Hi All,
New editors across Indic Wikipedias often face problems while editing for
which need they help. However, most don't know where they can ask questions
or get clarifications as they are usually unfamiliar with village pumps or
mailing lists or even talk pages on basic editing. Many existing editors
want to help new editors and could appreciate a central place where they
can meet and help new editors. India Program has started a pilot to
support the Odia community's help desk,
Chatasabha<http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%A…BE>.
(Incidentally, "Chata" means student and "Sabha" means community, in
Odia.)
This pilot will build on the community's existing efforts - and seeks to
provide a structured way of designing and running a Help Desk. It takes
learning from English Wikipedia's Tea
House<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Teahouse>as well as other
experiences on Help Desk and similar services.
The Help Desk that is being piloted is user friendly, has guidelines to
provide simple answers to new editors and tries to manage the work load of
existing community members by providing ready answers to frequently asked
questions. The user friendliness of the Help Desk is in the form of being
able to ask questions without getting stuck on Wiki markups as well as
illustrated answers to some questions.
I have put a page on meta which has the pilot
design<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Commun…ks>.
Eventually, we would like to help other Indic languages build similar Help
Desks. Please do provide your feedback on the talk
page<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Com…
.
Best
--
*Subha*
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!*