CIS-A2K/IRC meeting 2012-06-07

[21:25] =-= Topic for #wikimedia-office is “Wikimedia Foundation office hours |
Schedule: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours”
[21:30] Hisham: we're starting the logs now for the India Programs IRC. This time, we'd like
to discuss community building in an Indic language context for the first 45
minutes - and then we can talk about any other matters related to India
Program in the last 15 minutes.
[21:31] Hisham: The context for this particular IRC and the choice of community building as
a topic is becuase we believer there is tremenedous potential across all
language communities and there are important pointers and tips that emerged
from the pilot in Assam.
[21:31] Hisham: Hi tewkie.
[21:32] Hisham: I just wanted to start by asking if there were any Indic wikipedians on this
IRC and if there was anything in particular that you think we should be
adding / modifying in the agenda.
[21:32] srikanthlogic: Hisham: If you consider me as one "Indic" wikipedian
[21:33] tewkie: what srikanthlogic said!
[21:33] Shijualex: you an Indic admin also now Srikanth
[21:33] srikanthlogic: Hisham: I am very much interested discussing around "healthy environment"
after everyone else is done
[21:33] Hisham: I heard you are now an admin on ta-wp, so...
[21:34] srikanthlogic: Hisham: you heard it right..
[21:34] srikanthlogic: any other Indic wikipedian here ?
[21:34] freakofmimsy: I am a little Indic
[21:34] freakofmimsy:
[21:34]tewkie raises hand
[21:35] Hisham: sure thing, srikanthlogic. ...in fact, i think it is an important aspect and
we should do adequate justice to it.
[21:35] Hisham: Well, congratulations!
[21:35] srikanthlogic: Hisham: great! Thanks
[21:35] Hisham: which language do edit, tewkie?
[21:36] tewkie: umm Gujarati not regularly though
[21:36] freakofmimsy: hisham, tewkie is kondicherry, you met him in ahmedabad
[21:36] Hisham: and in the meantime, can i request shiju to talk about the key aspects of
community building, especially from the angle of what all our communities
could consider doing.
[21:37] Hisham: ah, tewkie. pleasure to meet you again.
[21:37] tewkie: same here
[21:38] Shijualex: Hello all, As mentioned in the mail shared by Hisham, Communication between
editors and other members is a key aspect of Community building
[21:39] Shijualex: When we started community building for Assamese, there were only one or two
members in AS wiki.
[21:39] Shijualex: Reachiing out to them, guiding them, and engaging them really helped in the
initial stages
[21:42] Shijualex: These initial members were ready for accepting ideas which helped AS wiki in
a positive way. The communication between editors slowly he;lped them to own
the project and execute various programs themselves
[21:42] Hisham: coming to srikanthlogic's point on community health, this is an aspect which
is of extraordinary importance. communication needs to be happening across
whatever forums a particular community is more comfortable with - whether it
is village pumps (in most cases) or mailing lists (in fewer cases.)
[21:43] Hisham: it requires folks to talk to each other, reach out for help, volunteer help.
...all the best things about wikipedia, really!
[21:43] Shijualex: For Asamese, FB was one of the strong medium which helped/are helping them
to build the community
[21:44] freakofmimsy: how many editors have you recruited through fb?
[21:44] Shijualex: So communication betwween editors is a prime aspect for community building
[21:45] Hisham: and i daresay that the absence of effective communication is probably a
reasonably strong indicator of the weak health of a community?
[21:45] Hisham: sorry, that shoudl have been a "." and not a "?"
[21:45] Hisham: freakofmimsy: context for your question?
[21:45] Shijualex: For AS wiki I should say apart from the initial 4 or 5 editors a amajor
percentage came through facebook
[21:45] freakofmimsy: (9:43:54 PM) Shijualex: For Asamese, FB was one of the strong medium which
helped/are helping them to build the community
[21:46] freakofmimsy: Shijualex, you must fill us on that through the india list. If facebook
works with recruiting users and sustaining their interest on indic language
wikis, I'd really like to see evidence so I can rethink my own opinion on
this.
[21:47] srikanthlogic is on listen mode while he finishes his dinner
[21:50] Shijualex: Another important aspect for community building is the effective of Wiki
projects. Wiki projects will help users (*especially new users) to
contribute and stay in wiki for long. More important is it will help them to
interact frequently with other users with similar interest
[21:50] Rodrig: Where is wikimedia foundation employee?
[21:50] Rodrig: I have an urgent request
[21:50] Rodrig: I need to pass on
[21:51] Hisham: i think the much larger story on assam is the various things that have come
together and which inform our recommendaitons and discussions to all other
communties: communications, collaboration, the initial push, building
capacity & confidence and the enabling healthy environment.
[21:51] Rodrig: oi?
[21:51] Rodrig: hello - can anybody help?
[21:52] tewkie: Rodrig private msg Ironholds, he works for WMF
[21:52] Rodrig: thank you tewkie
[21:52] Ironholds: Rodrig: sure; gimme a poke
[21:54] Shijualex: Building capacity & confidence is another imporatant aspect. This is very
important. If we give this confidence through various programs, then only
community will own the project and do things by their own.
[21:54] Shijualex: otherwise community will always expect a third person to suggest and do
programs for them
[21:55] Hisham: sometimes, this is in complex aspect like designing wikiprojects for
translation clean up and sometimes it iss to energise a community to do more
outreach - but any way, it is always about passing on capacity to the
community so they can take things up and forward.
[21:56] Hisham: stay tuned for some pretty interesting stories that you'll be hearing over
the next couple of months from at least 2 communities, as a result of these
efforts.
[21:56] freakofmimsy: so what's the recent news from the IP related work on AS wiki?
[21:57] Rodrig: Thank you Ironholds and tewkie
[21:57] Ironholds: thanks for bringing it to us!
[21:58] freakofmimsy: And I agree with the abstract ideas around community building that you have
expressed here, but could you give some examples as to how you "energised
the community"
[21:58] Shijualex: I remmeber I just assited AS wiki to start wiki project for Physics.
Community soon picked up the idea and started few more wiki projects and
users are focused on their area of interest.
[21:58] Hisham: freakofmimsy: the most recent news was the post i put out a few days ago...
....where i talked about the success in assam and the important things we
are taking forward from there.
[21:59] freakofmimsy: but hisham, you quoted some numbers, which are inherently faulty
[21:59] freakofmimsy: since most of the recent activity comes from bot-like creation of redirects
[21:59] freakofmimsy: there is a 690% increase in the number of redirects created in march, I
think. that's 10k redirects for a wiki which has 1k articles.
[22:00] Hisham: freakofmimsy: actually, not. there are new editors, and there are active
editors, and both of these are much more than there were in the earlier. i'd
actually urge you to look at the fundamental health of the community - and
allow that community to determine how they should run their projects.
[22:00] freakofmimsy: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaAS.htm
[22:01] srikanthlogic is back
[22:02] srikanthlogic: freakofmimsy: give a chance for AS editors to explain before coming to
conclusions "inherently faulty" ?
[22:02] Hisham: this community is planning an article contest and a photo contest for thier
10th. they are planning an event to celebrate their 10th. in this even, they
want to give out prizes for these contests. they are having mail discussions
on how to run the event. the agenda page is up on wiki. THESE ARE THE THINGS
THAT MATTER.
[22:03] srikanthlogic: Shijualex: can you please ask some AS editors to reply to my mail on that
thread ? India list too at some level figures into "communication" which is
part of community building
[22:03] Shijualex: I remember Srikanth has already explained the need of redirects in Indic
wiki.
[22:03] freakofmimsy: srikanthlogic, sure, but if you look at the statistics, 609% in march is
going to turn up in red. this kind of activity is unprecedented on any indic
wiki over the past 10 years.
[22:04] Theo10011: Yes, hello.
[22:04] srikanthlogic: Shijualex: I did, keeping the conversation open to AS folks to comment.
[22:04] freakofmimsy: hi theo10011
[22:05] srikanthlogic: Theo10011: Hello!
[22:05] Theo10011: Hello good people
[22:07] Hisham: wikiprojects are interesting. one of the recommendations we are making to
communities to start wikiprojects for their particualr states / languages -
because these are the kind of subject areas where there is (relatively)
likely to be more interest from a larger number of people. even withing
that, however, there is a need to focus.
[22:07] Theo10011: ohai Hisham
[22:07] Theo10011: I meant to leave you a note on the India list.
[22:07] Theo10011: You do over use citations in your recent emails.
[22:08] Theo10011: when you hyperlink on top, it gets really confusing.
[22:09] Hisham: so even within wikiprojects, there is a need to further focus. for instance,
one might choose to do just districts / district HQs as as starting point
and then move on to sub-district level, etc etc etc - while some other
WP:state might choose to go down the route of history and take a particular
era to focus on. for small communtiies, and with a relative shortage of
reference material (though that is changing) there is a n
[22:10] Hisham: hey Theo10011. ...maybe you can tell me how to do it differnetly? bunch of
folks now read mails on mobiles so the citations at the bottom are for them.
[22:10] Hisham: hey srikanthlogic: coming back to your starting point on healthy
communities, did you have any particular aspect you wanted to discuss.
[22:11] srikanthlogic: Hisham: dispute resolution framework.. nothing different from what I posted
a while back on meta talk
[22:11] freakofmimsy: srikanthlogic, link?
[22:11] Theo10011: ya dude, but you hyperlink them too, as in they have a direct blue clickable
link in the word, on top of having a citation.
[22:11] srikanthlogic: freakofmimsy:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Community_Building
[22:11] Hisham: srikanthlogic: i suspect you will find that my answers are exactly the same
as i mentioned there.
[22:12] Theo10011: the archiving program only does text, and that's HTML. Gets confusing but I
digress.
[22:12]: srikanthlogic: Hisham: I saw some name calling on Naveen's talk regarding on marathi
wikipedia. reaching new lows
[22:12] srikanthlogic: Hisham: why does it even go to that extent where someone comes and puts a
message naming a person to a chapter exec.
[22:13] Hisham: there are some discussions that are best had one-on-one with editors and
groups of editors and some that are more amenable to public discussions. we
need to figure out the most appropriate solution - and i know we are
encouraging more open discussions across communities.
[22:13] srikanthlogic: Hisham: I know Shiju is working behind the scenes, but talking in
open(without names) about these will bring in greater awareness to budding
communities like say assameese
[22:15] srikanthlogic: Hisham: starting such a conversation, might lead to a community designed
dispute resolution frameworks within themselves
[22:15] Theo10011: Noopur here?
[22:15] Theo10011: BTW^
[22:16] Hisham: srikanthlogic: i know what you are talking about and what happened was
unfortunate. ...i think for communities like assamese, and so many others,
their priorities are different and what consumes their time and effort and
resources on other stuff. ...and i think we shoudl encourage that!
[22:16] Theo10011: hmm I had something to ask her.
[22:16] Theo10011: oh well...
[22:17] Hisham: they want to work on wikiprojects and they want to figure out how to do
outreach better and they want to get more press coverage of their projects
and they want to do tie-ops with GLAMs. these are the things that matter for
community health.
[22:17] Hisham: these are the things that we remain steadfastly focussed on.
[22:17] srikanthlogic: Hisham: agree, priorities are different, but starting a generic conversation
doesn't take much time. It need not be a "pilot" long activity. It could
just be a meta page stating the problems that have happened in past, ways to
avoid, avenues for discussion (How many people know of meta in Indic's ?)
and so on.
[22:18] freakofmimsy: srikanthlogic, I am not sure what you are talking about.
[22:18] freakofmimsy: Is this an example of onwiki disputes spilling out into the real world?
[22:18] srikanthlogic: freakofmimsy: preventing fights / abuse in wiki communities and how to avoid
them
[22:19] Hisham: btw, folks, throwing things open to a anything related to india programs. we
have crossed the 45 minute mark
[22:19] Theo10011: Congratulations.
[22:20] srikanthlogic: freakofmimsy: you want things to go that bad before we raise awareness? its mostly on-wiki so far.
[22:20] freakofmimsy: srikanthlogic, no I didn't suggest anything like that. I'm not sure what you are discussing. I recall identifying some trolling on naveenpf's talk page
[22:20] freakofmimsy: anyway
[22:20] srikanthlogic: Hisham: I continue to believe something will be done *publically* to raise awareness on disputes, means and things that can ease uneasiness
[22:21] srikanthlogic: Hisham: are you doing anything for http://shop.wikimedia.org/ ?
[22:21] <tewkie> Hisham I'd like to know what you and Harsh4101991 have been planning for Ahmedabad?
[22:22] freakofmimsy: plans for ahmedabad? hmm.
[22:23] freakofmimsy: When is the IEP rolling out? It's already the end of the first week of June.
[22:23] srikanthlogic: freakofmimsy: you still remember IEP :)
[22:24] freakofmimsy: yeah, it's the only high-impact catalyst project I'm looking forward to. :)
[22:24] Hisham: srikanthlogic: i think the best way of doing things is to foster a healthy community. the best ways of doing this are for more effective communication, more collaboration such as wikiprojects, and more outreach and stuff like wikiclubs. these are things that foster stronger communities - and the most effective "dispute redressal" is by fostering a health community.
[22:24] Harsh4101991: tewkie:not planned yet
[22:24] Hisham: tewkie: best is to ask Harsh what his plans are - and we will support him in whatever he needs!
[22:25] srikanthlogic: Theo10011: Noopur28 is here
[22:25] Theo10011: "health community"?
[22:25] Theo10011: yay!!!
[22:25] Theo10011: ohai noopur
[22:25] freakofmimsy: Noopur, you're in Dallas?
[22:26] Harsh4101991: outreach and wikiclub are good but more important is awareness
[22:26] Noopur28: Hey guys
[22:27] Hisham: freakofmimsy & srikanthlogic: we will be updating the community about these plans. in the meantime, freakofmimsy, if you are interested in educaiton, i am sure there are many, many ways you can get involved.
[22:27] srikanthlogic: Hisham: you probably missed the shop question
[22:27] freakofmimsy: hisham, sure, happy to contribute if I see value in the effort.
[22:28] Noopur28: Apologies my connection and electricity irregular
[22:28] Hisham: harsh4101991: of course. and i'd urge a focus on gujarati wikiclubs. i konw folks in the office woudl be delighted to help you out.
[22:28] * srikanthlogic finds 800 INR for a tee is way costly even for charity
[22:28] Hisham: srikanthlogic: nope, india program is not doing anything specifically on shop.wikipedia.org
[22:29] srikanthlogic: Hisham: please consider. Possible place to explore the "local advantage" of having an office
[22:29] Hisham: srikanthlogic: didn't get that...
[22:29] Hisham: alright, we're near closing time now. we'll be closing just after i answer srikanthlogic's question.
[22:30] srikanthlogic: Hisham: if there are local partnerships which you could help with, the cost can come down and (possibly cheaper and increased revenue for WMF too) instead of producing and shipping the tees from US (which is imported from Pakistan)
[22:30] Harsh4101991: Hisham : ok. Thanks
[22:31] Theo10011: Aww
[22:31] Hisham: srikanthlogic: i know and hopefully as the shop stablisises and matures, a more globally efficient supply chain can be incorporated. ...but for the time being, it woudl be just be too much of an additioanl distraction on the team for now.
[22:31] Theo10011: everyone left already.
[22:32] Theo10011: Noopur and Shiju. :(
[22:32] Hisham: cool, folks. thanks for your time. logs will be put up on the meta page.