Hello my fellow Wikimedians,
First and foremost, I would like to apologize for not writing my monor kotha in Assamese. I am ashamed to say that my Assamese is awfully rusty, which is why I was contemplating writing this section for a long time. All the previous issues of monor kotha, which all are wonderfully crafted and thought-provoking, already touch upon all the issues that come to my mind when I think about why one should contribute to Assamese Wikimedia projects. Still, let me reiterate a few things which I feel worth mentioning over and over.
Digital dominance is inevitable. We will have to bring our A-game to create searchable content online in Assamese. What do I mean by searchable content? Texts written in Unicode Assamese which can be searched via search engines such as Google, Bing etc. are searchable content. It breaks my heart to see more than half of the results in Bengali when I Google anything in Assamese. Although we are seeing a trend of writing posts, comments, status etc. in Assamese on social media, these contents are mostly not searchable because of the privacy restriction that these social medias put in place. Don’t get me wrong, writing in Assamese in social media is undoubtedly a positive step. But we should also focus on creating Assamese searchable content elsewhere, such as Wikmedia projects: a publicly accessible and searchable platform.
The strong presence of Assamese language on the internet is unquestionably the most import objective of why one should contribute to Wikimedia projects. Of course, that holds true for me as well. Love for my mother tongue is what drew me towards becoming a Wikimedian. It was the year of 2010 when I stumbled upon the Assamese edition of Wikipedia. I was pleasantly surprised to know that it even exists. With my half-baked knowledge, I started contributing. It took me some time to get a hang of it, but it was a pleasant experience nevertheless. Back then I was a student of Computer Science, which ignited my interest to learn the technical aspects of Wikipedia as well. I was so thrilled when we redesigned the main page back in 2012. Along the way, I met many fellow Wikimedians in-person and online; and I can feel their warmth and compassion towards Assamese Wikipedia and Assamese language in general.
For me, editing Wiki projects are like taking a shot of dopamine. When I am stressed out at work I like to open up Wikipedia and do some quick edits, which makes me feel better instantly. Even making a small edit like adding a category or fixing a formatting issue gives me immense gratification. I feel like I did something good for my people, for my land. Over the years editing wiki has become my second nature.
I hope all the good things that are happening in our small Assamese Wikimedia community keeps going and growing. I salute all new, old, and future Wikimedians for your effort in making the world a better place. Thank you, জয় আই অসম। --SlowPhoton (talk) 12:23, 31 July 2019 (ইউ.টি.চি.)[উত্তৰ দিয়ক]
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