Project Tiger 2019 Coordinator position open

Project Background

In India, Wikipedia exists in 23 Indian languages. All of these Wikipedias are in the early growth phase having a range of articles from few thousands to 100,000+ articles. The typical size of an Indian language community is only to have around or less than 100 people making 5+ edits every month. While there are many social economic and technical reasons for the size and activity of the Indian language communities, learnings from successful projects in the past have demonstrated that we can provide specific interventions to support these communities.

• Many active Indian language Wikipedia editors tend to contribute more actively when they are provided support for contributing equipment and internet expenses. This was evident from the success of the pilot program initiated by the Wikimedia India chapter. The recently launched hardware donation program also had a lot of interest from the Indian region.

• Wikipedia communities usually show interest participating in contests and edit-a-thons. Well known examples are Wikipedia Asian Month, Punjab edit-a-thon, Women’s history month.

• More than 80% edits of all Wikipedias are made by around 2% editors of the community. While many editing promotion activities aspire to attract new editors who are hard to retain, we can sustain more editing activity by empowering existing active editors.

Combining these insights, we propose to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages by launching this pilot program which will (a) support active and experienced Wikipedia editors through the donation of laptops and stipends for internet access and (b) sponsor a language-based contest that aims to address existing Wikipedia content gaps.

Responsibilities

The CIS-A2K team is primarily based in the Bangalore office of CIS, and the Project Tiger coordinator, henceforth PTC, will be expected to work out of the same office.

 To support and drive outreach of the work being done by the CIS-A2K team, the PTC will be responsible includes but not limited to:

1. Supporting Project tiger related communication, documentation and coordination

2. Supporting Project Tiger Chromebook disbursal.

3. Supporting internet stipend distribution and reimbursement.

4. Supporting creation and updation of statistics.

5. Feedback collection and surveys.

6. Logistics coordination of offline events.

 Characteristics of a coordinator

• Accountability

• Awareness and sensitivity regarding issues of gender and sexuality

• Critical appreciation of open knowledge initiatives

• Effective communication

• Inclusive collaboration

• Intellectual curiosity and openness

• Respect for diversity

• Strong cross-cultural competency

• Ability to learn-at-work, especially about the Wikimedia ecosystem

Eligibility criteria

These are the eligibility criteria

Basic criteria

• Graduate in any discipline
  
• Fluent in English and excellent communication skills in English and working knowledge (or better) of at least one other Indian language

 Technical

• Basic understanding of functioning of Wikipedia, and ideally of other Wikimedia projects too

Location and Remuneration

The position is based out of the Bangalore office of CIS.

Monthly remuneration will be decided after selection. Expected monthly remuneration is around INR 28,000. As this is a consultant position, no other benefit is available

Application Process

We invite interested (and eligible) candidates to apply for the position before 10 June 2019 sending us the following documents to [email protected] (do not miss +ptc2019 part from the email id, it is a filter for us) with “Application for Project Tiger (Coordinator)” as the subject:

1. Cover letter (2 pages): This should introduce your relevant academic, professional, and other experiences, and describe the kind of work you look forward to do as part of the CIS-A2K team. We strongly recommend reading the Supporting Indian Language Wikipedia Project page[1] on Meta while writing this cover letter, as well as for preparation for the interview to follow (if you are shortlisted for interview).

2. CV: This should provide details of your academic, professional, and other achievements

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