wikimedia India Chapter, and difficulties
> faced in completion of its registration process. She also talked about
> Bangalore wiki meet-ups. She stressed the need to conduct wikipedia
> academies and informed about the upcoming visits of Jimmy Wales to Mumbai at
> the end of October. Other Wikimedia Foundation staff visit India in
> December, includes Sue Gardner (executive director), Erik Moeller (deputy
> director) and Danese Cooper (chief technical officer).
>
> Then wikipedians introduced themselves. Mr. Amit Yadav raised the topics of
> need for and lack of adequate references on Marathi wikipedia, quality of
> content, and outreach. He was for most of the discussions to take place
> online rather than offline. He stressed the need for initiative and
> self-learning process for making contributions on part of wiki-admiring
> people.On quality of content front, the success of Malayalam wikipedia was
> discussed. Mr. Vijay explained the difference in the initial focus, and said
> that now the focus is on making Marathi wikipedia reader-oriented. Everyone
> agreed that for bringing better quality we need more active users. Mr.Vijay
> also informed that Marathi wikipedians can request for various features and
> get various features adopted in the user interface, including page rating
> etc. for improvement in quality.
>
> Mr.Amit Yadav suggested that Marathi Wikipedians wherever necessary can
> refer to English language wikipedia  but need  to do more original writing
> than merely translating from English wikipedia and Good number of attendees
> supported this idea. One atendee asked whether it is right to give
> references of Marathi language sources apart from the English language
> references.
>
> Mr. Amit was of the opinion that those people who use old technologies for
> writing can share their documentation online and rest of the people can
> support them in uni-coding the texts for wikiprojects, whereas opinion of Mr
> Ajay Garg was that we can support these people technologically and we need
> to do so. Mr.Sudhanwa Joglekar was of the opinion that it is important to
> involve senior citizens. Mr.Vijay informed that we do have already good
> support and contribution from working professional and senior citizens
> categories; but academic and student categories,women and economically
> weaker and rural sections are under-represented in contributing and
> interaction with wiki projects.
>
> On media support, Mr. Samrat Phadnis (esakal.com) and  Mr. Nilesh Bane (
> indiatimes.com) assured support from their respective media houses. At the
> same time, Mr. Nilesh said that wikipedia in itself is the biggest medium.
> On this, Mr.Vijay stressed the need of diverting en wiki traffic using
> geo-location and asking for mother tongue while logging in and diverting
> users to their respective mother tongue wikipedias.Secondly Mr. Vijay also
> requested for a call center facility if  possible from the foundation side
> (to help contributors all over India instantly).Meeting also discussed
> importance of inter-wikilinks in spreading awareness among English language
> Wikipedia’s Indian visitors aware of Marathi language Wikipedia.
>
> Mr.Sudhanwa and Vijay highlighted that Pune would be a good location for
> the Foundation’s proposed India office, since it is a major educational hub.
>
> Mr.Nilesh Bane took up the subject of Marathi language used on Marathi
> wikipedia - he felt it should avoid usage of new difficult Marathi words,
> and highlighted the importance of usability and simplicity in the user
> interface. Mr.Sachin Venga seconded Mr.Nilesh on his points.While agreeing
> with his points Mr.Samrat Phadnis (from esakal.com) suggested giving
> preference to the language used by people from rural and small cities, since
> readers across Maharashtra constitute the major share of Marathi wikipedia’s
> target audience. Mr.Sudhanwa Joglekar briefed on the process of language
> terminology standardisation through FUEL (Frequently Used Entities in
> Localisation) sessions. In this context, the views of Mr.Mahesh Kulkarni of
> CDAC and Rachna Pradhan of Bhasha Sanchalanalay were brought to notice and
> the need for previous(Swa.Savarkar time) debates related to Bhasha
> Shuddhikaran Movement and  Balbharti's Dictionary becoming available online
> were also discussed.
>
> Mr.Nilesh Bane expressed his dismay over delay in (Govt.) Marathi
> Wishvakosh becoming available online.
>
> Mr.Ajay Garg promised to support wikipedians on technical and software
> special font conversion issues while Prof.Subhash Pawar was enthusiastic in
> supporting usage of Marathi on computers. It was agreed that there is a need
> to separate co-ordination by interested wikipedians team with promoting
> volunteers and technical support on font usage.
>
> Mr.Kaustubh Samudra informed the meeting that media wiki software is
> translated to Marathi and where people deem it fit to change the usage and
> correction of Marathi, the correction process is very simple and interested
> people can help themselves. Besides wikipedia, this software as content
> management system can be used by the Marathi web developer fraternity since
> localisation of the  Media Wiki software is almost  complete.
>
> Prof. Shriniwas Hemade  shared his experience and the need for public
> awareness for utility of encyclopedias. He was enthusiastic in sharing his
> own write-ups with wiki projects and requested for technical support on font
> conversion front. He said the best benefit of the meeting is to bring
> together people in need of technical support like Prof Shriniwas and
> software experts like Mr. Ajay Garg.
>
> On the subject of increasing contributors and contributions, Mr. Amit was
> of the opinion that involving post-graduate (PG) level students will ensure
> better quality and reliability of content. Mr. Vijay was of the opinion that
> wiki volunteers need to reach 10th standard onward students, journalism,
> law, Marathi language, Engineering, Computer hardware and software, and
> botany-related students on priority by way of wikimedia academies and
> PowerPoint presentations. Mr.Amit promised to take active part in updating
> PPTs while Mr.Ajay Garg promised to share his expertise in making
> presentations easily available. Mr.Sudhanwa Joglekar brought to notice the
> difficulty in approach the student community, asking what would motivate
> students? Mr. Amit said that a percentage of students would get awareness
> and factual benefits to themselves by using the same. Mr.Samrat Phadnis
> assured support with eSakal. Prof Shriniwas also assured support in writing
> article for Marathi media .
>
> Ms. Bishakha Datta requested support to the Women’s Studies department,
> University of Pune - they are very interested in contributing to Marathi
> wikipedia, but need handholding and technical help. Mr. Amit assured his
> support on this account.
>
> Mr.Omkar Khair, Mr.Gawande, and Mr.Paresh Mhetre expressed their support to
> Marathi wikipedia.
>
> On the subject of outreach to the people volunteering for presentations at
> colleges, Prof.Shriniwas Hemade was of the opinion that future meetings
> should preferably have a pre-decided agenda. Mr. Amit Yadav was of the
> opinion that future meetings, if any, should have three distinct teams: one
> for usage on Marathi plus basic training on wiki usage.Mr.Vijay suggested
> Marathi Usage on comp  promotion and new user wiki-edit help, Content and
> outreach group, Techsavy and higher experience level user guidance group,
> And language wise group of people for non Marathi if more than 5
>
> Thanks to Ms.Bishakha Datta for supporting in updating this
> writeup. Looking forward to feed back and openions about points raised
> during this meeting.
>
>
> Thanks and Regards
> -Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
Google Profile <http://j.mp/SrikanthL>
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