Odia Wikimedians User Group/Annual Report/2019-2020

Executive Summary

This report includes major strategic planning, and initiatives planned and organized by the Odia Wikimedians User Group (ODW) between Jun 2019 - May 2020. It is important to note that the ODW mostly consists of active contributors to the Odia-language Wikimedia projects (currently Odia Wikipedia, Odia Wikisource and Odia Wiktionary) apart from contributors to other language Wikimedia projects (mostly Santali Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons), majority of the activities naturally revolved around the Odia-language projects.

During this period, the ODW community actively participated in many local, pan Indian and international edit-a-thons to grow contributions to Odia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects while some of the active members of the community also received advance-level trainings. Some of these initiatives include Wikisource Advance Training, UNESCO Women's Day Edit-a-thon, Women Health Edit-a-thon, Like the previous years, ODW also participated in recurring events like Women's Day Edit-a-thon, International Mother Tongue Day Edit-a-thon and Wikimedia Asian Month 2019. ODW participated for the second time in the Project Tiger (acronymed GLOW) -- known as Project Tiger 2.0. In addition to Odia Wikipedia, the Odia Wikisource community leaders also received advanced training in events like Wikisource Advance Training and Wikisource Proofread-a-thon.

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, ODW took its collaboration with the Odisha state government -- that serves over 40 million people in its jurisdiction -- further by pushing for the relicensing of the government-operated COVID Dashboard under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0 International License.

Odia Wikipedia, one of key projects that ODW focused on had over 13 million pageviews (average >1.2M per month) with an average active editor count of 21.

List of activities

Community

During the reporting period, we had got a chance to participate in the following activities:

Wikisource Advance Training, Pune

This was a training program that was focused on providing experienced Wikisourcers hand-on training in some of the advanced features. It was conducted in Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, India from October 11-12, 2019. Wikisourcers from about ten different Wikimedian communities, including Pankajmala Sarangi from ODW, participated in this two-day event. Some of her learning highlights include training in proofreading, transclusion, library classification and Wikisource-Wikidata linkage. She also got an opportunity to meet other South Asian language Wikipedians and exchange ideas and resources, and plan with other Wikimedians for the Wiki Women Camp 2020, an event focused on womxn Wikimedians. Two ODW members participated and presented at Wikimania 2019 at Stockholm, Sweden whereas 2030 movement brand workshop in February 2020 at Bengaluru, India was joined by a ODW member.

UNESCO Women's Day Edit-a-thon

Every year during the first week of March UNESCO India celebrates the Women's Day edit-a-thon event in New Delhi, India. ODW member Pankajmala Sarangi joined other Indian-language Wikimedians and UNESCO's womxn staffers in this celebratory edit-a-thon on March 3, 2020 at the UNESCO New Delhi office. Several university students and other newbie editors also participated to edit and create new Wikipedia articles related to notable womxn personalities.

Wikisource Proofread-a-thon

The Centre for Internet Society's Access to Knowledge program conducted a proofread-a-thon to provide experienced Wikisourcers training on proofreading on Wikisource during May 1-10, 2020. Many Indic-language Wikisourcers including five from ODW participated in this event. Two Odia books were proofread and validated during this 10-day event.

Train The Trainer 2020

The Centre for Internet Society's Access to Knowledge program conducted Train the Trainer 2020 program from 28 Feb to 1st March 2020. Soumendrak represented Odia Wikipedia user group on that event.

Edit-a-thons

Editathons in which the User Group, a significant portion of the community Odia Wikimedia community or some community members participated.:

International Mother Tongue Day Edit-a-thon

Celebrated International Mother Tongue Day by having an edit-a-thon from 15th Feb 2020 to 1st March 2020 . 7 Odia wikimedians participated and created/improved 30 articles . Content Translation was hugely utilised in this edit-a-thon to translate articles from English to Odia.

LINK: Project main page for the edit-a-thon

Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2020

Odia wiki community participated in the the annual "Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2020 Edit-a-thon" between 1st Feb 2020 to 31st March 2020 . 5 Odia wikimedians created/edited 100 articles.

LINK: Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2020

2030 Strategy

2030 movement brand workshop in Bengaluru

As part of the 2030 movement brand project, the Wikimedia Foundation and its design partner Snøhetta hosted a two-day-long in-person workshop in Bengaluru, India in February 2020. ODW member User:Psubhashish participated in this workshop to engage with other participants and provide inputs on the then-ongoing and currently-on-hold Wikipedia/Wikimedia branding exercise.

International events

Wikimania 2019 Stockholm

ODW members Sailesh Patnaik and Subhashish Panigrahi participated and presented in many sessions at the Wikimania 2019 Stockholm in Sweden. Wikimania was a platform for the ODW to learn from many movement leaders around the world and share the same with the home community. Some of the sessions/initiatives organized by ODW members include:

Content

Participation in Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia (Project Tiger 2.0)

Odia Wikipedia community joined other Indian-language Wikipedians for the Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia (Project Tiger 2.0) campaign that was supported by Google and led by Wikimedia affiliate Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program and contributed in creating and improving a range of articles. By the end of this event, 155 new articles were created on Odia Wikipedia by five active participants. Three (two non-participating in the contest and one participating Odia Wikimedians joined as jury members for the campaign contest. Three Odia Wikimedians — User:Ssgapu22, User:Soumendrak and User:Subas Chandra Rout — were also supported with Chromebook computers and/or disbursement for internet charges under the distribution initiative that was a part of this campaign, and it boasted their individual contributions for the contest, and their general contribution.

COVID-19 Dashboard relicensing

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, ODW took its collaboration with the Odisha state government to the next level by pushing for the relicensing of the government-operated COVID Dashboard under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) International License. The government serves over 40 million people in its jurisdiction and the live dashboard is allegedly the most reliable source of information related to the spread of the pandemic in the province that is also home to the most number of Odia-language speakers. Relevant Odia Wikipedia articles not just got benefited from this collaboration, but it added more credibility for Odia Wikipedia among the Odia speakers.

Patnaik, Sailesh (15 May 2020). "So happy to share that COVID-Dashboard by @EIT_Odisha of Government of Odisha is under a @creativecommons 4.0 license. The first government in India to share their data and resources under an open license. Thanks to @manojmishratwit Sir, for this effort". Twitter. Retrieved 1 October 2020.

LINK: [ List of articles | Article evaluation on the Fountain tool ]

Statistics

Content and community growth (Jun. 2019 – May 2020) of Odia Wikipedia
	Total/highest *(whichever applicable)*	Average (monthly)	Simple English explaination
line\|2019-06-01~2020-06-01\|~total\|monthly Pageview]	13,247,954 (total)	1,204,359	The total pageview of all articles from unique devices was over 13 million with a monthly average of 1.2 million
line\|2019-07-01~2020-06-01\|~total\|monthly #editors]	127 (highest)	106	The total number of active editors went up to as high as 127 on Odia Wikipedia whereas, on an average, 106 editors remained active every month
#edits	5,164 (total)	516.4	A total of 5,164 pages were edited with a monthly average of 516.4 articles, and 14 MB of data equivalent of information was added

Learning from successes and failures

Focusing on advanced training to experienced contributors has resulted in more contribution to the Wikimedia projects and training of newer community members.
Focused regional and international events (e.g. International Mother Tongue Day Edit-a-thon, Women's History Month, Wikipedia Asian Month, Wikimania) have helped strengthen the community collaboration with other Wikimedia communities.
Specific content-focused events (e.g. Project Tiger - GLOW) with strict deadlines have been successful because of proactive community leaders.
Collaboration with the local government has helped build credibility among readers, increase in locally-relevant images has also helped grow Odia Wikipedia's readership base.
Odia Wikipedia has gained a larger acceptance among the Odia-language readers over time. Many noted newspapers and mediahouses, on a regular basis, not just rely on Odia Wikipedia but copy content.
Low quality content, that were mostly created in the past using bots are yet to be cleaned up. This is becoming a priority as the project (Odia Wikipedia) is gaining more popularity.

Media coverage and blogs

Panigrahi, Subhashish (19 October 2019). "The Indian state of Odisha publishes online dictionaries in 21 indigenous languages · Global Voices". Global Voices. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
Heath, Victoria (12 November 2019). "Indian State of Odisha Releases 21 Dictionaries Under CC BY". Creative Commons. Retrieved 1 October 2020.