Kannada Wikipedia Projects

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018

jayanta — 2018-12-08T18:22:29Z

A group of Indian Wikisource leader from 12 different language communities gathered in Kolkata to attend the Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018

There was a long time required of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for Indic language computing. There was not at per OCR available in Indic languages before 2015. Most of the Indic subdomain was created in 2007 to 2011, but due to not availability of OCR, the Indic Wikisource Community used to type the whole book or import the Unicoded text from other non-reliable sources. In 2015 the after Google Drive OCR released Indic community relief from the typing era.

Later Shrinivasan T developed an OCR4wikisource script to use the Google Drive OCR as Bot. Since the implementation of the OCR, there has been a lot of progress in Indic Wikisource. But we have realized the there should be a common platform where we can share our knowledge. Then one-month planning we have organized Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018. in Kolkata. this is first such consultation at this scale, convened by the CIS A2K team.

The meeting had a representation of one volunteer from the Assamese, Bangla, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu, and Sanskrit language Wikisource communities. Ananth Subray (Kannada ) Bodhisattwa (Bengali) Hrishikes Sen (English ) Gurlal Maan (Punjabi ) Gitartha Bordoloi (Assamese ) Pooja Jadhav (Marathi ) Pankajmala Sarangi (Oriya ) Shubha (Sanskrit ) Sushant Savla (Gujurati ) Ranjith siji (Malayalam ) Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Hindi ) Ramesam54 (Telugu ) Jayprakash (Indic Tech team) Chinmayee Mishra (Oriya ) as well as Tito Dutta, Tanveer Hasan, Subodh Kulkarni and Jayanta Nath, four members of the Access to Knowledge Programme of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) .

The objectives of the consultation are:

Share views and preferences on the most effective ways to pursue our shared vision of creating and sharing free knowledge in India and in the Indian languages (including English) around the world through the Indic Wikisource Project.
Attempt to come to an agreement on a roadmap for a future where our resources are better utilized, our volunteers are better served, and progress on our mission is more steadily attained.

We have started our discussion on day zero with the agenda of the main aims of this consultation and what all participants want from this program. The discussion was started at 6 PM and ended at 10 PM night. After discussion, we have summarized and set-up for two days agenda which was actually coming from the participants. The CIS-A2K team arranged for the travel and stay of all participants, as well as a night stay for all participants between the zero and second day, to ensure that the programme started on time on.

Day one started with Introduction of Wikisource by me were introduce the workflow of Wikisource, adding text, finding the source, basic copyright checking, creating Index pages, OCRed the page, Proofreading, layout with typography, Validation, Transclusion and Finishing touch. Later on, Hrishikes Sen demonstrated each segment broadly. Bodhisattwa (Bengali) demonstrated Wikisource Tool, like IA-UPLOAD, Vicuna Uploader, URL2COMMONS, Fill index Gadget etc. And all participants implement hands-on. Bodhisatta showed the Bengali Wikisource promotional videos.

Day two was started with Google Drive OCR without using Bot solution developed by Jayprakash (Indic Tech team). Later on OTRS process by Jayanta Nath, Wikisource Roadmap by Tanveer Hasan, Institutional Partnership - by Subodh Kulkarni and Transclusion in Wikisource by Susant Salva presented. The most achievements of this meeting were the second day, Jayprakash leads the task myself to clear the Wikisource technical backlog.

There were also some ideas coming up by the session by Tanveer. This included awareness, outreach, followups, and evaluation. A report about this meeting was published at Asomiya Pratidin. Some feedback from the participants can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ತರಬೇತಿ ೨೦೧೮ @ ರಾಂಚಿ

Vikas Hegde — 2018-07-04T17:02:46Z

ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರಾದ ವಿಕಾಸ್ ಹೆಗಡೆ ಅವರು Wiki Advanced Training 2018ರ ತಮ್ಮ ಅನುಭವ ಮತ್ತು ಕಲಿತ ವಿಚಾರಗಳನ್ನು ಈ ಬ್ಲಾಗಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೆದುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಈ ಬಾರಿ ಜಾರ್ಖಂಡ್ ರಾಜ್ಯದ ’ರಾಂಚಿ’ ನಗರದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದ ’ಮುಂದುವರೆದ ತರಬೇತಿ ಕಾರ್ಯಾಗಾರ’ವನ್ನು (Wikipedia Advanced Training, 2018) ಆಯೋಜಿಸಲಾಗಿತ್ತು. ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ ಒಂದು ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶವಾಗಿದ್ದು ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತುಂಬುವ ಕೆಲಸವನ್ನು ಹಲವು ವರ್ಷಗಳಿಂದ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾ ಬಂದಿದ್ದೇನೆ. ವಿಕಿಗೆ ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯವಾಗಿ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತುಂಬಿಸಲು ಬೇಸಿಕ್ ಮಟ್ಟದ ಎಡಿಟಿಂಗ್ ತಿಳುವಳಿಕೆ ಸಾಕಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಆದರೆ ಹಾಗೇ ಮುಂದುವರೆಯುತ್ತಾ ಹೋದಂತೆ ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ ಕಲಿಯಲು ಮತ್ತು ತಿಳಿದುಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಬಹಳಷ್ಟಿರುತ್ತದೆ. ಉತ್ತಮ ಗುಣಮಟ್ಟದ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು, ಪುಟಗಳನ್ನು ತಯಾರಿಸಲು ಹಲವು ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ತಿಳಿದುಕೊಂಡು ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ತಕ್ಕುದಾಗಿ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳನ್ನು ತುಂಬಿಸಬೇಕಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಅನೇಕ ವಿಷಯಗಳಿಗೆ ಒಂದು ಮಟ್ಟದ ತಾಂತ್ರಿಕ ಜ್ಞಾನ ಅಥವಾ ಅದನ್ನು ಅರ್ಥಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಅಗತ್ಯ.

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದಂತೆ ತರಬೇತಿ, ಸಮುದಾಯ ಕಟ್ಟುವಿಕೆ ಮುಂತಾದ ಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಗಳನ್ನು ಬೆಂಬಲಿಸುತ್ತಿರುವ ಸೆಂಟರ್ ಫಾರ್ ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಅಂಡ್ ಸೊಸೈಟಿ-A2K ವಿಭಾಗವು ಈ ಮುಂದುವರೆದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ತರಬೇತಿ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಹಿಂದಿನ ತಿಂಗಳು ಘೋಷಣೆ ಮಾಡಿತ್ತು. ಇದು ಮೂರು ದಿನಗಳ ಕಾಲ ನಡೆಯುವ ತರಬೇತಿಯಾಗಿದ್ದು ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಭಾರತೀಯ ಭಾಷೆಗಳ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯರನ್ನ ಆಹ್ವಾನಿಸಲಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಹಿಂದೆ ಕೆಲಬಾರಿ ಬೇರೆಬೇರೆ ಸ್ಥಳಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಮುಂದುವರೆದ ತರಬೇತಿಗಳು ನಡೆದಿದ್ದರೂ ಸಹ ನನಗೆ ಹೋಗಲು ಆಗಿರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಈ ಬಾರಿ ತಾರೀಖುಗಳು ಹೊಂದಾಣಿಕೆಯಾಗುತ್ತಿದ್ದುದರಿಂದ ನಾನು ಕೂಡ ಅರ್ಜಿ ಸಲ್ಲಿಸಿದ್ದೆ. ಅರ್ಜಿ ಸಲ್ಲಿಕೆ ಮತ್ತು ಆಯ್ಕೆಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ ನಾವು ಮಾಡಿದ ಕೆಲಸಗಳಿಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದಂತೆ ಕೆಲವು ಮಾನದಂಡಗಳಿದ್ದವು. ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಮುದಾಯದಿಂದ ನಾನು ಮತ್ತು ಮಲ್ಲಿಕಾರ್ಜುನ್ ಆಯ್ಕೆಯಾಗಿರುವುದಾಗಿ ಕೆಲದಿನಗಳ ನಂತರ ತಿಳಿಸಿದರು.

ಈ ಬಾರಿ ಈ ತರಬೇತಿಯನ್ನು ’ರಾಂಚಿ’ಯಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆಸಲು ಕಾರಣವಿತ್ತು. ಮೊದಲನೆಯದಾಗಿ, ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಬಹಳ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಿ, ಭಾರತದ ಉತ್ತಮ ವಿಕಿಮೀಡಿಯನ್ ಎಂದು ಗುರುತಿಸಲ್ಪಟ್ಟಿದ್ದ ’ಗಂಗಾಧರ ಭದಾನಿ’ಯವರು ರಾಂಚಿಯವರಾಗಿದ್ದು ಈ ವರ್ಷ ಜನವರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ನಿಧನರಾಗಿದ್ದರು. ಅವರ ಗೌರವಾರ್ಥವಾಗಿ ರಾಂಚಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಆಯೋಜನೆಯಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಎರಡನೆಯದಾಗಿ ಭಾರತದ ಪೂರ್ವಭಾಗದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಕಿಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಗಳನ್ನು ನಡೆಸುವ ಉದ್ದೇಶವೂ ಇತ್ತು. ಜೂನ್ ೨೮ನೇ ತಾರೀಖು ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿಂದ ಹೊರಟು ರಾಂಚಿಯನ್ನು ತಲುಪಿದೆವು. ವಿಮಾನ ನಿಲ್ದಾಣದಿಂದ ಎಂಟು ಕಿಮೀ ದೂರದಲ್ಲಿರುವ ’ಲೇ ಲ್ಯಾಕ್ ಸರೋವರ್ ಪೋರ್ಟಿಕೊ’ ಹೋಟೆಲ್ ತಲುಪಿದೆವು. ತಮಿಳು, ತೆಲುಗು, ಮಲಯಾಳಂ, ಬೆಂಗಾಳಿ, ಹಿಂದಿ, ಮರಾಠಿ, ಪಂಜಾಬಿ, ಗುಜರಾತಿ, ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತ, ಒಡಿಯಾ, ಇಂಗ್ಲೀಷ್ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರೂ ಸೇರಿ ಒಟ್ಟು ಮೂವತ್ತು ಜನ ಬಂದಿದ್ದರು. ಅಂದು ಸಂಜೆ ಪೂರ್ವಭಾವಿ ಸೆಶನ್ ಇತ್ತು. ಪರಸ್ಪರ ಪರಿಚಯ, ತರಬೇತಿ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ, ಕಾರ್ಯಸೂಚಿ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿಗಳನ್ನು ಕೊಡಲಾಯಿತು.

ಮಾರನೆಯ ದಿನ ಬೆಳಗ್ಗೆ ಹತ್ತು ಗಂಟೆಗೆ ಶುರುವಾದ ತರಬೇತಿಯು ನಡುವಿನ ಚಹಾ ವಿರಾಮ ಮತ್ತು ಊಟದ ವಿರಾಮದೊಂದಿಗೆ ಸಂಜೆಯವರೆಗೂ ನಡೆಯಿತು. ವಿಕಿಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದಂತೆ ಹಲವು ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ, ಟೂಲ್ ಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಡಲಾಯಿತು. ಬೇರೆ ಬೇರೆ ಭಾಷೆಯ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರು ಅವರ ಭಾಷೆಯ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ, ನಡೆಯುತ್ತಿರುವ ಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ, ಅನುಭವಗಳನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಂಡರು. ಹಿರಿಯ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರಾಗಿದ್ದ ಗಂಗಾಧರ ಬದಾನಿಯವರ ಕುಟುಂಬವನ್ನು ಸಂಜೆ ಆಹ್ವಾನಿಸಲಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಭದಾನಿಯವರ ಸ್ಮರಣಾರ್ಥವಾಗಿ ಒಂದು ಚಿಕ್ಕ ಸಭೆ ನಡೆಸಿ ಗೌರವ ಸಲ್ಲಿಸಲಾಯಿತು. ಇಂಗ್ಲೀಷ್ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಅವರು ಮಾಡಿದ ಎಡಿಟ್ ಎಣಿಕೆ ಎರಡೂವರೆ ಲಕ್ಷಕ್ಕೂ ಮೀರಿದ್ದು ಆ ವಯಸ್ಸಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಅವರು ಸಲ್ಲಿಸಿದ ಕಾಣಿಕೆ ಮತ್ತು ಅನೇಕ ಕಿರಿಯ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರಿಗೆ ಕೊಟ್ಟ ಪ್ರೋತ್ಸಾಹಗಳನ್ನು ನೆನಪಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲಾಯಿತು.

ಮೊದಲ ದಿನದ ತರಬೇತಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಸಮಯದ ಅಭಾವದಿಂದ ಎರಡ್ಮೂರು ವಿಷಯಗಳು ಬಿಟ್ಟುಹೋದದ್ದರಿಂದ ಅನಂತರದ ದಿನ ಬೆಳಗ್ಗೆ ಒಂಬತ್ತು ಗಂಟೆಗೇ ಸೇರಿದೆವು. ಅಂದು ಕೂಡ ಹಲವು ತರಬೇತಿ ಮತ್ತು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸೆಶನ್ ಗಳು ನಡೆದವು. ಆಯಾ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರು ತಮ್ಮ ಭಾಷೆಯ ವಿಕಿಗಾಗಿ ಮುಂದೆ ಯಾವ ರೀತಿ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಹಮ್ಮಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಬಯಸುತ್ತಾರೆ ಎಂಬುದನ್ನು ಪ್ರೆಸೆಂಟ್ ಮಾಡಲು ಹೇಳಲಾಯಿತು. ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಹಾಕಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬಹುದಾದ ಯೋಜನೆಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ನಾವು ಪ್ರೆಸೆಂಟ್ ಮಾಡಿದೆವು. ಕೆಲವು hands on activityಗಳು ನಡೆದವು.

ಕೊನೆಯ ದಿನದ ತರಬೇತಿ ಅರ್ಧ ದಿನಕ್ಕೆ ಮಾತ್ರ ಸೀಮಿತವಾಗಿದ್ದು ಒಂದೆರಡು ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಹಂಚಿಕೆ ನಡೆಯಿತು. ಎರಡು ದಿನಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದ ತರಬೇತಿಯ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮೆಲುಕು, ಬೇಕಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನ ಮಾಹಿತಿ, ಮುಂದಿನ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾತುಕತೆ, ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯ, ಹಿನ್ನುಣಿಕೆಗಳನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲಾಯಿತು.

ಬೇರೆ ಬೇರೆ ರಾಜ್ಯಗಳಿಂದ ಬಂದಿದ್ದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರು ಮಧ್ಯಾಹ್ನ ವಾಪಸ್ ಹೊರಟರು. ನಾವು ಕೂಡ ಎರಡು ಗಂಟೆಗೆ ಅಲ್ಲಿಂದ ಹೊರಟು ನಾಲ್ಕೂ ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತರ ವಿಮಾನದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಂಜೆ ಆರೂವರೆ ವೇಳೆಗೆ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು ವಿಮಾನ ನಿಲ್ದಾಣ ತಲುಪಿದೆವು. ಭಾರತದ ವಿವಿಧ ಭಾಗಗಳ, ಬೇರೆ ಬೇರೆ ಭಾಷೆಗಳ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯರೊಡನೆ ಸಂವಾದ, ಹಲವು ಹೊಸ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳಿದುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದು, ಕಲಿತುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದು, ತೆಲುಗು, ತಮಿಳಿನ ಹಿರಿಯ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರ ಭೇಟಿಗಳು ಒಟ್ಟಾರೆ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಅನುಭವ, ಖುಷಿ ಕೊಟ್ಟಿತು. ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಮೀಡಿಯ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳಿಗೆ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಲು ಈ ತರಬೇತಿ ಶಿಬಿರವು ಉತ್ಸಾಹ ತುಂಬಿತು.

Link to Vikas Hegde's blogpost

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cb5cbfc95cbfcaaca1cbfcaf-ca4cb0cacca4cbf-ce8ce6ce7cee-cb0cbec82c9acbf-1

Indian Women and Craft Edit-a-thon

Gopalakrishna A. — 2018-07-04T16:30:28Z

A two-day long edit-a-thon aimed to archive the Women achievers in the field of art and craft on Kannada Wikipedia was held with the help of Srishti Institute and Janastu on 8th March and 25th March 2018.

On 8th March 2018, The Access to Knowledge program in collaboration with the Srishti Institute of Art, design, and technology organised a Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Janastu, Bangalore. Srishti Institute is a Bangalore based non-residential institute which provides art and design education to various individuals, and Jantsu is a Non-profit organisation which provides FOSS support to NGOs and NPOs. The theme of the event was to create articles on Indian women and crafts, Padmini, the course leader for Digital Humanities at Srishti Institute helped the A2K program in preparing a list of articles which can be added into Wikipedia.

Near about 15 staffs of Janastu attended the workshop, as the majority of the participants had Kannada language background the event was conducted in the Kannada language. During the workshop, the participants were introduced to their user sandbox, and after the orientation program, they started creating articles on them. A total number of 7 articles were developed on the same day, we also introduced Wikimedia Commons to the participant, on how to upload images to Commons and how to add images from Commons to Wikipedia articles.

After the workshop at Janastu, a follow-up edit-a-thon was also conducted on 25th March 2018 at The CIS office. Five participants from the previous workshop joined us for the edit-a-thon and eight articles were created or improved as a part of that edit-a-thon, of which Daroji Eramma’s article was one among them. Daroji Eramma was a Kannada folk singer and performer of a South Indian folk art called Burrakatha. At the end of the event, a Wikidata training was given to the participants which helped them to translate a few labels on Wikidata.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indian-women-and-craft-edit-a-thon-1

Kannada Wikipedia Orientation Workshop at IISc, Bengaluru

Gopalakrishna A — 2017-12-19T16:16:29Z

A Kannada Wikipedia orientation workshop was held at the Entrepreneurship Centre, SID, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru on 26 November, 2017. The day long event was aimed at adding content to Kannada Wikimedia projects on topics such as ecology, environment, wildlife and sciences of Karnataka. The event was organised by Gubbi Labs in conjunction with CIS-A2K. Gubbi Labs is a research collective and social collective run by environmental scientists. The event was attended was attended by 8 participants of which one member was female.

The participants created six articles and expanded one article. The impact of this workshop was the fact that participants were made aware of the importance of open access data. It helped initiate another similar workshop in Mysuru. Upon sharing the idea for projects like Wiki Loves Butterfly Idea, a participant was interested in starting a project titled 'Wiki Loves Spiders'. We are hoping to take this project forward on Kannada Wikipedia.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru

Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Internship

manasarao — 2017-12-14T08:55:05Z

The Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge program, in partnership with Christ University, is announcing its annual internship program for the 1200 students enrolled in the Wikipedia Education Program. The Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University, now in its fourth year, is an effort to bring together educators and students to use Wikipedia as an educational implement. CIS-A2K conducts the internship activity for passionate Christ University students to improve the quality of the articles created or edited by their fellow WEP peers. The internship will largely involve improving upon the articles created by their peers as well as gathering community consensus based on which these articles would be moved to the main namespace.

The students will be working on Wikipedia over the course of 21 days in developing upon the content created by Christ University Wikipedia Education Program participants. The fledgling articles currently housed in the individual “sandboxes” of the WEP participants will be improved upon by the interns through addition of detailed content, images and info-boxes.

The students are selected based on three main criteria: fluency of language(written and spoken), knowledge of Wikipedia and its processes, and their personal interest levels. The applications are open from 13 to 17 December, 2017. Interested students can apply here:

https://goo.gl/forms/Ffxh3T3DRZz8Q25F3

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-university-wikipedia-education-program-internship-1

Orientation Program at Kannada University, Hampi

Gopalakrishna A. — 2017-10-24T13:01:25Z

A Kannada Wikipedia Orientation Program was conducted at Kannada University Hampi on 31 August and 1 September 2017.

A Kannada Wikipedia orientation program was conducted at the Kannada University in Hampi recently wherein the participants where introduced to the various Wikimedia projects in Kannada. The participants were doctoral research students of the Dravida Samskruti Adhyayana Kendra of which 5 were male and 1 female.

Working on Wiktionary, the students added 3300 words to their sandboxes, which will be moved to the main space on Wiktionary.

The meta page of the event can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/orientation-program-at-kannada-university-hampi

Wikipedia Workshop on Template Creation and Modification Conducted in Bengaluru

tito — 2017-08-10T06:48:26Z

A Wikipedia workshop on template creation, modification was conducted in Bengaluru on 30 July 2017. Here is a report.

A Wikipedia workshop on template creation, modification was conducted in Bengaluru on 30 July 2017. 9 Wikipedians, mostly associated with Karavali Wikimedians and Kannada Wikimedia projects attended the workshop. A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages. Templates usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on any number of articles or pages. They are commonly used for boilerplate messages, standard warnings or notices, infoboxes, navigational boxes and similar purposes.¹ The workshop was requested by Kannada Wikimedians.

The workshop started with explaining template and its importance. This was followed by discussing structure of a template, and creation of a simple template with a couple of variables. This activity continued for sometime, and designing a template with CSS markup was shown. Following this different types of templates such as infobox, navbox, sidebar, informational templates such as Hatnote were shown and discussed. On Wikipedia there is a Special page with a list of wanted templates. The participants studied the page and started making a list of templates they should create or improve. It was found that a good number of templates on Kannada Wikipedia don't have proper documentation in native languages. The participants came to a conclusion that attempts should be made to properly localize the template. During the workshop the participants spent sometime to translate and localize some template documentations.

The workshop was a preliminary one in nature and should be followed up by an advanced workshop.

Image credit

File:Kannada wiki workshop on Template 02.jpg by User:Gopala Krishna A from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Footnotes

Help:Template on English Wikipedia, accessed 10 August 2017
Special:WantedTemplates on a Wikipedia

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-on-template-creation-and-modification-conducted-in-bengaluru

Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Internship

Manasa Rao and Ananth Subray — 2017-07-05T09:33:19Z

CIS-A2K’s Wikipedia Education Program with Christ University, Bangalore is coming to an end after another year of intense classes, certificate courses and an internship at The Centre for Internet and Society. The internship activity in particular has successfully managed to engage students beyond classroom hours. The selection of 12 students for the internship program was based on their penchant for the language as well as their interest in the wiki world.

The internship was structured into three stages. Firstly, the students were asked to develop stub articles. The aim of this activity was for students to learn searching skills. As a result, over 1500 articles were developed with qualitative work.

Secondly, the students were asked to create new articles from scratch. They searched for the topic on the Wikipedia, ascertained whether the article exists or not and later researched further on the content of the articles. As a result, the students were able to create 1400+ articles

Finally, the students were asked to draft policy pages for their respective language Wikipedia. They went through the policy pages in different languages including English and were asked to create similar policy pages for Kannada Wikipedia.

Unlike previous years, the activities during the internship program were tailored to suit the individual capabilities of the students, taking into consideration the suggestions from community members. The students were of the opinion that in addition to rekindling their love for the language, the internship program also enabled them to develop their overall knowledge of various subjects. The students felt that their vocabulary and typing skills also improved. However, the students were of the opinion that they could have been taken a level or two higher from article writing and introduced to other Wikimedia projects and topics related to the overall movement. The CIS-A2K WEP Program hopes to incorporate these suggestions for the upcoming year while also trying to increase the number of days of the internship in order not to tax the students.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-university-wikipedia-education-program-internship

Wikipedia Event in Mangalore

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:43:30Z

The article was published by Vijaya Karnataka on December 18, 2016.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/vijaya-karnataka-december-18-2016-wikipedia-event-in-mangalore

Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far

Ananth Subray — 2016-11-18T02:45:05Z

As you know we are working closely with Christ university in Bengaluru for the Education Programs in Kannada Wikipedia and Kannada Wikisource, we worked on redesigning the programme for this academic year 2016-17 based on the lessons learned from the earlier intervention.

Before beginning this programme, we provided training for campus ambassadors who in turn provided training to the faculty and fellow students. This new design of the programme allowed us to spend more time with the undergraduate students of various disciplines in Arts, Science and Commerce that are part of the programme. And this exercise resulted in improving the quality of the articles created by the students. So far, 218 second-year students in total have created 108 good quality articles in Kannada Wikipedia and 70 start class articles. The latter ones will need further work like adding images and citations. 20 of the articles are stub-start class articles, and 20 more are stubs of poor quality. The articles are still in the user sandboxes for the evaluation work and will soon be moved to the article namespace.

The freshman year students contributed in digitising books on Kannada Wikisource by proofreading about 2000 folios from four books.

How we did things differently this time?

Focus on multiple workshops that were conducted by multiple facilitators to ensure the series does not become monotonous. Facilitators included myself, some of the faculty and the Campus Ambassadors where the latter was useful for more peer-to-peer to learning.
Sessions were made more interactive and were spaced evenly that gave the students go through a learning curve.
Faculty support and engagement that was less last year was increased this year.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-education-program-at-christ-university-work-so-far