[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Marathi

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of my discussions with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
Marathi wikimedians (Abhay, Mahitgar, and Mandar) also. All of them are
highly experinced wikimedians. They their editing experiences, their vision
about ml wiki projects, and other related topics. I have summarized the
discussions in meta wiki.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011


For the past few years I got the opportunity to interact and with
highly experienced wikimedians of Marathi wikipedia like Abhay, Mahitgar,
and Sankalp. The ideas they had shared about Indic wikis had defintely
helped when Indic wikipedians came together for some of the common
projects.

The focus that Marathi wikipedians given to mediawiki translation at
Translate wiki had inspired many other Indic language wikipedians. Many of
them contributed to the interface translation of Hindi and Sanskrit wikis
also.

Right now Marathi wikipedia has close to 35,000 articles, and about 40
active editors.

During and beyond WikiConference, it has been really inspiring to see the
increase in the activity levels across many communities in the country.  In
particular, Marathi community have been exploring opportunities and
formulating plans to drive community growth and project quality.
 WikiConference gave a big boost to the Marathi community because of the
increased profile of the projects, especially the press.  To illustrate,
between September and October 2011, the number of active editors increased
from 31 to 40.  It will be really important to keep us this momentum and to
translate this into sustained community building for a small but vibrant
community.

Community is working very hard to make Wikisource a reality for Marathi.
Hope that will happen soon.

I am personally very optimistic that Marathi is at an inflection point -
and this the right time to make concerted efforts at community building to
realize this opportunity.

Kindly read the experience of Marathi Wikimedians at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011

Regards

Shiju
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