Hi all,
There have been numerous outreach sessions organized all across India, so we decided to
organize a WikiWorkshop of our own in Ahmedabad. :)
We decided on the Electronics and Communication Engineering department at LD Engineering
College as the venue a couple of weeks earlier. This was mainly because Harsh was
confident that we would be able to obtain all the permissions to use a classroom in time.
The date was pretty convenient since it was a state-wide holiday due to Parshuram Jayanti.
We had also invited Hisham to be a part of the event during Office hours on 19 April 2012.
Hisham accepted our invitation to fly in and help us conduct the workshop. Nitika
followed up with the presentations and offered to help us with event planning. Arnav
Sonara, a Gujarati and English Wikipedia volunteer translated parts of Nitika’s
presentation into the Gujarati language.
We received confirmation of participation from 42 students through a Google Docs based
sign up page created by me. This was very heartening and we expected at least half of the
students to actually turn up for the event. ;)
Hisham landed in Ahmedabad at 8.40am and was available at the venue around 9.30am. Anirudh
and I joined in later. Hisham guided Harsh and I through the presentation he was carrying
so that Harsh could use them later for future workshops in the city.
The time period before the scheduled time for the session was spent discussing ideas with
regard to the purpose and objectives of outreach. Hisham opined that it is important to
keep pursuing the newbies after they attend outreach sessions and workshops, while Anirudh
said that was probably not the best use of scarce volunteer time, which could be better
spent contributing to the projects themselves, and helping those editors who approach the
veteran contributors on their own accord. We are interested in learning from the
follow-up work that the WMF India team has done with regard to the programs it has run in
the past and its direct success with the recruitment of new editors. We hope this will
start a useful discussion.
Seventeen people turned up for the workshop. This included Vyom Majmudar, a veteran
Gujarati Wikipedia and a frequent Wikisource editor and Karthik Mistry, a Debian geek and
FOSS advocate.
I commenced the session by introducing Hisham to the participants. Hisham then began with
his presentation. The agenda of this workshop was to acquaint the participants basics of
Wikipedia editing - five pillars, notability guidelines, followed by a short editing
session.
Hisham guided the participants through the first four pillars of Wikipedia but did not
speak about the fifth pillar ([[WP:IAR|There are no firm rules on Wikipedia]]). He told
me that it would be a bit too advanced for new editors to understand, and then asked to
explain it to the participants. Anirudh also elaborated on the third pillar of Wikipedia
([[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is free content]]) that Wikipedia not only provides content free of
charge, but that the users of the website are free to edit, use, modify and distribute the
content. Free as in free beer, and free as in free speech and free markets. :)
After the presentation was concluded, eleven people stayed back in the workshop out of
which five were completely new to editing. We edited both the English and Gujarati
Wikipedia projects. [[w:gu:User:Shaildve]] created three stubs while being guided by
Vyom. [[User:Chirayu.Chiripal]], who, by the way, does not speak Gujarati, has started
contributing to Gujarati Wikipedia by making templates. \m/
The City Bhaskar covered the story on the workshop.[1][2] Many thanks to Noopur Raval for
connecting us with the journalist.
Overall, we think there is scope for improvement in the way we present Wikimedia projects
to new users. Some of the topics we touched and discussed such as notability guidelines,
referencing and the five pillars could have been presented in a more coherent manner.
These are some of the things we will be working on in the near future and would really
like to take help from more veteran Wikipedia editors to promote our projects in the state
of Gujarat. (Ashwin, are you listening? :P)
TL;DR: The Ahmedabad workshop was organized by Konarak Ratnakar and Harsh Kothari on 24
April 2012. Seventeen participants attended the event. Anirudh Bhati (Wikimedia India)
and Hisham Mundol (WMF India Programs) were also present. Hisham addressed the new users
initially with a presentation, and later the experienced contributors trained and answered
the newbies. It was great to have two veteran contributors like Vyom and Anirudh around,
who helped out greatly during the sessions. There is a lot of scope for improvement in
the quality of our outreach sessions and each and every one of these events contributes to
their constant improvement.
Best regards,
Konarak Ratnakar (with inputs from Anirudh Bhati)
[1]
http://epaper.divyabhaskar.co.in/detail.php?id=119618&boxid=42415839921…
[2]
http://www.divyabhaskar.co.in/article/MGUJ-AHM-c-69-843564-3161426.html
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