The Centre for Internet and Society
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Odia Wikipedia 9th Anniversary Celebration
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/odia-wikipedia-9th-anniversary-celebration
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society, New Delhi is celebrating the ninth anniversary of Odia Wikipedia. The event is being held at Academy of Media Learning, M-6, Samanta Vihar in Bhubaneswar from 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span class="fsl"> ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ, ଅନଲାଇନରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଏକ ମୁକ୍ତ ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷର ୯ମ ବାର୍ଷିକ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ୨୯ ଜାନୁଆରୀରେ ଭୁବନେଶ୍ଵରର ଏକାଡେମି ଅଫ ମିଡ଼ିଆ ଲର୍ଣ୍ଣିଙ୍ଗରେ ଅପରାହ୍ଣ ୪ ଘଟିକା ସମୟରେ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହେବାକୁ ଯାଉଛି । ଏହି ଅବସରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ପରିବାର ଆପଣମାନଙ୍କୁ ଏହି କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକ୍ରମରେ ଭାଗ ନେଇ ଏହାକୁ ସାଫଲ୍ୟମଣ୍ଡିତ କରିବାକୁ ଅନୁରୋଧ କରୁଛି ।</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span class="fsl">ଏଥିରେ ଆମେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ଉପଯୋଗୀତା, ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବହାର ଓ ଆପଣ କିପରି ଏଥିରେ ଭାଗ ନେଇପାରିବେ ଓ ଜ୍ଞାନ ବିତରଣର ଏହି ମହାପ୍ରବାହ ସାମିଲ ହୋଇପାରିବେ ସେ ବାବଦରେ ଜାଣିପାରିବେ । ଏଥିରେ ଭାଗ ନେବା ପାଇଁ ଏହି ଅନଲାଇନ ଫର୍ମଟିକୁ ଭରନ୍ତୁ: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2Fq5vnA&h=FAQEgTac3&s=1" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/q5vnA</a></span></span></p>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id=".E0.AC.AE.E0.AD.82.E0.AC.B3_.E0.AC.AA.E0.AD.8D.E0.AC.B0.E0.AC.B8.E0.AC.99.E0.AD.8D.E0.AC.97_.28Agenda.29">Agenda</span></h3>
<ul>
<li>Introducing Wikipedia</li>
<li>Celebrating Odia Wikipedia's 9th birthday!</li>
<li>Current status of Odia Wikipedia and <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:Wikiprojects" title="ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:Wikiprojects">WikiProjects</a></li>
<li>Press meet</li>
</ul>
<h3>Organizers</h3>
<p><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%80:Odisha1" title="ବ୍ୟବହାରକାରୀ:Odisha1">ମନୋରଞ୍ଜନ ବେହେରା<br />ଶ୍ରୀକାନ୍ତ କେଡ଼ିଆ<br /><b></b></a><b><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%80:Psubhashish" title="ବ୍ୟବହାରକାରୀ:Psubhashish"><span>ସୁଭାସିସ<span>ପାଣିଗାହି</span></span></a></b><b><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%80:Psubhashish" title="ବ୍ୟବହାରକାରୀ:Psubhashish"><span><span></span></span></a></b></p>
<ul>
</ul>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Register for this event <a class="external-link" href="http://bitly.com/bbsrwiki">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/odia-wikipedia-9th-anniversary-celebration'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/odia-wikipedia-9th-anniversary-celebration</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaEventWikimedia2013-01-24T09:52:13ZEventPromoting GLAM in Goa
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa
<b>We organised an introductory Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) session at Goa State Central Library on December 13, 2012. It was well attended by about 45 interested people coming from over 10 different GLAM institutes in Goa. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nitika Tandon from CIS and Debanjan from Pune community led the session about Wikipedia and GLAM activities that have been undertaken by our global community since 2010. The talk instilled a lot of enthusiasm in librarians and curators in Goa to start similar programs in their associated institutes.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Some of the institutes attending the session were: <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Christian_Art">Museum of Christian Art</a>, <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Chitra_Museum">Goa Chitra</a>, <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookworm_Children%27s_Library">Bookworm Library</a>, K.S. Goa State Library, GTL Bicholini, and DFLG District Library. Participants had a lot of interesting questions about starting GLAM projects in English, Marathi and Konkani, starting point of the project, logistical/financial support required to run a GLAM project, etc.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><span><span>To begin with we'll be meeting Victor Hugos Gomes from <a href="http://www.goachitra.com/">Goa Chitra</a> who has shown keen interest to start a GLAM project. Goa Chitra showcases the rich tradition of implements, tools, arts and crafts. Goa Chitra has archived Goa's cultural heritage through documents, books, photographs, handicrafts, electronic recordings, costumes, musical instruments, and artifacts. In the coming weeks we'll be following up with Goa Chitra and more institutions to figure out the possibility of starting new projects in 2013.</span></span></p>
<h3><span><span>Audio </span></span></h3>
<p>Here's an audio recording of the entire event: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/XEmylE">http://bit.ly/XEmylE</a></p>
<hr />
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GoaLibrary2.png" alt="Goa Library Lecture" class="image-inline" title="Goa Library Lecture" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="description">A GLAM lecture at Goa Central Library</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:27:22ZBlog EntryBringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain
<b>On December 14, 2012, a meeting was scheduled with the Vice Chancellor Dr. Satish R Shetye to discuss the possibility of bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in public domain. Nitika Tandon shares the development in this blog post.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>As for now the four volume Konkani Encyclopedia is under the copyright of the <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Goa">University of Goa</a>. Dr. Shetye has gifted one whole set of Konkani Encyclopedia to the Centre for Internet and Society and is interested to relinquish the copyright to release it under creative common license and digitize it on Wikipedia.</span> In the coming weeks we'll be working closely with Dr. Shetye and his team to bring this free encyclopedia on Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A Special thanks to Goa State Library, Goa University, Dr. Shetye, Prof. Alito Siqueira, and Prof. Gopakumar for such a wonderful gift. And a big thanks to Harriet Vidyasagar and Debanjan and all those who helped to pull this through.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:35:29ZBlog EntryA Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a Wikipedia workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology (RKGIT), Ghaziabad in collaboration with Metawings on January 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the happenings from the one-day workshop in this blog post.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the soft skill development training program, RKGIT, an engineering college is working on a series of activities to empower the students with practical approach and competence for their professional life. We were invited to conduct a workshop for the students of mechanical engineering and help them understand the real reasons for contributions to Wikipedia as a volunteer.</p>
<p>Some of the focus areas we set for the workshop were:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Number of students not to exceed 60 to make sure that we get enough time and space to interact actively and pay individual attention.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Number of coordinators to support with logistics to conduct the workshop smoothly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Active participation of teachers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Arrangement of internet labs with multiple IP addresses for smooth user account creation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Around 65 mechanical engineering students from second and third year participated in this workshop. We began the workshop with an interactive discussion about their practical relation with Wikipedia as students and the usability and difficulties that they face. I presented about some important facts about Wikipedia and voluntary contribution in different ways. During and after the presentation students asked a lot of questions about the notability and authenticity of articles, collaboration vs. fights among editors, references and its significance, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a short break to make way for students to settle in the internet lab for a hands on training session. We faced problems with the LAN and 3G network for mobile broadband which made this session longer than expected. There were problems for creating accounts because of the Internet explorer and X based systems and the students couldn't create their user accounts. So, we had to manage with them contributing anonymously from IP addresses. Despite these unexpected technical problems all of them edited various articles. Some of them tried to vandalize and observe the quick reversal of the vandals.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img class="image-inline" src="blog/resolveuid/c95b296397b746abae98c8b557344504/@@images/image/preview" /><br />Subhashish presenting about Wikipedia to the participants</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I had a discussion with the director about conducting more such workshops, especially technical workshops where students can code and contribute to MediaWiki.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Quick links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Presentation used for this workshop: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia">www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia</a></li>
<li>English Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org">http://en.wikipedia.org</a> (Click <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main+Page&type=signup">here</a> to create an account on Wikipedia)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Presentation</h3>
<p> </p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/16067135" width="427"> </iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2013-01-22T03:09:25ZBlog EntryCelebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013
<b>Wikipedia Club Pune, a local community based outreach user group in Pune has recently organized Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 to spread words about “Spoken Wikipedia”, a project to add recorded audio for Indic language Wikipedia articles which will help the disabled to access Wikipedia and “Bridging Editor Gender Gap.”</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On January 12 and 13, 2013, I was in Pune to participate in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013</a>, a two day event organized by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a> to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India, to bring the country under a spotlight through <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Indic_Languages">Spoken Wikipedia</a>, and to bridge the <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men/">gender gap</a> of Wikipedia editors. Here is a summary of the activities.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Day 1</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the first day, January 12, more than 100 people including students from almost 10 different schools, housewives, working professionals and free and open source activists participated. The opening ceremony began with talks from Abhishek Suryawanshi, founder member of Wikipedia Club Pune, Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President of Wikimedia India Chapter, Rishi Aacharya, Principal, PAI International Learning Solutions, and social activist Ms. Vibha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Before the formal opening Abhishek spoke for a while about the Spoken Wikipedia project which is one main agenda of the two days event. He explained about the need of spoken wikipedia, especially for people with disabilities and how effective it would be when it spreads in 20 Indic languages. In the past wikipedians in Pune gathered and recorded articles in various Indian and international languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President, Wikimedia India Chapter introduced the chapter's role for Wikimedia movement to the audience. He spoke about the chapters' in few of the national events/projects like Wiki Loves Monument, GLAM project in Crafts Museum, Delhi and many other outreach events. There were few announcements about the chapter on the MoU to be signed from the chapter with district collector of Kanyakumari, the India Chapter being partner to Springfest, IIT, Kharagpur, Commons day celebration in February and GNUnify 2013, Pune.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Vibha, a social activist based in Delhi spoke about gender discrimination in many aspects of our social and professional life. Access to knowledge for free could bridge this and Wikipedia, being so known universally and accessed by millions of people every day could be the best platform for this.' says Vibha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rishi Aacharya, Principal of PAI International brought the vedic saying "Ya vidya sa vimuktaye" to explain the real meaning of knowledge which is free of its existence in an Indian context. He spoke about open source movement and Wikipedia's part in it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the formal opening there was a Q&A session for the participants to clarify various questions they had about Wikipedia. Then they were explained about the three parallel sessions: An Open Discussion about Gender Gap, Workshop for Indic Languages, and Spoken Wikipedia. The session on gender gap was attended by many school students. Vibha and some activists coordinated this event. In the Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia, wikipedians helped participants for the workshop with basic editing and the participants edited Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia. Articles from various medical subjects of common interest were chosen. There were three medical professionals to support with the medical terminologies for editors contributing to Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the end of the day there were separate wrap up tracks to summarize the learning of whole session. All of the participants gathered together to educate each other about the work they have done. Many of the participants spoke about their experience and learnings. Plans for the next day was announced. Wikipedians gathered for a group photo and socialized after the closing talks.</p>
<h3>Day 2</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second day, January 13, of the Wikipedia Summit in Pune was a sequel of the activities which happened on the first day. More than 40 students took part in this session. Vibha, Srishti and team were coordinating the gender gap track. Many topics related to Gender Gap, gender based discrimination, Role of gender gap in occupation, Gender gap in Wikipedia, Participation of Woman editors on Wikipedia were discussed.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/IMG_4124.jpg/@@images/31ee6a90-3009-45fa-8166-6a30bbf5d590.jpeg" style="float: left; " title="A participant records his voice for an article on Marathi Wikipedia" class="image-inline" alt="A participant records his voice for an article on Marathi Wikipedia" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of the participating Wikipedians recording his voice for a Marathi article</p>
</th>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Spoken Wikipedia is a project to bring out editors who are willing to contribute to Wikipedia by reading the Wikipedia articles, recording them and the uploading them to <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org">WikiCommons</a>. These recorded audio could be used for articles on various Indic Wikipedias and would be really useful for users with disabilities. The first workshop was aimed for contribution for articles related to common diseases.</p>
<br />"Those who are blind and unable to read can listen to the articles and get information. This will be beneficial to a lot of people", says Atharva, a school student who has contributed to an article about Rabies on <a class="external-link" href="http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%9C">Marathi Wikipedia.</a>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants of the Spoken Wikipedia session worked on the articles on Hindi and Marathi Wikipedia and moved them from sandboxes to article namespaces. After all of the articles were created they recorded them. They formed groups of 3-4 members and worked together. One of them would search information mainly from the English Wikipedia articles and some of the available Marathi (or Hindi), some others would translate and the other member would record it using a mobile phone. That was a great team effort.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 25 voluntary organizers joined hands for making this a success. There were about 120 participants. At the end of the day participants from both the sessions gathered. Many of the participants and organizers shared their experiences and learnings. The program was concluded with socializing, taking group pictures, promises to stay in touch and taking active part in more Wikipedia activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This event was co-hosted by Centre for Internet and Society with a financial support of ₹ 21,600 granted by Kusuma Foundation.</p>
<h3>Also see:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Wikipedia Summit Pune: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune</a></li>
<li>Wikipedia Club Pune: <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune</a></li>
<li>Pictures: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune</a></li>
<li>Spoken Wikipedia Project: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India</a></li>
<li>Pune Club facebook page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune">https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Video</h3>
<ul>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center; ">
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="371" width="450">
<param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGlU94o-388&feature"><embed height="371" width="450" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGlU94o-388&feature" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>
</object>
</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaDigital ActivismAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaYouthVideoOpen AccessOpennessEvent2013-04-16T12:48:40ZBlog EntryIndic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012
<b>I have compiled the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012. As usual, in this report, my aim is to provide my perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(The period of analysis is editor contributions between December 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012. December to December data is taken to account for the seasonal variations). Read the <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">2011 report here</a> and the <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/indian-language-wikipedias-2010-statistical-report/" target="_blank">2010 report here</a>. The data for this report and analysis is based on the statistical data published at <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>. A special thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here is my executive summary after analyzing the data for 2012 and my experince with building some wiki communities:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Steady and sustainable growth is available for communities which focus on community building.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Small languages with guidance and support are making huge progress than many big languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Lack of support from proper channels at the much needed time had affected the community growth of some communities.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Even though many outreach programs had happened across country, that is not showing up in terms of number of active editors.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Still many language communities (especially big languages) are not open to the idea of reaching out to the speakers of the respective language.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Pageviews of Indic projects continues to increase.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This report is presented in the following sequence. This is done so because I believe that community is central to the Wikimedia movement. Community will give us content which will drive readership.</p>
<ul>
<li>Community</li>
<li>Content</li>
<li>Readership</li>
</ul>
<h2>Community</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As mentioned above, according to me, community is the backbone of Wikimedia movement. But still many communities are not understanding the importance of this. It is important that all language wiki communities give adequate importance to community building to build the free knowledge repository in their language. The following table gives information based on two important parameters about the community. The first parameter shows the highly active editors (more than 100 edits per month) in wiki. The second parameter shows the active editors (more than 5 edits per month).</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Report.png" alt="Indic Language Statistical Report" class="image-inline" title="Indic Language Statistical Report" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Like last year, Malayalam continues to show an upward growth in terms of the number of active users. It has close to 120 active editors now. The <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryML.htm">graphical summary shows that mean number</a> of editors is around 100. Malayalam is the biggest wiki community among Indic languages even though Malayalam is only the 11th biggest spoken language in India. The sincere efforts put by Malayalam wikipedians to build its community is the only reason for this. The programs like Malayalam Wiki conference, Education program, CD project, wiki workshops, photo events, Wikimeetups, and many other outreach events started showing its result. If the community continues with these type of efforts then I am sure that the community strength in Malayalam Wikipedia will cross 150 in 2013. Apart from Wikipedia, the importance given to Malayalam Wikisource, Wiktionary, and more recently to Wikivoyage (in incubator) will attract more Malayalam speakers to the Malayalam wiki projects.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil comes second with close to 80 active editors. However, the number of active editors has gone down from last year. The <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryTA.htm">graphical summary</a> shows that number of active users was around 70-75 especially during the last two quarters.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Bengali comes third with around 60 active editors. This is a slight increase from the last year’s number of active editors. The involvement of editors from India in Bengali Wikipedia is less. That needs to be changed. Bangladeshi wikipedians are having many outreach programs to build Bengali wiki community. It will be nice if they extend their support to Indian Bengali speakers also as Indian Bengali wikipedians are not growing.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Telugu, Urdu, Gujarati, and Punjabi are the wikipedia languages that show notable increase in the number of active editors. But it will be be a mistake from my part if I am not mentioning that these numbers are not encouraging and the current number of active users is not showing justice to the number of speakers these languages have. This statement is more significant when we consider the fact that some smaller languages are showing a better progress.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">We have seen that <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">last year (2011)</a> the success stories were Odia and Assamese wikipedias. In 2012, the shining star is <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org" target="_blank"><b>Punjabi</b></a>. The community has grown from one active editor from last year to almost 15 active editors now. As mentioned in my blog posts (<a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/the-first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop/">post 1</a>, <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala/">post 2</a>, <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar/">post 3</a>, and <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/building-community-for-punjabi-wikipedia-my-experience/">post 4</a>) about building Punjabi wikipedia community, the task of building community for Punjabi was very challenging. Initiated in 2002 along with Assamese, Punjabi is one of the first Indic language wikipedia. But nothing much had happened in that wiki until deliberate efforts to build community initiated. The news is now we have an active community in <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org" target="_blank">Punjabi Wikipedia</a>. From the just one person last year (<a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guglani" target="_blank">Guglani</a> – who took lots of pain to travel to multiple locations to introduce Punjabi wikipedia), now Punjabi wikipedia has close to 15 active editors. Unlike Odia and Assamese, I have faced so many issues during Punjabi wikipedia community building (mostly conflicts between editors). But I am happy to see that community is slowly coming out of all that. The technical team has <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43730">fixed some of the bugs</a> related to typing tool which was very important for Punjabi wikipedia. Punjabi wikipedians require lot support from other wikipedians to sustain the current momentum and grow the community further. My best wishes to Punjabi wikipedians.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Gujarati and Urdu are the two other communities that made considerable progress in community growth. The efforts put by Gujarati wikipedians to reach out to Gujarati speakers started showing the results. I am sure with the significant attention also given to Gujarati Wikisource (<a href="http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-gu/2012-March/000095.html">which was created last year</a>), more Gujarati speakers will be attracted to Gujarati wiki projects. The involvement of Indians in Urdu Wikipedia is very less. But it is good to notice that Urdu wiki community slowly started growing. May be Wikipedia is one place where Indians and Pakistanis can work together.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The wikipedia languages that haven't shown significant change in number of active editors are Marathi, Odia, Assamese, and Nepali. The respective communities need to start putting efforts to build community by taking lessons from other Indic language wiki communities.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The languages that have considerable reduction in number of editors are Hindi, Kannada, and Sanskrit. Among this, except Sanskrit, all are spoken by at least five crore people. It is not good to see that speakers of these languages are not giving any attention to the wiki projects in their respective language. The case of Hindi is very strange considering the fact that it has support of the central government and many state governments of India.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The dormant language communities are Sindhi, Bhojpuri, Kashmiri, and some other small languages. Considering the fact that Odia, Assamese, and Punjabi were also dormant two years before, I am sure if someone is putting effort to build communities for these now dormant communities, these language wiki communities will also grow like it happened for Odia, Assamese, and Punjabi. Now there are multiple entities to support wikimedia movement in India and I hope that someone will take care of this apart from concentrating on the bigger languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In short, the point I want to emphasis is, conscious efforts are required from different stakeholders to grow communities and to sustain that growth for all Indic language wikipedias.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Content</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Number of articles is an important parameter, but it has misguided some wiki communities in the past. Fortunately that trend is coming down.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/SpeakersArticles.png" alt="Language, Speakers & Articles" class="image-inline" title="Language, Speakers & Articles" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">With more than 1,04,000 articles, Hindi continues to be the biggest Indic language wikipedia in terms of the number of articles. Almost 3500 articles were added to Hindi wikipedia in the year 2013.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil and Malayalam had added around 7000 articles which is the "biggest growth" in terms of number of articles. Urdu and Nepali added close to 5000 articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">If we consider percentage of increase then Assamese language has shown more than 100 per cent increase in the number of articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the important milestones are, Tamil and Telugu crossing 50,000 articles, Malayalam crossing 25,000 articles, and Assamese crossing 1,000 article milestones.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The languages that have shown very slow growth in terms of number of articles are Gujarati, Telugu and Kannada. I assume at least for few of these languages the focus went into enhancing the existing articles and building the community rather than creating thousands of stub articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">As mentioned in the past reports, communities don’t need to worry about the number of articles. Also the examples of Bishnupriya Manipuri and Newari Wikipedias shows the after effect of increasing the article count without focusing on building the community.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Readership (page views)</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unlike the number of editors, the number of page views in wiki is showing an upward trend irrespective of the language.(Please note that the information available in the below table is the total visits (page views) for a language wikipedia for a month from all the platforms combined. It includes visits by readers and editors. This is NOT the list of Number of Unique Visitors to the website).</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/SpeakersReaders.png" alt="Speakers & Readers" class="image-inline" title="Speakers & Readers" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> This is the one parameter where the figures are showing relative justice to the number of speakers.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Hindi with 78 lakh page views is in the top position.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The page views for Tamil had increased by more than 50 per cent.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Assamese has more than 100 per cent growth in page views.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Since the support for Indic languages is increasing for smart phone operating systems, I am sure the page views are going to increase further.</li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Conclusion</h2>
<p>I am concluding this report with the following thoughts:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Being the biggest language (or number of speakers) does not automatically build community for an Indic language wikipedia. Efforts from respective language speakers are necessary to build community.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Most Indians who have access to internet and computer still don’t know their respective language typing. This is the biggest road block to build Indic language wiki community.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Do not get obsessed by article counts or readership. These are natural outcomes of community building.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on community building through community interaction (through meetups, talk pages, village pumps, and mailing lists).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on community building through community collaboration (WikiProjects or planning outreach efforts or advocacy).</li>
<li>Focus on community building through doing more outreach, better outreach, and being supportive of newbies.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Stay away from bots and translation tools for article creation as they do more harm than good. Use bots in such a way that it is not affecting the growth of the community.</li>
</ul>
<p>Wishing all of you a wonderful wiki year 2013.</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012</a>
</p>
No publishershijuOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2013-02-03T02:40:48ZBlog EntryWikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa
<b>A three hour Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, in the morning of December 14, 2012 at St. Xavier's College in Mapusa, Goa. Over 30 participants attended the session.</b>
<p>The workshop started with a short introductory presentation followed by a learning session on how to edit the Wikipedia. Since there were lesser number of computers, participants were divided in groups of 2 or 3 at the maximum. Each group made at least 3 edits with the help of volunteers present in the room.</p>
<p>A follow up session will be organised in January or February of 2013 to organise an edit-a-thon for all the interested and enthusiastic participants.</p>
<p>A special thanks to everyone who helped organising this event, especially to Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick, Debanjan - all from the Wikipedia family and Nitin Volvoikar, the Head of Journalism Department from <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Xavier%27s_College,_Mapusa,_Goa">St. Xavier's</a>.</p>
<hr />
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GroupSt.Xavier.png" alt="St.Xavier GLAM" class="image-inline" title="St.Xavier GLAM" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above is a picture of the whole group of participants at the St.Xavier's College at Mapusa, Goa</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:33:29ZBlog EntryTwo-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university
<b>Last month, on December 12 and 13, 2012, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society along with Wikipedia community members organized a two-day workshop for M.A. and Ph.D. students at the Goa University. Nitika Tandon participated in the event and shares with us the developments. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All efforts invested in discussions and planning the workshop over multiple mail trails, conference calls, one-on-one calls paid off extremely well. Over 35 participants attended the two-days workshop and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most of the participants had already created their usernames before the first session, as it was instructed to them earlier, though there were some participants who created their user accounts during the session. Despite creating a <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42767">ticket</a> for releasing the IP from the "seven accounts creation limit" we ran into an IP block. This was the second time we encountered such a problem. We will look more closely into this matter for smoother operations in future.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was pre-decided by the organisers that the first session will be theoretical while the second session will be a complete hands-on-traning session. Hence, the first session started with a general introduction about Wikipedia, the five pillars, how Wikipedia works, a brief introduction about the Wikipedia community, and the state of Wikipedia in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The following day participants pre-selected articles that they wanted to edit during the course of the second session. They were taught how to do minor edits, add edit summary, add references, view history and page statistics, and also briefed about the importance of publishing articles, and user talk pages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The two day long workshop came to an end with a meeting organized by all the participants to decide what should be their next steps. The workshop created a lot of enthusiasm in the participants. They got to know how individual researchers and professors build pages on Wikipedia, and they too can start by contributing one page at a time. They also showed keen interest to understand how monthly meet-ups are organised in other cities so that they could also organise meet-ups in Goa starting 2013 (the proposed date was January 16, 2013 — when Wikipedia's anniversary can be celebrated).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The feedback received from the participants was extremely positive. In the meanwhile there have been some discussion about forthcoming workshops — we have already received inquires from five more institutes to organize similar events in Goa. It seems like the initial seeds have been sown for a flourishing Wikipedia community in Goa.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A special thanks to Prof. Alito Siqueira from Department of Sociology Goa University, Harriet Vidyasagar from OLPC, Prof. Gopakumar from Goa University, Debanjan and Frederick from Wikipedia community and the CIS team for making this workshop a huge success.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-01-25T06:30:54ZBlog EntryAccess to Knowledge Bulletin — December 2012
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-december-2012
<b>This is the fourth Access to Knowledge newsletter from the CIS team in Delhi! During the month of December we had organised the Marathi wiki workshop, a workshop at NMAIT in Karnataka and a workshop at SRM University in Chennai.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">Access to Knowledge (A2K) program</a> of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). In this issue we bring you updates from the Marathi wiki community and workshops organised in NMAIT in Karnataka and SRM University in Chennai.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at <a href="http://bit.ly/TOcXId">http://bit.ly/TOcXId</a>.</p>
<h3><span style="text-decoration: underline;">CIS Office in Delhi</span></h3>
<ul>
<li>The <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Team" title="Access To Knowledge/Team">A2K team</a> consists of three members: <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Nitika Tandon</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> and <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Noopur Raval</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Education Program</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss">Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS</a> (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, December 8, 2012). Organised as part of the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society’s initiative of focusing on Indian languages. Nitika Tandon participated in the event.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Workshops Organised by CIS:</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait">Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT</a> (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai">Wikipedia Workshop at SRM</a> (SRM University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute). Noopur Raval participated in the event.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur">A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur</a> (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<p># Blog Entries</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode">Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now!</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/new-avenues">New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups</a> (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Video</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-state-of-tech-talk-by-erik-moeller">Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller</a> (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.</li>
</ul>
<h3><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/">About CIS</a></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programs such as <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness">Openness</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a>, and <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a>.</p>
<p><i> </i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<h3>Follow us elsewhere</h3>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cis_india">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/28535315687/">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/">http://cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p>*<b>Support Us</b>*</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-december-2012'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-december-2012</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaWikimediaWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2013-01-10T13:33:41ZPageA Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi collaborated with Metawings Institute to spread the words about Wikipedia for Indian languages. A one-day workshop was organized to educated the students on contributing to Wikipedia on December 21, 2012. About 170 engineering students took part in this event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The workshop began with interaction with the students about their understanding. I asked few questions like what is Wikipedia, who edits articles on Wikipedia, is it paid or free, did they ever try to edit Wikipedia, etc. I took them through a presentation to explain basics of Wikipedia, five pillars, notability and copyright issues related to vandalism. One of the students were called to create his user account. Students were showed the simpler sign up process. To explain how articles are edited we introduced errors in the article on Bengaluru and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bangalore&diff=529072240&oldid=529071146">made it the capital of India for few minutes</a>! Students were explained how Wikipedia editors correct mistakes like these in real time and correct facts are published in Wikipedia. A majority of the students asked about the authenticity of articles which is open to anyone. So I got a chance to refresh the page and show how the error introduced was reverted within a few minutes.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ParticipantsatKarkala.png" alt="Participants at Karkala" class="image-inline" title="Participants at Karkala" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">Above is a picture of the participants from the Wikipedia Workshop at Karkala</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The session went on with such interaction and students were explained more about the importance of citing references to add credibility to the facts they can add on Wikipedia articles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We also had Dr. Ashok Kumar, prof, Computer science department, a wikipedian and columnist for Kannada newspaper <a href="http://www.udayavani.com/">Udaya Vani</a>. Dr. Kumar <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Outreach_Document_-_Kannada.pdf">introduced</a> Kannada Wikipedia to the students. At the end of the session I had a discussion with him about organizing more workshops for Kannada Wikipedia and supporting participant students. Special thanks to <a href="http://www.metawinggroups.com/">Metawings</a> for finding the venue and supporting for the event.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2013-01-04T16:30:28ZBlog EntryNew Avenues: Media Wiki Groups
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues
<b>This blog post is a brief recap and snippets of my conversation with Harsh Kothari, a volunteer on Gujarati Wikipedia on what we've been doing to help with MediaWiki groups.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Earlier in December, Harsh posted an e-mail to announce India's first MediaWiki group in Ahmedabad. The group is in its final stage of approval. The e-mail also generated curiosity among community members, some of whom had discussed starting similar technical initiatives earlier on the list.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I came across the idea of MediaWiki groups while Harsh, Yuvi Panda, Sheel and I were trying to conduct a mini hackathon in Delhi. The mini hackathon was a great success and very helpful to Harsh and Sheel. That is when we realized that the best way of repeating such training sessions would be to help foster the interaction of all technical volunteers within a city. Harsh told me Quim Gil from the Wikimedia Foundation had already proposed this and it would be best if I helped him frame a proposal for a MediaWiki group in India. I was told by Yuvi and Harsh that from their discussions on IRC with Quim they all agreed that local groups would serve better than a single national group given the expanse of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I thought this post would lend some perspective on how we could go about supporting technical outreach in India specifically for two reasons one, because Indian language Wikipedias could massively benefit from increased functionality — new gadgets, referencing and more. Apart from this, as we all might have encountered during our outreach sessions in technical colleges, there is great interest among students in contributing to MediaWiki but not enough resources or people who could spread the word.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A local MediaWiki group could serve multiple purposes supporting the relevant language Wikipedia as well as attracting and fostering a FOSS community in their city. It could also take up the responsibility of conducting events — small and large including hackathons, workshops and more. Especially in the context of smaller cities, towns and large university campuses, setting up a technical group similar to a LUG would be very beneficial. There will definitely be challenges, as questions come by and none of these groups can follow a standard model. But, I believe a major advantage of technical groups would mean faster resolution of bugs, more frequently updated infrastructure and consequently more activity on relevant Wikipedias. I have contributed to the proposal and am helping shape the first group. In case you want to set one up in your city or university, or wish to be put in touch with people who can help please do write to me at <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:noopur@cis-india.org">noopur@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2013-01-05T01:46:41ZBlog EntryA Wikipedia Workshop at SRM University, Chennai
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi in association with Metawings Institute organized a one-day workshop on contributing to Wikipedia at SRM University on December 17, 2012. About 40 students from different engineering colleges in Chennai participated in the workshop. Metawings coordinated for the logistics and for spreading the word among the students.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The three-hour workshop was mostly interactive. Since most students had a fair idea of what Wikipedia is and who writes articles on Wikipedia, they had many queries on who the 'editors' were, who selects them, how one can become an editor, how to determine reliability and authenticity of Wikipedia articles and so on. This was a pattern that I observed in many workshops that we conduct where people who have a level of ease and familiarity with using Wikipedia to get information, have often wondered if the information they are using is reliable or not. This also gives us a chance to explain how their contributions can make the encyclopedia more inclusive, informative and reliable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One student was called upon to create a user account and instead of answering his query on patrolling edits, I encouraged him to vandalize a popular article just to see how quickly it is reverted and the correct version is restored. Some students were also interested in knowing about Indian language Wikipedias. So, I invited a student to create his account in Tamil Wikipedia and create his user page subsequently.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the workshop the students wanted to stay in touch and receive more information on Wikipedia projects they could contribute to and filled up contact forms.</p>
<p>Special thanks to Metawings for helping us out with the logistics and to the student coordinators at SRM University for their cooperation!</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-27T05:57:34ZBlog EntryAccess to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Metawing Technologies (P) Ltd. is organizing a Wikipedia workshop at NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka on December 21, 2012, from 9.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 100 students are expected to participate in this workshop. The primary aim of the workshop is to educate them about Wikipedia in Indian languages and tell them how they can contribute to Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is willing to bear the travelling expense for upto two wikipedians to and from Bangalore (or any other place in Karnataka that is close to Karkala).</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpennessEvent2012-12-19T07:20:31ZEventNon Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode
<b>Odia Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar has designed a new tool which can convert non Unicode ISCII text to Odia Unicode text. A majority of the digitized text and web content of newspapers and books are in non unicode text which now could be used for Wikipedia and other Odia Wiki projects. This opens a new arena for digitized free license books in Odia language.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Akruti Sarala is a known name in Odisha. Every single DTP operator who knows typing uses this font. Until now thousands of books have been created using this font. Even today many mainstream newspapers and magazines use this font for typing. Sadly, no one ever realized the content they are creating would be useless when it comes to sharing and reusing, especially on internet. Because, internet accepts a universal standard called "Unicode" for all the languages. When a book is limited only for printing purpose then use of non Unicode font is absolutely of no problem. But, when one copies text from an e-book created using non Unicode fonts (e.g. Sarala) and pastes it elsewhere strange characters gets displayed instead of Odia characters. This is the same situation for all other non-Latin languages.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Why this happens?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Non Unicode fonts use a funny technique. English/Roman characters are removed and Indian (or any other Non-Latin language) language characters are inserted instead of English characters. So, when you type any key from your keyboard the corresponding Indian language character displays instead of the English character. When you have a particular non Unicode font installed this technique works effectively. But, imagine when you don't have the font in your computer! By default it will show the English characters.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How Unicode fonts work?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unicode fonts contain Indian language characters along with English characters. There is no character/glyph displacement. It is a global standard and fixed by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unicode.org/charts/">The Unicode Consortium</a> for all the languages. When one text is typed in an Indian language it displays the same character on Ubuntu, Windows or Mac operating system. As most of the operating systems come with Unicode fonts included there is nothing to be worried for installing them again.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How it got started?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Manoj Sahukar, a third year mechanical engineering student who is very enthusiast about the Odia science articles found <a class="external-link" href="https://or.wikipedia.org">Odia Wikipedia</a> and realized that the volunteers are working so hard to write content which could actually be simplified rather than merely writing the same content. There are many science articles which he wanted to read on Wikipedia were not there. Then he realized the gap of the the non availability of Unicode content. This is also one more reason Google doesn't have a button for Odia unlike some of the other Indian languages. "Nothing could be such open and great platform like Odia Wikiepdia if one is searching content in Odia language. My tool is dedicated to the Odia Wikipedians who have been working hard for my language", expressed Manoj in the release note. He shared his interest and ideas with Odia Wikipedian <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%80:Jnanaranjan_sahu">Jnanaranjan Sahu</a> and started working on building a tool which could convert the available science articles of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissabigyanacademy.nic.in/%28S%28zndhkk55ka1ev545zqv5iy55%29%29/publication.aspx">Bigyana Diganta</a> (a sciene magazine published in Odia language by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissabigyanacademy.nic.in">Orissa Bigyana Academy</a>) into Unicode. There are many articles which could be used for reference and some of the free content for WikiSource or WikiBooks. Finally he released his tool on internet on 12.12.12, the last one of the repeating dates of this century. It is still in its beta stage and Manoj is working on making it more user friendly. He is also keen on organizing technical events which will bring more individuals to create such open source tools. "My next target is developing OCR (<a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">Optical character recognition</a>) software in Odia", says an excited Manoj.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">What this tool does?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This tool could be used to convert text typed in non Unicode ISCII fonts to Odia Unicode text. The detailed procedure for using this tool and Unicode conversion is explained in a <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:%E0%AC%93%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86_%E0%AD%9F%E0%AD%81%E0%AC%A8%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%95%E0%AD%8B%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC_%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%A8%E0%AC%AD%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%8D%E0%AC%9F%E0%AC%B0#Procedure">tutorial on Odia Wikipedia</a>. The tool is released under GFDL license and is <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/odiaconverter/files/OR-TTsaralaUnicodeConverter.exe/download">available for download</a> on <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter">SourceForge</a>.</p>
<table class="plain" style="text-align: center; " summary="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF">
<tbody>
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<th>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/NonUnicodetextbeingcopiedfromaPDF.png" title="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF" height="520" width="609" alt="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><span class="contenttype-image">Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF<br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/Unicodefontafterconversion.png/@@images/a9b54863-8ec4-4ed9-b68d-1b61a376c0e9.png" title="Unicode font after conversion" height="117" width="613" alt="Unicode font after conversion" class="image-inline" /></span><br />Unicode font after conversion</p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 style="text-align: left; ">Quick links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Download from <a class="external-link" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/odiaconverter/files/OR-TTsaralaUnicodeConverter.exe/download">here</a></li>
<li>Project page on SourceForge: <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter">https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter</a></li>
<li>Tutorial and technical description on Odia Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cvm">http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cvm</a></li>
<li>Odia Unicode standard: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0B00.pdf">Odia Unicode code chart</a></li>
</ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center; ">Manoj Sahukar talks about his ideas about the usability of Odia Unicode Converter tool<br /> <iframe frameborder="0" height="23" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversation_with_Manoj_Sahukar_regarding_Odia_Unicode_Converter_tool.ogg?embedplayer=yes" width="300"></iframe> </th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2012-12-21T09:59:18ZBlog EntryMarathi Wiki Workshop at Tata Institute of Social Sciences
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss
<b>The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is taking up a number of activities and conducting workshops focusing on Indian languages across cities. A series of workshops in Marathi, Kannada and Bangla have been planned with Wikipedia sessions in each of these events.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Marathi workshop was organised on December 8, 2012 at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). It was a three-hour workshop.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Following preparations were made before the session:</p>
<div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Yogesh Khandke and Kartik Nadar from Mumbai community visited the venue three days prior to check technical requirements.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Programme participants were suggested to select a subject of their choice and find sufficient resources to add information during the course of the event. This proved to be extremely helpful and an efficient way. Participants didn't spend any time looking for resources during the event; they were already ready with the content they wanted to add.</li>
<li>Programme participants were requested to create usernames before they came for the session.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A tailored presentation was made ready.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42765">ticket</a> was raised to release the IP address of TISS computer labs. Despite the ticket being resolved the IP address got blocked after creation of seven accounts. We will be looking deeper into this problem to make sure that we do not face such issue again.</li>
<li>Multiple conference calls were organised between the conductors — Yogesh, Nikita and Nitika.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Details of the event</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The morning session of this workshop focused on digital humanities and social sciences research, and exposed students to different kinds of resources. The afternoon session focused on Wikipedia literacy and Marathi-language computing. There were be about 25 participants (MA and PhD level) and 5 conductors - Yogesh, Nikita, Moksh, Kartik and Nitika.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nikita gave a brief 40 minutes introduction about Wikipedia using a presentation followed by a hands on session which was led by Yogesh and supported by rest of the conductors. Many of the participants were comfortable with Marathi computing while some were struggling. There were a few participants who were editing in other languages including Hindi and Malayalam. Kartik & Moksh jointly led the session with educating participants about Wikimark ups, page view stats, article and user talk pages. Rest of the conductors pitched in with insightful examples, comments and answers. The participants raised some really interesting questions and were completely involved the workshop. Several participants showed interest to organise similar workshops at other institutes they are connected with.</p>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-02-04T04:55:56ZBlog Entry