Talk:CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2015 - June 2016/Kannada Wikipedia

For the year 2015, a clear blue print is essential. There are several positive developments in the arena of Wikipedia (Kn) This is a positive sign. All the great things or small things, will have a humble beginning. So there is no necessity of anxiety whatsoever. The main factor which satisfies me as a humble contributor, (Radhatanaya) we have a very easily accessible forerunner, who is always behind us. He is having an eye of an eagle, and heart as large as Ganesh. We are lucky to have such leader, particularly in this field.

1. We have to take the stock of the total articles big, small etc; and make them very much readable, giving supports like providing pics, links, correcting the grammar mistakes etc; We should not 'just put a tag' on the top, and leave it alone. This is not the way to encourage, to expect more articles in the field of Kannada wikipedia. believe me, you will fail in your target, if you adopt the way you are going.

It is necessary to mark articles into relevant categories. You can read for more information here. Any editors can contribute for article quality improvement (Believe me, marking a stub as a stub is a part of it!). --Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

2. Please check the articles created on the daily basis and examine them, and make it worth presentable.

This will happen once we have an active community of editors. Please read this.--Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

3. There are several articles which are repeated. Because of lack of knowledge of checking by various means. Such articles can be deleted at once. Give one or two weeks time. If no response please delete them.

It is the responsibility of author to search[1] for an article before creating a new one. But don’t worry, Even if happens by mistake, any articles are found duplicate will be marked by other editors and will be marked for merge. --Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

4. There are some articles which provide very important information of age old cultural organisations, Associations etc, They have been working for long time, with out any propaganda or press reports. If you insist a reference, where to bring ?

Please read this. --Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

5. Please do not adhere to the format of English wikipedia. Think in the regional languages and act the technical supports of English wikipedia. So there are lots of things one has to introspect, and proceed.

This is a very generic statement. Please specify in which particular aspect you require deviation from English wikipedia (or wiki culture). --Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

6. There are many article which just say, name of a person, birth, duties and death. This is of no use. No one gets inspirational information from such articles. I call them dead articles. For example. Sir c.V.Raman's one article was there. I edited it and made it interesting.

I appreciate your work. If you feel any article can be made better, feel free to do so. If you find any such articles out of your expertise area, wait, some other editor may improve it :) --Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

7. In English Wikipedia articles many have tags with some instructions, because they are having resources, and naturally expecting the same. But in kannada, it is utter foolishness to expect such links and supports. Just think in kannada, and act in English. Always please try to understand English readers of the west, and kannada readers, have different expectations. Good luck. (Radhatanaya (talk) 07:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC))

Please join your hands to build the community and improve the quality. Let’s adhere to standards which are set by wikipedia. --Teju2friends (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

highlight the efforts put in by CIS-A2K??

While I have many questions about this proposal, due to time constraint I have to start asking something atleast to initiate the conversation.

Major Concerns

Kannada WikiQuotes

• May I know what type of efforts were put in to make Wiki Quotes project for Kannada?

The project became active due to a personal interest and idea that myself and kn:User:Pavithra took it up as a family project that we explained in few of the Bangalore wiki meetups and this was also presented during Swatantram by Pavithra through a recorded session as per the request from Mr. Vishnu.

I don’t think this is the good way to appreciate the ideas shared or demonstrated by the community members.

We fully accept and appreciate the efforts put up by Pavithra and Omshivaprakash in adding content to Kannada Wikiquotes. A presentation on programmatically populating Kannada Wikiquotes was demonstrated by Pavithra during one of the meetups at CIS-A2K.--Pavanaja (talk) 16:33, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Kannada Wiktionary

• May I know what efforts were taken to improve Kannada Wiktionary?

I don't remember seeing a single activity around it and people who are involved working around Kannada Wiktionary have been working in isolation from Kannada Wikipedia community as well.

CIS-A2K's focus has been mostly on Kannada Wikipedia and Wikisource. There is a team of active volunteers who are working relentlessly on adding content to Kannada Wiktionary. CIS-A2K took cognizance of this and even linked up between the team and the journalist from Bangalore Mirror who wanted to make an article on the growth of Kannada Wiktionary--Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC).

So the report should highlight the community encouragement shown by providing PR related help specifically. Otherwise the project efforts and the effort put in PR won't tally. Thanks for adding the Bangalore Mirror link here to enhance this document. Omshivaprakash (talk) 05:43, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Driving me away from sharing further about plans on Wiki Activities

Strange to see such things being added as highlights of efforts put by CIS-A2K while I have been thinking of helping WMIN or CIS-A2K in whatever way possible to make the activities beneficial for community. (most of them(community members) facing this issue, so we need to highlight this)

This is not in case of other CIS-A2K members and program director himself as they have been supporting and providing valuable inputs for all work, initiatives even helping proofreading our blogs etc. which is very much appreciated throughout.

CIS-A2K has been actively supporting, discussing the issues, participating in discussions onwiki, mailing lists, social media, and through telephones also. CIS-A2K members have always promoted active Wikipedians by highlighting their works. --Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

The above quote was made based on the lines which were used to quote Wiktionary and Wikiquotes, and I'm sure I have taken enough initiatives to make these on/off wiki communications possible in whichever small way possible. So, this heading need not be read separately. It was supposed to have meant how it felt when I read the report first. I have also quoted how CIS-A2K has been encouraging and supporting outside the boundaries of Kannada activities. Omshivaprakash (talk) 05:45, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Quality?

I have been bringing up issues related to quality where in this report talk about having taken steps to ensure best quality. Just last month I have put my comments mentioning the articles being created without any sort of research from the institutional partnerships with colleges and universities. Only after discussion mails were sent out and the same has been forwarded to Mr. Vishnu (Program Director) mentioning about the steps being taken only after bringing it to notice. I see no internal quality control on such partnerships and only now it is being talked about and already the report boasts about having taken all measures. The note added by User:Radhatanaya itself shows how many active Wikipedians don't know about the wiki culture and Wikipedia basic rules to edit and contribute articles. I don't think any other major proof needs to be given to talk about the quality here. Kannada Wikipages also talk much without references.

It is not true that corrective action by sending emails is taken only after the quality issue being raised. CIS-A2K has been in touch with the faculty at partner institutions, mostly through telephone calls and SMSes. Most faculty people don't check emails very frequently as we people do. Hence telephone is the fastest way to reach. Emails are also sent with detailed instructions which can't be given through telephone or SMS. CIS-A2K member has taken extra effort to personally go to the partner institution to highlight the importance of quality.

Radhatanaya has been a Wikipedian since 2007 much before CIS-A2K program came into existence. There are one or two such old Wikipedians who need to be educated on wiki culture, importance of adding references, what is a good articles, etc. CIS-A2K is in constant touch with these editors and the results are slowly being shown.--Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Writing an email/SMS and the need for such things are very much essential as I myself face that issue while working as a volunteers. The program itself has to drive the quality from the day one and it depends on how the message and the steps to build a free and open encyclopedia is built. Its about the culture as I have quoted. If necessary, the delivery method and the way it is perceived by the attendees needs to be reviewed, researched and the corrective measures to be needed.

With respect to some of the seniors editing Wikipedia, quoting the quality again becomes a big issue here as they have lots of time to contribute but they still don't understand how the quality has to be maintained. Even if CIS-A2K spend a week with them training them and making them understand the quality measures, finding solutions to reference issues which they crib about would be a worth effort rather than doing 10's of out-reach programs as we have numbers + adding quality would take Kannada Wikipedia to next level. So, please review how this is approached. Also as a admin from the community from Pavanaja should definitely take quality control as a high priority and its not good to be lenient selectively. Omshivaprakash (talk) 05:53, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Community Discussion/Idea Exchange

All community discussions or idea exchange cannot become a part of program plan, it has to be agreed upon by the people who coin those ideas in community and then only the projects have to be built to support community members.

The work plan is still being evolved. Ideas from the community have been invited and the feasible are being incorporated. The very purpose of this discussion page is to discuss, evolve and finalise the work plan with the participation from the community.--Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I request you to follow the method of Idea lab used by WMF to give the required highlight for people who share ideas, let it take years to be implemented or worked on but - that would highlight how community is thinking and also add how CIS-A2K can support such plans along with community members. I can help setting up a Idea lab project on Kn:Wiki. Omshivaprakash (talk) 05:55, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

No Activity Reports & Followups

There has been no community report on activities created. Many of these issues reported on WP:VP are not responded to yet. Community don't have a clue on new people joined, mentored and continuing to effectively edit Wikipedia though there have been many outreach programs. Out-reach programs are ineffective unless community is engaged to support that crowd continuously unless they are become effective editors.

CIS-A2K is regularly publishing quarterly reports. For example, here are the reports of last two quarters -1, 2

Thanks for those links, but still as a community member I can't see how many attended the outreach programs and how they are doing over the period of time. I would like to adopt a best practice to track the community led workshops here on so that even the future community members can understand how a program can be planned and executed. And also further follow-ups can be done with the members who joined and never turned up after the first sign-up and first edit. Do we have anything valuable to take from CIS-A2K past work around Kannada wikipedia? Omshivaprakash (talk) 05:58, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Article Counts

Are we differentiating the articles that are being pushed from Wikisource to Kannada Wikipedia? I remember Shrikanth Mishrikoti making hundreds of such articles available on Kn:Wiki. So, do we count the contribution from the last years 1500 people reached out through outreach separately? I’m not sure.

Shall we have a monthly breakdown of articles, editors and retained editors please? I can help if there are any data points to come up with the report.

Growing number of article is not what the community needs. As the media has been criticizing on the wikipedia quality for Kannada, we can’t simply copy paste from Encyclopedia shared by Mysore University and ask Students to write anything they want without references etc. (Our facebook community chat room is the proof for the conversation that I’m quoting here for articles without references from colleges).

Mysore University encyclopaedia is the best encyclopaedia for Kannada. Creating articles taking input from this encyclopaedia re-released under CC-BY-SA by Mysore University, will definitely get some good quality articles for Kannada Wikipedia. While doing so, the editor has to make sure to improve upon the article by adding latest information about the topic, if available, and make sure that references have been searched and added. Some editors are doing so.

We need to have a style guide for this as a part of the project so the new editors catch up with the style. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Detailed table on articles and editors will be generated and provided.

Looking forward to it. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Regarding quality of articles added by students – CIS-A2K has taken strict measures to ensure the quality of articles added by students. Students have been instructed to write the article in their sandbox, show them to their faculty and then to CIS-A2K members. Only after it has been approved, they are allowed to make the article live. This multiple level of scrutiny helps in maintaining the quality of the articles added by students.--Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Can we go back and check the old articles which are already pushed without approval? We can make required changes to the template used to identify those articles in a row. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Any new leaders created?

We are not clear what has been really achieved out of the outreach programs in various districts. Except one last TV program attended by St Aloysius or SDM college students - I don’t remember seeing any other leader emerging out of the programs to systematically continuing to build wiki programs in institute or otherwise.

CIS-A2K has been generating new editors from last one year or slightly more than an year. It takes more time to develop a leader.--Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Please include a plan to identify the active editors and bringing them to TTT or similar programs focused around Kannada wikipedia so that community can learn to prioritize its growth. This would also include turning an active editor into an active leader for the upcoming programs. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:01, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this excellent suggestion Omshivaprakash! It is essential that we do this more pro-actively. Thanks for facilitating Kiran's participation in TTT-2015 this time around. We will certainly bank on you to reach out to the Bidar based Wikimedians that you have been grooming and involving them in next year's TTT and other such similar programs. --Visdaviva (talk) 06:07, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Don't bite off more than you can chew

Institutional partnerships - We are not yet having all books released under CC digitized and uploaded to Wiki Source. No news on what has been done to streamline books contributed by Department Kannada and Culture. Are we sure we want to take up more without finishing base work?

I myself initiated a follow up on Niranjana’s work with all at CIS-A2k and continuing to work on getting them in Commons through followup or whatever it takes. This is just a point to ponder.

Kannada Wikipedia has got very few Wikipedian’s who are working on and off with right perspective towards Wiki Culture. We have been contributing in our own way by technically being around in social media, Village pump, emails, mailing list etc. Rapport can be built with community and then a plan is built to make the program effective.

We have sent request to OTRS team sending all the declarations by Mysore Univ, Tejaswinin Niranjana and GoK. But they have not raised any ticket so far. We are waiting for the ticket to upload the books. We have added some content from Mysore University and GoK. But not adding more and waiting for the OTRS response.

As per the discussions on Wikipedia mailing list, many of us trying to understand and learn how the OTRS can be handled as we have many out-of-copyright works. Can we have an orientation or a document created on Kannada wikipedia for explaining process involved. We should not be trying to re-learn the processes for which we have spent time, efforts and money.

Yes, OTRS team takes its own sweet time and also number of books might have made them review it slowly. We can still try sending a follow-up if needed. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:06, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

We do have a program officer exclusively for institutional partnerships. He is fully dedicated to all related works.--Pavanaja (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Looking forward for the active involvement and contributions from Tanveer. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Request

I request for a detailed report on what has been achieved from the last years program list where in I myself had contributed ideas and I had also informed that I might not be able to take up all of them single handedly due to personal and professional responsibilities. Shared whatever inputs, technical time, translations, suggestions, comments through the year and even during planning. I feel that there is not enough justice done to that previous list. The present list mostly contains what has been discussed by community not a plan derived to achieve the best results.

I shall continue to discuss as and when I read and digest the information. Omshivaprakash (talk) 17:44, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Reports of last two quarters are here - 1, 2--Pavanaja (talk) 17:18, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

These are summaries. I have mentioned how a program report can help community take next steps to improve participation above. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

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After reading above lengthy discussion, I want to add few points,

• The main difference of opinion seems to be in the scope of the report. Let’s clearly define the scope & have content specific for that. If CIS-A2K's focus is on Kannada Wikipedia and Wikisource, it is good to have statistics only on them - clearly differentiating counts created by CIS-A2K's program effort. This will eliminate most of the confusions. We can discuss & define the template of such report for next term in a wikimeet.
• Quality: In case of controlled engagements with colleges and universities), it will be good to define a process of publishing (We can go for engagement only if they agree to follow the process). E.g.: Article Assignment -> Peer review -> Quality review (May be other peer/professor) -> Final review (by professor) -> publish. Articles which fail the process will not be pushed on wiki. This will help to create a good bench mark for other articles. This process can be brainstormed during next wiki meet.
• Community Discussion/Idea Exchange: I believe there is lot of WIP in this area.
  • Though we have good number of followers on Facebook, the platform is failing to have a active participation on the project. I have observed only few people are active on facebook. It will be good to have discussion on WP:VP (though FB users are reluctant to do so, we should encourage it).
  • Each wiki meet - sammilana, must have a predefined agenda & should document activities done, concerns raised, action items and decisions taken. This will help avoiding "reinventing the wheel".
  • We should work on bringing together contributors of different engagements & projects (E.g. authors from institutional partnerships and Wiktionary) on a single platform.
• Any new leaders created?

This is the major output factor we should work on. I believe this is directly correlated to establishing a community discussion & brining new editors in.

We should properly documents “lessons learnt” & “what went well”. This will let us analyze if any change in approach is required. Overall, let’s put apart all the differences in the process & have a fresh start with New Year. -- Teju2friends (talk) 08:27, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

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I endorse the Implementation plan, especially the points under content generation. Workshop for writers will not only generate new editors for Kannada wikipedia, but also help the language in general as new writers are trained. Thematic & focused monthly sprints will ensure that authentic content about specific topics gets into Wikipedia. Srimysore (talk) 09:24, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

---

Quality & Thematic Improvement

I appreciate the involvement of Kannada Wiki community in developing the work plan as this eventually serves the road map for next 1 year, but there are some points to be noted before doing so.

Quality improvement is one of the most tedious process. Would like to know the dedicated time limit of this process.

Quality of about 25% of the poorly written articles is expected to be improved by the end of the year - Based on which criteria these will be selected? And will this be a progressive one when it comes to community?

Institutional participation is good but I've seen articles written by those students which are not up to the mark. How these will be tackled & will there be any improvement (in terms of percentage)?

Thematic improvement - We all know that University of Mysore released Vishwakosha under creative commons but I don't see any content added from it to KnWiki. Why this hasn't been used under thematic?

- Kiran, 05 April 2015, 06:58 (UTC)

Thanks Kiran for your active involvement. Most of the points that we discussed during the TTT-2015 have gone into making this work plan.

Addressing quality of articles in Kannada Wikipedia will be an ongoing activity. Initially we have to focus more on improving the quality of existing poorly written articles. We have made a rough estimation on the amount of work involved. Based on the work involved and the amount of time that can be devoted to this activity, we arrived at the figure.

Regarding your query on the article quality coming out of institutional partnerships, written by students, has been answered for a similar query by Omshivaprakash, above.

Regarding your query on Mysore University Vishwakosha articles in Kannada Wikisource and Kannada Wikipedia - these are the category page in Kannada Wikisource and Kannada Wikipedia.--Pavanaja (talk) 09:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Some of my final comments User:Omshivaprakash

The answers given to my questions/concerns raised above are not answered satisfactorily. Responses were never addressed again. With respect to institutional participation, community doesn't have clear results outlined and reports requested are no where updated.

Though we have a dedicated position for Kannada, this entire report is not available for Kannada wikipedia community to understand it in its own language.

Christ University partnership has been a disaster. Please see this quality review initiated and finished with the help of few other Kannada wikipedians. For the entire years work, we have 109 articles tagged under ICCU template which demarcates the work done by the students. None of these articles are of any quality and also all of them fail to have basic reference. The language used in these articles deteriorate the quality of the Kannada wikipedia further. Its surprising that not a single article was touched after the events(edit-a-thon's) conducted for a day or two in this university. None of the community members were consulted or no effort is seen on wikipedia village pump expressing the ideas and taking inputs to run training programs or edit-a-thons in university. Also note that most of these articles are being marked for deletion due to their quality issues.

Other institutional membership contributions are hard to figure out.

We might have deleted stub or empty articles in hundreds of numbers and there are another 700 articles to be deleted after review. Most of these are from the new editors who are trained from outreach etc. No learning's have been taken from these. This talks about how a training or workshop practice without community involvement is working out. Also, gives an idea on the actual numbers.

The endorsements or contributions made to this proposal by some of the wikipedians are questionable. 1. Due to their involvement in the on wiki edits 2. There are no edits or discussion page note by many of these wikipedians in this proposal. Looks like they were asked to sign on the proposal.

I have not liked the idea of separating the wikisource project from this proposal, reason being a small community and so far the wikisource uploads etc are again done through university students or some volunteers from community. Apart from the efforts put in to get the content released under CC, no positive examples set to re-use the content to build wiki. Also having two different plans for a small community like ours distracts someone from evaluating the exact amount of money required to run any effective program.

We do not have any workshop reports, results achieved, lessons learnt etc on Kannada wikipedia. Until all these issues are sorted, I would not endorse this proposal Omshivaprakash (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Dear Omshivaprakash, thanks for your comments on the Kannada Wikipedia plan. We will engage with it in detail soon. However, we would like to take your remark "The endorsements or contributions made to this proposal by some of the wikipedians are questionable. 1. Due to their involvement in the on wiki edits 2. There is no edits or discussion page note by many of these wikipedians. Looks like they were asked to sign on the proposal." very seriously and investigate this matter internally and take appropriate disciplinary action, should it be true. More on the other comments soon.--Visdaviva (talk) 20:20, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

1.Adding to the points made by Om, I too have concern over the endorsement. Also I had asked to provide list of contributors with their contribution in drafting this work plan so that we, community members could use their ideas and suggestion for successful implementation. But I didn't get any.

2.Although the institutional partnership has created good number of editors, we don't see good number of articles. This was also discussed in IRC discussion. So for future institutional partnership, the type of approach and workshop that will be conducted has to be discussed.

3. Also, I had requested for one face-to-face discussion along with community members so that we can have detailed discussion on work plan, this was also mentioned in IRC, but that never happened :(. - Kiran, 01 May 2015, 07:38 (UTC)

No idea where it is heading to (Discussion etc). There has been no major response to the comments here. Here I find an another interesting thing.

Lesson 7 - Adding references to a Kannada Wikipedia article.webm This video was supposed to be talking about referencing in wikipedia articles. But its all about Wikipedia Commons and how to search and use Images from it. Does this ignorance explain the work? I thought of giving this video as a reference to one of the participant's who have been guided by Mr. U.B Pavanaja as this person has been adding lots of useful information to Kannada Wikipedia without any reference. But, this is pointless. The video script could have been verified by any community members. (Quality measures missing?) Omshivaprakash (talk) 17:31, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Lessons 6 & 7 have got interchanged by mistake. I noticed it just now. I have requested for a change in the file names. I have already changed the descriptions. There is no error in the script. It is a small error where two videos' titles got interchanged. Probably you also observed that mixup. I have suggested that person whom you have mentioned to see the video no.6 only (check the talk page) - Pavanaja

If you call the above one as a incorrect title issue, [this video contains an article requiring a copy-edit before even presenting it to a newbie as an example. The person in the article's notability is still in question as there are no references to his work and no notable work is mentioned in kn:wiki article. Omshivaprakash (talk) 17:57, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

The next video talks on how to add reference. The videos are in this order -first one learns how to edit, create interwiki links, external links, adding references and then images -Pavanaja

The article used in Video 4, 5, 6 talks about Sulabha_K_Kulkarni where in not a single reference added to the article while recording the video and that could have been atleast shown in the next phases of the video where referencing has been taught. Till date the Kannada article doesn't carry the references kn:ಸುಲಭ_ಕುಲಕರ್ಣಿ (December 2013). Hence it's not the best article that can be used on a video that is wide spread to teach wiki editing. People have been adding articles to Kannada wiki without any references and the root cause point back at the quality of these videos. Need a third party wikipedian view on these videos. It is not just about the naming or what has been covered in the video, but how it is covered. Omshivaprakash (talk) 02:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)