Reports/Jan-Mar 2018

Hindi Wikipedia Sammelan 2018
After two successful iterations of Hindi Wikipedia conference in 2015 and 2017, the third iteration "Hindi Wikipedia Sammelan 2018" was conducted from 12 January to 14 January 2018, in New Delhi. With 20% female participation, the conference witnessed participants from ten states of India, and two neighbouring countries as well. Several issues concerning Hindi Wikipedia, and the community as a whole were discussed. The strategic direction of Hindi Wikimedians User Group was also given a shape during the conference.

OpenCon 2018 New Delhi
OpenCon 2018 New Delhi was an official satellite event of annual OpenCon. The conference was conducted on 3 February 2018 at Acharya Narendra Dev College. Including organizers and speakers, the event witnessed 54 participants, and representation from Aricent Technologies, Centre for Internet & Society - Access to Knowledge, DataMeet, Delhi University, Government of Delhi, IGNOU, IIM Lucknow, IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, International Centre For Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, National Law University, Open Access India, Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia India, was observed. The conference gave form to the "Delhi Declaration on Open Access", which was adopted on 14 February 2018, and has been signed by more than fifty open access advocates across India. The complete text can be seen at: http://openaccessindia.org/delhi-declaration-on-open-access/.

IMLD-ODD 2018 Wikidata India Edit-a-thon
IMLD-ODD 2018 Wikidata India Edit-a-thon was conducted as a national level Wikidata editing campaign on content related to India, from 21 February 2018 (International Mother Language Day) to 3 March 2018 (Open Data Day). The campaign was supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, WikiProject India on Wikidata, Centre for Internet & Society - Access to Knowledge, Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians User Group, West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, and Hindi Wikimedians User Group. As a part of the campaign five outreach activities were organized across India, including Bhopal, Guntur, Hyderabad, and Patiala. More than 170 users participated in the campaign, and improved about 3500 items on Wikidata.

Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program: Resource Distribution
The first phase of the pilot program by the Wikimedia Foundation and Google, working in close coordination with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Wikimedia India chapter (WMIN) and user groups to encourage Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content on Indian language Wikipedias concluded with the announcement of internet stipends to 44 Wikimedians, and laptop support to 50 Wikimedians. The reviewing team comprised of User:Dsvyas, User:Manavpreet Kaur, and User:Yohannvt, with the support from User:Viswaprabha.

Project Tiger Writing Contest
The second phase of the pilot project, named the "Project Tiger Edit-a-thon 2018", started from March and will continue through the end of May. The participating Indian language Wikipedia communities would compete for three months on a writing contest focused on content gaps. 10 Indic languages; Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu, along with English are taking part in this contest.

January
Yercaud Elango ( User:Yercaud-elango ) is a prolific science writer from Tamil Wikimedia community. In November 2014, he got his first exposure to the Commons community, and has been very active ever since. Within three years of his joining, he has uploaded more than 10,800 photographs to Wikimedia Commons. He frequently visits Yercaud Hills, Yellagiri Hills, and Sitheri, to photograph various species of plants, animals, and birds. His uploads include 2,450 plant species, and 7,675 sub classifications of plants. He spends minutes, hours, days, even months and years to identify scientific names, before uploading them to Commons. Click to read more

February
Sangappa (User:Sangappadyamani) is an inspiring Kannada Wikipedian both in spirit and at work. Having made his first edit on Kannada Wikipedia in 2016, he has been very active ever since, and created around 170 articles, with more than ten thousand global edits. The fascinating part of Sangappa's contributions is linked with the Google Doodle section on Kannada Wikipedia Main Page. Every day, the subjects that are honoured by Google by featured them as their Doodle, are created/improved by Sangappa within a few hours of its updation at 00:00 hrs everyday. He says that in this way, he ensures that all the popular topics of India are well represented on Kannada Wikipedia. Click to read more

March
Nitesh Gill (User:Nitesh Gill) is a young and energetic Punjabi Wikipedian from Moga, Punjab, and is studying Punjabi literature from University of Delhi. Her Wikimedia journey started in August 2015, when fellow Wikimedian Satdeep Gill introduced her to Wikipedia and taught her how to edit. One of her main focus on Punjabi Wikipedia is the Gender Gap. In her attempts to bridge the gap, she has been a trainer to BBC 100 Women Edit-a-Thon and also collaborated with "Feminism in India". She has also organized many outreach activities & edit-a-thons like Sanjh, Asian Month, Womens History Month, LGBT Edit-a-thon etc. Click to read more

Community Capacities Map Announced
The Community Capacities Map (CCM) is an experiment led by Asaf Bartov from the Community Resources team at the Wikimedia Foundation, created as one of the recommended next steps following the Community Capacity Development (CCD) pilot project. The goal of the CCM is to provide useful information about the capacities present or missing in a group, a community, or an organization, with a view to identifying and acting on opportunities to build and improve that capacity, as well as tracking change over time. More information can be seen at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Map

2016–2017 WMF Annual Report published
The annual report of the Wikimedia Foundation for the fiscal year 2016–2017 was published in January. It includes the details of the 6 million donations that were received by WMF to support free knowledge. The Annual Report documents how those donations were put to use. Full report can be seen at: https://annual.wikimedia.org/2017/

New stewards elected
In addition to the existing stewards, five more users; User:There%27sNoTime, User:علاء, User:Green_Giant, User:Rxy, User:-revi, were appointed as stewards in February.

New Affiliations Committee appointments
Post elections, Derick Ndimnain Alangi, Biplab Anand, and Sami Mlouhi have been appointed to the Affiliations Committee as new members in January. In addition, two incumbent members -- Maor Malul and Emna Mizouni -- have been re-appointed for an additional term.

2018 Ombudsman Commission appointed
2018 Ombudsman Commission (OC), the small group of volunteers who investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, and in particular concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight tools, on any Wikimedia project for the Board of Trustees, was appointed in January. Nine users were appointed including Sailesh Patnaik from India.