Deoband Community Wikimedia
Deoband Community Wikimedia (abbreviated as DCW) is a recognized user-group affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. It takes its name from the Deoband Islamic seminary, and aims at improving Wikipedia and its sister projects with knowledge and information related to but not limited to global Muslim academia, scholarship, history and culture, at a global level, in any language.
| Deoband Community Wikimedia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | India |
| Affiliate code | DCW |
| Country code | IN |
| Founding date | July 31, 2021 |
| Approval date | January 16, 2022 |
| Main office | New Delhi, India |
| Volunteers | 29 |
| Official language(s) | English and Urdu |
| President | TheAafi |
| Key people | |
| Incorporation paper | AffCom Resolution (2022) |
| Budget |
|
| Reports | Reports Index |
| Affiliations | Affiliations Committee, Wikimedia |
| Website | dcwwiki.org |
| E-mail address | dcw wikimedia org |
| Mailing list | wikimedia-dcw |
| Telegram | dcwwiki |
| dcwwiki | |
| dcwwiki | |
| dcwwiki | |
| Motto | Free knowledge! |
| Remarks | The budget indicated includes individual grants that have been taken to complete certain projects and price of the assets that belong the affiliate. |
Established on 31 July 2021, DCW was recognised by the Affiliation Committee on 16 January 2022. It has introduced collaborative projects such as Deoband Yoruba Collaborative Project and DCW-K Editathon to sustain its growth and objectives. It hosts the DCW Conversation Hour once a month, and has firm activity plans for its growth and development.
In June 2023, DCW announced making of its leadership development and skills infrastructure plan and prior to that helped in making of Wikipedia 101, an educational learning video kit in in Turkish.
News and announcements Edit
- 22:09:2023: The upcoming DCW Progress Prism is scheduled to happen at 7:30 PM IST, on 24 September.
- 09:09:2023: The second iteration of the Deoband Yoruba Collaborative Project is running for fifteen days from 10 to 25 September 2023.
- 15-08-2023: The strategic learnings from July 2023 have been published on the Diff blog.
History Edit
The first draft about the Deoband Community Wikimedia (DCW) was published on Meta-Wiki on 31 July 2021 and it was formally established on that date. Prior to being recognised by the Affiliations Committee on 16 January 2022, the user-group held two introductory meetings on 12 August 2021 and 20 November 2021 respectively.
DCW focusses on anything related to Muslim academia and scholarship and takes its name from the Darul Uloom Deoband, a premier Islamic seminary in India. The seminary is home to the Deobandi movement, one of the major contemporary movements that spreads throughout the world, through a plethora of institutions, scholars, and organizations.
The DCW does not limit itself to any specific language. It focuses on its theme that transcends all the languages and as such it tries to form collaborations with the language affiliates of Wikimedia Foundation and external organisations in order to disseminate knowledge related to its theme on those languages. The Deoband Yoruba Collaborative Project was formed on 25 June 2022 to promote the theme on Yoruba language Wikipedia. On the English Wikipedia, the DCW editors have worked through the DYK and the ITN processes. DCW's major on-wiki accomplishments are recorded here.
DCW hosted events including two offline meetups in Deoband in 2022; the first between 17 and 20 March 2022 and the second on 19 June 2022. Others include a series of meetups and little workshops about Wikiquote which were organised between 7 August and 10 August 2022 in Delhi. The Bhopal Photo Event was organised between 15 and 20 October 2022, and a thematic edit-a-thon was conducted while celebrating the tenth anniversary of Wikidata on 30 and 31 October 2022. DCW participated in the Movement Charter Ambassador Program, Phase I under the leadership of TheAafi in order to represent itself and the Indic-Urdu language community at a global level.
The DCW also initiated a series of conversations inviting scholars from around the globe, and also the people from within the movement, to build its base strategically. This initiative called the DCW Conversation Hour was inaugurated by Donia Al Domiaty, an Arabic Wikimedian on 30 September 2022. The second lecture of this series was delivered by Dr. Ashraf Dockrat on 13 November 2022.
Objectives Edit
Subject to DCW's focus on the representation of global Muslim academia and scholarship, historical or contemporary, which includes and is not limited to: Muslims in history and contemporary world, their contributions in science, society, journalism, education, and in the organisational network, its objectives include:
- Promoting edit-a-thons related to themes relevant to its vision on Wikipedia, Commons, Wikiquote, Wikidata and several other Wikimedia projects.
- Bridge the gaps concerning this thematic knowledge on all of the Wikimedia projects. DCW does not focus itself to a single language project.
- Forming collaborations with Wikimedia movement affiliates for "transformation" of this thematic knowledge to different languages. For example, Deoband Yoruba Collaborative Project targets the Yoruba language Wikipedia, and DCW-K Editathon targets the Kashmiri language Wikipedia.
In news Edit
- Our founder Aafi interviewed by journalist Fredrick Noronha during WikiConference India 2023.
- Deoband Community Wikimedia members to meet in UP this week by Free Press Kashmir on 16 June 2022.
- Deoband Community Wikimedia announces a collaborative project with Yoruba language Wikipedia by The Chenab Times on 26 June 2022.
- Deoband Wikimedia's 5-day long Bhopal Photo Event has started by Millat Times Urdu on 17 October 2022.
- DCW celebrates 10th anniversary of Wikidata by The Chenab Times on 31 October 2022.