Submissions/Warring to Caring community: Channelising community energy in Telugu Wikipedia

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 1091

Title of the submission

Warring to Caring community: Channelising community energy in Telugu Wikipedia

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

presentation

Author of the submission

Vishnu
Rahimanuddin

E-mail address

vishnucis-india.org
rahimanuddin@wikimedia.in

Username

Visdaviva
రహ్మానుద్దీన్

Country of origin

India
India

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Centre for Internet and Society, Access to Knowledge Program CIS-A2K
WMIN Chapter, Telugu SIG

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

By December 2012 Telugu Wikipedia was a kind of a war zone :) There were internal community conflicts on numerous issues and low priority topics. In addition to this there was complete absence of overall community collaboration. The already stifling community's energy was drained in these internal conflicts and often the lengthy debates remained endless without any productive outcome or decision. Telugu Wikipedia hit a new low in terms of user activity and contribution on wiki. Though some of the enthusiastic users tried to initiate collaborative projects, they could not sustain in this environment on Telugu Wikipedia. As this environment on Telugu wiki persisted for quite a long time it has demoralized the few enthusiastic users, some of whom had left. The budding sister projects had also become dormant in Telugu. However, there were a series of ideas that were tried out during 2013. This has ushered in a positive change and built community spirit and wiki collaboration. Some of the Telugu Wikipedians at large had returned with more motivation to contribute to Telugu Wikipedia. Within a year Telugu Wikipedia has hit many new highs in terms of the community growth and contribution with many active collaborative projects. This was made possible because the movement funds, routed through WMF's catalytic program (CIS-A2K) in India, were productively leveraged by the Telugu community. This has also had positive ripple effect on the sister projects which now see relatively better activity.

In this presentation we will present the various ideas and activities that were done in Telugu Wikipedia since January 2013 and show how can one channelize a small community's energy towards productive growth. CIS-A2K's Telugu Plans had worked catalytically in rejuvenating the community and vice-versa. This process of change, which we will share in the presentation, could be an ideal example of how a small global-south wiki community can productively utilize movement resources to effectively strengthen the community and organically grow the Wikimedia projects qualitatively and quantitatively. These lessons could be beneficial to many small wiki communities in the Wikimedia universe.

Track

WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

To be added later

Special requests

Interested attendees

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Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
--MF-Warburg (talk) 21:23, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Djembayz (talk) 12:24, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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