[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Odia (Oriya)

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

Today I am sharing you the summary of discussions I had with Odia wiki (
http://or.wikipedia.org/) community. It is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011

Odia is a shining example of how a wiki project can be revived and build a
community around it, if few wonderful users with a vision for building free
knowledge in their mother language arrive in their mother language wiki.

Odia wikipedia was started in 2002. In fact it is one of the first Indic
language wikipedia. Nothing much had happened in Odia wiki till 2010
December. But the progress made by Odia wiki project (
http://or.wikipedia.org/) during the past one year is note worthy and it is
an example that can be replicated in some of the inactive Indic language
wikipedias. Odia was having just 600 articles (which were created over the
past 8 years) and no active users at the start of this year. Now 10 months
later, it has close to 1600 articles and 10 active users. The online and
offline outreach initiatives took by Odia wiki community for building the
community is showing positive result.

I was actively involved in the community building for Odia wikipedia. I
still remember the day (2011 January 15) when I introducted Odia wikipedia
and Odia tying tool (developed by Junaid) to an Odia speaker (Ashuthosh
Kar) during Wiki X celebration at Bangalore. Through him very soon we got a
wonderful wikipedian (Subhashish) who is leading the efforts for Odia wiki
now. Initially Subhasish and I used to meet at my home and work on the
basic things for Odia wiki. I remember us working on the Odia wikipedia
logo, FAQ booklet, Translate wiki, and so on. Soon Odia got more members to
the team through the few Odia wiki workshops happened at Bangalore. Along
with workshops, Odia wikipedians translated the FAQ booklet to Odia and
took efforts to integrate the Odia typing solution to Odia wikipedia. Later
with the support of Dhanada Mishra (the chairman of Human Development
Foundation (http://www.hdf.org.in/)) and a young student Odia wikipedian
Srikanth Kedia a wiki workshop is conducted at Bhubaneshwar. Odia
wikipedians from Bangalore are doing an excellent job and now many of them
are participating in Wikimedia India chapter activities also.

Odia wiki community is effectively making use of various social networking
sites to reach out to Odia speakers.

Odia wiki project picked up not because Odia has got huge speaker base,
high literacy among Odia speakers, access to computers, or any thing else;
it become active only because it has receieved the right volunteers who
have passion and vision of developing a wikipedia in their mother language.
We need similar volunteers for each Indic language wikipedia.


Requesting you to place your comments on the talk
page<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011>
.


Regards
Shiju
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