Project: Access to Knowledge Programme
Grantee: Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India
Grantor: Wikimedia Foundation
Grant Period: 2 years
Grant Sanctioned: ₹26,000,000/-
Grant Disbursed: ₹11,000,000/-
Section A: Introduction
Background to the Access to Knowledge Programme
The Wikimedia Foundation approved a grant to support the growth of Indian language Wiki communities to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) to expand their India Access to Knowledge program (A2K) in India. The grant enabled CIS to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand upon Wikimedia’s Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. Further, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects and wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.
Objective of the Narrative Report
This narrative report captures the work done by the A2K programme during the period September 2012 to April 2013. It examines projects and activities and its impact and outcomes over a period of eight months. This report will also inform A2K programme’s strategy for the next one year to achieve the goals set out by its donor Wikimedia Foundation and goals listed in our Work Plans (which were developed in consultation with the Wikimedia community in India). Importantly, this Narrative Report is critical for the Wikimedia community in India, Global Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation to get a comprehensive overview of A2K’s work and to critically assess the A2K programme’s eligibility for further support.
Context
Though the mandate of the CIS-A2K programme was clearly articulated before the commencement of the programme, it should be noted, that the context in which the programme had to undertake its work was very disturbed. Majority of the Wikimedia community in India saw CIS-A2K as an extension of the India Programme as the entire team of the India Programme moved into the CIS’s A2K programme, except for the Director. Thus the CIS-A2K programme inherited the not so conducive image of the India Programme that was operational until August 2012. It should be noted that by August 2012, the Wikimedia community in India was extremely critical of the India Programme’s work and achievement.[1] Further, the community explicitly expressed lack of faith and Trust in the India Programme’s method of work.[2] Thus, it is important to note that the CIS-A2K programme did not start with a clean slate but had to first address multiple challenges, before it could take on active implementation of various programmatic activities. These challenges include:
a) building trust with the Wikimedia community in India;
b) building a collaborative relationship with Wikimedia India Chapter;
c) find a new leadership to anchor the programme that was left vacant in August 2012.
A2K Programme Achievements (Sept. 2012 to April 2012)
CIS Access to Knowledge (A2K) team started working on facilitating the improvement of Indian language Wikimedia projects with special focus on Indic Wikipedias in September 2012. Some key activities during the period of Sep 2012 to April 2013 are:
- Number of newsletters published: 8
- Number of events conducted: 41
- Number of educational programs conducted: 5
- Number of people reached: about 1000
- Number of women participants: about 390 (39%)
- Number of community meet-ups: 8
- Number of cities where events were conducted: 17
- Number of usernames collected: 376
- Number of blogs posted: 52
- Number of Print Media mentions: 21
- Number of Hackathons supported: 2
- Number of community celebration events: 7
- Number of Institutional partnerships: 9
CIS hired A2K program Director, T. Vishnu Vardhan, through an open and multi-stakeholder process of selection.[3] Representatives from Wikimedia India Chapter, Wikimedia community in India and Wikimedia Foundation were actively part of the selection process. This process was extremely critical and ensured participation of the Wikimedia community in India and the WMIN Chapter in deciding the leadership of the program.
Noted academician Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana was hired as Adviser to A2K.[4] This was done upon the request of the selection committee that was constituted for the selection of the program Director and in consultation with the WMF.
- A2K proactively interacted with the WMIN Chapter Executive Committee and built collaborative working relationship.
- Most of the A2K programs executed in collaboration with WMIN Chapter and community.
- Began a new project on visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedias.[5] [6] Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro are working on this. Two blog posts have been published so far. This was appreciated by the Wikimedia community in India and the WMF. Further, the WMF has expressed interest in extending these visualizations at a global level.
- A2K has successfully reached out to the Wikipedians across Indian Language communities through conducting outreach programs, resolving technical bugs, supporting with required logistics, merchandise and media publicity, building public relations and communications.
- Work-plans for the growth of Indic Wikipedias[7] were developed in a participatory manner with active collaboration from Wikimedia community in India and Wikimedia India Chapter Executive Committee.
- Proactive open disclosure of A2K budget [8] and proposed revisions to the budget seeking feedback from the Wikimedia community in India towards building transparency.
Section B: A2K Programme Impact
In discussing the A2K program’s impact we have presented below both the tangible and intangible aspects of our work.
- Intangible Impact
The A2K team has left no stone unturned since the commencement of the program in September 2012 to work in a transparent manner. We have taken the following measures in being transparent:
- Periodic publication of A2K work and outcomes through monthly newsletters
- Circulation of A2K monthly newsletters and notifications on various India related Wikimedia mailing lists.
- Real-time listing and communication of activities on A2K Meta page.
- Active documentation of all events and activities, which were published as blogs on CIS.
- Prior announcements of all the events organized or supported by A2K.
- Open and collaborative process of hiring the program Director’s position.
- Keeping the WMI Chapter EC in the loop on all programmatic developments since March 2013.
- Proactive disclosure of A2K program budget and proposed revised budget to the WMI community.
In addition to this A2K has explored all the possibilities of collaboration with the WMI community and Chapter alike. The biggest instance is the A2K Wok Planning exercise for 2013-14, where multiple stakeholders were consulted. These include
a) some English-language Wikimedia community members from India;
c) Wikimedia India chapter Executive Committee;
d) Indian language Wikimedians and
g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff.
- Some of the collaborative and community building efforts of A2K are:
- Support to community-led activities and facilitating community participation and ownership (e.g. Wiki Women’s Month).
- Mobilization of the Indian Wikimedia community in organizing mega community events like Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam.
- Engagement with WMI Chapter EC and built a collaborative relationship.
- Wikipedia Education programs in 4 Indian languages done in active collaboration with the Wikimedia community.
- Supporting Wikimedians in conducting outreach events.
- Almost all the A2K events since February were done in collaboration with WMI Chapter.
- A2K team participated in various community meet-ups.
These transparency and collaboration efforts resulted in building trust among the Wikimedia India communities, where in they have begun to constructively engage with the A2K program’s work. This is a significant achievement since the closure of India program in August 2012. However, there are still some Wikimedians who prefer to ignore the A2K program, which indicates that the A2K program still needs to prove its worth. Thus it could be said that the A2K program has been partly successful in winning the faith of the Indian Wikimedia communities and still needs to put in more effort in this direction. The A2K team is committed to achieve this by demonstrating success through its work during the next phase of this program.
- Tangible Impact
It is difficult for the CIS-A2K program to take a direct credit for the growth or lack of it, in the Indian language Wikimedia projects. However, we believe that we have been one of the key factors in impacting the growth of the Wikimedia projects and communities in India since the commencement of the project. Though the A2K program has done some amount of work with almost all Indian language Wikipedias, the A2K team has had relatively more involvement in the following 10 languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi and Telugu. In addition to this based on the various outreach work done by A2K we have attempted to present an analysis of the direct new Wikipedia users that A2K activities have cultivated through these activities.
- The growth momentum in Indian languages over the eight month period of Sept. 2012 to April 2013 looks healthy.
- Some language Wikipedias have been growing at a phenomenal rate than others in terms of percentage change since Sept. 2012.
- Assamese, Punjabi, Kannada and Odia Wikipedias have a growth rate of 58%, 55%, 30% and 26% respectively and are the top 4 Indian language Wikipedia projects during the eight month period under consideration.
- In terms of absolute number of articles, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi Wikipedias have grown by about 4,200; 3,600; 3,300; and 2,300 articles respectively.
- However, given the small size of the Wikipedia communities in Assamese, Punjabi, Kannada and Odia (as given in Graph 2 below) the growth achieved by them is much commendable and all efforts have to be put to ensure that this momentum continues by strengthening these communities and also expanding them.
- There is a fluctuation in the number of active editors in majority of Indian language Wikipedias, except for Punjabi Wikipedia, which has seen a consistent growth. This is clearly an impact of the efforts put-in by the then India program team starting in July 2012, which was continued by the A2K program.
- The active editors on Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit Wikipedias have been consistently coming down, which is a cause of concern.
- It is important to note that Kannada and Telugu Wikipedias where the number of Active Editors were in a declining trend as of Sept. 2012 have shown a remarkable turnaround. The efforts of the A2K program over the last 3-4 months could have resulted in this positive change.
- Overall the active editors on Malayalam Wikipedia have crossed the 100 mark numerous times, making it the first Indian language Wikipedia to reach this benchmark.
- Looking at the trends Tamil Wikipedia may soon reach the 100 active editor mark.
- Even Bengali community could cross 100 active editors if concerted efforts are put in.
- The Assamese Wikipedia, which received support from A2K program until January 2013, had a consistent active editor population which was around 20 people. However, once the support from the A2K dwindled since February a declining trend can be noticed. One could deduce that the A2K program has had critical relevance in the growth of Assamese Wikipedia. The decline over the last 3 months also alerts us to the possibility of building dependencies on the A2K program, which is a concern that we need to address going forward.
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- On an average 96 new editors have joined Indian language Wikipedias every month.
- Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil Wikipedias have consistently seen more than 10 new editors joining every month.
- Assamese, Odia and Sanskrit Wikipedias did have many new editors joining.
Total of 673 new people have become editors for Indian language Wikipedia since Sep 2012.
- However, the conversion rate of new editors into active editors is still a challenge across all Indian language Wikipedias.
- Overall the “Page View” trends of Indian Language Wikipedias look positive.
- Bengali, Odia and Punjabi Wikipedias have shown highest percentage growth in page views since August 2012.
- In absolute numbers Bengali Wikipedia has seen a spectacular growth of 1,400,000 page-views, Marathi and Tamil Wikipedias witnessed a growth of about 1,000,000 and 800,000 a page-views respectively.
- These clearly indicate the demand for knowledge and information in Indian languages on the internet.
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In the above given graph, we have also looked at direct impact the A2K program in cultivating new editors on Indian language Wikipedias through various outreach programs conducted during Sept. 2012 to April 2013. It should be noted that a total of 1275 participants were reached out by the A2K program. However, the Username data for more than 700 participants could not be ascertained, due to inefficient data collection and input. This includes participants giving wrong Usernames, trouble with hand-writing of the participants, etc. We have already taken note of this issue and have put in measures to efficiently capture the new user data. Thus we have only presented an analysis of 558 participants, whose usernames are valid. Of this it can be noted that more than 120 Users have done more than 5 edits, which is 21% of the participants. Further, 24 participants have done more than 100 edits on English and various Indian language Wikipedias, which constitutes 4% of the total participants that the A2K program has reached out to.
Outreach Sessions in September
Outreach Sessions in October
Outreach Sessions in November
Outreach Sessions in December
Outreach Session in January
Outreach Session in February
Outreach Sessions in March
Outreach Sessions in April
Education Programme Updates
Hackathons
Meetups
Celebration and Events
Events Participated In
Section C: Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project
Section D: The Access to Knowledge Work Plan (2013 – 2014)
Language Area Work Plans
Overall Community Support
Section E: Team Orientation and Development
Team’s Professional Development
Exits and New Hires
Section F: Additional Links and Data
Blog Entries
Press Coverage
Newsletters
Talk @ CIS
Section G: Budget Utilization
Footnotes
- ↑ Independent Report from Tory Read on India Education Program
- ↑ Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot. Wikimedia-India Mail archive
- ↑ Most recent updates on the hiring of the Programme Director for the A2K programme. Wikimedia-India mail archive
- ↑ The Access to Knowledge - Bulletin - January '13
- ↑ Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #1: Visualising Basic Parameters
- ↑ Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #2: Visualising Page Views and Project Pages
- ↑ CIS-A2K Work Plan (Draft). Wikimedia-India mail archive
- ↑ CIS-A2K Budget, Utilization Report and proposed revision. Wikimedia-India mail archive