99.65 Not out: Telugu Wikipedia’s Endeavor to Enhance Cricket Content

Cricket, a sport that holds a cherished place in the hearts of millions, serves as a unifying force in many countries, especially India. As the Cricket World Cup 2023 approaches, the Telugu Wikipedia community has embarked on a significant endeavour: a collaborative effort to enrich articles about cricket. 1516 articles were created and improved within 74 days and the majority of articles were written by 8 Wikimedians. The initial target of this project is 1000 articles before the end of November. In addition to this, 92.26% of articles in this category have at least 4 kb of content, whereas 99.65% of articles have at least 2 kb and meet the other quality standards set up by the community.

Why Cricket?

August’s Six-Fest

Much like a brilliant opening batsman’s lightning-quick, August has seen a surge in the count of articles. In the first month, the project achieved an impressive 77.5% of its target, with 12 Wikimedians leading the charge while 8 of them scored above half-century articles. Their enthusiasm and commitment have been nothing short of remarkable. Together, they’ve contributed 756 new articles and expanded 19 existing ones. This surge in content has added over a billion bytes of valuable information to the wiki.

Key Highlights:

• Averaging 24 articles per day, the team hit a peak of 48 articles on August 20 and maintained a steady pace throughout.
• The project has seen enthusiastic participation from new wiki contributors, signifying a growing interest in cricket-related content.
• Pranayraj1985, Chaduvari, K.Venkataramana, Yarra Ramarao, Vjsuseela, V Bhavya, and Divya4232 made significant contributions that stood out prominently.
• Notably, four out of the 12 participants are women.
• The translation tool has played a pivotal role, allowing for extensive use and bridging language barriers.
• Chaduvari, the project coordinator, mentioned that “Some articles require refinement of their content following machine translation.”
• Repetitive tasks were assigned to AWB (AutoWikiBrowser) as a good practice to save time.

September’s Steady Innings

The momentum carried into September, resulting in the creation of 568 additional articles and a growth of 19.72 megabytes of information. Although the pace slightly tapered off, the dedication of the contributors remains palpable. Notably, half of the August contributors continued their valuable contributions into September. Yarra Rama Rao and Bhavya displayed commendable consistency, contributing more articles than the previous month. Pranay Raj, with the highest number of articles this month, continues to lead the overall effort where Chaduvari is following him closely.

October’s Unbeaten Streak

By mid-October, Telugu Wikipedians had created 1516 cricket-related articles and improved 21. This included biographies of Indian Test and One-day Cricket players, profiles of cricketers from various nations, articles about National cricket teams, umpires, cricket controversies, and cricket grounds. The effort also saw significant improvements in articles about over 150 women cricketers, often overlooked in the popularity of men’s cricket.

This community placed a strong emphasis on quality. They actively discouraged low-quality translations and the creation of stubs. As of October 1, 99.65% of cricket-related articles on Telugu Wikipedia were over 2 kilobytes, with 92.26% exceeding 4 kilobytes. Where as, articles created during this campaign are almost all exceed 4kb.

Due to a lack of images for several cricketers on Commons, over 1000 articles lacked visual representation. The community is actively working to rectify this by uploading local images under fair-use policy.

Conclusion:

The Telugu Wikipedia community’s cricket project is not only enhancing the cricket content on the platform but also fostering a sense of collaboration and shared purpose. As we move forward, the journey promises to be even more enriching.