Ravi, You should perhaps post this to the Kannada Wikipedia mailing list to get some answers from some actual contributors.
On 17 May 2014 16:40, Ravishankar <ravidre...@gmail.com> wrote: > MarHey, > > Any community member here from Kannada Wikipedia? > > I would like to understand the outcome of CIS work there. > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-10-02/News_and_notes > > lists one of the lessons learned as follows: > > //Single-session, general-audience outreach has negligible impact > everywhere (for example, just giving a single talk about Wikipedia to > whoever shows up—the conversion rate to editors is tiny, and yet we keep > *doing* it".// > > (Do give a full read of that whole section 1.3 Lessons learned) > > Yet, CIS seems to be repeating sich negligible impact outreach programs > many times in March and April 2014. This includes Tulu workshops where > there is active editor community at all. > > To quote Asaf again: > > //So just what *has* the Foundation learned about the criteria for > funding successful activities? Bartov first talked about a fundamental > prerequisite: > "The *sine qua non* of most programs is a core of self-motivating active > editors. Most of the things you want to do, most of the things chapters in > the global north are doing, depend on this core. It can be as small as four > or five people, but those people need to be actual active editors ... who > edit because they like it, they enjoy editing Wikipedia or Commons, they > get it, and they are inherently committed to our principles like NPOV; not > people who are editing because there's a contest on and they want to win > the laptop. > > "Where that core doesn't exist, it's very hard to deploy any other type of > program. If you want [a GLAM partnership] with the National Museum of > Cameroon ... how are you going to deliver on what you promise the museum if > you don't have local editors who will do the work – write the articles, > show up to meet the curators. So this is the big, big challenge for which > we don't have an answer: how do you grow such a core ... in a certain > country? ... we're now cautious about active investment where there is not > an active community—although it's still possible if you give us a really > great idea."// > The only outcome of such initiatives seem to be PR material like this: > > > http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/wikipedia-taps-students-for-kannada-content/article5824580.ece > > where Pavanaja quotes as follows: > > //There was a significant increase in the number of editors after 500 > students of Christ University, Bangalore, were trained in editing at a > workshop held in January this year.// > > And when you look at Kannada Wikipedia stats, the user activity has > returned to pre-education programme levels within a month > > http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaKN.htm > > So, I would like to understand why the wheel is getting reinvented again > and again with an insane budget besides documented evidence of WMF's > learning on this. > > Stop doing paid outreach. > > Ravi > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > > -- Hari Prasad Nadig http://hpnadig.net http://twitter.com/hpnadig http://flickr.com/hpnadig
_______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l