This is our second blog to showcase the Hindi Wikimedians User Group’s most recent achievement and results through our activities focussed on Engaging, Encouraging and Empowering both the current and future community members to boost editor and editing growth. Here is a link to our first blog focussed on the first three months under our ongoing partnership with Google India, supported by The Wikimedia Foundation, through which we aim on taking our projects to new audiences, users and potential editors.
Here is a snapshot of some of the initial activities we have executed under the partnership and our own activities from January to March, 2024
Building Capacity on Hindi Wikimedia Projects
2024 started off on a busy note for the Hindi Wikimedians as we hosted multiple workshops and discussions focussed on building awareness, capacity and eventually content for various Hindi Wikimedia Projects.
- In January we organized a series of three capacity building workshops held in a under-graduate college in New Delhi through which we engaged over 50 students on basics of Wikimedia projects from creating accounts, signing in and preliminary editing. The participants were also introduced to Wikibooks.
- In February we hosted a Hindi Wikisource Capacity Building Workshop and Editing Festival which was a intense session and editathon with 15 participants through which we supported the participants in editing an ongoing festival on Hindi Wikipedia (details below)
- We then moved online to host and organize a festival through a new outreach model where we engaged 25 participants through a Hindi Wikipedia Capacity Building Program which aimed to be the first of many programs with the same students on building editing skills and interest.
Content Creation Contests: Hindi Wikipedia and Wikisource
One of the ways we have been encouraging and engaging our existing and new editors is by hosting regular editing festivals and competitions through which we not only gain new content but also are able to improve the editing quality of our newcomers.
We organized a 15-day editing competition on Hindi Wikipedia where we encouraged our participants to fill certain content gaps which were identified by Google based on their recent searches which didn’t result in a Hindi Wikipedia article. This festival saw close to 30 sign ups and the creation of over 300 new articles in Hindi Wikipedia.
Right at the completion of the Wikipedia edit-a-thon, we hosted another competition on Hindi Wikisource from the 20th of February to the 6th of March which focussed on completing the upload of certain books by Mahatma Gandhi. This initiative got 26 participants who worked on completing pre-decided works as per a book list shared with them.
Key Learnings and Next Steps
Through the last few months we have conducted numerous workshops, editing festivals and meet-ups through which we have engaged new and old community members and also established partnerships with various educational institutions.
We realized the importance of a consistent approach and a sustained but streamlined process hence we will continue on the same path in the next few months and also plan to organize a small meet-up of active Hindi Wikimedians to reconvene, strategize and plan for our next steps as a community and under this partnerships.
To know more or engage with us, please contact on our meta page or on the Hindi Wikipedia Village Pump
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