[Wikimediaindia-l] Notes on meeting of Mumbai Wikimedia community with Hisham Mundol

[Pradeep Mohandas]

hi,

We had a Wikipedia Mumbai Meetup today where the Mumbai Wikimedia community
was introduced to Hisham Mundol who has taken charge "WMF Consultant for
National Programs, India.".

We had a wide ranging conversation today on several things. Listed below are
the meeting notes (in no particular order, to the best of my ability):

1. We had 13 attendees today at the historic Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf,
Bandra. (Historic because the first Wikipedia Mumbai meetup took place here)
2. Barry Newstead introduced Hisham Mundol with a brief about Hisham's
background work.
3. Hisham had brief conversation with all the attendees explaining that his
work was primarily to network with the community and the chapter in India,
find out best practices (what worked/what did not work) and try to see if it
is duplicable on a larger scale across other Wikimedia projects. He also
talked about watching these practices over timelines to understand impact
etc.
4. User:AroundtheGlobe made another brief comment about his idea of getting
pictures off Flickr of some of the unique situations that might not be
covered in a photowalk. He showed how he had approached users on flickr,
showed them how to upload images on Wikimedia Commons and also explained
licenses.
5. There was Nikhil Sheth and Rekha Sankhala who spoke about working in a
village in Raigad, taking instances of the English and Marathi wikipedias
along with Wikipedia for Schools instance. They shared the excitement that
students in Raigad had in learning about the existence of the Marathi
Wikipedia and also learning about the content present there. Nagarjuna also
talked about how they saw the lack of content on a certain article and
expressed their desire to edit Wikipedia and improve the article!
6. We discussed about how Wikipedia was present in school text books in
Maharashtra and Kerala.
7. We discussed the Workshop for Women in Wikipedia. I asked for help in
making it happen in Mumbai. Bishaka suggested contacting a faculty member in
SNDT University and Nagarjuna offered help. Nagarjuna said that many
people's fear of editing Wikipedia was that they would make mistakes.
8. Hisham asked about various ways in which people could be encouraged to
edit Wikipedia. We talked about small edits in places like English Wikipedia
if subjects of the person's interest was saturated or if the person was
afraid. These included simple stuff like categorising, making copy edits,
adding templates etc. There was also suggestions of contributing pictures to
Wikimedia Commons.
9. Hisham then asked if there could be one thing that we could say to a new
editor what it would be. The community thought that the concept of being
bold on Wikipedia should be communicated better. The question of speedy
deletions arose and how these discouraged new editors. User:AroundtheGlobe
suggested the use of the "under construction" template.
10. We had brief discussion on the work of the Salman Khan's Khan
Foundation. Some of us (me included :) ) thought it was Salman Khan, the
actor :). We stood corrected.
11. Vickram said that discussion had centred around how to get students and
people in schools and universities involved. However, effort should also be
made to involve adults since they had access to certain knowledge that was
dying.
12. Conversation turned to making the meetups more interesting. Barry
suggested mixing up the content and having topic-specific meetups like done
by the folks in Bangalore. I suggested having alternate meetups with
WikiAcademy. This meant that people coming for the meetup could be told
something concrete about there being an academy where they could learn how
to participate.

warm regards,
Pradeep Mohandas
user:Prad2609
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