WikipediansSpeak with Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni: Tulu Wikipedia in the making

When I caught up with Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni during an ongoing Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in his college, Shri Ramakrishna P.U. College, Mangaluru, he left me with his wonderful ideas of expanding the Tulu Wikipedia. Back in 2014, with a few sporadic contributors, the Tulu Wikipedia community probably did not exist. After several outreach programmes in and around Mangaluru, it has grown to about an eight-editor community. It could look really tiny today but has potential to grow to a bigger community provided the constant effort by these eight people continue. This edit-a-thon is one of the stepping stones to build this community. About 37 people who hardly know anything about Tulu Wikipedia are participating in this event where six of the experienced editors will support them. The project is all about creating a live encyclopedia on the internet. We have enough and many Tulu authors and teachers who otherwise contribute to the language and literature. The idea is to bring them aboard. In collaboration with three other institutions here; Ramakrishna PU College, Ramakrishna Degree College and Tulu Sahitya Academy, we're trying to bridge the gap of lack of Wikipedia in our language. So far, very little work has been done in documenting the rich Tulu culture in Tulu language. There is no encyclopaedia of any sort in Tulu at this moment. There is also a need to bring the entire world's knowledge to the Tulu speakers. I hope Tulu Wikipedia will be the future to take our language and culture to the world, and fill the gap of knowledge that exists today.