Wikimedia Community User Group Sri Lanka/2016 Annual Report

Recognition | 2017 Annual Report

Thank you for visiting. The following page reports the activities done by members of the usergroup during the fiscal year from 2016-02-18 to 2017-02-17. Being the very first year as a usergroup, the majority of it involved familiarizing with the group environment and community.

An important aspect which we learnt during the past year is that being a usergroup for a trilingual community, it is not effective to have a single team lead its activities. Hence one of the main focus for FY 2017 is to create three subgroups for each of the three languages used in Sri Lanka. This will reduce any discomfort in participation by members and will also further encourage more non-English members to join in. With this approach, we aim to conduct more community-involved activities, as well conduct our first offline event.

2016 in Summary

Wikimania

The annual Wikimania Conference was held in Esino Lario, Italy, from 2016-06-22 to 2016-06-26. User:Rehman represented the Usergroup at the conference. Key usergroup-related outcomes from the conference includes understanding better ways of editor rectruitment and retention, and also ways to get quick projects funded via Rapid Grants.

With guidance from fellow Wikimedians met at the conference, we have successfully applied for our first project grant for photo equipment. This is further detailed later in this report.

Funding for photo equipment

In August 2016, Grants:Project/Rapid/UG LK/Photo equipment was initiated in order improve photographic coverage of landmarks and icons of Sri Lanka, and also to encourage more offline user activities. The $925 grant was approved in December 2016, but the process of transferring funds is still in progress.

We are hoping to reach out and encourage members to participate in offline photowalks as part of our initial projects, once the purchase of the photographic equipment is complete. With the new photographic coverage, a trilingual edit-a-thon can be organized in order to create/improve the corresponding articles in English, Sinhala, and Tamil.

WikiConference India

User:Sandaru and User:Rehman represented the Usergroup in the regional conference held in Chandigarh, India. Among other topics, discussions were held with the Wikimedia affiliates from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Nepal with regards to a joint effort to promote activities via Wikimedia SAARC.