Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Ravishankar  wrote:


Thanks for these great suggestions Ravi.

*1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.
> *


Yes this is very important. Infact I already mentioned this in my second
point (attracting newbies) This is what I wrote:

We must also look at both newbies to editing as well as existing *English
Wikipedia editors* who have inclinations and abilities on Indic languages.
Remember that many Indic editors initially started off in English Wikipedia
and we must actively seek them out. I know some communities - like Marathi
- who look for editors who have Marathi sounding names or edit
Marathi/Maharashtra centric topics and quietly invite them to contribute to
Marathi Wikipedia.


As we can see already few language communities understood the importance of
reaching out to users with English wikipedia experience.

*2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.*


Yes this is very very important for the growth of Indic wikipedias. In the
previous reply to Arjuna I mentioned about the involvement of Social
organizations. That will directly or indirectly help Indic wiki projects.
One immediate example I can show from ml wiki project is the free licensing
of LDF keralam , Kerala State Electricity
Board,
and Dutch in Kerala  website. All those
became possible since friends of Wikipedia or community members were ready
to talk to people outside wikipedia about the importance of such landmark
decisions.

*3. Developing the sister projects.*



A very valid point. Many Indic languages have rich cultural heritage. There
are rich litereacry works in most of them. No need to mention about the
rich vocabulary. We have lot of things to do at least in Wikisource,
Wiktionary, and Wikiquote. Infact from the example of Tamil and Kannada we
have seen the efforts put by community to develop wiktionary. Remember in
Kannada, Wiktionary project is  active even more than Wikipedia. Also in
Malayalam and Sanskrit wikisource is very active. So some communities
already understood the importance of sister projects. Infact what I found
is, we can use sister wiki projects also (especially wikisource and
wiktionary) to develop a wiki community for  a language.

Networking with state and central governments, various educational
institutions, social organizations, and so on are required to grow Indic
wikipedia projects. As mentioned before some extra effort and leadership
role from some community members of each language is required to grow the
community and wiki projects for any Indic language.

Thanks for providing all these suggestions. All these important suggestions
will help us as we try to help various indic language wiki communities.

Thanks
Shiju





On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Ravishankar  wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
>
> Thanks for the excellent analysis on Indic Wikipedia communities.
>
>
>>  When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
>>
>>1. Editor retention
>>2. Attracting newbies
>>3. Community communication
>>4. Community collaboration and
>>5. Community celebration
>>
>> Based on Tamil Wiki experience, I would like to add few more key points
> that can make a difference:
>
> *1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia
> experience.*
>
> While small communities should not enforce all en wiki practices and rules
> as such, active participation of people having English Wikipedia experience
> is a great plus. They can help implement the best practices, clarify on
> wiki procedures, help in technical aspects and act as ambassadors for the
> local wiki. Throughout Tamil Wikipedia's growth, we have had such
> contributors who made immense difference to the project. It is this
> context, I emphasize that awareness about Indic Wiki for people visiting en
> wiki should be increased.
> *
> 2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.*
>
> Not everyone can contribute to Wikipedia directly even if they know how to
> do it. But they can still support the cause of Wiki. Efforts should be made
> in getting friends in blogosphere, technosphere, media, academia and the
> Government (if possible). These people can be of great help in outreach and
> other logistical help.
>
> *3. Developing the sister projects.*
>
> For small communities, developing Wikipedia to a useful stage ( 100K
> articles of decent quality) is a very long term and intensive process. But,
> with some meticulous planning, the sister projects like Wiktionary,
> Wikisource can be scaled with less effort. When these projects grow, they
> in turn bring visitors and contributors for Wikipedia. They will also serve
> as a reference source for citations and vocabulary. This is one solution
> for the chicken and egg problem of building content to get contributors Vs
> having contributors to build content. This is also one are where formal
> entities like WMF and the chapter can help the community to network w

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Arjuna Rao Chavala]

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:

> What I found one of the key factor behind active communities particularly
>> Tamil and Malayalam, is the support of Government for the initiative.  This
>> could be a priority area for  other Wikipedias as well.
>
>
> According to my knowledge, World Classical Tamil Conference 
> 2010was 
> the only time Tamil wikipedians and --cut--
>
More important is, to grow Indic wikipedias some community members need to
> take some extra effort.
>
> Thanks for the clarifications. Agree with your above recommendation.

>
>  But unfortunately, the community could not be strengthened due to various
>> issues like access to Internet. computing platform, issues with rendering
>> and input methods and we ended up with stub articles remaining in the same
>> state.
>
>
> That is the case in all Indic wikis which used bots to increase the number
> of articles. According to me strength of the community also should grow as
> the number of articles grows. If we focus on community growth, articles
> numbers will grow as a natural outcome of that. As we already saw it will
> not happen the other way round for Indic wikipedias. As one editor pointed
> out in discussions, *Users will be attached to a wiki only if they feel
> proud about it*. So it is important that we should plan some programs to
> retain existing users and attract more new users to Indic wikis. We need to
> have some programs to bring back our old editors also.
>
> Bringing back old editors could be more difficult than bringing new
editors. I talked to few experienced but currently dormant editors on
Telugu Wiki and was  not successful.

Cheers
Arjun
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Shiju Alex]

>
> What I found one of the key factor behind active communities particularly
> Tamil and Malayalam, is the support of Government for the initiative.  This
> could be a priority area for  other Wikipedias as well.


According to my knowledge, World Classical Tamil Conference
2010was
the only time Tamil wikipedians and Tamil Nadu Government
collaborated.
During the conference there was an article writing contest which attracted
many people to Tamil wikipedia. Also during the same time a huge repository
of tamil words were donated to Tamil wiktionary. Apart from that, according
to my knowledge,  there are no other Govt initiatives. But I should say at
least in the case of Tamil the collaboration was a direct one.

But the case of Malayalam is slightly different. There was no direct
collabration. For Malayalam, the support community received was mainly due
to the personal efforts of IT@School director. IT@school supported most of
the wiki workshops across kerala, sponsored ml wiki CD, and so on. There
were couple of instances when community received indirect support. I have
listed some of those
here.
 One good thing about Malayalam is the involvement of social organizations
(for example 
KSSP).
This has directly or indirectly helped/helping Malayalam wiki projects. But
even though community tried to directly interact with Kerala government
multiple times (for example, to discuss about Kerala Govt website licenses)
none of them fetched any positive result till now.

So even though both Tamil and Malayalam communities received limited
support it became possible only because some volunteers from the community
were ready do physical outreach programs, meetup, and to talk to people. In
short I should say these all some of the after effects of public outreach
programs. There are many other things related to the outreach of Indic
wikipedias and its benefits, it is not just adding more users to wiki. I
may share that at anther point of time. More important is, to grow Indic
wikipedias some community members need to take some extra effort.


 But unfortunately, the community could not be strengthened due to various
> issues like access to Internet. computing platform, issues with rendering
> and input methods and we ended up with stub articles remaining in the same
> state.


That is the case in all Indic wikis which used bots to increase the number
of articles. According to me strength of the community also should grow as
the number of articles grows. If we focus on community growth, articles
numbers will grow as a natural outcome of that. As we already saw it will
not happen the other way round for Indic wikipedias. As one editor pointed
out in discussions, *Users will be attached to a wiki only if they feel
proud about it*. So it is important that we should plan some programs to
retain existing users and attract more new users to Indic wikis. We need to
have some programs to bring back our old editors also.


Shiju



On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>>
>> --cut--
>>
>> I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
>> discussions with a host of community members from across Indic language
>> communities.  I have shared these for 12 languages 
>> (Assamese,
>> Hindi,
>> Tamil,
>> Telugu,
>> Kannada,
>> Nepali,
>> Malayalam,
>> Marathi,
>> Odia,
>> Sanskrit,
>> Bengali,
>> and 
>> Gujarati

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Ashwin Baindur]

No, this is an important topic. Please discuss on-list being discreet to
avoid naming people or making accusations. We need to know the kind of
issues involved. Cooperation with English Wikipedia is one of the fastest
ways Indic language communities can grow their articles and add quality.

Warm regards,

Ashwin Baindur
--


On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ravi, this is exactly what I was talking about. I try to translate an
> article from English and I'm told that the community can do it
> themselves and don't need our help. The same editors refuse to help us
> when we need content from Indic projects on English. If need be, we
> could have an offlist discussion about this. I don't want to make too
> much noise on the list.
>
> On 12/24/11, Ravishankar  wrote:
> > HI Srikanth R,
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> > parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Ravi, while the idea of having English editors help out on Indic wikis
> >> sounds good, it isn't feasible. Most Indic editors distrust us English
> >> editors and remain aloof from us.
> >
> >
> > Indic communities don't need "help" but active "contribution" from people
> > familiar with en wiki. So, you have to think, act and become like a
> native
> > community member except for the fact that you are already aware of wiki
> > ways.
> >
> > I am not aware of happenings in other wikis. But, I can give you many
> > examples of contributions in Tamil Wikipedia where the editor came from
> > English Wikipedia. If you faced specific problems, please feel free to
> post
> > in our village pump and I am sure the community will take the steps
> needed.
> >
> > Ravi
> >
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

Ravi, this is exactly what I was talking about. I try to translate an
article from English and I'm told that the community can do it
themselves and don't need our help. The same editors refuse to help us
when we need content from Indic projects on English. If need be, we
could have an offlist discussion about this. I don't want to make too
much noise on the list.

On 12/24/11, Ravishankar  wrote:
> HI Srikanth R,
>
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ravi, while the idea of having English editors help out on Indic wikis
>> sounds good, it isn't feasible. Most Indic editors distrust us English
>> editors and remain aloof from us.
>
>
> Indic communities don't need "help" but active "contribution" from people
> familiar with en wiki. So, you have to think, act and become like a native
> community member except for the fact that you are already aware of wiki
> ways.
>
> I am not aware of happenings in other wikis. But, I can give you many
> examples of contributions in Tamil Wikipedia where the editor came from
> English Wikipedia. If you faced specific problems, please feel free to post
> in our village pump and I am sure the community will take the steps needed.
>
> Ravi
>


-- 
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Ravishankar]

HI Srikanth R,

On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ravi, while the idea of having English editors help out on Indic wikis
> sounds good, it isn't feasible. Most Indic editors distrust us English
> editors and remain aloof from us.


Indic communities don't need "help" but active "contribution" from people
familiar with en wiki. So, you have to think, act and become like a native
community member except for the fact that you are already aware of wiki
ways.

I am not aware of happenings in other wikis. But, I can give you many
examples of contributions in Tamil Wikipedia where the editor came from
English Wikipedia. If you faced specific problems, please feel free to post
in our village pump and I am sure the community will take the steps needed.

Ravi
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

Ravi, while the idea of having English editors help out on Indic wikis
sounds good, it isn't feasible. Most Indic editors distrust us English
editors and remain aloof from us. This has happened with me on the
Hindi wiki and with community members of Tamil.

-- 
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Ravishankar]

Hi Shiju,

Thanks for the excellent analysis on Indic Wikipedia communities.


>  When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
>
>1. Editor retention
>2. Attracting newbies
>3. Community communication
>4. Community collaboration and
>5. Community celebration
>
> Based on Tamil Wiki experience, I would like to add few more key points
that can make a difference:

*1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.
*

While small communities should not enforce all en wiki practices and rules
as such, active participation of people having English Wikipedia experience
is a great plus. They can help implement the best practices, clarify on
wiki procedures, help in technical aspects and act as ambassadors for the
local wiki. Throughout Tamil Wikipedia's growth, we have had such
contributors who made immense difference to the project. It is this
context, I emphasize that awareness about Indic Wiki for people visiting en
wiki should be increased.
*
2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.*

Not everyone can contribute to Wikipedia directly even if they know how to
do it. But they can still support the cause of Wiki. Efforts should be made
in getting friends in blogosphere, technosphere, media, academia and the
Government (if possible). These people can be of great help in outreach and
other logistical help.

*3. Developing the sister projects.*

For small communities, developing Wikipedia to a useful stage ( 100K
articles of decent quality) is a very long term and intensive process. But,
with some meticulous planning, the sister projects like Wiktionary,
Wikisource can be scaled with less effort. When these projects grow, they
in turn bring visitors and contributors for Wikipedia. They will also serve
as a reference source for citations and vocabulary. This is one solution
for the chicken and egg problem of building content to get contributors Vs
having contributors to build content. This is also one are where formal
entities like WMF and the chapter can help the community to network with
academic and government institutions and secure the content in appropriate
license.

Ravi
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Arjuna Rao Chavala]

Hi Shiju,

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>
> --cut--
> I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
> discussions with a host of community members from across Indic language
> communities.  I have shared these for 12 languages 
> (Assamese,
> Hindi,
> Tamil,
> Telugu,
> Kannada,
> Nepali,
> Malayalam,
> Marathi,
> Odia,
> Sanskrit,
> Bengali,
> and 
> Gujarati
> .)
>

Thanks for the extensive work you have done in surveying the language
Wikipedias and sharing insights on key priorities.  I have browsed through
the reports and found them interesting.


> Community --cut--
>

What I found one of the key factor behind active communities particularly
Tamil and Malayalam, is the support of Government for the initiative.  This
could be a priority area for  other Wikipedias as well.

> Projects There is a constant debate of what should come first - article
> count or article quality?  I
> --cut--
>

When some of the language Wikipedias started to use the bots for creating
stub articles, they would have imagined the strengthening  of community  to
improve the same. But unfortunately, the community could not be
strengthened due to various issues like access to Internet. computing
platform, issues with rendering and input methods and we ended up with stub
articles remaining in the same state.

I agree that use of bots for example could have been limited to District/
Mandal(Taluk) headquarters  rather than covering all the villages in the
case of Telugu Wikipedia for example. If  appropriate stubs are created as
part of overall project with committed community members and a definite
time frame,  seeding of the pages with stubs could be useful.

> Readership --cut--
>
As internet penetration and mobile data access increase, we will get even
> more Indic readers.
>
 +1

I also want to try and identify potential areas of support that India
> Programs could work closely with communities on.  The idea is to support
> community across languages.  We would like to identify a very limited (1 or
> 2) pilots of a very controlled nature (in terms of scale) that we would
> like to collaboratively design with respective communities.  Given the
> efforts that will be required in any pilot (even if it is of a relatively
> small scale), we believe that there needs to be a certain basic level of
> community size and collaboration to be able handle such pilots.
>

Chapter has kicked off Language SIGs  for some of the languages.  I am sure
the language SIG chairs and the active language Wikipedians will be eager
to interact with you on the  next steps.


Best wishes
Arjuna Rao Chavala
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Bishakha Datta]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Excellent Shiju, very well written.


+1. Excellent analysis, very meticulous.

Particularly like the way you broke down community building into the
various sub-parts (below) and detailed what each entails, and the
understanding that now that confirmed readership exists, the need is to
build the communities/projects to ensure readers keep coming back.

Good luck with the next pilot phase,
Bishakha

> When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
>

> >1. Editor retention
> >2. Attracting newbies
> >3. Community communication
> >4. Community collaboration and
> >5. Community celebration
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Shiju Alex]

Rajesh and other Nepali wiki community members,  I am really sorry about
the spelling error.

I have corrected the error in the meta wiki
version
.

Shiju

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Rajesh Pandey wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
> Thanks for sharing this. This is great. However the link for Nepali should
> have been
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Nepali/Discussions/2011
> which might have been misspelled.
>
> Thanks Shiju for the excellent work.
>
> Cheers,
> Rajesh Pandey
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Excellent Shiju, very well written. I hope the community will learn a
>> lot from your research and surveys and use them in a positive manner
>> to ensure that our local indic Wiki projects are in as good health as
>> English, French, Spanish, etc.
>>
>> On 12/16/11, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>> > Dear All,
>> >
>> > Apologies beforehand for a rather long and winding mail - but there is
>> so
>> > much that I want to say. I want to share how my thoughts are being
>> > crystallised.  I want to try and cross-pollinate ideas from some Indic
>> > language communities across to all communities.  I want to reach out and
>> > ask your views and suggestions.  I want to understand how best we can
>> help
>> > each community in a manner that is most appropriate to that community.
>> >
>> > I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
>> discussions
>> > with a host of community members from across Indic language
>> communities.  I
>> > have shared these for 12 languages
>> > (Assamese<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Hindi<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Tamil<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Tamil/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Telugu<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Telugu/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Kannada<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Nepali<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Neplai/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Malayalam<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Marathi<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Odia<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Sanskrit<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Bengali<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > and
>> > Gujarati<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Gujarati/Discussions/2011
>> >.)
>> >  I haven't (yet) got any response from 7 other communities (Bhojpuri,
>> > Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhisnupriya Manipuri, Pali, and Sindhi).
>> >
>> > At the very outset, I want to thank all of you who took time out and
>> shared
>> > your experiences and thinking.  It has been really useful and I hope you
>> > found it is as productive and constructive as I did.  The purpose behind
>> > this exercise was to hear, learn, and understand the evolution of the
>> > various communities - and to therefore suggest ideas going forward. I
>> urge
>> > everyone to go through all the other languages (even if they are not
>> > personally involved in those specific communities) because there are
>> > learnings for everyone from everywhere.
>> >
>> > I have been reflecting on the various insights and inputs and ideas I
>> have
>> > got from all these folks as well as subsequent discussions on mailing
>> lists
>> > and talk pages.  Here are my initial thoughts.
>> >
>> > CommunityIt sounds like a self-evident and very basic thing but the
>> single
>> > biggest priority for all communities (even relatively bigger ones like
>> > Tamil and Malayalam) is community building.  What has struck me from the
>> > various language communities is that everyone agrees that this is very
>> much
>> > required but very few are aware of what needs to be done or how it
>> needs to
>> > be done.  I wanted to share some thoughts about this.
>> >
>> > When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
>> >
>> >1. Editor retention
>> >2. Attracting newbies
>> >3. Community communication
>> >4. Community collaboration and
>> >5.

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Rajesh Pandey]

Hi Shiju,
Thanks for sharing this. This is great. However the link for Nepali should
have been
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Nepali/Discussions/2011
which might have been misspelled.

Thanks Shiju for the excellent work.

Cheers,
Rajesh Pandey

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Excellent Shiju, very well written. I hope the community will learn a
> lot from your research and surveys and use them in a positive manner
> to ensure that our local indic Wiki projects are in as good health as
> English, French, Spanish, etc.
>
> On 12/16/11, Shiju Alex  wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > Apologies beforehand for a rather long and winding mail - but there is so
> > much that I want to say. I want to share how my thoughts are being
> > crystallised.  I want to try and cross-pollinate ideas from some Indic
> > language communities across to all communities.  I want to reach out and
> > ask your views and suggestions.  I want to understand how best we can
> help
> > each community in a manner that is most appropriate to that community.
> >
> > I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
> discussions
> > with a host of community members from across Indic language communities.
>  I
> > have shared these for 12 languages
> > (Assamese<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Hindi<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Tamil<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Tamil/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Telugu<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Telugu/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Kannada<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Nepali<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Neplai/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Malayalam<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Marathi<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Odia<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Sanskrit<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > Bengali<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011
> >,
> > and
> > Gujarati<
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Gujarati/Discussions/2011
> >.)
> >  I haven't (yet) got any response from 7 other communities (Bhojpuri,
> > Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhisnupriya Manipuri, Pali, and Sindhi).
> >
> > At the very outset, I want to thank all of you who took time out and
> shared
> > your experiences and thinking.  It has been really useful and I hope you
> > found it is as productive and constructive as I did.  The purpose behind
> > this exercise was to hear, learn, and understand the evolution of the
> > various communities - and to therefore suggest ideas going forward. I
> urge
> > everyone to go through all the other languages (even if they are not
> > personally involved in those specific communities) because there are
> > learnings for everyone from everywhere.
> >
> > I have been reflecting on the various insights and inputs and ideas I
> have
> > got from all these folks as well as subsequent discussions on mailing
> lists
> > and talk pages.  Here are my initial thoughts.
> >
> > CommunityIt sounds like a self-evident and very basic thing but the
> single
> > biggest priority for all communities (even relatively bigger ones like
> > Tamil and Malayalam) is community building.  What has struck me from the
> > various language communities is that everyone agrees that this is very
> much
> > required but very few are aware of what needs to be done or how it needs
> to
> > be done.  I wanted to share some thoughts about this.
> >
> > When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
> >
> >1. Editor retention
> >2. Attracting newbies
> >3. Community communication
> >4. Community collaboration and
> >5. Community celebration
> >
> >
> > I would like to detail what I mean by each of these.
> >
> > 1. Editor retention: Like most language wiki communities we also have an
> > editor retention issue in all Indic language communities. This is
> > particularly an area of concern for us considering the fact that all our
> > Indic language communities are really tiny and community buiding efforts
> in
> > Indic wikis are very less. A dramatic case in point is Kan

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

Excellent Shiju, very well written. I hope the community will learn a
lot from your research and surveys and use them in a positive manner
to ensure that our local indic Wiki projects are in as good health as
English, French, Spanish, etc.

On 12/16/11, Shiju Alex  wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Apologies beforehand for a rather long and winding mail - but there is so
> much that I want to say. I want to share how my thoughts are being
> crystallised.  I want to try and cross-pollinate ideas from some Indic
> language communities across to all communities.  I want to reach out and
> ask your views and suggestions.  I want to understand how best we can help
> each community in a manner that is most appropriate to that community.
>
> I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory discussions
> with a host of community members from across Indic language communities.  I
> have shared these for 12 languages
> (Assamese,
> Hindi,
> Tamil,
> Telugu,
> Kannada,
> Nepali,
> Malayalam,
> Marathi,
> Odia,
> Sanskrit,
> Bengali,
> and
> Gujarati.)
>  I haven't (yet) got any response from 7 other communities (Bhojpuri,
> Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhisnupriya Manipuri, Pali, and Sindhi).
>
> At the very outset, I want to thank all of you who took time out and shared
> your experiences and thinking.  It has been really useful and I hope you
> found it is as productive and constructive as I did.  The purpose behind
> this exercise was to hear, learn, and understand the evolution of the
> various communities - and to therefore suggest ideas going forward. I urge
> everyone to go through all the other languages (even if they are not
> personally involved in those specific communities) because there are
> learnings for everyone from everywhere.
>
> I have been reflecting on the various insights and inputs and ideas I have
> got from all these folks as well as subsequent discussions on mailing lists
> and talk pages.  Here are my initial thoughts.
>
> CommunityIt sounds like a self-evident and very basic thing but the single
> biggest priority for all communities (even relatively bigger ones like
> Tamil and Malayalam) is community building.  What has struck me from the
> various language communities is that everyone agrees that this is very much
> required but very few are aware of what needs to be done or how it needs to
> be done.  I wanted to share some thoughts about this.
>
> When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
>
>1. Editor retention
>2. Attracting newbies
>3. Community communication
>4. Community collaboration and
>5. Community celebration
>
>
> I would like to detail what I mean by each of these.
>
> 1. Editor retention: Like most language wiki communities we also have an
> editor retention issue in all Indic language communities. This is
> particularly an area of concern for us considering the fact that all our
> Indic language communities are really tiny and community buiding efforts in
> Indic wikis are very less. A dramatic case in point is Kannada where active
> editor numbers (that is, editors who do at least 5 edits a month) have
> declined from 25 members to just 9 members over the past 10 months.  It is
> essential that all of us reflect on why this is happening and what can be
> done to avoid it in future and to resurrect lapsed editors.  Existing
> editors and old editors understand our projects and community and can play
> a huge role in community building and project quality improvement.  Many
> times, they have become inactive because of changing personal priorities.
>  However, sometimes, they leave because they are no longer excited by the
> pro