This is a presentation I made for Wikimedia Foundation in 2011 outlining a vision for their India program.

1. Wikimedia Foundation in
India
Sundar

2. WikiLove Triangle
Chapter
WMF
Community
Wikimedia
Projects
WWMMFF

3. Community
 Asynchronous collaboration
 Headless, bottom-up
 Tremendous, unmatched energy
 No individual obligations, right to vanish
 Independent, free thinking, not to be
disturbed inside wiki
 Needs support for real-world activities

4. Chapter
 Think tank
 Outreach front
 Community liaison
 Geographically distributed (eventually)
 Partially synchronised
 Reasonably funded
 Needs staff support
 Members have day jobs
 Can’t commit to external meetings

5. WMF Office
 Full-time staff members
 Only sufficient as anchors
 Execution must involve community and the chapter
 Can handle external contacts
 Fund-raising
 Lobbying
 Content acquisition
 Need to work with chapter for execution
 e.g., curate content for print or CD versions
 Outreach activities
 Commission projects
 Mediawiki (embrace community members as much as possible)
 Professional services
 Grants route

6. How?
 India Strategy Wiki as an asynchronous
collaboration mechanism
 Mailing lists for wider consultation
 Fortnightly calls with the chapter
 Some community members will be on either
side, forming bridges
 Meetups with community members

7. Goals
 Top-7 and bottom-3 in focus
 Topline has greater promise
 But, bottomline is in critical condition
 Establish many low-cost beachheads
 Seeding is low-cost
 Could trigger organic (slow) growth
 Bootstrap wikis in all Schedule 8 languages
 All have > 1 million speakers
 Beyond that community will take over

8. Bootstrapping strategy
 Bootstrap Wikis (ref. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=
Proposal:SEO_Market_and_Contributor_Funnel&oldid=74248 )
 Content-acquisition
 GLAM
 Long literary tradition -> Wikisource
 Lobby government for content
 Targeted promotion in-wiki and off-wiki
 Location
 Affinity
 Other context
 Tech support
 Localisation
 Input-method editors (IME)

9. Focus areas
 North East India needs to be tapped
 High literacy
 “Unexplored” territory
 Bishnupriya Manipuri could be our window to the
region
 Other focus areas to be data-driven

10. Tech challenges
 Input method
 Punjabi Wikipedia split by script
 Eastern wiki uses Gurmukhi
 Western Wiki uses Shahmukhi
 Result: the wiki is disproportionately smaller
 Kashmiri Wikipedia one wiki - two scripts
 Managed to remain as one wiki
 But, no automatic transliteration for readers
 Konkani wiki – three scripts in incubation
(http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom)
 Saurashtra Wiki

11. Community efforts
 Malayalam Wikipedia CD
 Tamil Wiki article writing contest
 Wikimedia India Community NewsLetter
“Cross-pollination of these ideas
happening, needs to be encouraged.”

12. Conclusion
 Huge scope for development in India.
 WikiLove triangle should be understood and
leveraged.
 India has needs not comparable with western
Wiki projects.
 Even among Indian language wikis,
differences are many.
“Open-minded, data driven, facilitatory
approach necessary”