User:Tito (CIS-A2K)/12S

Independence day edit-a-thon

What? CIS-A2K conducted and supported a multi-lingual edit-a-thon during the Indian independence day 2019. On Wikipedia (in alphabetical order) Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Telugu, and Urdu communities participated in this edit-a-thon. Wikidata community also conducted a label-a-thon.
Why? The objective of this edit-a-thon was to celebrate this independence day with Wikipedia/Wikidata content creation. The topics selected for this was Indian independence, culture, history, and society.
When? The edit-a-thon took place around Indian independence day (i.e. 15 August). Every community selected their own starting and ending dates. For example, the Marathi community conducted the edit-a-thon between 10–20 August 2018, the Telugu edit-a-thon was a month-long one. The Wikidata label-a-thon was conducted between 15-19 August 2018.
Where? The main edit-a-thon was conducted online. We conducted and supported a few offline edit-a-thons as well. The following table shows the offline edit-a-thons as part of this Independence edit-a-thon.

Date	Place	Community	Event page
16 August 2018	Guntur	Telugu	Meta Wiki
18 August 2018	Hyderabad	Telugu	Outreach Dashboard
19 August 2018	Bangalore	Kannada
18 August 2018	Pune	Marathi	Marathi Wikipedia

How? In the work plan, we proposed to conduct/support national-level edit-a-thons. At the end of July 2018, after a team meeting, we felt that conducting a national-level edit-a-thon during the independence day week might be a good idea. Earlier we have had experience of conducting and supporting several large edit-a-thons such as Geographical edit-a-thon, Project Tiger edit-a-thon etc. In the first week of August, we started the event page on Meta-Wiki and shared it with the communities requesting to participate. Telugu and Marathi communities were the first to show interest. Gradually Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, and Urdu also participated in this edit-a-thon. On Wikidata User:Mahir256 and a CIS-A2K person started a week-long label-a-thon. An extensive list of items was prepared and the task was translating the labels into Indian languages.

Learnings
We observed/learnt a couple of things

1. The communities liked the idea of celebrating Indian independence day/week with Wiki-content contribution.
2. The theme "India" was appropriate and Interesting for the participants.

Follow-up
We are excited to see the involvement of the communities during this event. In the next year, we wish to conduct Independence edit-a-thon on a larger scale. A couple of improvements we hope to do next time:

• Promote it more among the communities.
• Prepare a comprehensive list of references/resources the participants can use during the edit-a-thon.

Wiki Advanced Training 2018

What? Wiki Advanced Training or WAT was a residential workshop for Wikipedians in India. The theme of the workshop Wikipedia content creation and improvement. We discussed and trained several topics related to creating content on Wikipedia in a better way.
Why? Wikipedia is an important Wikimedia project, and almost all Indian Wikimedia communities are actively working on Wikipedia. The objective of the workshop was to discuss/train different Wikipedia policies, tools those help content-creation and global content-creation initiatives such as Wikipedia Asian Month
When and Where? The workshop took place on 29 June – 1 July 2018 at Ranchi, Jharkhand, India.
How? The aim of the workshop was to train and groom these Wikipedians to write even better quality content on Wikipedia. 23 Wikimedians from 12 Indian language communities participated in this workshop. 4 of them were female. Some of the topics discussed during the workshop were: Wikipedia article structure, Good article, core Wikipedia policies such as Neutral point of View, Verifiability, getting resource support from The Wikipedia Library. User:KCVelaga and User:Satdeep Gill participated as trainers. User:Jayprakash12345 attended the workshop to provide technical support and suggestion. User:AddisWang joined remotely to discuss how he planned Wikipedia Asian Months and the best practices follow when someone wants to conduct large edit-a-thons. A detailed narrative report of this event may be seen event page. After the event, a couple of participants wrote detailed reports on their participation and learning experience. Please see a graphic report by Punjabi Wikimedian User:Manavpreet Kaur here. Kannada Wikimedian User:Vikashegde wrote this report.

Learning

• This was a Wikipedia workshop and we named it "Wiki Advanced Training". Our idea was to conduct an "advanced training" annually focusing a particular project (such as Wikipedia, Wikisource etc.) every year. However, this idea was not well-communicated to the community, and right after the event announcement, we got feedback on this. We admit a mistake here. In our next activities/next iteration of Wiki Training, we'll clarify in a better way to avoid confusion.

Follow-up

• The workshop took place in July 2018. After the workshop, we saw a couple of events which were outputs of this workshop. We have written about these events and activities in #Independence day edit-a-thon and FIX#WWWW sections.
• We would like to conduct a second Wiki Advanced Training after July 2019. We have not decided the project yet, however, we think that the next iteration will cover any other Wikimedia project other than Wikipedia (as in 2018 that was our focus)

• 
  Group photo
• 
  Participants discussing
• 
  Poster presentation at WAT

Indic-TechCom

What? Indic-TechCom is a group of volunteers who provide technical assistance to Indic Wikimedia projects. The idea came up at [LINK SECTION]Wiki Advanced Training 2018. CIS-A2K helped to form the group and also promoted it.
Why? For a long time we had the necessity to form an Indian group of tech-volunteers to write/fix scripts/gadgets and work on other tech areas,
When and Where? The project page was started on 2 July 2018 (first edit link) This is an online group.
How? In the Wiki Advanced Training 2018, User:Jayprakash12345 participated as a tech-resource person. During the workshop, he discussed MediaWiki and Phabricator structure and also showed a few advanced scripts and tools. Some of the participants came up with a request to create a space for Indian Wikimedians where tech-requests could be posted. That's how Jayprakash12345 and we thought of starting Indic-TechCom. Jayprakash12345 is the founder and the primary developer of the workshop. As of 31 December, the group created 3 user scripts, 2 tools, and 1 MediaWiki extension. Please see the tools here. The group also received more than 20 tech requests in this period.

Learning

• With the help of Jayprakash12345's volunteer contribution, the Tech-com could help several Wikimedians. The learning here is: we must use the expertise and skill of the community members in our programs.

Future plans

We have a few future plans

• 2 workshops: We have spoken to Jayprakash12345. We'll conduct at least 2 zonal workshops on MediaWiki and tools and gadgets before 31 July 2019.
• We'll continue promoting the group and its work. We'll also print some merchandise items such as stickers for MediaWiki and IndicTechCom for the participants.

City and regional Wiki-meetups

What? CIS-A2K conducts and supports conducting regional and city Wiki-meetups. In the last 6 months CIS-A2K conducted/supported 5 meetups for Odia Wikimedia communities, and 1 meetup for Kannada community and 2 meetups for Punjabi community.
Why? Wiki-meetup is a great place for Wikimedians discuss ideas, activities, collaborations and future plans. These meetups also help to improve community bonding, and resolve disputes in face to face interactions.
Where?
How? We conducted the following meetups:

• Kannada meetup in Bangalore: a Kannada community meet-up on 19 August 2018 at Bengaluru. 12 community members participated. 3 of the participants were female and 9 were male. This was the first meetup conducted by CIS-A2K for the Kannada Wikimedia community in this work-plan year. This meetup was conducted as a follow-up activity of Wiki Advanced Training (WAT), that took place in Ranchi in July 2018. Kannada Wikimedians User:Vikashegde and User:Mallikarjunasj, who participated in WAT, debriefed the community about the topics they learnt. They discussed Good article and Did you know process, application of Wikipedia policies such as Neutral point of view, and Verifiability. User:Ashoka KG, who is a professor at Alva's College, informed about the activities being conducted by the Wikipedia association. He also discussed the future Wiki-plans of the association. There was a brief session on Wikidata discussing Wikidata labels and descriptions. There was also a hands-on session where the participants improved Kannada Wikidata labels as a part of Indian Independence Day 2018.
• WikiTungi or Odia community meetups: WikiTungi is a city-based meetup for Wikimedians in Odisha to discuss ideas, activities, collaborations and future plans. CIS-A2K is supporting WikiTungi both financially and in idea-level. In the last 6 months, 5 numbers of WikiTungi meetups were conducted in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, and Bangalore, Karnataka.
• Meetups at Patiala, Punjab: CIS-A2K supported 2 Punjabi community meetups in Punjab, India, and financially supported one of those meetups. The first meetup took place on 28 October 2018 at Patiala Bites. Meetup event page may be seen here. 9 Punjabi Wikimedians participated in this workshop. This meet-up being conducted during Women Wellbeing Editathon and Hockey World Cup Editathon. Some of the topics discussed during this meetup were: Wikipedia Asian Month, choosing lead persons for Punjabi Wikisource Training Workshop, Patiala and Project Tiger Training 2018, and Wikidata birthday celebration. The second community meetup took place on 28 November 2018 at Punjabi University, Patiala. Meetup event page may be seen here. 8 Punjabi Wikimedians participated in this workshop. Some of the topics discussed during this meetup were: Project Tiger Training community event division of role and responsibilities, to choose new contact persons of the Punjabi Wikimedians User Group, Bathinda Literary Festival, bringing featured books on Punjabi Wikisource. Two participants shared their learning from the events in which they participated.

Future plans
Our over-all plan is:

• Continue supporting and conducting city/regional meetups. Other than the communities we are already working with (Odia, Kananda) we'll work with other communties such as Bengali, Tamil on this.

and we have a few specific plans as well:

• CIS-A2K will conduct 2 more meetups before the month of June in Punjab, India.
• For Kananda community we'll conduct at least one more Kannada community meetup in Bangalore in April/May 2019.
• The Odia community meetup in Bangalore was the first such meetup of the community that took place outside Odisha. We'll conduct at least one more meetup before 31 July 2019.