WikiProject India Nurturing

Project WIN

Preface

Work plan

Roadmap

Requirements

Discussion

Project WIN or WikiProject India Nurturing is a project to improve and nurture the WikiProject India (Indian English Wikipedia) community. The project is almost entirely based on the belief that—

Project WIN
Other name	WikiProject India Nurturing
Motto	"We'll WIN"
Financial requirements	None
Other requirements	See here

Project WIN in five bullet points

1. Train, mentor and organize (new) editors and encourage them to participate in WikiProject India noticeboard-related and mailing list discussion
2. Start a few small initiatives and revive Assessment drive; Collaboration of the Month or a few other initiatives;
3. Encourage these editors by barnstars, Merchandise gifts (rarely, specially during competitions), and making sure that their best works are highlighted by Wikimedia blogs, social networking channels.
4. Understand and try to solve projects'/editors' problems/channels and issues.
5. Keep on doing the work.

An organized community working together can perform much more efficiently than an unorganized one, and if we strengthen a community, it'll definitely improve the entire WikiProject (and also the Wikipedia).

The project will conduct a series of online editing events, and will try to revive a few initiatives and projects like Collaboration of the month.

Objectives

The objectives of this project are—

1. support and nurture the community;
2. engage them in more organized Wikiwork, like WikiProject India article assessment drives, Collaboration of the Month, participation in deletion and other discussion etc;
3. make sure that their best works are highlighted and recognized;

Challenges

The challenges and difficulties are:

1. Large but unorganized community: The English Wikipedia Indian community, but unorganized;
2. No popular central discussion place:' The community does not have a popular central discussion place;
3. Lack of participation in project works: In last couple of years a good number of initiatives have failed or faced difficulties due to lack of participation;

Definition of community

Here "community" does not mean "only" a handful of people who attend Wikimedia events, seminar, workshops, but here "community" mainly means the large number of editors who generally don't participate in (or don't know about) village pump/noticeboard/mailing list discussions or Wikimedia events. Many of these editors often face difficulties or have questions but don't go to (or don't know about) Help Desks or IRCs. Now, this project will attempt to support and strengthen this larger Wikipedia community.

A central discussion place

Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales says—

Wikipedia is something special. . . It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others.

Similarly, to make a community more organized, we feel, it is absolutely necessary to have a place where "we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others. "These are the two places which are generally used as the central meeting places in WikiProject India

• WikiProject India noticeboard and
• Mailing list.

In this Project WIN, our primary and the first work will be to bring more and more editors to our noticeboard (and mailing list). This will have the following benefits:

• Central discussion place: The editors will get a place to discuss Indian-related topics or ask question;
• Active watchers and India experts: We'll get more active watchers and India-experts in the board, which is badly needed at this moment;
• Reaching more editors: It'll also help to reach a larger number of editors. It'll be very helpful, when the project will announce something or will start a new initiative.

Motivation

It is very important to motivate and encourage editors or find them a reason to join initiatives and the noticeboard. And for this, the project has its own rewards and encouragement structure which includes—

1. Barnstars.
2. Merchandise gift (T-shirts, hoodies, badges, stickers etc.) in competition.
3. Publicity and visibility of events and deserving editors;

(It does not include any financial reward)

Standpoints

1. Seminars, conferences, workshops: The project does not have any plan to conduct seminars, conferences or workshops.