Global Reach/Office Hours/Jan 19 South Asia meeting notes

Meeting Notes for South Asia Office hours Jan 2017

Date: Thursday, 19th January 2017

Time: 16:00 UTC

YouTube recording available at 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD-VCpQkVSk&t=6m8s

Introduction (Presented by Ravishankar Ayyakkannu)

- WMF's Global Reach team works to remove barriers related to using Wikimedia projects in the Global South countries.

- We will have office hours regularly for all regions within Asia and Eastern Europe. South Asia, South East Asia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. This office hour is for South Asia (India, Nepal, Srilanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh)

- We are focusing on increasing "readership" of Wikimedia projects.

- Focusing on partnering with non-profits, governments,  educational institutes and private companies.

- Update on Wikipedia Zero (WP0) program: We will stick to our operating principles. We will comply with local regulations and reception from Wikimedia community. No active WP0 partnership in India. We also won't pursue any partnership in India in the future to comply with local regulation. Srilanka and Pakistan have no WP0 partnership. Bangladesh has two active WP0 partnerships while Nepal has one WP0 partnership. 

- Global Reach team's focus is on target countries and then expand to more countries in future. Current set of countries: India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico

- We will work together with all movement affiliates like chapters and user groups to implement our partnerships. We don't see our work substituting or replacing any work done by movement affiliates already. 

Highlights from New Reader and current work (Presented by Smriti Gupta)

- Sharing the research Global Reach has done: Phone surveys and News Readers.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Reach/India_survey

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Findings

Some highlights from New Readers research:

- Compared to people who already access the internet for entertainment, news, and information, Wikipedia awareness is still low in our target countries.

- In India, 65% of people who took our phone survey used the internet. Wikipedia awareness was only around 25%. A majority of them use Wikipedia for school and work. Most of them access the internet through a phone. They are not constantly connected to the internet. They download content and share with peers. There is a high potential for us to grow.

- The cost of data is an issue but varies across countries. 

Based on this research, our work will focus on three themes: increasing WM projects' awareness, providing offline access, and dealing with the affordability barrier. (The amount of focus on each of these three themes can vary by the target country).

- Awareness: People should know about our projects and how to access and use them. 

- Offline: Aim to provide a seamless user experience for people who are not always connected.

- Affordability: Build partnerships that make it more affordable to access our projects. The approach may vary across countries. 

Highlights from current work:

- Talking with a state government under skill development program. 

- Talking with a non-profit organization that delivers curated content from the internet through TV. 

More info at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Reach/AEE

We look for partnerships that can scale, plug into existing programs and reach a new audience who would otherwise not use Wikipedia as is. 

Comments, questions, and answers:

Regarding Wikipedia App:

Soni: In the India survey, about 60+% of the mobile internet users in India use apps. My personal anecdote is that a good number of technology brands in India have popular apps (on Android etc.).  But since a lot of Wikipedia traffic is driven from Google and mobile browsers, it's unclear to me how many Wikipedia readers use the app compared to just viewing it from the browser. 

Smriti: Exact figure is yet to be known but it is exceptionally low. Only power users were aware of Wikipedia app. 

Soni: Do we have any reasons for why that is?  And how big of an impact that has on the visibility of brand Wikipedia? Once again, my personal anecdote says that the number of readers should be dramatically more should the app be more accessible. But is there any way for us to quantify similar questions?

Adele: How do other companies promote their brand/app in India? 

Soni: Lightweight, easy to use apps are spread by word of mouth. Billboards, TV commercials also help.  Shall promote in schools. 

Smriti: Our new readers research also acknowledges how people learn from peers. 

Adele: Do you consider Wikipedia app easy to use? Will you recommend it?

Ravi: Recently we did a survey in India asking people how we can explain Wikipedia better? Insights from that will also help us. 

Satdeep: There are many issues in the Wikipedia app. I prefer to use the browser to access Wikipedia on my phone.

Soni: Not sure why but even reading on Wikipedia app seems to take longer compared to using the Wikipedia site from a browser. Which is slower than just reading it from Google's auto generated summary. (From my personal experience)

Same. It's much faster to simply use Google on my mobile to get the same information than the Wikipedia app

Yohann: I have been using the Wikipedia app for quite sometime & it has improved a lot over time. I am here talking about the reading part, not editing

Impact of our work

Satdeep: I would like to see the impact of the work being done by this team

Like in a few months

Smriti: Yes, we look forward to reporting immediate and long-term impact. 

Adele: Our team is committed to measuring the impact of our work as advised by the Program and Evaluation team. 

Reliability of content

Manav: Before developing the app or awareness I think we need to address some basic issues like the reliability of content. Being a researcher, the only thing I feel is driving users away is the general attitude towards wiki and that's the reliability concern. Every student knows about wiki, but they aren't allowed to use that information

because we don't have references for everything that's mentioned there.

Smriti: New Readers research found that most people don't worry much about reliability of content and didn't bother to check for a valid source. Only professionals like journalists and researchers whose job depends on having reliable content were looking for them. This is an interesting insight for us. 

Ravi: People not only expect quality and authenticity, but they also look for size and diversity of topics. We should be aware of this while we try to promote native language Wikimedia projects. 

General Feedback

Ravi: How we can work with the communities better?

Satdeep: You can try and see if Punjab Government is willing to collaborate. 

Manav: I've done some homework on what Satdeep is saying. I have spoken to the District Education Officer, and she gave us a green signal to have workshops in different govt.schools

Ravi: We welcome such leads. Wherever possible, we will be a mutual partner for communities and movement affiliates.

Satdeep: Skill Development and Wikipedia is a great combination. (y)

Smriti: Yes, we need to find folks who have the right context and progression of work to start working with. 

Soni: It would be beneficial if you clarified if the team has any specific aims in mind apart from research and collaborations that might involve the community members as well.

Adele: Research and partnerships are the two main things we do. We welcome leads on partnerships. We can help or be part of it. It works the other way too. If we get a lead where it makes more sense for the communities to be involved, we will ping you. Especially, in cases where the opportunity is about editing. 

Asad from Pakistan explains about awareness related initiatives their community is doing.

Satdeep Gill  - For reference, Asad and Mehtab Ahmed are working on Sindhi Wikipedia.