CIS-A2K/IRC meeting 2012-03-29
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[10:31] =-= Topic for #wikimedia-office is “office hours | https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours | Publically logged during office hours.”
[10:31] =-= Topic for #wikimedia-office was set by Ironholds!~f@wikipedia/Ironholds on Saturday, March 24, 2012 12:17:55 PM
[10:31] === #wikimedia-office http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
[10:31] Hmundol This is the fortnightly India Program IRC and today we'd like to talk about the outreach work.
[10:31] Hmundol and a little about communications.
[10:31] Hmundol I do hope you have had the chance to see the opening statement I mailed
[10:32] Hmundol but just for the record, I shall post it here in a sec
[10:32] Hmundol As I had indicated earlier, what we will do going forward is to publish an opening statement - which is below. We'd like to have a rich discussion around these topics for 45 minutes and then throw it open for 15 minutes for any other topics that anyone wants to discuss.
[10:32] Hmundol There have been more than 22 outreach sesssions (English + some Indic languages) across India over the past 2 1/2 months. We have been working on constantly every component of outreach.
[10:32] Hmundol * Pre-session work - building supporting material (documents, presentations, handouts etc), evaluating different ways of conducting an effective outreach, using different ways to reach out to organisations with the proposal to conduct a session etc.
[10:32] Hmundol * Session work - adopting different techniques of doing outreach, how do we get participants more involved during the session, how to filter out the folks so that we do the editing session only with the genuinely interested participants, how to balance between practical and theoretical aspects of training, how much information to give out in one session etc.
[10:32] Hmundol * Post-session work - how do we provide editing support to the participants, how do we collect their contact information, how do we keep in touch with them on regular basis, how do we invite them to join other Wiki projects, how do we track their edit count - soon after the session, after 1 and 3 months of conducting the session etc.
[10:32] Hmundol We'd like to discuss these. In the IRC, the following will be covered:
[10:32] Hmundol * Indic Outreach: How can we do more outreach session in Indic langauges in particular? / Can regional communities work to translate supporting material? / How do we provide more support to different language communities to conduct these sessions?
[10:32] Hmundol * More Outreach: If we are doing 7 outreach session in one month right now is there a way of us doing 10 every month? / Can we find more community members who will be willing to conduct these session? / For community members who are interested to conduct outreach sessions but think they lack confidence - is there a way we can help them?
[10:32] Hmundol * Better Outreach: Can we find some volunteers who will be willing to "adopt" these newbies and give them support? .
[10:32] Hmundol I'd strongly encourage all those folks who have been actively involved in conducting these sessions over the past 2 months to join this IRC. It will be great if you could share your first hand experience with the wider community on what worked, what didn't, what we could have done better etc. I especially do want to ask Indic Wikimedians to join because we desperately need more outreach sessions in Indic languages.
[10:32] Hmundol We will also briefly address the early stages of the communications work - which are the storytelling and Wikipatrika support that was announced yesterday. Given it's early days on communications, I'd prefer this IRC stay largely focussed on outreach since there is so much to work through there.
[10:32] Hmundol See you all there!
[10:32] Theo10011 oh wow lots of text.
[10:33] RajeshPandey ya
[10:33] Theo10011 me thinks you wrote that before.
[10:33] giri Good evening, folks (and Hmundol)
[10:33] Theo10011 Also, hi.
[10:33] logic|afk Theo10011: copy of mail
[10:33] Hmundol I did indeed!
[10:33] Theo10011 ahh
[10:33] Nitika thats the mail that was sent on the India mailing list earlier today\
[10:33] logic|afk Theo10011: this channel doesnt have pastebin ? ;)
[10:33] Theo10011 CC by SA.
[10:34] Nitika As the note says About 22 sessions have been conducted over the past 2 and and half months. Which I think is great! Over the course of time we have learnt whole host of things at the same time we have faced some set of challenges as well.
[10:35] Nitika Some best practices would be: 1) doing an outreach with limited no. of people at a time and not get carried away by numbers
[10:36] Nitika 2) engaging high level of participantion from the attendees by way of calling them on stage to create their username, make a minor edit etc.
[10:36] giri Nitika: couldn't agree more about the "numbers" bit
[10:36] Nitika 3) divide the session into 2 parts: intro and editing. and ask only the intersted participants to stay back for the editing bit
[10:36] Hmundol on point 1, we would advise that if you have too many people, then split up and have multiple outreach sessions. to be fair,we don't have a hard number of what is the max but anything above 30 becomes physically difficult to manage
[10:37] Nitika it helps further filter down the attendees and leads to higher interaction level
[10:37] Nitika 4) stay focused only on Wikipedia and not deviate towards other projects - too much info can be overwhelming for some
[10:38] Nitika 5) give a balanced training - bit of both practical and theoritical
[10:38] Hmundol point 3 is a little dramatic but what we've seen is that if you ask folks after the initial nice stuff about wikipedia and a little glimpse of editing, if you ask only the guys who are really interested to stay, you can then have a very meaningful discussion on stuff like policies as well as gig ethe newbies the time and attention to do actual editing
[10:39] Nitika While the outreach sessions are going well, it has its own set of challenges
[10:39] Hmundol give the newbies...
[10:39] Hmundol sorry. typo.
[10:39] Nitika 1) How do we follow up with the participants 2) How do we handhold them (maybe a buddy system) 3) how do we get them involved in other projects
[10:41] Nitika while we are doing outreach sessions on one side on the other hand we are also capturing data of all the participants and their usernames
[10:41] Nitika we'll be analaysing their edits over a period of next months
[10:41] Srikeit Hmundol Nitika : On point 3, while I agree with its application sometimes, I wouldn't go so far to call it a best practice. Sometimes you need to keep the bored audience on for a bit, the mood may change. Not highly likely, but has happened at several outreach sessions I've been part of.
[10:43] Nitika @Sriket: sure! this is def not the best practice because we dont have enough facts to establish. Thou, just to add to the basic intro session goes on for about an hour and half or so
[10:44] Nitika by then its upto the aduience to decide if this is something that interests them or if they'd like to leave
[10:45] giri Nitika: typically, what are the subjects you choose that need contributing to, or editing?
[10:46] Nitika we ususally pick india realted articles. another way of enagaing with the participants is to ask then what they want to edit rather than imposing our choice on them
[10:46] Srikeit Nitika : Just drawing from my experience at the Wiki11 outreach session in Pune. We too had a lengthy intro session and the audience looked bored stiff. Had we given them an out they'd have all gone. But once we got to the hands-on editing, they really got into it
[10:46] Theo10011 I should get something to eat....
[10:46] Theo10011 oh sorry, wrong channel :P
[10:46] giri Theo10011: there you go... :)
[10:47] Nitika we try and select articles that are relatively underdeveloped - a lot of them say they want to edit the article on manmohan singh or any other important article like that
[10:47] Nitika but we discourage them from making their first few edits on an article like that
[10:47] giri Nitika: interesting. manmohan singh, eh?
[10:47] Nitika we ask them to select an article with low level of importance
[10:48] Theo10011 Before I go, any one want voice in the channel?
[10:48] Hmundol giri: sometimes it's also that they want to pick a particularly topical article. the day of the oscars, we were doing a session and they suggested the academy awards article. one glance at the article and the view history indicated that there was so much that had been done on it already that it would have been tough so we suggested something else
[10:48] Hmundol thanks theo!
[10:48] Theo10011 np
[10:49] Nitika A lot of documents are available that anyone can make use to conduct outreach - 1. draft mails that can be sent to profs, student clubc, interest groups, photo clubs 2. presentation that can be used 3. FAQs 4. handouts etc.
[10:49] kondi that reminds me Nikita can you forward the to me?
[10:49] kondi *them
[10:49] giri Hmundol: ok. "where should i begin" is naturally one of the questions any newbie asks
[10:50] Hmundol absolutely, giro. and it is a tough one on english wikipedia especially, coz there is also this urge to "create" an article - and with 4 million articles, that's not always easy.
[10:50] Nitika It will be great if al of us could reach out to institues where we see the potential - make use of mails etc
[10:50] Hmundol sorry, giro...
[10:50] giri Hmundol: :)
[10:50] Hmundol aaagghh. sorry, giri.
[10:51] Hmundol we suggest articles about indian topics only because they make it seem so much more real to the audience.
[10:51] giri Hmundol: must be the esperanto gravitation-field (ALL nouns end in -o)
[10:51] Nitika over the past few months we have done several outreach sessions in enginerring colleges
[10:51] giri Hmundol: yes, that makes abundant sense
[10:51] Hmundol a powerful field. i will kid you not, but my spell check is forcing it on me, giri
[10:51] Nitika but we want to movea little away from that to reach out to arts, medical, literature disciplines
[10:52] Hmundol we also suggest time at the end where ask folks to suggest what they will edit after the session.
[10:52] Hmundol it's nice because you can once again suggest where they might be choosing tough articles to begin with.
[10:53] Hmundol the essential thing is to try and encourage them to start where there is reasonable potential and not to take a tough one. because they will stumble
[10:54] Nitika I notice that we have few Indic Wikipedians here and I'd love to know how we can help them conduct outreach session and provide them with back ened support
[10:55] Nitika @Kondicherry: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Handbook#Respository_of_Documents
[10:55] kondicherry Nikita :)
Nikita
[10:56] RajeshPandey :) waiting ..
[10:56] RajeshPandey shall I speak?
[10:56] Hmundol of course!
[10:56] RajeshPandey I will be talking about Nepali wikipedia..
[10:57] kondicherry kondi
[10:57] =-= kondicherry is now known as kondi
[10:57] RajeshPandey this year Nepali wikipedia is going to be 10 years old and we want to organize an event on this
[10:57] RajeshPandey (obviously other wikipedia are also turning 10)
[10:57] RajeshPandey people are interested and are waiting for the event to happen..
[10:58] RajeshPandey people have started knowing about wikipedia .. because for Nepali wikipedia its about telling them that we also have wikipedia in local languages ..
[10:58] Hmundol hey RajeshPandey, is there any help you need on this? I think it'll be a sweet thing if you can organize an event to celebrate this event. What did you have in mind?
[10:59] RajeshPandey well an event on that day.. obviously..
[10:59] RajeshPandey we have some volunteers .. as well...
[10:59] RajeshPandey last time we organized a similar event by collecting money from the volunteers themselves
[10:59] RajeshPandey and this time volunteers are a bit scared :)
[11:00] RajeshPandey I think a kind of grant for the event would be helpful.. but that might be another thing .. I don't know .. just an idea..
[11:00] RajeshPandey may be we should take some people from wikimedia india to kathmandu and organize an event
[11:00] RajeshPandey like Hisham/ Nikita / Shiju ..
[11:00] Nitika I have personally tried mailing and calling a lot of institues in Andhra, Bengal and Assam. But my expereince has been rather disheartning. Its very rare that I hear back from them and I think this might be due to the fact that Im writing to them in english and they'd be more comfortable talking in their resp langauge
[11:01] RajeshPandey take them to Kathmandu.. and it will be more official thing.. when they will see some wikimedia officers there..
[11:01] Hmundol RajeshPandey: love the invite! thank you. a grant is an option - and you could consider a grant request with the community.
[11:01] giri RajeshPandey: when are you planning this event?
[11:01] RajeshPandey Its okay when you write them in english beause the ones who will be interested will know english mostly ..
[11:01] Nitika Thats one of the roadblocks in getting the opportnity to do an outreach in Indic lang
[11:02] RajeshPandey I need to check the date.. but its around June..
[11:02] Hmundol also, shiju / I will get in touch with you to see how best we can help out.
[11:02] RajeshPandey will tell the date later
[11:02] Hmundol i understand your issue about the "official" aspect.
[11:02] Hmundol also the other big issue we wanted to discuss is how to suppert indic language outreach.
[11:03] Hmundol few points to note.
[11:03] Hmundol the material that nitika has prepared so far are all in english.
[11:03] giri RajeshPandey: thank you. if you keep us informed, i can inform a few friends from nepal who contribute to the esperanto wikipedia on nepal-related matters
[11:03] Hmundol even the stuff like mails to the professors are still in english.
[11:03] RajeshPandey @girl: hmm ok ..
[11:03] Nitika @RajeshPandey: im sure they would understand english but thats probably not their comfort language
[11:04] Hmundol however, they seem to be working - in english. but not (obviously) when we send them to indic language audiences.
[11:04] RajeshPandey @yes.. it will be really nice to get it in Nepali .. but even if it is in English it will help ..
[11:04] =-= dungodung|away is now known as dungodung
[11:04] Hmundol RajeshPandey: absolutely, but it will be so much more powerful if it can be done in nepali - or the respective indic language.
[11:05] RajeshPandey @English or nepali will not matter.. but some kind of moral/official/presence would be more appealing ..
[11:05] debanjan then again in how many outreaches do you have a specific language audience??
[11:05] giri debanjan: good point
[11:05] Hmundol sure, RajeshPandey: will work with you on this. there's a lot of stuff happening in nepali and we'd be delighted to support.
[11:05] debanjan I mean, if your generally doing a academy in institutions, you will have to do it in english as the lingua franca right??
[11:06] BobTheWikipedian we've got activity going on in portuguese in brazil
[11:06] debanjan and if you find the audience is of a specific indic language, just start speaking in that language...slides don't need to change right..??
[11:06] Nitika @Debanjan: we'd love to do langauge specific outreach. To build Hindi community we have already done an outreach in Dept of Hindi and are scheudle for one in Dept of Hindi @ DU
[11:06] giri debanjan: not necessarily, though. i can visualize a session held in the hindi or telugu dept of my univ -- it would have to be in those languages
[11:07] debanjan see....I am not saying its not possible...
[11:07] Nitika In addition to that over the weekedn 3 different outreach sessions are happening in Odia
[11:07] debanjan but am saying generally you tend to do it in english...
[11:07] Hmundol debanjan: you're right. the challenge is how to get more in indic languages too
[11:08] debanjan I mean, you can never do it in any specific language in my institute, as it has a varied mix...
[11:08] RajeshPandey <brb>
[11:08] giri debanjan: at my univ level it depends on whether you are addressing a language dept or a discipline (sociology, etc)
[11:08] Nitika I'd strongly recommend and request all the communitites to translate the mails/docs that we already have ready for en.wikipedia
[11:08] Hmundol and in small indic communities, you don't always have enough folks who have the experience, material (such as presentations, FAQs, etc.) to conduct outreach sessions
[11:08] Nitika into their own langauges and share it with the wider community
[11:08] debanjan yeah, that won't be too difficult actually...
[11:08] debanjan If you'd like nitika, I can traslate in bengali
[11:09] kondi Guys one offf topic notice, only two days are left in march and the April COTM has not been decided yet.
[11:09] Nitika @Debanjan: Thumbs UP!!
[11:09] Nitika would love it!
[11:10] kondi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_India/Collaborations_of_the_month/Nominations GO VOTE!
[11:10] Hmundol we would really like to see folks from other communities do similar for their languages so that the material is in place for folks who might be interested.
[11:11] =-= Jarry1250__ is now known as Jarry1250
[11:11] Hmundol also, moving on to communications, noopur has just started some preliminary work on wikipatrika as well as storytelling
[11:11] debanjan Also, I think we should have a set of unified flier design in case of say a stall outreach...
[11:11] Noopur28 Hello all :)
[11:12] BobTheWikipedian hi noopur :)
[11:12] debanjan hi Noopur
[11:13] debanjan I had some difficulty when designing the flier for the outreach stall in Kolkata recently...wasn't sure what to keep and what to leave...
[11:13] =-= RoanKattouw is now known as RoanKattouw_away
[11:13] debanjan hence recommend a fixed flier available to everyone, much like the slides...
[11:14] Hmundol so noopur has been talking to a bunch of folks who have been involved in patrika in the past
[11:14] Nitika @Debanjan: I can surely help you out ont hat and u can then translate it to bengali
[11:14] Hmundol and a bunch of them have expressed interest in bringing out an issue again, soon!
[11:14] debanjan will do...
[11:15] Hmundol a suggestion we go was that we could look at the next issue to cover the period of july 2011 till March 2012
[11:15] Noopur28_ Sorry about that
[11:15] Hmundol and then see if it can be done more regularly (hopefully quarterly) after that.
[11:15] debanjan nice idea
[11:16] Noopur28_ I had also sent out a mail on storytelling
[11:16] Noopur28_ lhttp://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/27/wiki-women-joining-indic-languages/
[11:16] Noopur28_ oops
[11:16] Noopur28_ http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/27/wiki-women-joining-indic-languages/
[11:17] debanjan if its a bit off topic, sorry, but views on the online session?? I quite enjoyed it...
[11:18] Nitika @Debanjan: Double thumbs up!! :)
[11:18] debanjan will we be doing it more often??
[11:18] Nitika we most definitley should if we have intersted folks and stable internet connections
[11:18] debanjan I mean, even my participant asked that...he seemed very keen to do it again...
[11:19] Hmundol folks, just realized we reached the 45 min mark - so happy to take any other questions related to india program
[11:19] kondi May I?
[11:19] Hmundol of course!
[11:20] kondi We are having a academy in april + a possible meetup and another small wikipedia session in Ahmedabad, would it be possible for anyone from Wikimedia India to come here?
[11:20] Hmundol happy to look into it kondi.
[11:21] debanjan_ sorry...network failed...
[11:21] Hmundol would love a situation where we can come meet up with interested community folks, show them how to do outreach, hold their hands during the actual outreach and then hopefully sit through another outreach session when they can do it independently
[11:22] Hmundol sometimes, folks just need a little support in their first session and then they gain the confidence to do it themselves
[11:22] kondi that sounds great hmundol
[11:22] Hmundol also, coming back to debanjan's point, we actually would love if experienced folks (who might not have done outreach) sit through the online outreach sessions so that they can see how outreach can also be done - and take ideas from there
[11:23] debanjan_ yes, and sometimes you need to unveil the cool gadgets to advanced editors to show them how fun wikipedia really is...
[11:23] debanjan_ ok...weird...I've quit?? Am still here to??
[11:23] Noopur28_ yes you are debanjan
[11:23] BobTheWikipedian lol you are
[11:23] Noopur28_ hey :)
[11:23] Theo10011 I can kick you?
[11:24] debanjan_ can we do an outreach for irc??
[11:24] Hmundol ha ha
[11:24] debanjan_ I really need it...
[11:24] Hmundol we'd need to do an irc beforehand though...
[11:24] =-= Mode #wikimedia-office +o Theo10011 by ChanServ
[11:25] Hmundol folks, we are now close to 5 minutes before closing.
[11:25] Hmundol if there are any questions or comments.
[11:25] debanjan_ minutes of the meeting then??
[11:25] BobTheWikipedian the log will be posted shortly
[11:26] Hmundol going to scroll up and ask whoever hasn't spoken yet to feel free to going in
[11:26] kondi hmundol waiting for the answer! wil it be possible or not?
[11:26] BobTheWikipedian http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2012-03-29
[11:26] Hmundol kondi: not sure if you are referring to the ahmedabad plans that you spoke about and i said we would try to work it out.
[11:26] Hmundol kondi: did i miss anything else you had written?
[11:26] Hmundol Mkar: good luck with your session tomorrow!
[11:26] MKar Odia Wiki Community will arrage 3 Meetups: Tomorrow at Nalconagar (Angul), 31st March at SCB Medical College and ont he Odisha day at Bhubaneswar
[11:27] MKar Thanks:)
[11:27] =-= Mode #wikimedia-office -o Theo10011 by ChanServ
[11:27] debanjan_ will all of it be in odia??
[11:27] Hmundol that's great. i saw the registrations for the one on MOnday and there are quite a few already which is nice.
[11:27] Nitika @MKar: goodluck! :)
[11:27] kondi hmundol yes I was talking about ahmedabad
[11:27] MKar Yes all 3 in Odia :)
[11:27] Hmundol debanjan_: subha has actually made a cool version of his prezi outreach presentation - in odia
[11:27] giri MKar: yes, good luck!
[11:28] debanjan_ nice...If I could read odia I'd check it out...
[11:28] Noopur28_ Dear all, just a gentle reminder about Wikipatrika.
[11:28] MKar Thanks to all. Subha is the backbone of all 3 meetups
[11:28] debanjan_ @noopur...reminder as in??
[11:28] Noopur28_ I've heard from a few community members, if anyone is facing issues starting the page for their community, please do tell.
[11:29] Hmundol Mkar: i know you folks are having a meet up too this weekend - so good luck with that. it'll be really nice if you could see how you folks could consider how best to provide support to newbies.
[11:29] Noopur28_ debanjan: to start a page on bn wp and start posting news stories
[11:29] Hmundol there's a number of new accounts being created on odia wikipedia so there are interested folks - but they seem to be struggling at the first edit stage
[11:29] debanjan_ will get more details about that from you after my exams then,,,
[11:30] Noopur28_ debanjan: sure, will wait. It would be great if the issue can come out by end-April
[11:30] MKar As there is very less active Odia wikipedians. we are facing this sort of problems
[11:30] MKar ;
[11:30] Hmundol and repeating Noopur28_'s points about patrika and story telling. please do reach out to her if you need any help or if you are struggling with patrika.
[11:30] Hmundol I know MKar. Just look at the problem as 1 newbie at a time - and you will see results!