Community Resources and Partnerships/India Rapid Project/Kannada Language Workshop/Final Report

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Kannada Language Workshop

01 December 2024 - 30 August 2025

Report ID: 11568

Report status: Accepted

Report due date: 29 September 2025

Project ID: P-IR-2409-17160

Amount supported: 323090 INR, 3861 USD

Amount spent: 321995 INR

India Rapid Project Final Report

Application type: Standard application

Part 1: Project and impact

1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)

Activities

For more comprehensive list see <a>https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kannada_Language_Workshop_2024-25</a>

here is the list of all activities and campaigns.

November 20 - December 20, 2024: Online Campaign - Wikipedia Asian Month. Focused on creating content about Asian countries on Kannada Wikipedia.
November 29, 2024: Online Meeting - Preliminary community discussions on Google Meet. Discussed event plans for Bangalore and Mangalore, institutional collaborations, and the need for monthly community calls.
December 15, 2024: In-Person Event - Tulu Wikisource Meetup in Mangalore. Discussed upcoming activities, grant applications, and planned workshops for Tulu Wikisource.
December 16, 2024: In-Person Event - Wikipedia Asian Month Offline edit-a-thon at St. Aloysius Deemed to be University, Mangalore. Included demonstrations of growth tools and newcomer tasks.
December 26, 2024: Online Workshop - Wikidata Basics workshop on Google Meet. Covered introductory Wikidata concepts and tools like wikidata-todo and TABernacle.
December 27, 2024: Online Workshop - Wikisource Workshop - linking wikidata on Google Meet. Focused on editing and using Wikidata within Wikisource.
December 28, 2024: Online Workshop - Pywikibot/PAWS Automation Workshop on Google Meet. An introduction to automation using Pywikibot and PAWS.
January 23 - February 21, 2025: Online Campaign - Indic writing systems campaign 2025 on Wikidata. Focused on creating and improving data items related to Indic scripts.
January 30, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wiktionary Workshop - Wiktionary Editing Guide at CEOL - Incubation Centre, Mangalore.
January 30, 2025: Online Workshop - Templates Workshop on Google Meet. Covered creating and managing templates.
January 31, 2025: Online Workshop - Templates (Infobox basics) Workshop on Google Meet. Focused on using and designing infoboxes in Wikipedia.
February 1, 2025: Online Workshop - Wikiquote Workshop on Google Meet. Covered contributing to Wikiquote.
February 1 - March 31, 2025: Online Campaign - Feminism And Folklore Edit-a-thon on Kannada Wikipedia. A two-month campaign to create articles related to feminism, women, and folklore.
February 26, 2025: In-Person Meeting - Community meetup in Mangalore. Discussed implementations of translations namespace and facilitated discussions for the Wikisource Conference.
March 4, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wikisource Workshop at Canara College, Mangalore. An introduction to Wikisource and an offline edit-a-thon for Kannada and Tulu languages.
March 4, 2025: Online Workshop - Userscripts - Tools and Gadgets on Wikimedia on Google Meet. Covered the usage and examples of userscripts and gadgets.
March 5, 2025: Online Workshop - Tables on Wikimedia & References on Google Meet. Covered formatting tables and using reference templates and citations.
March 6, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wikisource Workshop at Vijaya College, Mulky. An introduction to Wikisource.
March 9, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wikisource - Introduction to wikisource in Suratkal. A workshop and edit-a-thon held in collaboration with Rotary club Baikampady for International Women's Day.
March 23, 2025: In-Person Meeting - Post event meetup discussion in Bangalore. A community gathering to discuss events and future plans.
June 7, 2025: Online Workshop - Wikimedia general topics workshop -1 on Discord & Google Meet. Covered Wikimedia privacy practices and two-factor authentication.
June 14, 2025: Online Workshop - Wikimedia general topics workshop -2 on Google Meet. Covered administration tools and rights on wiki projects.
June 21, 2025: Online Workshop - Wikimedia general topics workshop -3 on Google Meet. A guide on how to organize and run workshops.
June 29, 2025: Online Meeting - Wikimedia general topics Q&A on Google Meet. A general question and answer session for the community.
June 30, 2025: Online Workshop - Wikisource - Translation on Wikisource on Google Meet. Focused on how to translate content in Wikisource.
July 1 - July 21, 2025: Online Campaign - Kannada Wikiquote 20th Anniversary Quote-a-thon. A campaign to add quotes to Kannada Wikiquote celebrating its 20th anniversary.
July 5, 2025: Online Workshop - Wikimedia interwiki linking between projects on Google Meet. Covered how to link pages between different Wikimedia projects.
August 22, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wikipedia and Wikisource Workshop at St Agnes College, Mangalore. An introduction to Wikipedia and Wikisource.
August 23, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wikipedia and Wikisource Workshop at Govinda Pai Memorial Govt. College, Manjeshwaram. An introduction to Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikisource.
August 29, 2025: Online Workshop- Content translation- A guide on how to use Content translation tool on WIkipedia.
August 30, 2025: Online Workshop on commons - A guide on how to Upload files to commons, Copyright, good practices such descriptive filename, adding description, category for uploading
September 24, 2025: Online Workshop on Wikidata items creation for Wikisource pages , Created on behalf of encouraging wikisource content in wikisource reader app -<a>Wikisource-Reader/issues/23</a>
September 26, 2025: In-Person Workshop - Wikipedia and Wikisource Workshop at Govt. First Grade College for Women, Balmatta Mangalore. An introduction to Wikipedia and Wikisource
October 19, 2025: In-person workshop - <a>technical tools Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons. guidance on Admin role</a> on wikimedia for community members who are admins/have become admins recently.

Results

Offline Workshops and Edit-a-thons These in-person events were crucial for onboarding new contributors and providing focused, hands-on training. And to gain experience in Kannada as well Tulu Languages.

Online Editing Campaigns These were time-bound, thematic online events that motivated distributed contributions.
- Wikipedia Asian Month (Nov-Dec 2024)- A month-long campaign to create and improve articles about Asian countries on Kannada Wikipedia. Significant creation of new content related to Asia
- Indic Writing Systems Campaign (Jan-Feb 2025) A Wikidata-focused campaign to create and improve data items & articles related to Indic scripts.
- Feminism and Folklore Edit-a-thon (Feb-Mar 2025)- A two-month campaign to address content gaps on Kannada Wikipedia by creating articles related to feminism, women, and folklore, which directly addressed the gender gap by adding numerous articles about women and cultural topics.
- Kannada Wikiquote 20th Anniversary Quote-a-thon (Jul 2025) -celebration of Kannada Wikiquote's anniversary focused on adding quotes from notable Kannada figures and literature. Before event there were only less than 200 articles existed and many of active community members weren't even aware how easy to add quotes to wikiquote this this competition we significantly increased content by adding 600+ pages & increase awareness of project .
- Tulu Community Growth: The focused efforts on Tulu Wikisource have laid a strong foundation for a thriving community, with plans for further workshops.
Community Building and Capacity-Building Workshops (Achieved Results)This was the backbone of our strategy, focusing on upskilling existing community members.
- The initiative focused on building a wide range of technical skills, including automation with Pywikibot and PAWS, the use of Userscripts and Gadgets to enhance editing, and the creation and management of Templates, including complex Infoboxes. Participants were introduced to project-specific skills through dedicated training on Wikidata Basics, advanced Wikisource functions like linking to Wikidata and handling translations, and the fundamentals of contributing to Wiktionary and Wikiquote & general Wiki skills such as properly formatting Tables & References and implementing Interwiki linking to connect content across projects. safety practices were emphasized, including enabling Two-factor authentication, understanding Administration tools, and managing Privacy settings.

2.1. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)

Share links to:

Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.

You can also share links to:

Important social media posts
Surveys and their results
Infographics and sound files
Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects

outreach dashboard for offline workshop

online events

photos or videos from your event

Commons category for Workshop Images: [3] and https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f76RmlXIgnr8wsYbCh4CrPImPQx6ydMD?usp=sharing

News Article : Mangaluru: St Agnes College holds Kannada language workshop: https://www.daijiworld.com/news/newsDisplay?newsID=1290096

2.2. Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)

For example:

Training materials and guides
Presentations and slides
Work processes and plans
Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others

Work process : [4] and pre-on workshop guideline followed [5]Toolforge webpage to co-ordinate active workshop with community - [6] , Wikipedia editing slides - [7] , wikisource slide - https://klw-2024-25.toolforge.org/wm-wikisource-guide.html

Printed handbook on tips on privacy policy, general guide on layout, uploading , https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ಕನ್ನಡ_ವಿಕಿ_ಕೈಪಿಡಿ.pdf

Wiki admin guidelines and tips [8]

PAWS editing help page [9]

Template and Infobox [10] & [11]

Wikidata editing in english & Kannada [12] & [13]

General editing/wikipedia layout Introduction [14]

WIkipedia privacy policy [15]

general guidelines on wikipedia editing and content translation [16]

Wikiquote help page [17]

Wikisource help page in English [18] & In Kannada https://kn.wikisource.org/wiki/ಸಹಾಯ:ವಿಕಿಸೋರ್ಸ್_ಕೈಪಿಡಿ

wiktionary edit help page [19]

General tips for conducting workshops [20]

3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)

Our efforts during the project period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Strongly agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups	Not applicable
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Not applicable
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Strongly agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement	Strongly agree
F. Other (optional)

Part 2: Learning

4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)

You can recall these learning questions below:

Community Growth: The workshops will create a core group of contributors who can continue editing and expanding the projects even after the training is complete.
Content Enrichment: By improving Kannada and Tulu Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, this initiative will preserve regional knowledge and make it accessible to a global audience.

The initial learning questions served as a guiding framework for this project, I learned that creating a "core group ( [21] ) " is more about nurturing an ecosystem. I discovered that sustainable growth is fueled by continuous, low-touch engagement. The vibrant WhatsApp and Discord communities that formed organically became the real engine of growth, where new editors could comfortable asking simple questions and experienced contributors shared opportunities. This taught me that while workshops are excellent for ignition, long-term retention depends on accessible, peer-to-peer mentorship, I also learned the immense value of empowering contributors from smaller language communities like Tulu; their engagement was incredibly high and their impact on considerably more for projects like Tulu Wikisource and Wiktionary which was recently evolved as new wiki from incubation.

i learned that contributors are most motivated to create and improve content when they connect with it personally. Thematic campaigns like the Feminism & Folklore Edit-a-thon were far more successful than generic editing challenges because they allowed participants to contribute knowledge they were passionate about—stories of local heroines, traditional art forms, and regional folklore. This not only preserved valuable cultural knowledge but also immediately boosted the quality and depth of content available in Kannada and Tulu. We learned that content drives community and community drives content; they are a virtuous cycle.

How we hope to use these learnings in the future:

Scalable & Sustainable Community Model: We will institutionalize the "always-on" support model. Instead of viewing the workshop as a finite project, we see it as the foundation for a permanent, digitally-native community. We plan to develop more structured yet flexible mentorship programs and regular "office hours" within these communication channels to keep the momentum alive with minimal resources.
Thematic & Campaign-Based Approach: Based on the success of our focused campaigns, all future content initiatives will be built around specific themes, anniversaries, or global Wikimedia campaigns. This provides a clear focus, makes recruiting new editors easier, and generates high-quality, interconnected content bundles rather than scattered articles.
Empowering Micro-Contributions: I learned that not all contributions should be massive edits. We will better design our training and campaigns to celebrate and facilitate smaller, easier tasks like we have done already like adding a citation, uploading an image to Commons, creating a Wikidata item make participation a regular habit.

5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)

The main unexpected learning was as this has been my initial experience organizing workshops, In the initial stage of training I was only one who supposed to start training/organising events, From the Initial workshop community was there to support each and every events , later on the students who started learning in the initial workshops continued to attend workshops and assisted new users to get adjusted to wiki editing , even though I was only one organiser there support made knowledge sharing a lot easier
We saw that doing only basic workshops is not enough. The people who stayed long-term were those who learned advanced skills like Pywikibot, Wikidata, and Templates. They became our core group. We also learned that supporting separate groups like the Tulu Wikisource community is very important for true growth. In future we will always plan for multiple projects together – Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikidata. We will also train our volunteers to add interwiki links so their local content gets a global audience & we will focus on creating a clear path for new editors to become trainers themselves. We will give more power to these core group members to run their own shows.. This has been proven good for project implementation and improving volunteer contributions sustain.

6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)

I have created diff detailing overall project diff blog posts were shared on South Asian community calls and In telegram groups such as South Asia , Wikisource group , I have already shared my report with community with every community meetups that are organised periodically, along with sought every opportunity attend offline event organised to spread word about my programs to community members.

English version : https://diff.wikimedia.org/kn/2025/08/30/ಕನ್ನಡ-ಭಾಷಾ-ಕಾರ್ಯಾಗಾರ-೨೦೨/
Kannada Version : [22]
Women days Worshops : https://diff.wikimedia.org/kn/2025/03/17/ಮುಕ್ತ-ಜ್ಞಾನದ-ಸಬಲೀಕರಣ-ಕನ್/
English version : [23]
Google slide link that is used to present project outcomes [24]

Part 3: Metrics

7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)

In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.

	Target	Results	Comments and tools used
Number of participants	100	191
Number of editors	100	199	https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Kannada_language_workshop/Wikimedia_project_workshops Total number of editors: 199 Total new user accounts created during workshop: 154
Number of organizers	1	1

Wikimedia project	Target	Result - Number of created pages	Result - Number of improved pages
Wikipedia	0	299	3000
Wikimedia Commons		100	100
Wikidata		26	5000
Wiktionary	100	108	267
Wikisource	10	10	6
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote	100	800	150
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia

8. Other Metrics results.

In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.

Other Metrics name	Metrics Description	Target	Result	Tools and comments

9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)

No

9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

Part 4: Financial reporting

10. State the total amount spent in your Indian Rupees. (required)

321995

11. State the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)

3694.72

12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)

Upload the financial report Detailed project Document sheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rlUpXZJs-YCLL3sMlFLC8I7xOUrEbCjOlSF8GYPjHzQ/edit?usp=sharing

Financial document - Utilization certificate Kannada Language workshop ( P-IR-2409-17160 ).pdf

12.1. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)

Printing/Stationary which was not in original budget which was required for providing Certificates, pens, campus books to takes notes for student.
To promote on occasion of Kannada Wikiquote 20th anniversary added Swag for 17 edit-a-thon participants.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ಕನ್ನಡ_ವಿಕಿ_ಕೈಪಿಡಿ.pdf Handbook created for to distribute with novice users for explore further on different aspects of Wikimedia projects as most users were only acquainted with Wikipedia

13. Do you have any unspent funds from the project? (required)

No

13.1. Amount of unspent funds.

N/A

13.2. Explain the reason for unspent funds.

N/A

13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

14. Are you in compliance with all applicable terms, laws and regulations as outlined in the project agreement? Yes

15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)