User:Titodutta/2015 English Wikipedia India community workshop and peer review

English Wikipedia India community workshop
Full event name	2015 English Wikipedia India community workshop and peer review
Proposed by	English Wikipedia community members
Date	TBA
Place	TBA
Status	As of 18 March 2015, it is awaiting experts' analysis

2015 English Wikipedia India community workshop and peer review is a proposed workshop and peer review for the English Wikipedia English community.

History

Past proposals

Such an event was proposed during the India Community Consultation 2014 (ICC 2014). It was noticed that the English community's problems were something different than the other Indian language Wiipedia communities. During Swatantra 2014, this was discussed once again. After that during Wikipedia Train the Train 2015, User:Nvvchar and another English Wikipedia editor (admin) went to the program organizers and requested to organize such a wiki-event for them. The program director asked them to come up with a detailed proposal.

India noticeboard proposal

On 10 March 2015, User:StrikeEagle went ahead and proposed such an event on the India noticeboard. The proposal received mixed reactions from the noticeboard members. User:Amitrochates told— "I like the idea of a workshop restricted to en.wiki issues..." and endorsed the event. User:Rsrikanth05 believed that this proposal had "a lot of merit" and "the Indian English community is one of the underworked communities and needs a boost to restore ourselves to" their formal glory. However User:AshLin pointed out that off-Wiki consensus can not be forced on the on-Wiki/larger community. User:Abecedare raised two important points a) "Who is the intended audience for the workshop?", b) "Relatedly, is it meant to be pedagogical (i.e, teaching participants about best practices) or meant to formulate best practices through discussion?". User:Ijon agreed that "wiki policy is not made off-wiki", but he also pointed out— "my experience suggests that for difficult questions, an intensive face-to-face meeting of at least some active voices to discuss and come up with proposals can move things forward. . ."

Drafts

Draft 1.0

As some people wanted to see a draft plan, here draft 1.0 with the basic outline of the program is being presented. Note, this is just the initial draft, these will be changed and modified gradually.

Duration	Date	Place
3 days	TBA	Bangalore or New Delhi
Objectives
The proposed workshop aims to— Organize a real-life workshop only for Indian English Wikipedians for the first time which might be the starting point of many such/bigger workshops. Organize presentations, discussions, review sessions to understand the most critical issues affecting the Indian English Wikipedia community AND documenting all these well Attempt to find solution of these issues by group discussion, expert analysis etc. WITHOUT attempting to force any consensus on the Wiki-community (which is almost impossible) Initial talk with WMF/WMIN/CIS (whoever will be present there) on "resource preparation" and finalizing the initial workplan (here "resource preparation" means India-specific resources like videos, documents etc.) India Community Consultation 2014 (ICC 2014) English community follow-up English Wikipedia specific work plan preparation
Special requirements
As we are not planning an event just for event's sake, here are a few things which we think may increase quality of the over-all workshop— Professional level video documentation: we generally rely on text-based documentation, that's fine, but we propose video documentation of the entire (main) event and upload both session videos, speeches etc on Commons and YouTube under Creative Commons license. Roles: There should be an experienced presenter or event conductor (preferably Asaf Bartov as he has prior experience, he was the event conductor of ICC 2014 too and knows many of WikiProject India issues). And there should be a "participants' mentor" too (this role is something new and experimental). This person should have both real-life experience of attending and managing Wiki-events and knowledge of multiple Indian languages. He'll mentor participants and also guide/channel/control their discussions so that those become relevant, systematic and to the point. Someone like T. Vishnu Vardhan should be fit for this role (see the next point for further clarification). Encouraging professional, disciplined and civil discussions: Professional, disciplined and civil discussions should be encouraged. It means it should be made clear that precise, relevant, to the point discussions will be anticipated and encouraged. On the other hand, topic/session hijacking, unnecessary discussions/debates on completely out of topic subjects/past disputes (like "why WMF gave a grant to ABC country of Africa continent in 2007") will be discouraged. Punctuality will be encouraged as well. It'll mainly be the task of the "participants' mentor" to fulfil these requirements. Pre-work scope: Final schedule should be announced at least 8-10 days before the event dates so that participants get enough time to do pre-tasks/home-works.
Possible difficulties		Result
We may face these problems— Lack of experience: As this is the first attempt to do an English Wikipedia (India) specific event, we'll not have past experience Large but un-organized community: English Wikipedia India community is a large but non-organized community, we may face problem to organize and connect to editors		If it is decided that we'll go forward and start preparing Draft 2.0, please note it here and close this section