New subject: Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Kannada

6 Dec 2011

 Dear All,

As part of my discussion with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
Kannada wikipedians. I have summarized the discussion in meta wiki. It is
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…

Kannada with more than 4 crore speakers and is one of the 22 scheduled
languages of india. Kannada is primarily spoken in the Indian state
Karnataka.

Kannada Wikipedia has a very interesting heritage.  This is the community
that started Wiki outreach programs in India.  In fact, the first Indic
wiki workshop that I am aware of was organized by HPN way back in 2004! A lot
of interesting things happened for a while and there was a time when Kannda
has a vibrant 40+ strong community.

However, off late, things appear to have slowed down and the number of
active editors is on a relative decline.  Having said that, the seeds have
already been sown in this community and I am confident that with a little
nurturing, we can see activism in Kannada wikipedia coming back. I am
basing my optimism on Kananda Wiktionary -where the community has taken it
to the 2nd largest wiktionary in the country.  There is much activism
happening around kannada wiktionary. In Kannada wikipedia I got opportunity
to interact with high prolific editors like User:Radhatanaya who is
silently doing wonderful job.

Kannada wikipedia has more than 11,000 articles now and kannada wiktionary
has whopping 1,50,000 entries (making it the second biggest Wiktionary
among Indic language wiktionaries).

Kindly read the experience of Kannada Wikimedians at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…

Regards
Shiju