CIS-A2K/Reports/Community Monthly Reports/May 2012

Plan - May 2012

I'm outlining the broad areas that the India Program team is going to be working on during May 2012. This is for your information as well as to elicit suggestion.

Please do add comments on the discussion page, or offlist to me (hisham@wikimedia.org)

• Indic Community Building

We will continue our efforts to support local community building (across languages) with as many interested community members as we can effectively handle. This will primarily involve a combination of promoting collaboration (through Wikiprojects, for instance) as well as through helping grow communities by supporting community outreach efforts. Specifically in May, we plan the following

• Supporting the Malayalam community on a series of initiatives that they seek to do (partially as conceptualised and/or discussed at the recently concluded Malayalam community conference, WikiSangamolsavam
• Support the Assamese community to plan a series of initiatives around their 10th anniversary, including potentially an offline initiative - and any other initiatives that they are independently planning such as their photothon
• Support the Odia community in building on the momentum after last month's outreach and community buildng events - specifically by support to WP:Odisha as well their medical project as well as supporting an editathon in Anugul and a follow-up medical outreach at SCB, Cuttack.
• Helping the Nepali community with planning for their 10th anniversary as well as their medicine project)
• Providing advisory services to Bengali & Telugu wikisources
• looking at building the medical projects in Bangla & Telugu

• Supporting Outreach

• We will work on analysis of the various outreach sessions to understand trends and provide learnings to inform outreach going forward
• On Indic languages, we will continu the process of translation of the Outreach Handbook to Indic languages, of which we have (at least partially completed) Gujarati, Bangla, Telugu and Odia.
• We will continue to fine-tune the Outreach Handbook and other outreach material - building on the feedback and responses we are getting.

• Staying-in-Touch with Newbies Post-Outreach

• Communications

• We will conclude the work on Wikipatrika and plan to release it on May 10.
• We will publish at least 1 story on a topical community initiative
• We will continue to establish the social media / digital outreach plan using the Facebook group that has been set up, and now has a number of existing community members willing to support the initiative as mentors
• We will build on the social media pilot with the Odia community, and start the initiative for Odia We will also work on a similar for Kannada
• We will explore the potential for a digital outreach model for an Indic community - and preliminary discussions have commenced.
• Initiative work to support the Assamese & Nepali communities for their upcoming 10th anniversaries (in June) in the form of media / Public Relations
• We will work on and improve communication with Indic communities.

• Education Program

This is a topic we are carrying forward from last month. We have had a number of discussions with community members and we are working on a plan that we will hope to release this month.

Monthly Report - May 2012

Indic languages

• Supported Malayalam conference, WikiSangamolsavam and attended community meetups (or meeting with government officials) in Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, and Palakkad
• Meeting with Hindi Wikipedians at Greater Noida focused on community building
• Prepared a blog post on numerals in an Indic context, and a discussion on the implications for Hindi Wikipedia
• Supported the Kannada, Assamese, and Nepali communities with their anniversary initiatives - focused on community building (including outreach and Wikiprojects)
• Helped in setting up the proofread extension in Bengali Wikisource.
• Started the initial discussions for Assamese Wikisource.
• Helped Malayalam community to prepare a GLAM proposal which the community had submitted to the Keralam - Museum of History and Heritage.
• Helped Malayalam community with an education proposal which the community will be submitting to the IT@Schools project.
• Started setting up the Telugu Wikisource ready for the Proofread extension (and other required support)

Supporting Outreach

• Worked on capacity building pilot or Train the trainer design program
• Initiated a discussion with British Council to incorporate Wikipedia editing as a part of their regular activity for their library group members. A Wikiclub is proposed and the first in-class session planned for 23rd June. Announcements will be made once things get finalized
• Worked with Indic Wikipedians to get outreach supporting documents translated into various languages and the following languages were added Kannada, Bengali, Telugu & Gujarati
• Supporting Gujarati Wikipedians to potentially organize a Wikipedia Summer Camp in Ahmedabad
• Supporting Gujarati Wikipedians to form a Wikipedia Club
• Working on getting Editor Contribution Campaign running on one of the Indic language Wikipedias

Education

• Supported the Malayalam community with back end work like putting together a proposal and document for IT@Schools.
• Conducting one-on-one discussions with Indian community members to hear their opinions on how we should implement the program in the next semester
• Going through various talk and program pages associated with the Pune pilot to collate the suggestions and ideas of community members.

Communications

Social Media

• Created social media mentor note/guidelines with comprehensive learnings and insights from the first month experiences on two groups (English and Odia)
• Skype calls with mentors - spoke to 6 English mentors and 3 Odia mentors, explained, guided and redesigned messaging for groups
• Engaged 30+ new editors (with 5 edits at least) in the English group and 12 editors in the Odia group.

Storytelling for community building

• Supported Assamese community blog post for upcoming 10th anniversary celebrations
• Profiled Malayalam community member for insights on Wikisangamolsavam (blog post scheduled)
• Interviewed coordinators of Tag and assess drive for en-wp (blog post due)

Media support

• Medianama story on Wikisource
• Supported Odia press story
• Times of India story on Internet freedom
• Wrote two blog posts for teenage web site
• Media contacts support for Assamese, Kannada and Nepali celebrations
• Helped with press releases Assamese, Kannada and Nepali
• Updated media contacts for Assamese, Kannada, Nepali and English newspapers, radio and t.v.

Wikipatrika

• Successfully published third issue of Wikipatrika in May
• Made new sections, changes in designs, introduced new columns (Editor's point of view, featured interview, a tab for Commons)

Community and Program Support

Community Support

• Buddy system: Worked on a new offline program called "Buddy system" which will function to support new editors offline by the local experienced editors as mentors.
• Teahouse-Chatasabha: An on wiki New editor support system called "Chatasabha" was initiated on Odia Wikipedia by taking the lessons from Teahouse project on English Wikipedia. Based on lessons from English Teahouse host Debanjan and Chatasabha hosts similar systems will be implemented on Indic Wikipedia with the help of community members.
• Worked on plans for supporting Delhi-Hindi community.
• Meta update: Updated meta with FAQ (in PDF), Translated Outreach letter, Press release and Translated Prezi.
• Sugar customization: A CRM Package called SugarCRM is being used by customizing it for the use of India Program for several works related to reaching out to existing Wikipedians, managing contacts, etc.

Program Support

• Uploaded 19 of WikiConference India 2011, Mumbai videos on Youtube.
• Data Analysis: Worked with WMF research team for analysis of user contribution for new editors.
• Tools for Analysis: Has been working on toolserver tools for analyzing contribution of new wikipedians.
• India project tracker: Worked on preparing an analysis of Indic Wikipedia projects, their current community progress, Growth in the number of Active editors, New Editors, Content Growth, and Readership.

Social Media and Media support

• Supported in engaging 30+ new editors (with 5 edits at least) in the English group and 12 editors in the Odia group.
• Brief note on Odia Social media support:

A Facebook group pilot was initiated to invite Facebook users of the group to edit Wikipedia on 4 May 2012. 12 new editors were invited to the group to create user accounts on Odia Wikipedia, supported with basic editing. Some of them uploaded photos on Commons and used them on different articles. The present group has 613 members. Few other Facebook groups (who post messages related to Odia language, culture, literature, etc.) also helped to promote Odia Wikipedia Facebook group to invite more people. Links to Wikipedia articles were posted to create interest among new Wikipedians, variety of articles were selected including traditional alcoholic drinks prepared by tribal communities, local festivals, traditional food and dance forms and many such subjects. New Wikipedians uploaded pictures of preparation of traditional drinks by indigenous tribal groups, cuisines, places of interests.

• Media support: Supported for a press release and a story for Odia Wikipedia.

Meetings

• IRC - none