[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Bengali wiki community

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of my discussions with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
members of Bengali wiki community.They have shared their editing
experiences, their vision about Bengali wiki projects, and other related
topics.  I have summarized the discussion in meta wiki. It is available
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011

As you know most of the current active editors of Bengali Wikipedia is from
Bangladesh. Bengali wikipedia has close to 50 active editors as on 2011
October<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-october-2011/>
. Over the years I got opportunity to work closely with Bengali wikipedians
for various programs (Newsletter, developing typing solution, and so on are
some of them). I remember Tinu and I closely worked with Jayantha to
conduct a wiki workshop in Kolkata.

There are a couple of very interesting features I noticed about Bengali
community.  First of all, even though it is a small community, it is very
evident from the tone and content of the discussions that it is a very warm
and welcoming community.  The second aspect I noticed is that there are
frequent community meet ups (though in fairness, there are many more
happening in Bangladesh than in India) and there is a  reasonably good
response to these meet ups.  Meet ups are a really useful way of community
building because it helps people connect and collaborate.  Common to all
Indic languages, there is a strong gap of awareness about the existence of
Bengali projects and the need is felt to get media & press coverage to
promote this.

In the context of the Kolkata Book Fair, one very interesting point that I
found about Tanvir is, he cam to know about Wikipedia at a similar book
fair in Dhaka!  I wish West Bengal wikipedians all the very best in the
Book Fair so that we can introduce and invite newbies to the Bengali
wikipedia.  We need to figure out a practical way of improving the
collaboration between Bengali wikipedians in Bangladesh and in India. I
felt very sorry when Tanvir couldn't attend WikiConference due to some VISA
issues.

Read the discussion at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011

Shiju
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