Odia Wikimedians User Group/Annual Report/2022-23

Executive Summary

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This annual report includes updates on strategic plans, initiatives undertaken and the impact of the same by the Odia Wikimedians User Group (ODW) between Jun 2022 - May 2023. This report only highlights the current members' direct contributions towards the Odia-language Wikimedia projects (currently Odia Wikipedia, Odia Wikisource and Odia Wiktionary) and indirect contributions through other Wikimedia projects and to the larger Wikimedia movement that are tied to the Odia language or topics related to the Indian state of Odisha. Individual contributions not related to the topics above might not be fully captured here, considering the limited scope of this report. Note that Odia is spoken by nearly 45 million people residing in the Indian state of Odisha and the Odia-speaking diaspora in India and abroad.

This year saw major events like in-person meetups like Wikimania and MCDC Strategy meetings, organization and participation in several edit-a-thons.

Initiatives

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The user group organized an in-person Wikimania 2022 led to an in-person gathering of the members of the Odia Wikimedians User Group and the Santali Wikimedians User Group on 13 and 14 of August[1] A total of 17 participants joined this event including one support staff from the foundation.[2]
Odia Wikimedians joined hands with the Punjabi, Assamese, and Santali communities for this edit-a-thon to extend the initiative to expand the language-related articles and create new articles. Four Wikimedians created 55 new articles. Most of the articles were biographies of notable Sahitya Akademi award winners.
Odia Wikipedia saw active community participation while returning to the 2023 edition of the annual Feminism and Folklore edit-a-thon. Ten Wikimedians created 156 new articles. Most of these articles were biographies of notable women helping bridge the gender gap on Odia Wikipedia.
  • Organized a workshop with the support of Feminism and Folklore 2023 team
The user group organized a workshop for the new volunteers at Bhadrak (1st workshop of this district), where a total of 7 volunteers attended the workshop, and the user Sangram Keshari Senapati explained the basics of Wikipedia and trained them how to translate using the [[w:en:Wikipedia:Content translation tool|Content translation tool]. 6 volunteers joined Wikipedia and translated a few articles for the Feminism and Folklore 2023 edit-a-thon.[3]
The Odia Wikipedia community participated in the 2022 Wikipedia Asian Month edit-a-thon. However, the event did not see wider participation and only 20 articles were created during the contest.
Odia Wikipedia organized a 7-days long edit-a-thon on the tourist places of Odisha for the first time. But, due to year-end time, this event did not see wiser participation. One 1 article was created and 5 existing articles were improved by two users.
  • Organized Strategy meeting for MCDC
The user group organized an offline meeting on 18 December 2022. The users from Odia and Santali Wikimedians User Group joined this meeting and shared their valuable feedback on the moment charter.
A few members from the user group participated in WikiConference India 2023 in Hyderabad from 27 to 30 April 2023. One user, Chinmayee Mishra was part of the organizing team. Two users, Gyana and Sangram were part of the photography team. Soumendra was part of the Sessions documentation team. A few presentations were presented there by the Odia Wikimedians in collaboration with other communities for different projects.
Organized by CIS-A2K, one Odia Wikimedians participated and created content for one article related to this edit-a-thon and improved a few articles.
Organized by CIS-A2K, one Odia Wikimedians participated and created content for two articles about the celebrations held in June month.
  • Delhi Meetup in August 2022
On 24 August 2022, three members of the user group, Sangram, Pankajmala Sarangi, and Radharani Dwibedi, met in Delhi. Pankajmala and Radharani couldn't attend the Bhubaneswar Wikimania event, so Sangram met them to distribute their swags. They talked about Odia Wikisource's future and the upcoming edit-a-thons.
  • Bhubaneswar Meetup in May 2023
On 9 May 2023, four user group members met in Bhubaneswar. One member from the WMF also joined the meetup.
  • Planning Ratha Jatra 2023 edit-a-thon [successfully implemented by the time of reporting]

Additional updates

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  • Odia Wikimedian Chinmayee Mishra is leading the WikiWomenCamp 2023, the most important in-person gathering for expanding Wikimedia's scope and collectively address gender gap, to be held in New Delhi, India, in October 2023.
  • The number of pronunciations of Odia words crossed 70,000 — making it the largest speech data in Public Domain among South Asian languages, and the third largest globally on Lingua Libre.

References

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  1. Team, Wikimania Core Organizing (2022-08-09). "Join Wikimania 2022 in person". Diff (in en-US). Retrieved 2022-09-04. 
  2. "Two-day Wikimania event held". Sambad English (Bhubaneswar: sambadenglish.com). 17 August 2022. Archived from the original on 18 August 2022. Retrieved 18 August 2022. 
  3. Dhangadamajhi, Sunil Kumar (13 April 2023). "ଭଦ୍ରକରେ ପ୍ରଥମକରି ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ କର୍ମଶାଳା ଆୟୋଜିତ". ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବାର୍ତ୍ତା (in Odia). Archived from the original on 22 June 2023. Retrieved 22 June 2023. 

In news

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