CIS-A2K/Events/Meetings with WMF team

CIS-A2K is involved in various operations in India with WMF team. The following online meetings were conducted -

Strategy meeting

This meeting was conducted on 12 April with Quim Gill. Some of the highlights are -

• We need to move into implementation mode at the earliest with the communities in India

• What is the role of Indian communities in governance of the movement?
• If you are not involved in decision making, strategic processes; then somebody has to guess what the Indian communities need. Don't let others decide your actions.
• How can communities be made aware about the impact of strategy implementation on their working?
• Small research studies, activities can be planned by volunteers around the issues like less community involvement in meta discussions/VP discussions, approaches towards larger dynamics & long term processes
• Grants for small projects around initiatives to be opened in a few weeks
• A2K to decide the list of initiatives to focus upon and specific activities.
• Regional Coordination with other WMF staff, contractors, affiliates etc. will have to start.

TWL for India meeting

This meeting was held on 15 April with Sam and Praveen Das. Some of the highlights are -

• We need to analyse the policies around references and status of implementation in Indic WP projects

• Study of active editors regarding reliable referencing, pattern of using/finding sources etc. is to be done

• The potential communities willing to initiate TWL process to be identified and facilitated

• Some pilots with enthusiastic libraries could be started. For e.g. Rawat's Nature Academy & Gokhale Institute showed interest after TWL Con in Pune

• The baseline of libraries is also to be prepared. They need basic inputs on Metadata handling, Koha, digitisation, linking their database/resources with Wiki platforms etc. The strategy to address these needs and then building further is to be developed.

Board Governance meeting

This meeting was held on 20 April with Krishna Velaga. Some of the highlights are -

Community awareness of governance

This opportunity should be used not only to do election outreach but also to convey the legal status & structure of Wikimedia Foundation, methods of governance and their importance across the movement. It is important to create awareness among grassroots communities about basic concepts, rather than only focusing on elections. It can focus on points such as:

• The Wikimedia Foundation, the Board and their relation
• How and why do volunteers’ participation & opinions matter?
• Overview of Bylaws

All this material should be translated into all major languages.

This is a long-time problem that many community members do not know about this. It will be a long term investment, and will also be a foundation during the implementation of Strategy 2030.

This will create a positive attitude towards movement among the non-Wikimedian community including institutional partners, well-wishers, supporters and donors.

Translations

• Well established organization to be partnered with for providing translation services to all major Indic languages.

• Individually it is difficult to manage a lot of people, in a country in India, where we have 10-15 major languages
• It would be better if Wikimedia Foundation can directly contract their services, it might be complicated for A2K, especially with the new FCRA guidelines.
• Rapid grants might create conflicts in the community where there are multiple interested people.

Voters

• Comparison with the election scenario in India; unregulated campaigning can harm the movement. Increasing voter turn-out by various means adopted just before the election will send the wrong message and it’s not beneficial for the movement in the long run.
• Increasing the number of eligible voters should not merely be an attempt to increase the number, but also increase the number of “informed” voters. Getting new users to vote might not give us good results.
• We can use this opportunity to revive users who were active in the past but not active currently. It can be a call to contribute again and relook at their decision, highlighting recent developments and tools.

• This would mean getting a list of people who have 300 edits overall but not 30 edits in the last six months

• Getting back old members can also revive community health, which is declining overall in India.

• How will home-wiki be considered? Based on SUL account creation, many people would have created accounts on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, but are contributing to Marathi (or any other language) content. Recent examples - Lingua Libre contribution by Marathi Community, Wikisource event participation, WLM, WLF etc.