The Second Telugu Community Blog - Ugadi 2024

Hello everyone, welcome to the 2024 Ugadi Blog, or the second Telugu Community Blog.

Today, April 9th is Telugu new year, called ఉగాది (ugādi) in Telugu. Last year, Ugadi was on March 22nd! In the traditional Telugu calendar, there are 60 years which repeat as a cycle. This Ugadi is the beginning of the year క్రోధి (krōdhi), which last happened in 1964 and will happen again in 2084.  This is a special new year on JetPunk as it is the second year a whole Telugu community celebrates here together. After our first year, this year we will finally be able to reflect on our progress that we've done. You might also be able to find the Telugu version of this blog soon. Last time we promised that and didn't deliver. Oops. Also, due to some hijinks and etcetera, this blog is a bit late!

In this blog, I will go over the accomplishments of Telugu JetPunk, the expansion of this community, its current stage, future, some statistics, and each of its main members will also have a section to introduce ourselves and our plans for this community in the next year.

So if you're a Telugu speaker or interested in this community, or wondering why a year in review blog was published in April, this blog is for you!

By AratiPandu

Ugadi is the Telugu and Kannada New Year, based on a lunisolar calendar followed in both communities, with a lot of religious customs tied to it, and it commonly falls in March or April. Telugu people prepare a dish called "Ugadi pacchadi," which has great symbolic significance and is made with vepa puvvu (the flower of the Azirachta indica) and maamidikaya (raw mango). It has all the six primary tastes in it, which is intended to remind people that they will have all kinds of experiences over the coming year and that there will be good things to take from bitter experiences and vice-versa. Some believe that the first taste that you get out of Ugadi pacchadi reflects how the next year will go for you. Another important part of the whole Ugadi experience is decking up the house, in particular the doorway with thoranalu (arches made often of mango leaves) and muggulu (floor art made with chalk, often colourful).

By AratiPandu

From there, the vision for a Telugu community really kicked off through the efforts of people like Thread, Neodymium and AntiMatter. The important part, I think, is essentially that Telugu eventually got added to JetPunk as its own language- and that these guys found other Telugu people through tireless sitewide searching. It's been a year now since Telugu JetPunk came into being, and I'm very pleased to say that I've been part of the community myself for nearly a year too. I'm personally very grateful that people that speak my language and share my culture were able to find me and that I've been able to be part of this beautiful community, and would like to end this section with a bit of a call to arms- if you're Telugu and you're just now finding us, or if you aren't but would like to come along on what has been a wild ride, get in touch with us and we'll be happy to add you to the growing Telugu community!

By TheNatureThread

While the last Ugadi blog covered the formation of the community and its origins, in this blog we can finally look back on Telugu JetPunk's first year and cover the timeline of important events during the year of śōbhakṛtu, from March 22, 2023 onwards.

Let's continue from March 22, 2023, last Ugadi, when the previous Telugu community blog was posted. The publishing of this blog was an exciting moment for the community, as we could finally present ourselves to JetPunk for the first time. On March 26, which was also a month after the Discord server was created, SWATkun joined our server, becoming the first member who was not a Telugu native but a Telugu learner, presenting another way Telugu JetPunk could grow. April started off with a mysterious change to the profile picture on April 1, which reverted back a few days later. Strange. On April 8, AllOfSanMarino (formerly ThisOneNerd) also joined the Discord server, as the server became more and more of a base for the community rather than the JetPunk group. We also started making charts of server activity, which you'll see later in this blog, at this time. Two days later, On April 10th, AratiPandu (formerly Racecarfreak) said he wanted to join the community though he didn't have Discord, and I invited him to the group the next day. Surajrocks99 joined on April 11, a few days after he joined the JetPunk group, quickly joining the four server founders as an active contributor on the server. On April 12, I posted the first Telugu blog, a simple explanation of language families and historical linguistics, something I had been working on for about a month. I had been excited to get a Telugu blogging community started, being bored with English blogging, although some other members weren't as familiar with blogging, and not as confident in their ability to write in Telugu. AntiMatter8192 and Neodymium were also hoping to blog in Telugu however. With the multilingual JetPunk blogging community's encouragement, I started working on some more blogs to follow up. On April 13, Surajrocks99 posted his first Telugu quiz about identifying Telugu movies, and he would become a regular Telugu quizmaker in the following weeks.

While April so far had been quite a successful month, we would be pleasantly surprised on April 19th, 2023, possibly the most important date in the community's history, when Stewart let us know he could add a Telugu section to the front page. This finally gave Telugu quizzes and blogs the opportunity to be categorized in their own language, rather than using the other section. It also let all Telugu quizzes and therefore the Telugu community be easily discovered from the front page of JetPunk, making this a huge step forward for the community.

Two days later, our hopes that other Telugu JetPunkers would find us through the Ugadi blog were also fulfilled, when Noivern asked to join the community in the comment section. He joined the Telugu JetPunkers group, but couldn't join the Discord server. The last week of April didn't have any other significant events, but the community was in an joyous and celebratory mood, with a new era of Telugu JetPunk beginning with the creation of the Telugu section, the community growing, the variety of quizzes increasing, and an active Discord server, still boosted by the early excitement about the community. While the boost of April would keep the Discord server steadily growing in messages into May, the community's growth started to stagnate, with no new users joining, and some motivation to grind quizzes lost after the jam-packed previous month. By this point, one of our founding members, ArgoniteS7, had also become inactive.

Before the start of June, we decided to set some goals for the month, intending to regain some motivation and develop the new section. These goals were to get to 100 quizzes and to finish the Countries of the World project, to translate each country's name into Telugu (if you missed last year's blog or forgot, this will be explained soon). We had also set the goal of finishing COTW last month, and planned some more goals to have each month, but we didn't really follow them strictly. In early June a few important events happened again, with both Neodymium and Surajrocks99 starting to make some short Telugu blogs, and a new community member, Weeknd, joining the Telugu community after making some quizzes about Telugu movies. Around the same time, AratiPandu told me he had joined Discord and I invited him to the server. While the community in May was kept going by talking and having fun on the server, in June there was an attempt to return to the motivation and dedication of April, as just having Discord conversations started to seem boring and unproductive, and they also saw a small decrease. On June 11, we did have Lavangam join the Discord server, after AntiMatter8192 posted about our community's country name project on r/telugu, although he already was on JetPunk. By the end of June, neither of our goals were achieved, though there were almost 100 quizzes, and the community seemed to be declining in a way, with Surajrocks99 going into inactivity, AratiPandu still not checking JetPunk regularly, and the community founders' preference of Discord making it hard to communicate with Noivern and Weeknd. There still was a successful boost in quizzes however, and the Discord message count steadily increased, although the amount of serious discussion started to be... a bit less than that of random tomfoolery.

This situation remained through most of July as well, but things started to change towards the end. For one, it was motivating to see the JetPunk blog project completed, as Neodymium, AntiMatter8192, and I had been active in that community as well. But on July 24, AratiPandu, then known as Racecarfreak, finally joined the Discord server, just a few hours after Surajrocks99 returned after over a month of no messages. To quote Neodymium, "Tis a good day". On July 27, we also reached 100,000 total messages on Discord. AratiPandu become an active member on Discord, and also invited his friend DeLaLune to JetPunk and the Discord server, making him another addition to the Telugu JetPunkers, and a semi-active member of the server for the next couple of months. Speaking of the next month, September was not a very eventful month, but we did see two users leave Discord, AllOfSanMarino and Lavangam. By this time, the server was still very active, though gradually reducing each month, and maybe reducing in quality, but we did have to accept that we hadn't been working on quizzes and blogs like before. I had still not made a second Telugu blog, and there were multiple ideas for community blogs that were not really worked on. Owing to this stagnation perhaps, we began October with another set of goals, to have 150 quizzes, finish COTW, make a few blogs, and have a community competition. October came and went, and it seemed that these goals couldn't motivate us. By the end of the month, I was also offline.

November was by far the most inactive month for the community, with a lot of messages actually being in the JetPunk group. Maybe a break from Discord and some time to reflect on the community would help? As we discussed in December, when I surfaced on Discord a few times, if the year would have all six flavors of Ugadi Pachadi, the period of September and October would be bitter, while November and December were astringent, as we tried to plan a way to get the community motivated again. We discussed this a few times in December, but nothing came out of it. The first few months of 2024 were similar, and I was almost completely inactive. In January the milestone of 100 quizzes was finally reached, but not much else happened. In February, it was finally the server's first anniversary, but it went by without much celebration.

It might seem boring to go through the events of a whole year, but it's important to understand just how much Telugu JetPunk has changed in this time period. Compare this community on March 22, 2023, a recently formed group of a few enthusiasts, holding on to the hope that our language will have a successful future on our beloved website, to today, a quickly growing group of Telugu speakers all over the world, with no doubt in our minds that that Telugu can and will achieve milestones that seemed impossible before we met each other. Compare the collection of quizzes in an "other language" tucked away in the profiles of a few random users in March, to the entire page of Telugu quizzes now accessible on the front page of JetPunk. I mentioned Surajrocks99 and AratiPandu in last year's Ugadi blog as JetPunkers who had been invited to join but were inactive, but I was proven wrong as they are now essential community members who have written some other sections of this blog. Of course, there is much more work to do in developing our quiz section and the community, but the progress we made this year will serve as a stepping stone to even greater goals over the next year. On that note, I will let Suraj explain our current community and its achievements.

By Surajrocks99

Currently, the Telugu community uses both a JetPunk group and a Discord server, of which the latter is more frequently used. The JetPunk group only has members who speak and/or understand Telugu, whereas the Discord group also has ambassadors who support the community. The Telugu JetPunkers who have joined our community since the previous blog are Surajrocks99 (myself), AratiPandu (formerly known as Racecarfreak), KarthikVatsavayi, TeluguTypewriter and Lavangam; TheBeanPanda, Noivern, Rohith and Weeknd, only on the JetPunk group.

Over the past year, the Telugu community combined has created over 100 quizzes. At the moment, 7 people have made quizzes in Telugu: TheNatureThread, Neodymium, AntiMatter8192, Surajrocks99 (myself), AratiPandu, Jerry (TenThousand) and AllOfSanMarino. This is a 133.3% increase from the previous year! And based on our goals, we are hoping for a similar increase by next year.

Here are some notable quizzes and blogs made by us, mainly from the last year (there are some more older ones featured in last years blog):

Ahhh looking to join the great bastion of Telugu JetPunk Culture? Telugu JetPunk Discord (TJPD) is the place to be!

We have many channels in our server. It was created to replace unnecessarily complex communication on the JetPunk Group. Armed with 30+ channels (much to the chagrin of parota) and lots of helpful emojis like [meme man saying "telegoo"] and [Gigachad in front of Indian flag] this server has it all! If you are interested, come visit! Here are a few stats below of our messages. As you can see, including private messages, we have over 150,0000, and without private messages we have over 100,000.

As you can see, sometime in November, we started getting a lot less active. This is because Thread left, and this lead to less activity, perhaps also combined with no significant events. Thankfully, on April 1, 2024 he returned! Since then, we have been getting more active. In fact, during some of our early days, we were more active than the French server. It remains to be seen if that’s possible again.

This is messages sent by person. In the beginning, most messages were sent by the OG members, AntiMatter8192, Neodymium (me!), TheNatureThread, and ArgoniteS7 and now “only” 50% of messages are sent by these members. Compared to 16% of all messages every in the French server being sent by the most active member (parota), here 30% are! And 70% of all messages ever were sent by 4 people! This share is continually declining though, as we gain new members. The share is below:

It’s the number of messages each person sent per week. After Telugu made itself a JetPunk language, it started to fall, especially after TNT left. Thankfully we can see an increase at the end, which will hopefully continue!

So what do we do on the server?

Well heres a list of things, ranked by the number of messages...

The channel with the most messages is actually...commands! With 24581 this is the channel with the most. However, a catch! A message with a command will actually count towards both the bot's messages and the user who ran it. So the messages here might be a bit skewed. Extra data, the music bot we use has somewhere around 5,000 messages, with a 25% margin of error.

The next channel is the general channel, which makes sense. But this is actually the English general with 20044 messages. The Telugu general only has 3490. This server is more Telugu by the things and project we do rather than the language you see. Next is linguistics with 9476. Linguistics discussion is actually another major part of what occurs here, with Thread in particular being a linguistics connoisseur. After that is memes, with 5956 I actually planned to make a blog about our memes but oh well. Next is general learning, meaning about Telugu but not a specific aspect, like a specific tense, with 5554 messages. Not all messages here are about learning Telugu, some are other topics. After that is COTW with 4994! We finally get to a channel centered around JetPunk, specifically finding the names of countries in Telugu. This means looking through dictionary and other sources to find actual words. Imagine if in French, the United States was "Euniteauxed Stauetse" or something, rather than an actual translation. For example, the Telugu COTW quiz (countries of the world) currently has the UAE down as "Unaited Erab Emirets" instead of say, "Samyukta Arabi Rajyalu", which would be a proper translation. Then we have some more miscellaneous channels like Songs, Movies (both of which are Telugu Songs and Movies), Culture, Poems, Wikipedia, Fun, Sports, Games, Cubing, Chess, Ugadi (made for this blog series), Maps, Blogs, and much more.

As well as our text channels, we have voice channels, which mostly has no talking, but streaming chess, listening to music (of many languages), or streaming movies. I expect to see our streaming grow through next year.

Recently we also had a major server reorganization, which depending on who you ask has made it easier to navigate! Our sections are Welcome, Announcements, General Channels, JetPunk, Projects, Miscellaneous (formerly called Fun), Palace (private), Voice and Archive.

Its good to note that sometimes the conversations in a channel have nothing to do with the name of it. I remember once writing a political rant in the casual polls channel, and I've seen many conversations in commands, and other stuff like so.

No matter how much the community grows, the Telugu section itself will be a base for it, so it's important to see how it's surviving. Of course, some of you must be wondering how popular or how far this community has actually gotten. In this section, you will find all the statistics and numbers you need to understand the current situation of Telugu JetPunk, its history, and what its future may be, through real data, fetched by ourselves, and my dear Stewart.

Also, another thing that should be important to mention, and I'd like to say you've heard it first from us, is that Telugu JetPunk is/may not be profitable. While the advertising revenue from places varies, the cost to host a server and allow a user to use JetPunk are the same everywhere, so in some areas, like India (with low ad revenue) and Russia (being illegal to advertise to), actually lose JP money. I believe Stewart said Telugu getting over 100 takes per day on Telugu would be concerning. We shall see where Telugu takes come from (profitable regions or not), and whether we are large enough to post a threat to revenue like doom and nay sayers proclaim.

Here I would like to thank my dear Stewart again, as the following is near verbatim his messages.

I apologize for the image format, but this blog is already 10 days late!

As is evident, much of our users do not come from the lower revenue region of India. Infact, Telugu has much room for growth. Assume Stewart is right and we get 500 yearly, with 100/day being too much, and assuming 50/day is fine, we are only at 0.5% of our allotance! So please, share Telugu JetPunk to as many people as you know (for now) as we are not yet harmfull, and if we are is to be seen!

There are many notable users in the Telugu JetPunk community. Here are the introductions of the users who joined over the last year as well as updates from the last blog:

Hello! I'm AratiPandu, and I've been on JetPunk since 2018. I'm from Hyderabad, India, but I currently live in Bengaluru where I go to uni for econometrics. I speak English, Hindi, Telugu and I have some Kannada too. I'm an advisor on Telugu JetPunk's Countries of the World project (more on that later) and the Discord server's resident spiritual guide, and I'm looking forward to another absolutely amazing year with the great people in this community. I guess one sort-of fun fact about me is that my username literally translates to "banana" in Telugu.

Hi! I am TheNatureThread, one of the founders of the Telugu community on JetPunk. For those who missed my introduction last year, I've been on JetPunk since 2016, and made the first Telugu quiz in 2021. In the winter of '22-'23 I met Neo and Anti on JetPunk and we started a small community and Discord server, which grew into what we have today! Last year I set some ambitious goals for myself, to write more Telugu blogs and make some SVG quizzes. My targets were a bit too high, but I am happy to have written one Telugu blog in the last year. While it would be nice to continue on these fronts for the next year, I think the best part of Telugu JetPunk is the community we have, which is why my main wish for this year is that our community will continue growing, that new heights will be reached by us working together, and that I can be of help to old and new users in quizzing, blogging, and general learning over the next year. Maybe I'll work on those goals from last year lol. Have a happy 10th day after Ugadi!

Hello! I’m Neodymium and I’m a relatively new JetPunker compared to the other two but I guess im a year old now. I've been a member since November-December 22 and I avidly played JetPunk for a couple months before that without an account. I somewhat co-started the Telugu movement on JetPunk. Hopefully you’ve seen me around! I like geography, linguistics, Telugu, communicating with the Ageless Entity, chess to an extent, and definitely some other things that’v’nt came t’mind! Lemmie go thru the goals I set last year and make some new ones!

1000 quizzes: I only got about 50% of this one

10,000 takes: I got 20,000! And a feature!

Make more Telugu quizzes: My Telugu quizmaking stalled 💀

Learn to read Telugu: Did with the help of TheNatureThread! Now I’m gonna gain reading fluency, as well as increase my vocab

A little bit more: I live in the states, which hasn’t changed since last time!

Thanks so much for reading this blog, and lending your eyes to this! (You may retrieve them at the gift shop). I would also like to thank our new and old members for staying somewhat steadfast in their support of Telugu, and our journey, and to all those that helped write this blog, and the last one, including those that contributed their messages. Hoping to see more Telugus and a bigger, more timely blog next Ugadi!

Hi! I'm Surajrocks99, and I've been on Jeptune since 2020. I currently exist within the mythical and fictional realm of Scandinavia. I make a few Telugu quizzes now and then, and I hope to make some more. I also hope to get 150 quizzes completed by the end of the year and make another philosophy blog in Telugu by the end of the 2024.

Hello! I'm KarthikVatsavayi, and have been on Jetpunk since 2018. I've always been an active player on the website but did not really create many quizzes, especially not related to Telugu until much later. I'd love to create more quizzes in my mother tongue and help popularise this beautiful language on the internet, and help make the web more accessible to Telugus across the world.

For something more about me, I'm from Hyderabad, but currently live in Vellore, Tamil Nadu where I study engineering. I'm quadralingual, fluent in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil and English. Looking forward to create a more vibrant JetPunk Telugu community!

I’m San Marino, I found JetPunk in 2020 and quickly became an avid user. Sometime between then and now I met some Telugu speakers on JetPunk who invited me here. I think this server could be a great place for me (if only I were more active (and could actually read and write Telugu)).

Helloo, I'm QueenOfAwe15, sometimes known as QOA or Queen and I've had JetPunk for 4 years so far, and I began to use it in 2020. I currently live, and study as a student in Uganda. I, personally, do not use JetPunk too often, and many of my cohorts in TJPD have tried to get me to use it more often (I'm looking at you, Neo), with little result. I currently am fluent in English only, but I do understand Telugu. I'm also learning French and German. I barely fit the requirements of TJPD, but I enjoy conversing with this group of learners.

(Neo’s Note: We’ve tried teaching her Telugu. Didn’t work)

Namaskaram, I'm TeluguTypewriter! I live in New Jersey and study in Philly, but my roots will always be in Andhra Pradesh. I found this site during middle school, and it has enhanced my love for geography and history! In 2024, I finally decided to create my own account and quizzes, noticing the potential for growth in quizzes relating to South Asian history. I am fully fluent in Telugu, English, and French, and am glad to have joined this community!

By AntiMatter8192

Over the past year, the Telugu section has seen modest growth, and we currently have 108 quizzes and 10 blogs. Looking at the recent uptick in activity after TNT returned, and with many new members, hopefully we can keep this momentum up and continue growing the section. We currently have plans to get even more new members and try to diversify quizmaking, blogging, and other activities beyond just our most active members.

Due to this, we hope to significantly increase quizzing and blogs. By next year, if all goes well, we hope to have at least 250 Telugu quizzes and 25 Telugu blogs. This would be especially good if newer members, offering their unique perspectives and skills, produce quizzes and blogs that have greater diversity, and therefore attract a wider pool of potential community members. We also want higher quality quizzes and blogs, hopefully even a few creative SVG quizzes.

Additionally, last Ugadi, we planned to complete the Telugu Countries of the World quiz, which we felt was just a collection of country names in English, but written in the Telugu script. Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete this goal because it was getting increasingly difficult to find names, and we constantly disagreed on what should be the "official" Telugu country name. While we still haven't fully sorted this out, we plan to put more effort into this and produce a high-quality COTW quiz, an essential part of being a language on JetPunk.

We also have a few Telugu charts, thanks to our official chartographer Neodymium, who gets statistics about our community and upkeeps the charts. In fact, he made and updates the charts you see on this very blog. We do not have any major plans for Telugu charts, but it would be nice to have more charts that are not only about the JetPunk community. Maybe Neo can work on it. (Neo’s note: there are a tenth of a dozen or so charts in Telugu already)

As you can see, we have many grand plans for the coming year, and they all look very achievable at the moment. If we truly work, we can achieve all of them and continue growing.

If you are Telugu and would like to join our project, we would love to have you! As you probably know, we have a Discord server and a JetPunk group, and we can work together to build a better Telugu section! Please comment on this blog, and we’ll add you!