CIS-A2K/Indic Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011

This page documents the discussions I have had with few Odia wiki community members. For these discussions, I reached out to everyone I knew and tried to connect with some I didn't through Email-user facility/talk pages. I have created this page based on those interactions. Since then, some community members whom I couldn't contacted earlier have asked to share their views. I request you to share them directly with me personally at shiju@wikimedia.org. I request you NOT to post directly on this page. (In the cases below, I have removed personal details to protect privacy, any personal remarks to try and keep the learning focused and the discussions constructive.) And most important is, all the initial discussions that happened in 2011 were to get the community started sharing the ideas. This will continue in 2012 and in coming years also. Please post your comment/opinion/views regarding the below discussions on the talk page of this page.

2011

Summary of discussions

November 1st - Srikant Kedia from Odia Wiki community

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On November 1st, I had a dicussion with Srikant Kedia of Odia wiki community regarding Odia wiki projects. In the past Srikant has actively helped with creating lot of basic stuff (especially various necessary templates), ornanize the first Odia wiki worshop at Bhuvaneshwar, and many other stuff (Remember he is a student). I met him personally during the first Odia wiki workshop that happened at Bhubaneshwar. Following are some of the important points that I captured from our discussion.

Srikant informed that the current active members in Odia wiki is around 15.
As of now 3 wikipedia projects are active in Odia wikipedia. Odia Cinema, Odia Sahitya, and Odia loves Wikipedia. Odia Cinema is for developing Ollywood film articles, Odia Sahitya is for the Odia literature, and Odia Loves Wikipedia is to make article with pics
Odia wikipedians are using social networkimg sites (for example Facebook, Twitter, and so on) to reach out to odia people who has access to computers and internet
Srikant mentioned Odia wikimedians from cuttack is planning for a montly meetup at cuttack.
Srikant and team want to conduct more wiki workshop across Odisha. But the lack of support (money, infrastructure, and manpower) are preventing them from doing more wiki workshops. For the last wiki meetup at Cuttack, Srikant was forced to to bear all the expenses. Remember Srikant is a student.

November 2nd - Subhashish Panigrahi from Odia Wiki community

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On November 2nd, just before having meeting with Odia wiki community I had a discussion with Subhashish Panigrahi. Subhashish is the main person behind building a wiki community for Odia (even though I extended minimal external support). Apart from organizing number of wikiworkshops for Odia (both in Bangalore and in Odisha) he had also helped with the creation of FAQ book for Odia, helped in the development of typing tool for Odia, setup many basic things in Odia wiki projects, an on. He is also active in sister wiki projects of Odia and in Translate wiki. Following are the important points captured from the discussion with Subashish.

Understands and agrees that community building is the key thing for the future of Odia wiki projects. He himself feel the benefits of it, since now Odia has a small community to look after the basic stuff so that Subhashish can work on few other admin related tasks.
Is happy that they have a set of people who are very positive about the future of Odia Wiki projects
Feels the importance of creating more awareness among Odia people and conducting wiki worshops for that. As of now he feel the focus needs to be for community building by more and more outreach programs
Requests the support of WMF to reach out to Odisha government officially.
He feel, for time being, the priority should be for the Outreach programs in different places (In and outside Odisha) and Official contact to reach the Government
Now Odia wikipedia started getting active English wikipedians (of Odia origin). Subhahish said the new member Jyotiprakash is such a user. The recent Cuttack wiki workshop turned him active into an or wp.
The need of activating and using the Odia wiki mailing list effectively is discussed. Mailing list is the medium by which Odia wikipedians can reach the speakers of Odia. So that needs to be used properly.

November 2nd - Odia Wiki community

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I (Shiju) had a meeting with few active Odia wikimedians on November 2nd 2011, regarding Odia wiki projects. Since I was involved with the community building of Odia wiki in the past, I know many active Odia community members. And I am fortunate enough to meet some of them on various occasions. Following are the Odia wiki users attended the meeting.

Subhashish
Ansuman
Srikant
Nayansatya
Jyotiprakash
Swnbi
Kamalakant

After the initial introduction, we discussed various topics related to Odia wiki projects. Some of the major points discussed are listed below:

Srikant and few others said, Odia wikimedians want to do more wiki workshops across Odisha, but unable to do so due to lack of resources (money, infrastructure, and local support). Citing the example of European language Wikipedias (and Tamil and Malayalam from India), I explained the importance of getting more local support for Odia wiki projects and explained (with my past experiences with Malayalam wiki community) and how it will help the Wikimedia movement in Odisha state. Even though support to some extent can be requested from foundation, getting local support for the infrastructure and participation of local people will fetch more positive results for Odia wiki projects. So the Odia community members need to start building good relationship with people of Odisha state and try to attract more support from Odisha state. All are agreed to this view.
Srikant mentioned about the plans for starting a monthly Odia wiki meetup in Cuttack. If that happens that would be wonderful move and it will hep Odia wiki rojects in many ways.
Ansuman mentioned that currently Odia wiki community is not able to start new wikipedia projects due to the limited number of community members they have. This emphasis the importance of adding more members to the community. The fact that existing community members start thinking about new wikipedia projects is definitely a good and shows the vision of existing community members about the future of Odia wiki projects.
Ansuman also mentioned the importance of retaining existing members. I suggested the idea of starting few small interesting wiki projects so that existing members will be engaged and retained. In short inside wikipedia some interesting things need to be happened apart from the normal wiki article creation. Then only members will stay.
The idea of collaborating with the Odia organizations of Bangalore is discussed. Subhashiah and Ansuman said they will look into it.
Already 3 wikipedia projects are running in Odia Wikipedia. The idea of starting wiki projects when some important event related to Odisha happens is discussed. The wiki projects like creating articles on all Grama Panchayat of Odisha, if executed properly can be used to bring more new users to Odia wikipedia.
Subhashish mentioned about the recent successful photo walk.
Subhashish started a parallel facebook page for Odia quotes, and now Odia wikimedians are importing quotes from there to the wikimedia Incubation project for Odia Wikiquote. This is defitely a sucessful way of using social networking sites to improve the Odia wikimedia projects.
Community building and Getting government support are the most important things that need to happen for Odia wikimedia projects now
Subhashish mentioned 4 new users (Jyotiprakash, Kamalakant, Krupasindhu and Sisir) joined Odia wikipedia.