Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Hindu : The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat
I think there are 3 issues that this newsarticle raises. The first is the is the desperate urgency for community building. Community building is a combination of: - increased community communication (in increasing order of importance: events, mailing lists, talk pages, meet-ups and village pumps) - stronger community collaboration (small wikiprojects starting of with even 2 editors and on virtually any topic of interest whether it is a subject area like health articles or a task like translate articles clean-up) - more frequent and impactful outreach (including targeting the most suitable audience profile for outreach, combination of classroom hands-on editing experience during the workshop, staying in touch with newbies after the session, hand-holding newbies during their first 100 edits and integrating newbies into the existing community) - reaching out retired editors - which is a particularly severe problem in Kannada (and Telugu) because active editor numbers have declined (or not grown) over the past 1 year. This is particularly alarming given the small community size. Also, the reason why these editors retired is not because of technology but a whole host of other reasons (including changing personal circumstances, lack of an adequate sense of community, lack of collabaration inside wiki, lack of pride of projects, over usage of bots, and so on. The second is that while there are very real issues that the Google translate project created (some of which were outlined below), the biggest problem is that it focuses on content and not community. This is a similar problem to using bots to create content - which has been shown time and time again to downright harmful to projects and hence to communities. On the specific issue of Google translate project, it also represents a solid opportunity to get existing editors (and maybe some newbies as well) to get involved with the clean up. Some editors in Kannada wikipedia have already started preparatory work on this - and there is great potential in this. It is a great way of building the community through collaboration around a common mission. The third issue is on technology. I know that - historically for PCs - there have been issues around fonts, browsers, OS, and so on. However, I think these are becoming less critical as technical developments have resolved many issues. (This is evidenced by the increased Kannada presence in the blogosphere as well as on sites like facebook and twitter.) Having said that, editing wikipedia - in any language - does require certain basic technical comfort especially when one clicks on edit and sees the HTML mark-ups that pop up. To that extent, I would suggest that we don't focus too much on the technical challenges but place all our emphasis on community building. According to me technical challenge is not a major issue for most of the major indic languages (when it come to PCs). And now it is time for us to come out this excuse and contribute to our own language wikipedia. Omshivaprakash is right when he says that too few knew that they can edit. To address this, a combination of outreach and press coverage is essential to convey this message. On press coverage, it is tempting to put out stories that a particular language has achieved a milestone (for example, 10,000 article milestone.) is great but the even more useful ones are stories that mention that anyone can edit, give the very basics of editing, suggest specific areas where readers might be interested and give them contact details in case they are interested. In all this, do keep in mind that readership of Indic language wikipedias is growing exponentially. The audience is there now! We need to get the community built so that the can edit the content. Thanks Shiju On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.comwrote: As a person working in the relevant field, we would welcome Shiju's comments on the article, its facts, proposed steps by the editors mentioned and what Kannada Wikipedia needs for revival. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Tinu Cherian (Wikimedia India) tinucher...@wikimedia.in wrote: *The Hindu : The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat* http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2909005.ece *In the world of online Kannada content, blogs may be thriving but Wikipedia is struggling. The reasons vary from technology barriers to lack of contributors, say Wikipedians. While there has been a surge in Kannada content in the last two years, contributors to the language have been grappling with technology barriers. After floundering for years, the Kannada Wikipedia picked up with font availability, said Hari Prasad Nadig, a Kannada Wikipedian. The software to add to Kannada Wikipedia is not so
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Hindu : The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat
As a small editor on kn-wp, I find that the people using the kn-wp lack basic rules of editing wikipedia since I often see that :- - Only the same editors edit there. Newbies are a lot less. - The newbies are in a large number - IP addresses only and they never want to create their own account - The kn-wikipedia is sometimes used for advertisement of people ( say for ex: I need money urgently for operation etc., OR for schools where they start the article with their school name say this school is the best school in that particular town) - The other thing is that some of the editors who have created accounts, upload pics they have taken on kn-wikipedia itself without any rights posted. - Also the editors or IP addresses who edit never observe messages sent to them. I was tired of informing people the rightful duties of an editor and left that job. Eventhough I edit a lot on sa-wp and sa-ws... My native language is Kannada., I felt about the state of kn-wp seeing all those articles on newspapers. I only want kn-wp community to take help from people who edit wikipedia (maye in any other language) also. The administrators and b'cats of kn-wp have all slept off or retired or busy (with their own work) after the initial hard work. I saw HPN sir on IRC (#wikimedia-in) and talked to him but their was no response at all WAKE UP FROM SLUMBER KANNADA ADMINISTRATORS B'CATS.. This is a very kind request from a kind kannadiga.. On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Shiju Alex sh...@wikimedia.org wrote: I think there are 3 issues that this newsarticle raises. The first is the is the desperate urgency for community building. Community building is a combination of: - increased community communication (in increasing order of importance: events, mailing lists, talk pages, meet-ups and village pumps) - stronger community collaboration (small wikiprojects starting of with even 2 editors and on virtually any topic of interest whether it is a subject area like health articles or a task like translate articles clean-up) - more frequent and impactful outreach (including targeting the most suitable audience profile for outreach, combination of classroom hands-on editing experience during the workshop, staying in touch with newbies after the session, hand-holding newbies during their first 100 edits and integrating newbies into the existing community) - reaching out retired editors - which is a particularly severe problem in Kannada (and Telugu) because active editor numbers have declined (or not grown) over the past 1 year. This is particularly alarming given the small community size. Also, the reason why these editors retired is not because of technology but a whole host of other reasons (including changing personal circumstances, lack of an adequate sense of community, lack of collabaration inside wiki, lack of pride of projects, over usage of bots, and so on. The second is that while there are very real issues that the Google translate project created (some of which were outlined below), the biggest problem is that it focuses on content and not community. This is a similar problem to using bots to create content - which has been shown time and time again to downright harmful to projects and hence to communities. On the specific issue of Google translate project, it also represents a solid opportunity to get existing editors (and maybe some newbies as well) to get involved with the clean up. Some editors in Kannada wikipedia have already started preparatory work on this - and there is great potential in this. It is a great way of building the community through collaboration around a common mission. The third issue is on technology. I know that - historically for PCs - there have been issues around fonts, browsers, OS, and so on. However, I think these are becoming less critical as technical developments have resolved many issues. (This is evidenced by the increased Kannada presence in the blogosphere as well as on sites like facebook and twitter.) Having said that, editing wikipedia - in any language - does require certain basic technical comfort especially when one clicks on edit and sees the HTML mark-ups that pop up. To that extent, I would suggest that we don't focus too much on the technical challenges but place all our emphasis on community building. According to me technical challenge is not a major issue for most of the major indic languages (when it come to PCs). And now it is time for us to come out this excuse and contribute to our own language wikipedia. Omshivaprakash is right when he says that too few knew that they can edit. To address this, a combination of outreach and press coverage is essential to convey this message. On press coverage, it is tempting to put out stories that a particular language has achieved a milestone (for
[Wikimediaindia-l] Localisation and internationalisation bugs affecting Indic language communities
On 02/22/2012 07:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: From: Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: WMF Localisation team localisation-t...@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Localisation and internationalisation bugs affecting Indic language communities Message-ID: ca+30aunziw70guq189dlp0wf2ttgijxl5vndzebp3+r3pbq...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 10:54, Sumana Harihareswara suma...@wikimedia.orgwrote: On 02/20/2012 07:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgwrote: Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:23:08 +0530 From: Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com If you are asking only about technical issues, many communities do log bugs from time to time. But when they remain open beyond certain period and the person who logged becomes inactive, they go into black hole and there is no one to follow up(even if its fixed, they remain open). There is nothing to be distressed here. Srikanth, this is distressing to hear! If you could point to some specific Bugzilla reports that have gone into the black hole, including ones that no longer reflect reality, I could help ask the localisation team to follow up and at least put some updated information in the issues at bugzilla.wikimedia.org . They are called black hole for the reason anyone(apart from the filer / folks who conversed) might not be able to easily spot them. In most cases the bugs lack update from the filers / language communities. But again if the filer is from one generation and has retired, who does the follow up? Ideally language support teams must do it. But all of us know Indic communities have very few people to look into these and the common pattern I have found across few communities I have interacted is that spending time on bugzilla / improving technology/language support is not going to change things big way, so I might as well be contented (Ex:- Why Narayam when js works fine) with whats there and do my editing. But at some point, communities need to focus on these, as and when the communities grow, they will also get contributors who are interested in supporting the language technically. But the larger issues are common and pretty much known to i18n team. (like say PDF rendering). I tried cleaning up Tamil related bugs recently which were documented here[1] since 2006, also created a tracking bug[2]. But then as someone else said, People are just waiting for one more tracking bug to fix those. ! //So tracking bugs don't help beyond a point ! This is also distressing to hear! I'm not quite sure what was implied there -- did the speaker mean that the localisation team won't address certain problems until there are more tracking bugs to help track issues, or something else? The quote was from one of the bugs I remember seeing on bugzilla, said by someone on a totally different bug nothing related to localization. The point I implied quoting it was process for the sake of it doesn't help much beyond a point. Adding tracking bugs does not impact the age of the bug. The bugs remain open either because they are hard to solve / lack of bandwidth / lack of input / variety of other reasons, not because no one is tracking them. Adding a tracking bug wont magically fix the bug / help in the getting it to closure. But tracking bug serves useful especially for anyone new to see what are problem areas, how can I help fix / test / not report duplicate bugs etc. Most, if not all Indic issues would be tagged with i18n keyword on bugzilla. Yes, adding the i18n keyword to an issue in Bugzilla will help bring it to the attention of the localisation team. Another point, Not all Indic wikipedia related issues are i18n issues, though there might be heavy overlap. There are site requests like changing logo,namespace, installing extensions whatever. The point to note is, when someone does these things in any Indic community(which already have tiny community), please keep the community widely posted / document these somewhere.Not just issues, but solutions/workarounds, gadgets used, things like abuse filter rules(if any) and its rationale behind etc. This will help someone else in your community(who may come years later) to follow up even if you retire / had forgotten. Fortunately Tamil Wiki community did that from the beginning(at least the major ones,if not everything) in the form of a page[1] and I was able to go through,know the past issues,update it after almost 2 years! I felt a tracking bug might be easier to track on issues than a page, so I just created one. Thanks for mentioning this problem, Srikanth. This problem is not restricted to bugzilla. This may even happen in say in translation or anything, where only a subset (ideally 1-2 in a
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Creating video of Indian Editors We Edit Wikipedia
Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch) On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 20:38, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Let me clear this confusion. Dear Srikanth R, *please* attempt to read the ENTIRE mail. I suggested recording in a popular format because converting and editing ogv is a PAIN. And, it reduces video quality by two times. +1 to that. OGV, for all its openness, is a big pain to work on, especially for converting. Another thing, if we are to upload these videos to Commons, *obviously* we will have to convert them to open formats. So, no one is denying that. It is rather obvious and understood. So now that we have cleared confusions, can the SIGs and guys organizing meetups please raise hands? Will you guys be able to do such recording? *raises hand* I am willing to create such a video; I appreciate Subha's mail about what exactly to say, but it shouldn't be a boring, mechanical interview-style answering of questions. If it is to motivate others, it should be catchy (read ad-like). On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi su...@wikimedia.org wrote: Well, that's the whole point. The final file to be hosted for public would be ogg and the backend work will involve raw file editing collected in different formats. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Konarak Ratnakar konarak...@live.com wrote: Subhashis exactly, you might know this, but Xiph (developers of .ogg /.ogv) doesn't even endorse .ogv. And .ogg can be used with Matroska. Though I'll convert the videos in .ogv. Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 18:53:51 +0530 From: su...@wikimedia.org To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Creating video of Indian Editors We Edit Wikipedia That sounds good Konarak, and apart from the loss of quality most handy cam users might not be aware of converting them to ogg, but once you convert raw footages to ogg there will be difficulty to edit, because normally the final avi/mpeg is converted to a open source format and uploaded in Commons. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Konarak Ratnakar konarak...@live.com wrote: Hey Srikanth, that's fine by me, twas just a suggestion, because in .ogv there is loss of quality due to compression. Subhashish, I will, in the Meetup, it's on 19th of feb. Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 17:10:39 +0530 From: su...@wikimedia.org To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Creating video of Indian Editors We Edit Wikipedia Yes, they are also being invited to participated, it's about Indian Editors and Indian faces. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: And what about participation of the Indian English Community? On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi su...@wikimedia.org wrote: Here are the answers I have to all of you. @Noopur: nice points, I am including them all and here is draft for the community which I will be posting in the respective Wikipedia Village pumps. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Subha_WMF/sandbox1) @Ashwin, the videos you, Nitika and Swaroop are working will be hardcore outreach videos to teach how to edit Wikipedia. @Konarak, thanks a lot buddy, let us get the footages and we would definitely seek your support for the post production. Moover, we would be more than happy if you lead the event to get the videos done in your place from the community members. @Srikanth, the final video will be in Commons and obviously with .ogv format. But the raw footage will be in .mov/avi/mpeg, they are the formats used before editing. After editing we will convert the final video into .ogv. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Subha, What about the Indian English Community? Noopur, Thanks for the ideas, but one small suggestion. Format- Keep it OGV. We can't be promoting an open project with a closed format video no? Konark, Good to see young brains like you volunteering on this. Ashwin, Can I have a link please? On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote: Nitika MikeLynch some others have just begin working in this field and a prototype video on how to create an account has been made. Imho these efforts should be combined. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 10:59 PM, Konarak Ratnakar konarak...@live.com wrote: Hey, +1 to this, I can help(composing, editing). Konarak. Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 22:10:06 +0530 From: noopur.ra...@gmail.com To: wikimedia-in...@lists.wikimedia.org; wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re:
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Creating video of Indian Editors We Edit Wikipedia
Thanks a lot Swaroop, We are expecting more inputs from you guys, and please free to add/modify the questions wikipedians have to keep in mind ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Subha_WMF/sandbox1). I have also received responses from Pune and Ahemadabad communities. If you guys can shoot some videos at the end of the meet ups as there will be a gathering of wikipedians it will be good. We can make a prototype video to make the Indic language communities understand the way they need to make this video. Thanks Subha On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 9:41 PM, Swaroop Rao raul.swar...@gmail.com wrote: Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch) On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 20:38, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Let me clear this confusion. Dear Srikanth R, *please* attempt to read the ENTIRE mail. I suggested recording in a popular format because converting and editing ogv is a PAIN. And, it reduces video quality by two times. +1 to that. OGV, for all its openness, is a big pain to work on, especially for converting. Another thing, if we are to upload these videos to Commons, *obviously* we will have to convert them to open formats. So, no one is denying that. It is rather obvious and understood. So now that we have cleared confusions, can the SIGs and guys organizing meetups please raise hands? Will you guys be able to do such recording? *raises hand* I am willing to create such a video; I appreciate Subha's mail about what exactly to say, but it shouldn't be a boring, mechanical interview-style answering of questions. If it is to motivate others, it should be catchy (read ad-like). On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi su...@wikimedia.org wrote: Well, that's the whole point. The final file to be hosted for public would be ogg and the backend work will involve raw file editing collected in different formats. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Konarak Ratnakar konarak...@live.com wrote: Subhashis exactly, you might know this, but Xiph (developers of .ogg /.ogv) doesn't even endorse .ogv. And .ogg can be used with Matroska. Though I'll convert the videos in .ogv. Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 18:53:51 +0530 From: su...@wikimedia.org To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Creating video of Indian Editors We Edit Wikipedia That sounds good Konarak, and apart from the loss of quality most handy cam users might not be aware of converting them to ogg, but once you convert raw footages to ogg there will be difficulty to edit, because normally the final avi/mpeg is converted to a open source format and uploaded in Commons. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Konarak Ratnakar konarak...@live.com wrote: Hey Srikanth, that's fine by me, twas just a suggestion, because in .ogv there is loss of quality due to compression. Subhashish, I will, in the Meetup, it's on 19th of feb. Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 17:10:39 +0530 From: su...@wikimedia.org To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Creating video of Indian Editors We Edit Wikipedia Yes, they are also being invited to participated, it's about Indian Editors and Indian faces. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: And what about participation of the Indian English Community? On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi su...@wikimedia.org wrote: Here are the answers I have to all of you. @Noopur: nice points, I am including them all and here is draft for the community which I will be posting in the respective Wikipedia Village pumps. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Subha_WMF/sandbox1) @Ashwin, the videos you, Nitika and Swaroop are working will be hardcore outreach videos to teach how to edit Wikipedia. @Konarak, thanks a lot buddy, let us get the footages and we would definitely seek your support for the post production. Moover, we would be more than happy if you lead the event to get the videos done in your place from the community members. @Srikanth, the final video will be in Commons and obviously with .ogv format. But the raw footage will be in .mov/avi/mpeg, they are the formats used before editing. After editing we will convert the final video into .ogv. On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Subha, What about the Indian English Community? Noopur, Thanks for the ideas, but one small suggestion. Format- Keep it OGV. We can't be promoting an open project with a closed format video no? Konark, Good to see young brains like you volunteering on this. Ashwin, Can I have a link please? On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote:
[Wikimediaindia-l] Announcing live search for the Wikimedia projects
Hi all, Greetings from Wikimedia India !!! We are proud to announce live search for the Wikimedia projects http://live.wikimedia.in. The site was developed by Shrey Gokani under guidance of Wikimedia India Chapter. We want to thank Shrey Gokani for volunteering to do this project and making this a reality. We also want to thank Santhosh Thottingal and Junaid P V for the contributions for this project. Special thanks to Naveen Francis for leading this initiative. How to use ? * Select your Wikimedia Project, say “Wikipedia” * Select language of the project to search, say “English” * Input your search string in the Search: Box * The site auto displays possible pages based on the string match. * The site is also integrated with Narayam to support Indic language search. So select the corresponding input method ( if available) while searching on a Indic Project. This is still a beta version and further improvements are needed. As of now, it supports only English and Indic Language projects. For further queries, reporting bugs and suggestions, please contact us :- socialme...@wikimedia.in Thanks, Tinu Cherian. Wikimedia India http://wiki.wikimedia.in ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
