Introduction: The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bengaluru-based non-profit multidisciplinary research organization working on open knowledge, digital pluralism, public accountability, and pedagogic practices. The Access to Knowledge (A2K) program is a movement partner for the Wikimedia Foundation, consistently working to strengthen and further efforts to sustain and expand the Wikimedia movement in Indic language projects. We are also supporting and collaborating with Indic MediaWiki Developers UG by supporting Techipedians to participate in national-level FOSS meetups like IndiaFOSS besides supporting the community engagement activities like Indic Wikimedia Hackathon, etc.,
Through this blog the Technical Team at CIS-A2k aims to share about our upcoming plans and priorities in addressing and bridging certain technical gaps for Indic Wikis. Happy reading!
Our Focus
The CIS-A2K team is invested in improving the basic technical understanding of the language Wikimedians, understanding technical requirements and challenges in the Indic language projects context, and improving the language community collaboration with the technical contributors besides nurturing the technical community-based in India. These initiatives will not only improve the user experience of the language communities but also create a pathway for engaging with individuals who are interested in contributing to the technical aspects of Wikimedia projects. As a part of the process, we are collaborating with the Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group (IMD-UG) — a volunteer user group providing technical support to Indic Wikimedia projects — and the IIIT-Hyderabad and WMF’s WikiClub Project — a foundation-led project in collaboration with IIIT-Hyderabad to increase the technical contributors by bringing developers from educational institutions into the movement in India.
Current Works and Initiatives
The A2K has zeroed in on the the following initiatives to accomplish our goals for the current year:
- Technical Trainings and Workshops
We have launched an edition of our Wikimedia Technical Trainings, which focus on building and empowering language Wikimedians with the essential skills needed to contribute effectively to various Wikimedia projects. This training program will cover topics that are essential for navigating around the technical spaces within Wikimedia (like Introduction to MediaWiki and Phabricator), and importing templates/modules from other wikis, besides teaching already established tools for events and community purposes. We have already launched the first of many, of such trainings.
- Technical Improvements in Mobile Editing
With the South Asia region, especially India being a mobile-first country, the A2K team is invested in understanding the challenges of mobile editing and is planning to improve the mobile editing experience in phases thereby contributing to a better contributor experience. We are furthering our understanding of the challenges and work on different ways to address the same.
- Fostering Collaboration Between the Language and Tech Community
The A2K team is actively collaborating with the Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group on various fronts which include collecting inputs to understand the current technical developments in the community, the scope for collaborations with other organisations, fostering and bringing language and technical community along with resource support during national hackathons mutually.
- Collaborating with IIIT-Hyderabad and Wikimedia Foundation for the WikiClub Project
India is a young nation and one that has a thriving technical community and mindset, which provides us with a well-suited audience for furthering our technical contributor base. Furthermore, CIS-A2K has immense understanding and learnings of not only Indic language communities and their challenges, but also past experience in establishing WikiClub at educational institutes. Hence, our team is supporting the WikiClub initiative, co-created by WMF and IIIT-H, in carving out a better curriculum that can help in growing technical contributors from India and aid in increasing its reach and engagement.
- Opportunities and Scope for Improvement in Tech
The A2K team is currently invested in improving selected technical tools and infrastructure for providing a better user experience and ease while contributing to the Wikimedia projects. The A2K team is also planning on looking for possible ways to implement the current technologies for users in contributing to the Wikimedia projects.
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The above information provides a snapshot into the current thinking and approach adopted by our team in supporting the Technical infrastructure available for Indic Wikis. If you wish to know more or join in, please get in touch at program@cis-india.org
To know more about our plans and priorities please read our 2024 Strategic Plan
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