Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021/Submissions/Introducing newcomers from Wikisource to Wikipedia: A case study from Hindi Wikipedia
Contact details[edit]
- Your username: Innocentbunny
- Presenters: Innocentbunny and हिंदुस्थान वासी
- Email address:viresh.raj.sah@gmail.com (optional)
- Affiliation:Hindi Wikimedians User Group
Your topic[edit]
- Title:Introducing newcomers from Wikisource to Wikipedia: A case study from Hindi Wikipedia
- Language:English/Hindi
- Type:Presentation
- Time needed:20 mins
- Narrate your plan in details: The question of how to increase "Retainabiity" of new comers, into the wiki community after workshops has been an issue and a question that every indic wiki community has been struggling with. We have seen many events and workshops in all languages and of all kinds boasting of participation in tens and even hundreds, but even if we manage to introduce wikipedia to new people through workshops, conferences, edit-a-thons, etc. we hardly get any new comer who then becomes a permannent part of the community for a long time. As a solution to this problem, the hindi wiki community tried a different approach a couple of years ago and was able to achieve a significantly better result as compared to our other endeavours. We tried introducing new comers into the wiki community in two stages, first by introducing them to Wikisource proofreading, which is a significantly easier thing to do and served the purpose of letting the new 'recruits' get used to the wiki interface. Subsequently, in the next stage, we invited the more "interested" and active participants to our annual wikiconference and there we introduced them to wikipedia and the idea of 'neutrality', 'citations' and other complexities of wikipedia to these participants which might have been "too much" to grasp for a complete new comer. Doing this through our annual conference also served the purpose of introducing them to the rest of the community, which naturally motivates people due to the idea of being a part of "something bigger".
- Through this process we were able to attract many people to Wikipedia and wikisource (in tens). Not only did we add many wikisource editors, but also some participants actually "seeped" into Wikipedia editing and became a permanent part of the community and are active till date. In context of the indic wiki communities, we all agree how big an asset even one permanent member could be as compared to 10 temporary participants. Seeing the observable change, we feel that this could be studied as a case study to develope a standard model to be copied accross India by other communities as well.
- In the presentation we plan to narrate the story of our work with context and quantify the results in more details so as to get it known to other indian communities as well.
- Any support you need: Good Wishes ;)
- How will this session be beneficial for the communities in India?:As mentioned before, In context of the indic wiki communities, we all agree how big an asset even one permanent member could be as compared to 10 temporary participants. Also, the question of retainability of participants has been a looming problem in our Indic communities. On the basis of the results we feel that this two-step approach should be made known to the other indic wikipedians as well and it could be studied as a case study to either improve it, or to develope a standard model to be copied accross India by other communities as well.
Status[edit]
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