Grants:TPS/Balajijagadesh/Wikimania/2019/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2019!

Participant

Balajijagadesh

Tamil Wikisource is my home project. closely involved with Tamil wikipedia, wiktionary, wikidata and wikiquote.

Outcome

New Creation: What was one useful outcome of the event for the Wikimedia movement?

• After meeting Jayprakash12345 at the wikimania I explained to him about the need for a tool to transfer the non free fair use images cross wiki to lot of user time is saved. Considering the importance of the tool, Jay created wikifile-transfer tool which saved lot of time and hassle for me and many other users. There was another problem in Tamil wikisource. The gadget nop inserter was installed in Tamil wikisource. But it was not working. The gadget saves lot of time while proofreading. Needed that gadget. When I met Jay in wikimania, I discussed this problem with him. Within an hour he rectified the problem. Now the gadget is working properly in Tamil wikisource.

Connections

Me with slowking4

I made connections and re-connections with many people.

• I had interesting talk with Ankry. He is a prolific contributor in Polish wikisource. He personally explained me about how polish wikisource overcame the problem of wsexport tool. I came to know that he has rented a server and hosted the wsexport tool in that domain. The advantage of the domain is that the files generated through wsexport tools in kept in cache for 24 hours. So subsequent downloads for the same books would be faster. Also since the resources allocated in the server is greater that tools.wmflabs, bigger books also gets converted and downloaded relatively quickly in variety of formats such as mobi, epub, pdf, etc.
• I met slowking4 and learning about his amazing work in english wikisource. we discussed many nuances in wikisource in English
• I met cyberpower678. He works for the IA-bot. I had given request in phabricator for the integration of Tamil wikipedia project in IA-bot for the archival of references in internet archive. So when I met him in wikimania it was interesting to see the person live. had a discussion with him about the IA-bot and Tamil wikipedia.
• Met Jayprakash12345. We had many interesting discussions regarding the tech team. Various problems, challenges, possible future propositions, etc.
• Had long discussions with Pavan santhosh.s regarding wiki scene in back home. The discussions led to a friendly relation. This facilitated many India related events. We were able to clear some of the Tamil wikisource related copyright issues.
• Had long discussions with KCVelaga. Learned about his work about organising different events in India. This helped to create a trust between each other. After returning back home we collaborated for wikiconference India 2020. For the Tamil wikimedia community I was leading the discussion whether to support the event or not. Because of overwhelming support for the conference from Tamil community, the conference was supported by Tamil wiki community in meta.
• Met Sebastian Wallroth an interesting wiki podcaster. We had good light hearted discussion regarding my wiki journey. He recorded the whole talk. As a podcast of the talk hope some find it interesting or inspiring for their work.
• Met Manavpreet Kaur and had many discussions regarding the wikiprojects in India. Because of the rapport developed during the wikimania, it is easier to connect regarding various cross community events with here such as wikiloves women event etc.
• Met and connected with amazing wikimedians from Bangladesh Ibrahim Husain Meraj and Afifa Afrin. Learned about many interesting projects happening in wikimedia Bangladesh. I learned their education programmes. They are cool and relaxed person and they are go person now If I am having a wiki burnout.
• Met Abhinav619 and had interesting discussions regarding wikisource, wikimedia India chapter, etc. Helped him out with his problems in proofreading books such as Nationalism. The meeting was a fruitful collaboration and helped to completed to works in English wikisource. We also had other online meetings regarding wikimedia India chapter.
• As a wikisourcer, I felt immensely happy to meet wikisourcers from various languages like Ankry , Bodhisattwa, VIGNERON, Atudu, LA2, Jon Harald Søby, Peter Isotalo, Pmlineditor, Ijon, Ruthven, Satdeep Gill, Slowking4, Wikilover90. Learning from the experiences of each one of them inspired me to do more work in wikisource. After wikimania I started dedicating work in English wikisource in addition to home project Tamil wikisource.

Anything else

cheering during the coolest tool awards event

• The details of sessions I have attended and the notes taken can be seen here.
• Attended "Google-hosted Dinner at Wikimania" in one of the evenings. Had fruitful discussion with Google team regarding project tiger, Growing Languages On Wikipedia (GLOW). Was invited for the event as a representative of "Tamil community" member. Was quite inspired by the event. After returning back home from wikimania, actively participated in project tiger 2.0 article writing editathon among Indian language communities. Participated in the event in various capacities such as Jury, article writer, communications, etc. Tamil language Wikipedia stood first in the competition writing 2929 accepted articles.