User:Frhdkazan/Wikimania2017/Small Wikipedia Community Development

This is a drafting place for my Lightning Talk presentation to be delivered during Learning Days @ Wikimania 2017.

Small Wikipedia Community Development: Lessons from Russia

Who are you? edit

31 & counting local language wikis as a community within a single country

Wikipedias in the languages of Russia - Russian Federation regional & indigenous wiki communities' informal Chapters Council. Some in our Facebook group invite us to think wider & rename ourselves as Wimedia North Eurasian languages, but we don't seem to be there yet: still lots to be done at home with current & Wikimedia Incubator wikis. But we are ready to share what we learn & want to see Wikimedia Indigenous Languages become active!
- screenshot of the multilingual bar
- language codes: ru/ +26 /+4 (az/fi/kk/uk) / upcoming / pnt
- select statistics graphs (languages, users, pages based on Wikipedias in the languages of Russia/Tables, make in Excel & upload pictures)

The one and only meeting in more than two, 26 Dec 2015

Social diminishing of the non-dominant languages are a fact of life.

All necessary background & context to expect my home wiki to be a role model for small wikis in Russia & CIS.
- 6-7 million speakers of Tatar worldwide
- Even some higher education programs partly available in the language
- History of cultural innovation
- Tatarstan region is in Top-5 economically & technologically developped Russian regions.
But no one to engage with constructively
- aboriginal small language communities in countries with very strong national identity are often lost about their language & culture future, sometimes stuck in the past - often no discussion, no interest to come for a meeting
- such communities often try to isolate their culture, close themselves out from encroaching globalisation that threatens them
- trying to do it alone, no cooperation with those in the same boat
Whilst most other small wikis in my region have even lower participation

2016 Wikimedia Russia conference participants, St.Petersburg, 1 Oct 2016.

2016 Finno-Ugric Seminar Poster presentation @ Petrozavodsk (in Russian for now) - Make sure those who came once come again & stay longer
1. make your MainPage fun & dynamic
2. balance in past-present-future, article topics, etc.
3. make navigation & finding new articles easy (Categorization, Intrawiki links, Templates)
Make sure you properly wikify your wikis' most popular pages from yesterday
Way forward - Wikimedia Russia 2016: Small wikis are important part of the global community (in Russian for now)
1. Competitions schedule, GLAM & more and more education projects (8-year-olds creating articles certainly made us all! You & your mentor are great!), etc.
2. The more of multilingualism the better - disentangle nation, country, ethnic language & culture bundle
3. Promote new User-groups & thematic organization, Inter wiki-organizational cooperation
June 2017 similarweb.com Traffic Sources analysis results for small wikis (finish compiling for all 3X & put them on .../Trends)
1. Other wikipedias:70-100% (Interwiki)
2. Search engines:<30% (Categorization, intrawiki, Templates)
3. Direct: <10%
4. Social networks:<3%

Bashkir Wiki-grandmas rule

Dominant inter-ethnic communication language (Russian) Wikipedia project page as a start.
Interwiki Newsletter & a Russia's Regional & Indigenous Wikis' Facebook group - most useful ideas from all over the world
Turn Russian Wikimedia Regional Chapter wiki into our multilingual wiki-embassy (need screenshot) & help get Russian Wikinews' indigenous multilingual articles project to take off!
Calendar on the MainPage - show your existing content on the Front Page (some 15 of our local small wikis have it now)
"Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Day" on the MainPage - make your Front Page exciting & dynamic (some 20 of our local small wikis have it now)
Draw attention to backstage tasks
Importance of Offline
1. Bashkir Wikiseminars
2. Selet WikiSchool