Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion meetup in Hyderabad

A Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion event was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016. Tito Dutta of CIS-A2K joined as a resource person and Telugu Programme Associate Pavan Santosh coordinated the event.

Although the Train-a-Wikipedian program was launched in January 2016, this was the first on-ground workshop for Telugu Wikipedians. The event was organized at Golden Threshold campus, Hyderabad. 13 editors from 5 Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the event. Here is the list of the participants:

Introduction

The day's program started with discussing and explaining the works CIS-A2K is currently doing to support Indian-language Wikimedia communities. This session was primary focused on introducing the Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) program. There were a number of editors who either were not aware of TAW, or were attending a real-life session for the first time. The program's vision, working-process and syllabus were narrated in details so that those who were new to the program understand how TAW works better. They were also informed about the past sessions. As there were a few editors, who were very new to the world of Wikipedia, they were quickly introduced to Wikipedia's main components. User:Rajasekhar1961 discussed the basic structure of an article.

Train-a-Wikipedian: Hands-on activity

This was followed by a hands-on activity where the participants were asked to glance through random articles on Wikipedia and discuss the issues in the article. More than 20 articles from English and Telugu Wikipedia were read and the issues/concerns were listed. The new editors were asked to comment from their own perspective, and the experienced editors shared their views using Wiki-vocabulary. The aim of the activity was to make a list of issues Wikipedia articles generally have (such as prose style, article size, references) and try to discuss those with relevant policy or guideline, so that it becomes clearer that policies and guidelines are needed in every step of Wikipedia editing.

Policy discussion

After the hands-on session which ended with a sense that almost every Wikipedia-editing related issue to be directly related to one or another policy, the second session of the day, on policy discussion, started. In the beginning of this year CIS-A2K, —with the help of Indian Wikipedians—created an Indic Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines Handbook, discussing how to create Wikipedia policies and modify the existing ones, discussing on Village pump, consensus etc. The book's content was presented to the participants.

Right after this session the participants were divided into two groups with Telugu Wikipedians and non-Telugu Wikipedians, and two parallel activities were conducted. Telugu Wikipedians started discussing their Wikipedia's policy portal and with non-Telugu Wikipedians the Train-a-Wikipedian session was continued. Telugu Wikipedians discussed a number of policies and guidelines such as stub policy, notability of books, authors, academics, prose style, and, using honorifics etc. Telugu Wikipedians suggested that they should work on the policy portal on a regular basis. They proposed that for the policies where they already have consensus, they should try to work on at least policy in every 1-2 week(s).  For other policies discussion should take place on the village pump on regular basis.

Train-a-Wikipedian: Tools and gadgets

Following the policy discussion, a second session of Train-a-Wikipedian was conducted where a few advanced tools and gadgets were discussed. Some of the tools, gadgets and topics discussed in this session are:

The day's program ended with a general feedback-gathering on how the Train-a-Wikipedia program can be improved more in future.