WikiPatrika/2012-05/Community News/en
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English News
Indians working on English Wikipedia comprise of perhaps one of the most active wiki communities from India. The efforts of Indian Wikipedians on English Wikipedia is coordinated through WikiProject India.
Wikiproject India
A WikiProject is a group of editors that want to work together as a team on a specific topic or family of topics within the Wikipedia. WikiProject India or WP India is one of the largest Wikiprojects on the English Wikipedia. It is a group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the Republic of India and the history and culture of the Indian subcontinent.
The project was originally started by veteran Wikipedian User:Ganeshk in 2006 July. The WikiProject India has 1,07,502 known articles. The list includes 53 featured articles, 22 featured lists, 3 A-class articles and around 180 good articles. The figures are much developed compared to previous year, where the project had only 35 featured articles and 2 GAs related to India at the commencement of the WikiProject.
The goals of this group are three-fold:
- provide guidelines and recommendations for articles that describe aspects of India.
- improve Wikipedia's coverage of India by creating, expanding, and maintaining factual articles.
- serve as a place for discussion.
To achieve the goals, this project group has developed features to help in managing its work. This includes Departments, which coordinate work on certain tasks, such as peer review or project-wide collaboration, and Work Groups that focus on content and articles related to India - such as cities, politics and culture. The popular one being Collaborations of the month and Tag & Assess - 2012.
Departments include – Assessment, Automation, Cartography, Collaboration, Outreach, Peer review, Photography, Translation, and Anti Vandalism. Tasks entrusted to departments include authoring, maintaining the project pages, administering portals, adding articles, reviews, managing the project, and so on. Workgroups include Geography (we have wikigroups for each state and UTs), Religion, Media & communications (One each for Cinema and Television). We have dedicated workgroups for Maps of India and Transport systems in India. We also have Indian wikipedians who contribute to various other global communities like for UN workgroups, Cricket workgroups and different scientific / technology / cultural workgroups/wikiprojects. We now have around 48 workgroups on India-related sub-topics and ~427 active members under WP:INDIA
At the time of the previous newsletter in 2011, the project around 83,000+ India related articles under the project scope, with 15 Featured Articles (FA), 19 featured lists, and 154 Good articles (GA).
- The Indian Barnstar of National Merit is given to Wikipedians in recognition to exemplary contribution to the project and has been awarded to more than 100 Wikipedians.
- AlexNewArtBot identifies newly created articles that are potentially being within the scope of the project, based on the India ruleset.
EPOV: On coordinating the INCOTM project
Special correspondent/coordinator: User:BPositive
Indian Collaboration of the Month (INCOTM) is a Wikiproject on English Wikipedia whereby editors from all over India collaborate to improve an underdeveloped article over the course of the month.
- How we do it
The article is selected by taking a vote from the community members. One article is chosen for the collaboration of the month (COTM) and one for taking upto GA/FA status. The editors work on various aspects like expanding the article, adding new sections, adding and improving the references, copy-editing, adding images, etc. At the end of collaboration, barnstars are awarded to the top editors for their hard work and effort. In the past articles like Dance in India and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam emerged as successful COTMs and referencing improved to a great extent in both these articles. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam for instance, had 205 edits from 32 contributors. Karthikndr, Kondicherry and Hisham were amongst the top editors and were awarded barnstars to thank them for their contributions and motivate them for further COTMs. At the same time, the article on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was chosen for GA/FA of the month and editors put in a lot of effort to improve the references. After the long struggle, the article finally got GA status in May and hence the collaboration proved fruitful. AshLin was the major contributor for the same.
- Why I do it
COTM is indeed one of the best possible ways to interact with experienced editors from the Indian community and to get the feel of team work, which is one of the many advantages of editing Wikipedia! I volunteered for this WikiProject as it would give me a chance to interact with editors from all over India! I love what I’m doing and we are surely coming up with some great articles in the future. There are so many articles which need to be worked upon. And we all can do it - collaboratively. I urge all the community members to join this project, vote and improve India-related content on this beautiful encyclopaedia. Happy Collaborating! :)
(EPOV - Editor's Point of View is a regular column where you can voice your Wiki story)
