CIS-A2K/Pilot Designs/Wikipatrika

CIS-A2K

CIS-A2K (Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge) is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape.
If you have a general proposal/suggestion for Access to Knowledge team you can write on the discussion page. If you have appreciations or feedback on our work, please share it on feedback page.

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Context

Wikipatrika is the community newsletter of and by the Wikimedia community in India. Wikipatrika has and can continue to play an important role in community building. It is a platform for our community members to learn about and learn from fellow community members who they might not directly interact with. It serves as a great motivator by recognizing contributions. It helps community members avoid repeating mistakes and supports replicating success stories. It conveys the momentum that is there in our community. It also provides a great story for the media coverage.

Two editions of Wikipatrika have come out already (in September 2010 June 2011.)

Objectives

Since it has been 9 months since the last edition of Wikipatrika, the following are suggested

Restart the initiative to cover the period Jan-Mar 2012 - and bring it out by end April 2012
Reach out and request those involved earlier as well as attract Wikipatrika newbies to contribute to it
Regularise it so that it comes out at least every quarter - through processes (if applicable), templates (where relevant) as well as encouraging community members to take up responsibilities for their individual languages as well as for overall coordination
Suggest modifications to the current format that promote community building

Work

Identify all those who contributed to Wikipatrika in the past, as well as an initial list of folks who might be interested now
Request community member help to make template for input.
Update links on Wikipatrika for the newsletter - to create the broad structure of the newsletter, including community updates, Wikimedia projects, Wikipedia Wikiprojects, events, meetups, landmarks, anniversaries, and featured Wikimedians
Inform and elicit suggestion on the wikimedia-in-newsletter mailing list and past contributors (through offlist emails / talk pages) about the suggestions for Wikipatrika, the support that will now be available and the schedule for Wikipatrika
Reach out to Chapter SIG & CIGs for support on this intiative
Past experience has shown that mailing lists alone are not the most useful channels for Wikipatrika so it is proposed to use emails, talk pages, village pumps as well as mailing lists
Follow-up with all those interested to get inputs into various sections on Wikipatrika

Share standard templates with respective community members
Request community to contribute directly on relevant project page on their own Wikipedias (which will then be moved to Wikipatrika)
Encourage community members to write in their own languages and encourage others to help with the translation into English
As and when inputs are received, copy edit as necessary and share feedback to the editors - which they are free to consider or otherwise
When useful contributions are made, share these with folks from other languages, or within the same language, to serve as examples of how they can articulate their own specific stories

Throughout all the above, reach out and invite folks (both new and old community members) who have not previously contributed to Wikipatrika
Throughout all the above, follow-up, follow-up and follow-up!
Prepare a media/PR plan including interviews with interested community members - especially in Indic language media
After Wikipatrika is complete, implement the media plan to maximise the coverage - which should serve to motivate the existing community and attract new members to the community

Learning Points

What are the features that could be added to improve Wikipatrika - with the objective of supporting community building?
How do we ensure that support that is provided in communications is done in a manner that does not either make the community dependent on the support or reduce the ownership of the community on the initiative?
How do we build capability and encourage leadership in community members to independently run this initiative?
How do we start building contacts in Indic language media and driving stories to them?
What are the drivers for success in the various Indic language medias (and these are likely to be different by language & channel?)

Measures of Success & Assessment

Process

Measure	Objective	Baseline	Actual	Assessment / Comment
Structuring Wikipatrika	Update wiki.wikimedia.in link by first half Apr 2012	na	Done	A few changes made like introducing new columns, removing events tab, adding featured interviews etc.
Existing Wikipatrika contributors	Contact editors who worked on previous issues	na	List available in the credits	to be filled in Aug 2012 to cover 2 quarters
Potential new Wikipatrika contributors	Prepare list and reach out to as many as possible by end Mar 2012 and even newer ones by mid Apr 2012	na	New contributors in as, bn, hi, mr, en, or, ml, ta, Commons Assamese community did not have a page, now they do	Need to engage more editors who are active on mailing lists and village pumps for next issue

Outcome

Measure	Objective	Baseline	Actual	Assessment / Comment
Regularising Wikipatrika	To be published every quarter	Twice in 3 quarters	May issue released	to be filling in Aug 2012
Wikipatrika Contributors	Increase contributors to at least 1 per community by Apr 2012 for 10 out of 20 communities, and then 2 per community for 10 out of 20 communities and 1 per community for 5 out of 20 communities by Aug 2012	baseline not clear	total contributors in the May issue: ~25 total communities covered: 15\|\| to be filled in Aug 2012
Wikipatrika News coverage	Use Wikipatrika as a platform to (try) and get media coverage in at least 1 English & 1 Indic language by May 2012 and 3 languages (English and 2 Indic languages) by Sep 2012	baseline not clear	Aim to get it covered in Signpost	to be filled in Aug 2012