Government Higher Secondary School, Anchal West

All Indic Wikimedia communities (and indeed all small communities across the world) need to invite, welcome, introduce, support and encourage new editors.  Students – including school children – are wonderful additions to our communities. They have energy and talent and the right attitude. They are the ones to take forward Wikimedia projects.

The Malayalam Wikipedia community has a long tradition of working with school children and with the education system through its partnership with the Kerala Government’s IT@School Project. On 3rd July 2012, this relationship was further strengthened with the inauguration of  the Malayalam Wikipedia Education Programme.   The objective is to promote Wikipedia editing with school children and teachers at the Government Higher Secondary School at Anchal West, Kollam. This has only just started, but there are some pointers even at this early stage which are useful to small communities exploring similar initiatives and partnerships – within and beyond education. (more…)

Banner for Assamese Wikipedia celebrations

I made a short weekend trip to Guwahati, Assam (India) to attend the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Assamese Wikipedia on 10th June. Assam is known as the ‘gateway state’ to the North East of India and is home to people of diverse ethnic and linguistic origins. Including the Ahom, Bodo, Dimasa and Tai-Aiton, people of more than 10 tribes who all speak different languages inhabit Assam. However, since India’s independence and the formation of the state of Assam, Asssamese has been the official language, largely spoken by all. The Assamese language has over 1.3 crore (13 million) native speakers spread across Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and pockets of Bhutan. Currently, the Assamese Wikipedia has over 1000 articles and around 30 active editors. Interestingly, started in 2002, it was the first Indian language Wikipedia ever.

Assamese Wikipedians at the tenth anniversary celebrations

To mark ten years of Assamese Wikipedia, community members organized a workshop in Cotton College, Guwahati which was attended by over 60 people including students, linguists, journalists and prize winners of the article writing and photography contest. Machumi Bordoloi won the first prize for her article on “Malita” (a folk ballad) and Akashdip Goswami won the first prize for his photograph of “Kolia Bhomora Setu” – a bridge in Tezpur, Assam.

Presentations and talks explained what Wikipedia is (Gitartha Bordoloi), how one can contribute in Assamese (Bishnu Saikia), why one should contribute to Wikipedia (Uddip Talukdar), and gave lessons on community building (Jyoti Prakash Nath) and font support (by Bonojit Pathak). Their community is a perfect example of a well-knit family with one guiding another. The community’s warmth and openness to go that extra mile to welcome new members is admirable – they make sure that new users understand that editing is actually your contribution to your culture and knowledge preservation!

First prize winning entry in the photography contest

As a community that went from almost 0 to 30 members in a year, Assamese Wikipedians have some important lessons to offer. Jyoti, one of the most active Assamese editors, told me over dinner, “I contribute to Assamese Wikipedia so that people know about our culture and progress. Most newspapers and magazines don’t give you an objective picture of a place or its people. Wikipedia is my best bet.” I asked them how they went about getting more members. Most of them actually got acquainted on the Facebook group they run for as-wp. That’s where they asked questions, discussed and paired up for Wikiprojects. And looking at their discussions, many more were inspired.

What do they plan for the future? Get more editors, encourage the winners of photography and article contests to continue writing. The first step in this direction is the Wikiproject ‘Districts of Assam’. Writing about one’s own district, cities and towns could definitely be a great start for any new editor. They are also one of the first communities to use social media effectively for outreach. This structured way of community building that has led to the fantastic growth of the Assamese community could serve as a great example for smaller Wikipedias striving to get more editors on board. Especially for Indian language Wikipedias, a multi-pronged approach such as this (offline outreach, social media and pilot projects) might be the most sustainable way to progress.

Every little drop fills the ocean. In the Wikiverse, where many an editor has created hundreds of articles, imagine what a 30 member community could do for its Indic Wikipedia! Here’s hoping for a successful year to the Assamese community with more editors, articles and workshops!

Noopur Raval, Consultant (Communications), India Program, Wikimedia Foundation

Logo of the Malayalam conference (English version)

Of the 20 Indic language Wikipedia projects, the Malayalam Wikipedia (ml.wikipedia.org) is one of the most vibrant. With about 35 million Malayalam speakers, it is the biggest Indic language community with over 100 Wikipedians. The latest feather in their cap is the recently concluded WikiSangamolsavam conference on April 28-29, 2012. WikiSangamolsavam, a two day event organized in the city of Kollam, was the first Indic language Wikipedia conference ever and witnessed over 100 participants from different parts of the state and country.

A veteran Malayalam Wikipedian, Viswa Prabha, recalls, “Every year, many editors from Malayalam Wikimedia Community attend Wikimania, the annual conference of Wikimedians. Inspired by the activities at Wikimania a few active Malayalam Wikimedians though of planning a similar conference in Kerala.” Many Malayalam Wikimedians also participated in WikiConference, 2011 Mumbai, after which the idea of organizing a conference was put forward in mailing lists, Facebook group, and other discussion forums. Since Wikimedians from Kollam took up the initiative the venue was chosen as Kollam.

Over 30 Malayalee Wikipedians were involved in different stages of organizing the conference like managing the venue, food, accommodation, financial resources, registration etc. What was proposed as an idea in 2009 took 3 years to materialize, but rightfully so into a wonderful experience! “The event celebrated the achievements of the Malayalam community, planned new projects as a community and welcomed more Malayalees to the community. E-malayalam, free and open knowledge, copyright and cyber-freedom were the highlights of the conference this year”, said Kannan Shanmugam, a teacher based in Kollam.

Takeaways from the conference? As Netha Hussain, a medical student and Wikipedian points out, “The high point for me was the parallel Wiki Vidyarthi Sagaman (Wiki students’ meet) where school students were taught to edit Wikipedia. Among the 100+ participants of the conference, a few new editors got valuable insights about Wikiprojects from the paper presentations and discussions during the conference. The existing editors got to meet their friends/fellow Wikimedians whom they had only known online. The paper presentations and discussions brought up new ideas that could be worked upon in the future to enrich ml-Wikipedia’s content. At a larger level, partnerships were explored with IT@School (a government initiative) and Wiki activities were highlighted in the local as well as national media.”

Barry Newstead, Chief Global development officer at the Wikimedia Foundation who also attended the conference, wrote in his blog post, “What was encouraging about my visit was that I saw that this isn’t some naive dream…The Malayalam community served as a real inspiration. Over the past 4 years, they have built a passionate community that has expanded their Wikipedia from 5,700 to 23,000 articles.”

The journey hardly rests at the conference. In the week immediately after the conference, there were meet-ups in 3 different towns – Thrissur, Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram.  Also, community members have been working on initiatives around GLAM and education – and have collaboratively developed proposals for both. Preliminary meetings have already started with a number of museums and a proposal has been submitted to the Keralam – Museum of History and Heritage. Discussions have been initiated with the IT@Schools department of the Kerala government and a formal proposal to introduce Wikipedia as a teaching and learning tool in the 7th – 8th standard will be submitted shortly.

As Shiju Alex, Indic language consultant for Wikimedia Foundation articulates, “These are people who contribute to Wikipedia to share free knowledge but also to keep traditions alive and preserve the language they love. This movement requires young and old, teachers, doctors, engineers, linguists, researchers, writers, bloggers, lawyers, photographers and students. I hope what has started with the conference infuses new enthusiasm in the community and takes it to new heights!”

Noopur Raval, Consultant (Communications), India Program, Wikimedia Foundation

Netha Hussain

User:Netha Hussain‘s inspiring story is a wonderful way of celebrating Women’s History Month. Netha is a woman editor of the Malayalam language Wikipedia from the state of Kerala in India.

Netha is both a medical student and a Wikipedian. She mostly edits articles related to medicine/biology, literature and women’s biographies. She used to maintain a portal for biology on the Malayalam Wikipedia and is presently working to create and improve its most important health articles.

Netha recalls how she landed up on Wikipedia searching for a kind of chutney made in Malayali cuisine, ‘Chammandi‘, and after realizing there was no article on it, started it herself. Initially reluctant to edit in Malayalam, it is actually through Wikipedia that she brushed up her language skills well enough to write a Featured Article in Malayalam within a year! On the English Wikpedia, she started by editing the article about her college.

As it is so often the case, until Netha landed up at a WikiAcademy in Kozhikode, not many knew she was a female editor! She has taken up the challenge to bridge this gender gap and now runs mailing list discussions for women Wikimedians in Malayalam to share their experiences and build offline relationships. “Most of my friends online are Wikipedians”, she quips.

About welcoming women editors on Wikipedia, especially its Indic language versions, she says, “The community is very receptive to women editors. I was not privileged or discriminated just because I was a woman. I was encouraged to work on women’s biographies which were mostly stubs. With my help, many good quality articles on famous women were created on Malayalam Wikipedia.”

As in Netha’s case, in most Indic language Wikipedias it is easier to make substantial contributions than in other projects. Netha believes that the role of women is not different from the role from men in their contribution to free knowledge movements.

Netha believes her medical dreams and her Wikipedia editing reflect aligned missions “to empower people with knowledge and fulfill our duties towards the society.” (To reach out to her, the best place is her talk page.)

Noopur Raval, Consultant (Communications), India Program, Wikimedia Foundation