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Odia Wikimedians User Group/Annual Report/2023-2024

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Executive Summary

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This annual report includes updates on strategic plans, initiatives undertaken and the impact of the same by the Odia Wikimedians User Group (ODW) between Jun 2023 - May 2024. This year saw nine successful edit-a-thons, a partnership with the Odisha state government leading to engagement during an international conference on the Odia language, and other major contribution to Wikimedia projects and movement by other initiatives. During this report's duration, 21M unique visitors visited Odia Wikipedia, the flagship project, and the total number of articles grew by 3K new articles due to the contribution of 13 active editors and 112 total editors.

Key Highlights

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World Odia Language Conference 2024
Wikimedians Chinmayee Mishra and Jnanaranjan Sahu interact with the Odisha state information technology secretary Manoj Kumar Mishra at the Odia Wikimedians User Group booth.

The Odisha state government invited us to showcase the work of our user group and Wikimedia projects at the World Odia Language Conference 2024, an international conference to promote the Odia language, during February 2024. Odia Wikimedians staffed a booth during this four-day event, interacting with hundreds of event participants and sharing with them ways to contribute to Odia-language Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects.

“ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ସମ୍ମିଳନୀରେ 'ଡୋମ୍ ଅଫ୍ ଦ ଫ୍ୟୁଚର୍'ରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆକୁ ନେଇ ସଚେତନ କରାଯାଉଛି। ସାହିତ୍ୟ, ସଂସ୍କୃତି ଓ ରାଜନୀତି ଆଦି ଅନେକ ତଥ୍ୟ ଏଥିରେ ରହିଛି। ଏହା ଉପରେ ଅଧିକ ଜାଣିବା ପାଇଁ ଏହି ଲିଙ୍କରେ କ୍ଲିକ୍ କରନ୍ତୁ। or.wikipedia.org” (trans. “Awareness is being made about Odia Wikipedia in 'Dome of the Future' in Odia Language Conference. Literature, culture and politics etc. contains a lot of facts in this. Click on this link to know more about it. or.wikipedia.org.”)

Nine major edit-a-thons

The Odia Wikimedians User Group organised and participated in nine major edit-a-thons during this reporting period. These sprints brought together existing and new editors, and the Odia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects saw significant content growth on specific topics, ranging from the Indian independence movement to folklore to Asia-related topics.

2023 Cure Award

Odia Wikimedian Dr Subas Chandra Rout was awarded the "2023 Cure Award" by the WikiProject Med for being the most prolific medical translator of 2023, with 349 medicine-related articles created on Odia Wikipedia. The Odia Wikipedia articles remain the largest among all the Wikipedias in 32 languages where editors are contributing under the scope of this WikiProject, receiving 87,528 pageviews at the time of reporting.

Highest LinguaLibre contribution record

During this reporting period, speech data contributions in the form of pronunciation of Odia words increased significantly on LinguaLibre. Odia is the second largest language contributed to by Lingua Libre, with 131,377 recordings at the time of reporting. By August 2023, Odia Wikimedian Subhashish Panigrahi had the highest number of contributions on Lingua Libre (70K), and Wikimedian Sangram Kesari Senapati had a notable contribution of 59K recordings by September 2023. French and Telugu Wikimedians have since broken these records.

Other Initiatives

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  • Monthly Online call
The user group is organizing a monthly call on the last Sunday of every month, to discuss and share the work of the month, experiences and learnings.
The user group had restored the Ratha Jatra Edit-a-thon and Wiki Loves Ratha Jatra event on Wikimedia Commons. During this 9-days event, 3 people had created 11 articles on Wikipedia and a total of 312 photos and videos from different places of Odisha (Puri, Bhadrak, Sonepur, Kalahandi, Keonjhar, Baripada, Nilagiri, Koraput, etc.) as well as out of India (Cooksville, Maryland and Johannesburg). The twitter to Commons tool developed by Janaranjan Sahu was very useful during to this time for uploading photographs shared on the Twitter handles of Govt. of Odisha in CC-by-SA-4.0 license directly to Commons.
  • Param Vir Chakra Edit-a-thon
Initiated by Wikimedian Sangram Keshari Senapati, the ODW User Group led the Param Vir Chakra Edit-a-thon to honour the military officers awarded with the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military decoration that honours those who have shown distinguished acts of valour during wartime. The edit-a-thon saw an uptake in four other Wikipedias—Angika, Assamese, Kashmiri and Santali—in addition to Odia. Wikimedians created and improved articles about the 21 awardees and other related key articles.[1]
The Odia Wikimedians organized a 3-day long mini edit-a-thon from 14 August to 16 August 2023 to celebrate the Indian Independence Day. Six editors create/edited 27 articles about Indian activists by translating from English Wikipedia.
Odia Wikipedia organized a 3-days long edit-a-thon to created articles related to Mahatma Gandhi from 30 September to 2 October. During this period, a total of 26 articles has been created by 3 users. During this period, the Mahatma Gandhi article on Odia Wikipedia has been improved by Janaranjan Sahu by adding 3,59,456 bytes, which become the longest article on Wikipedia and that article helped the school students of Odisha to know more about Gandhi in their local language.
The user group organized an offline meeting at Bhubaneswar on 29 October 2023 to celebrate the 11th Birthday of Wikidata. The users from Odia Wikimedians User Group joined this celebration.
  • Organized Wikipedia Asian Month 2023 edit-a-thon
The Odia Wikipedia community participated in the 2023 Wikipedia Asian Month edit-a-thon. However, the event did not see wider participation and only 2 articles by only 2 users.
  • Organized Feminism and Folklore 2024 edit-a-thon
Odia Wikipedia saw active community participation while returning to the 2023 edition of the annual Feminism and Folklore edit-a-thon. Ten Wikimedians created 156 new articles. Most of these articles were biographies of notable women helping bridge the gender gap on Odia Wikipedia.
  • Organized Odia Literature 2024 edit-a-thon
To improve articles related to Odia literature, the Odia Wikimedians user group had organized a 15 days long edit-a-thon from 1st April (Odisha Foundation Day) to 15th April (Odia New Year). Later, the timeline had increased to 7 more days and during this period, 3 users had created 31 articles on Odia Books, Odia writers and poets.
  • Participated in World Odia Language Conference by the Govt. of Odisha
The Govt. of Odisha had invited the Odia Wikimedians User Group to participate at the World Odia Language Conference held on 6-8 February in 2024 at Janata Maidan, Bhubaneswar. A few members from the user group attended this event and showcase about Odia Wikipedia, Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects to create awareness among people and basically among school children and college students.
  • Timeline of Eminent Odia people
By collaborating with the Govt. of Odisha, the Odia Wiki UG had developed a timeline to showcase at the Future of dome at Odia Language Conference.
  • Wikipedia Awareness Survey Form
The Odia Wikimedians User Group had shared a Google form among the people visited the Future of Dome hall at the language conference, where more than 50 interested participants gook part of in this survey including some administrative officers of Odisha Govt and famous personalities like Sudarshan Pattnaik.

Blogs

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In the news

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Notes

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  1. Senapati, Sangram Keshari (2023-09-05). "A three-day Edit-a-thon to remember the sacrifices of Indian freedom fighters". Diff. Retrieved 2023-09-05.