Submissions/Malayalam wiki projects - Current status and future strategy

From Wikimania 2010 • Gdańsk, Poland • July 9-11, 2010


Information

This is an open submission for Wikimania 2010.


Title of the submission
Indian Language Wikipedias - A Comparison study & Malayalam wiki projects - Current status and future strategy
Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)
Presentation and discussion
Author of the submission
Shiju Alex
E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)
shijualexonline@gmail.com
Country of origin
India
Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)
Not Applicable
Personal homepage or blog
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/
Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)

There are about 22 Indian Languages in which Wikipedias are available. I will present a brief overview of Indian languages and a comparison study of the Indian Language Wikipedias.

Among Indian languages Wikipedias Malayalam Wikipedia (http://ml.wikipedia.org) has achieved a special status.

Malayalam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam) is the language spoken in Kerala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala), a state in South India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_India). WikiMedia Foundation's first Malayalam Wiki project (http://ml.wikipedia.org) was started in 2002 December 21. Over the years Malayalam Wikipedia and its sister projects have created a special status among the other Indian language Wikis.

Some of the features of Malayalam Wikipedia/Malayalam Wiki community when compared to other active Indain language Wikipedias are:

  • The first Indian language Wikipedia that released a CD version of its selected articles. (In fact it is the first non-Latin language Wikipedia to do so.)
  • The first Indian Language Wikipedia to release a book in local language (Malayalam) about the Wikiprojects of WikiMedia foundation.
  • The first Indian language Wiki community to develop a software (Wiki2CD) that is useful for all the MediaWiki wikis.
  • The first Indian language Wiki community to host a Wiki meetup way back in 2007.
  • Wikipedia with highest page depth (In fact, globally it is in second position just after English)
  • Wikipedia with most number of active users
  • Wikipedia with highest number of edits/article
  • Wikipedia with most number of edits
  • Wikipedia with highest number of images uploaded


My emphasis will be more on providing information about the strategies that we adopted to achieve the special status for Malayalam Wikipedia among Indian language Wikipedias. In this presentation I will cover the current status of various Malayalam Wiki projects and our future strategies.

Here is the abstract of the points that I will be covering in this presentation.

  1. Indian languages - An Introduction
  2. Indian language Wikipedias - A comparison study
  3. Malayalam langauge- A short introduction and its status among other Major Indian Languages.
  4. Malayalam Wikipedia - Introduction and its status among Indian Language Wikipedias
  5. Maintaining the quality. Keeping our heads high among bigger languages Wikipedias
  6. Malayalam Wiki community
  7. Our public outreach programs- Wiki Meetups, Wiki Academies, CD Project, Book projects, and so on.
  8. Sister projects of malayalam Wikipedia - Current status
  9. Support from Malayalam Language FOSS community - Introducing the software we developed for creating Malayalam Wikipedia CD
  10. Support from Kerala state Government.
  11. Problems/Issues/Threats. For example, there are many issues in many non-latin language wikis, since most of the developers are interested in developing solutions only for Lain scripts.
  12. Our future strategies.
Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)
People and Community
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted? May be
Slides or further information (optional)
Coming soon


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  1. --Ravidreams 18:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Aphaia 18:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Tinucherian 06:47, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  4. -- Mayooranathan 20:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  5. aprabhala 14:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]