Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Mumbai Wikipedia Workshop
Draft post[edit]
A report on the Wikipedia Women Workshop in Mumbai, India[edit]
On Sunday, 4th of November 2012, Wikimedians from Mumbai, India, conducted a Wikipedia workshop for women at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology,Wadala. The event was aimed at introducing new women, who are not yet editing, to Wikipedia and teaching them how to edit. "Lots of women are interested in editing Wikipedia, but sometimes they need to be specially invited to join in. Doing this workshop was a chance to strategically get women to participate by creating an event meant for them - where they could freely ask questions, including basic ones, without feeling silly or stupid," says Bishakha Datta, one of the primary organizers of the workshop. Wikipedia editors Krutikaa Jawanjal and Pradeep Mohandas, who facilitated, were motivated to conduct a women's workshop for bridging the gender gap that exists in Wikipedia.
A lot of preparations were done before the event. Vidyalankar Institute of Technology was found to be the best place to conduct the workshop among all venues checked out by the team of organizers. The volunteers got together to discuss the agenda and the schedule of the event and planned their respective sessions. Karthik Nadar, the Secretary of Wikimedia India Chapter, says "The pre-meetup preparations involved more than 50 days of work. Two meetups were conducted for planning the workshop. The whole process involved a lot of hard work, yet it was fun."
Over one hundred participants signed up for to attend on the workshop's Wikipedia page. A Facebook page was created for the event, on which around 50 participants registered. Interested participants also emailed Wikipedia's volunteer customer service group, OTRS. The enthusiasm was so high among the participants that registration had to be closed down a couple of days before the workshop! Some of the interested attendees had experimented with editing Wikipedia, and they had started asking doubts to the organizers even before the event was launched! All participants who created an account were sent welcome messages by the organizers.
The workshop was a full day event with a lot of fun activities. More than 70 participants attended. After an introduction by the organizers, the participants were divided into groups and one facilitator was allotted to each group. The facilitator helped her/his group to create and expand a Wikipedia article by themselves. During the lunch break, the participants were served pav bhaji, an Indian delicacy. The participants moved around and made friends with each other and the organizers during the lunch break.
During the afternoon session, the participants asked to clarify their doubts about editing. A brief introduction about the Wikimedia India Chapter was given. Sessions on How to add references to a Wikipedia article? and How to upload pictures to Commons? were conducted. The much awaited results of Wiki Loves Monuments India, an event for uploading photographs of Indian monuments to Wikimedia Commons, was declared after the sessions. A Wiki-Quiz was conducted and the winners were given t-shirts and other Wikimedia goodies!
Conducting the workshop was a memorable experience to the team of organizers. Krutikaa recalls that her best memories included the ones where she had to solve doubts and answer questions about editing Wikipedia. The questions were filled with curiousity, and allowed Krutikaa to share her personal opinion about her own editing experiences. Wikimedian Rohini Lakshane observes that it was thrilling to see the joy on the faces of the participants when their edits went live. She is planning to organize more workshops in future because she thinks that workshops of this kind can make the community grow. For Karthik, the workshop is not about the number of participants, but about the number of people who are excited to edit Wikipedia. He recalls that nearly all participants the experience of editing Wikipedia, and want to contribute to future events. The Mumbai community is planning to conduct similar events in various parts of the city in the coming months.
The event was covered by various newspapers and websites. Videos on various aspects of Wikipedia were created during and after the event by a team of journalists from Real Reviews, a website that hosts videos.Techgross, an online daily for news related to technology, reported: "Here is wishing that many more such workshops are held across India, Techgoss is sure there are many takers."
Report by Aditi Vashisht and Netha Hussain