Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K Co-Facilitates Punjabi Wikimedians Wikimedia Strategy Meeting

tito — 2017-08-01T08:02:14Z

On 15 July 2017, Punjabi Wikimedia User Group, conducted Punjabi Wikimedia Strategy Meeting at Patiala. CIS-A2K members Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta attended the event as co-facilitator and resource person. The event was followed by a meeting on the next day when active Punjabi Wikimedians and CIS-A2K representatives discussed different plans and strategies for the Punjabi Wikimedian projects in the coming months. Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is conducting, encouraging to conduct and supporting Strategy Meetings in different countries of the world. Wikimedia Foundation relates

these meetings to strategy for the Wikimedia movement, strategy for entities such as the Wikimedia Foundation and Chapters, and roadmaps for individual Projects (e.g., Wikidata or Wiktionary or Wiki Loves Monuments). In India, several communities have conducted or have shown interest to conduct Wikimedia Strategy Meetings. Punjabi Wikimedians, a WMF recognized user group, conducted their Strategy Meeting at Punjabi University, Patiala on 15 July 2017. Punjabi Wikimedians Satdeep Gill and Stalinjeet were the primary hosts. Around 16 people from different domains of knowledge, including active Punjabi Wikimedians participated in the meeting. Punjabi Wikimedians invited CIS members Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta to co-facilitate the event. CIS-A2K helped Punjabi Wikimedians to plan the meeting structure and anchor the discussion.

On 16 July, a meeting between Punjabi Wikimedians and CIS-A2K was conducted. The aim of the meeting was to plan Punjabi Wikimedians' events and activities for the next one year. 8 active Punjabi Wikimedians and Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta, from CIS-A2K participated in this meeting. A good number of important topics were discussed during the meeting such as―

Should Punjabi Wikimedians register themselves as an organization and what are advantages and disadvantages of registering as an organization,
How can CIS help Punjabi Wikimedians as Fiscal Sponsor to route grants from the Wikimedia Foundation,
Wikidata Workshop (North India)― how can Punjabi Wikimedians contribute to and be part of it.
Regional Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki Training for Punjabi Wikimedians.
Wikisource digitization

CIS-A2K provided suggestions and inputs on these topics. CIS-A2K thanks Punjabi Wikimedians for hosting the meetings.

Image credit

File:Punjabi Wikimedians Strategy Salon - 15 July 2017 01.jpg by Satdeep Gill from Wikimedia Commons, image licensed under theCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k-co-facilitates-punjabi-wikimedians-wikimedia-strategy-meeting

Wikidata workshop (South India) conducted in Bangalore

tito — 2017-06-28T09:48:30Z

Wikidata workshop (South India) has been conducted in Bangalore on 10 and 11 June 2017. 11 Wikimedians from 6 Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the workshop. Here is a report.

Wikidata (https://www.wikidata.org) is a free, collaborative, multilingual, secondary database that collects structured data to provide support for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, the other wikis of the Wikimedia movement, and to anyone in the world.¹ In India, in the recent years, we have seen increased enthusiasm about the project. CIS-A2K received several requests from different communities to conduct Wikidata workshops. In response to the requests, CIS-A2K organised a Wikidata workshop on 10 and 11 June 2017 at Bangalore. The workshop was a regional one, and participants were invited from 5 South Indian states: a) Andhra Pradesh, b) Karnataka, c) Kerala, d) Tamil Nadu, and e) Telangana. 11 community members from 5 Indic Wikimedia communities (Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu) participated in the workshop, 3 of the participants were women.

The workshop was a general orientation. On the first day, the following topics were discussed:

Introduction to Wikidata and its importance
Wikidata items
Wikidata labels, descriptions
Property and statement
Hands' on activity: Label-a-thon

On the second day these topics were discussed:

Complete structure of a Wikidata item
Wikidata references
Using Wikidata in Wikipedia, using statement, property
Wikidata gadgets
A couple of Wikimedia labs tools (note: a few tools such as Wikidata game was in the planned topics, but could not be shown as we faced server error almost all day long)
Hands' on activity by group: Label-a-thon, adding references

This was CIS-A2K's first attempt to conduct a Wikidata workshop in India. To keep it cost-effective, we made it a regional one (eg. no air travel was needed for any participant). This was a fledgling attempt to test the waters before we take this forward to other regions in India. This was an effort to see if the participants felt the need for such a workshop as much as we did for conducting it. It enabled us also to understand the modules and sessions to include in a manner that is tailored for teaching Wikidata

Tamil Wikimedian User:Info-farmer, who participated in the workshop gave his feedback after the event:

I was waiting for a theme-specific workshop for a long one & I liked this one. Please encourage such theme-specific workshops special interest groups.

Following this event, and based on the need-assessment CIS-A2K may conduct such workshops in other regions of India.

An event dashboard is available here. The event page on Meta Wiki may be seen here.

Footnotes

Introduction to Wikidata

Acknowledgement

Manasa Rao, for help to improve this blog post

Image credit

File:Wikidata Workshop South India Logo.png from Wikimedia Commons, author: Saumyaa Naidu, License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikidata-workshop-south-india-conducted-in-bangalore

Dalit History Month 2017 edit-a-thon in Delhi, India

tito — 2017-06-21T06:09:39Z

Dalit History Month edit-a-thon was conducted in Delhi on 20 May 2017. Here is a report.

A Dalit HIstory Month edit-a-thon was conducted Delhi, India on 20 May, 2017. This event was organised by Whose Knowledge?. A member from the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, attended the event as a resource person. The history of Dalit movement, and their knowledge are not very-well represented on Wikipedia, and it is essential that attempts are made to bridge such gaps. This edit-a-thon was such an initiative. On 15 April, this year, an edit-a-thon was conducted in Berkeley, US, and the Delhi edit-a-thon was followed by that.

14 editors participated in the edit-a-thon (not counting the resource persons). In the introduction speech Wikimedian and the primary co-ordinator of the event Inaaya explained the details the importance, scope and objectives of the edit-a-thon. This was followed by hands' on editing activities. A few participants were new to Wikipedia, and they created their accounts. Discussions took place to understand the gaps, and the difficulties. It was noticed that finding references to create or expand articles is sometimes a big challenge. Other than referencing, other topics such as Wikipedia manual of style, images, image license policy etc. were also discussed. Although it was a one-day workshop, the aim was to continue it after the event as well, so the participants were encouraged to continue editing. We have statistics of last 1 month, and it shows that in this time period: 45 articles were edited, 11 articles were created, and more than 10 thousand words were added.

There are plans to conduct follow-up Wiki-events. A few students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, showed interest to form Wikipedia club in their campus. Although, the edit-a-thon was not very big in scale and size, taking such an initiative itself is challenging, and hopefully such initiatives will help reduce the knowledge gap on Wikipedia.

Image source

File:Dalit History Month header.jpg, from Wikimedia Commons, author: Bilqischondol, file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dalit-history-month-2017-edit-a-thon-in-delhi-india

Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata

tito — 2017-06-28T09:53:55Z

A regional version of Train The Trainer and MediaWiki Training was recently conducted in Kolkata.

CIS-A2K’s widely well-regarded flagship skill building program was conducted in Kolkata between 7- 8 January 2017, in partnership with the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group. The two-day event was held at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. There were 20 participants at the event, of which 18 were male and only two female.

There were three thematic sessions, each broadly dealing with: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. The participants were taught article enrichment and how to upgrade articles into good category articles on Wikipedia. The participants learnt reference resources in detail in addition to discussing the different types of syntax required to apply the references meaningfully. The participants were also exposed to advanced search techniques on Google in order to gather relevant references.

During the Commons session, the participants were taught the basics of creating categories and subcategories in order to help narrow down searches and hence, image utility on Commons. Facilitating easy identification of an image helps enrich articles in need of descriptive photos. Additionally, participants were encouraged to give specific file names to their images along with a detailed description of the same. This was followed by a technical session on the following popular tools and gadgets that help frequent uploaders on Commons:

Cat-a-lot is a JavaScript gadget that helps with moving images (or subcategories) between categories or adding categories to search results
Google Images tab: On File pages, adds a new tab to easily search for similar images on the Internet using Google Images
OTRS is a tool used by the Wikimedia projects, including Commons, to manage and archive email conversations. The main use of OTRS in relation to Commons is to verify and archive licensing permissions.
Flickr2Commons - Tool to easily upload single and multiple files from Flickr to Commons. This tool uses OAuth to upload files to Commons.

In addition to these on-wiki discussions, a broader discussion took place on photography tips such as the rule of thirds which helps enhance the effect and purpose of the image.

The final thematic session was on Wikisource. Participants had a hands on lesson in proofreading methodology in addition to learning about image formatting, formatting table of contents, table access page break, text divider, and tools and script of Wikisource.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mini-ttt-and-mwt-held-in-kolkata

Wikipedia workshop for Konkani students conducted in Mangaluru

tito — 2017-06-28T09:57:32Z

A two days Wikipedia workshop "introduction to Wikipedia" was conducted at Besant College, Mangaluru. 16 undergraduate and post-graduate students from 3 different colleges participated in the event. Here is a report.

A two day workshop was conducted for students who opted konkani at U.G.& P.G.courses of Mangalore University on 16 and 17 December at Besant Evening College, Mangaluru. This event was jointly organised by Mangalore University Konkani Adhyayana Peeta, and the Dept. of Konkani (M. A.). The Centre for Internet Society, India (CIS, India) and Besant Evening College, Mangaluru were the collaborators. Dr. Devadasa Pai of Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Academy was the primary co-ordinator. A representative from CIS, India participated in the workshop as a resource person. Harriet Vidyasagar, a Konkani Wikipedia enthusiast and supporter, and Sabrina Hougaard attended the event to groom the participant and share their expertise.

16 undergraduate and post-graduate colleges from 3 different colleges of Mangalore participated in this workshop. The table below shows participation from each college and gender ratio.

College	Participants	Female	Male
Mangalore University College	2	1	1
St. Aloysius College	9	4	5
Milagress Degree College	5	3	2
Total	16	8	8

The first day's (16 December) event was started with general introduction to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. The following topics were discussed:

Wikipedia and Wikimedia movement
Importance of Wikipedia as a source of knowledge and information in the World Wide Web (WWW)
Free knowledge movement
Indic language Wikipedias

This was followed by account creation where the participants were asked to create accounts on Wikipedia. After that they were taught about Wikipedia user page, and sandbox page. They were also taught about basic editing (general formatting) on sandbox using Visual Editor.

On the second day (17 December) the participants wrote articles on their Konkani Wikipedia user sandbox page in Kannada script. 16 students wrote more than 25 short articles on their sandbox.

They were also introduced to Wikipedia content translation tool and Wikidata. During the Wikidata session, following a general introduction to Wikidata, the participants were asked to add labels and descriptions in Indian languages such as Kannada, Konkani etc. More than 150 edits were made during this exercise.

This workshop should be followed up by another iteration where the participants will be taught about the next level of editing.

Image credit

Source: Wikimedia Commons, author: User:Outofindia, CC-BY-SA-4.0

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-students-conducted-in-mangalore

A Shortcut to Freedom

tito — 2017-06-28T09:58:47Z

In our everyday life we need access to knowledge and information, we need books (and magazines, newspapers), movies (and documentaries, animations), music for education and entertainment purposes. Now, a delighting fact is almost everything we need, from a 1965 book to the latest Bollywood movie’s MP3 song, is available on the web. You knock the door, and it opens. Why should we care for free knowledge then? We have a got “a shortcut to freedom”.

Scenario 1
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalaithaa died on 5 December 2016. Kamlesh, a college student from Chennai wants to post a few photos of the leader on his Facebook wall and page paying his tribute to her. He quickly searches on Google, finds a few photos, and posts on the wall.

Scenario 2
Nilima, a young girl from Mumbai, wants to use a latest Bollywood movie song as her mobile ringtone. She too searches on Google, and quickly finds the movie song with many options such as 64 kbps, 128 kbps, remix, reprise and a few issues such as misleading download buttons, pop-up advertisement windows etc. She selects one and puts it as her mobile ringtone.

Scenario 2a
A few days later, Madhuri, a friend of Nilima finds her mobile ringtone. Madhuri requests Nilima to send a copy of the music piece, and Nilima sends it over her mobile bluetooth.

Scenario 3
Lokesh Sanyal, a school teacher from Darjeeling, West Bengal, needs a book for his studies. He first goes to his local library and also asks his friends, but fails to get a copy of the book. Now, before buying a copy of the book, he thinks to check the world wide web to see if a free PDF copy the book is available, and hurrah!, he gets the book from Torrents or some other site.

We have almost everything we require. . .
If we make a list of our requirements of content such as movies, music, books, magazines, games, softwares, we’ll find almost everything is available on the web. You just need spend some time, (be careful about malicious web pages and downloads) and you will get what you want. It might be the movie released just a week ago, or a book published in 1990. It might a photograph of your favorite actress, or music piece of Amzad Ali Khan. Whatever we want, we get.

. . . but
Let’s ponder upon these questions:

Are you using a Windows operating system in your laptop or computer? Is the copy of the Windows OS original (if you are unsure about it then did you buy a copy of the OS with registration key or installed from a CD or pendrive given by someone freely)?
How many (hundred) times you have downloaded images, videos, music, games from the web without checking or knowing its license details?
Do you know that everytime you are sharing some music or video over your mobile bluetooth, there is a possibility that you are violating some copyright and which might be punishable?

The World Wide Web is not free. You get content, but with those come a large number of restrictions. Knowingly or unknowingly we violate copyright everyday. So what should we do?

Of course we have a shortcut — illegal downloading, piracy, as we know that no one really cares. We can ignore everything and carry on.
Or, there is a second option, join the free and open knowledge movement and try to get more and more content under the free licenses.

One option is easy, needs no hard work, on the other hand the second option is difficult to follow, needs a lot of hard work, although that should be the process. It’s completely upto you that which option would you prefer.

Image credit

Source: WIkimedia Commons, Author: W.carter, License: CC SA 4.0 International

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-shortcut-to-freedom

Freedom in Feb — an awareness increasing campaign

tito — 2017-06-28T09:59:29Z

You have heard about the Ice bucket challenge (and the rice bucket challenge). You may have heard about the 100happinessdays challenge (and its Wikipedia version 100wikidayschallenge). You may have heard and participated in the November no shaving challenge. Some of these campaigns are organized to increase awareness about different social issues. Now here the Centre for Internet and Society, India brings to you a campaign called Freedom In Feb.

Freedom in Feb (FiF, hashtag #freedominfeb) is a campaign to be conducted in the month of February. The objective of the initiative is to increase awareness of free content and free licenses. The name of this campaign “Freedom in Feb” was coined by Sunil Abraham, the Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society, India.

Event dates

The first iteration of the event will take place between 0:00 UTC on 1 February 2017 and 23:59 UTC on 28 February 2017.

Rules

The rule to participate in this challenge is simple:

The works you will create or publish in February you have to release those under free licenses such as the Creative Commons licenses or under public domain.
The content includes your blog post, writing, image on Facebook, or Instagram, or your Tweets (no “all rights reserved” please :)).
If releasing all content under free licenses is not possible, please try to release as much as content under the free licenses this February.

So, this Feb, please release your works under the free licenses, and encourage others to do so as well.

Participate

If you are interested to participate in this challenge or want to know more, please fill this form, or you can also send us an email to this address sunil@cis-india.org and/or tito@cis-india.org. Please include "Freedom in Feb" in your email subject line.

FAQ

Question: Which free license should I choose?
Answer: You can choose any free license. We suggest you to choose a license that allows remixing, and using for commercial purpose such as CC BY-SA 4.0. You may also choose a license CC BY-NC 2.0, but that’s not really free.

Question: I am a professional and depend on my works (photography, music, writing) on living. Do I need to release all my creations under the free licenses?
Answer: We understand this situation, but we request you to release as much as or some content under the free licenses or public domain.

More FAQs to be added

Keep in touch

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freedominfeb/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freedominfeb
Freenode IRC: freedominfeb
Public forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/freedominfeb (anyone can post here by sending an email to: freedominfeb@googlegroups.com, but you need to join the group to view posts and other
Hashtag: #freedominfeb

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/freedominfeb

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

tito — 2017-06-28T10:02:00Z

Indian Government works are not available under free and open licenses. On the other hand a large number countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela etc. have adopted the Creative Commons and other free licenses. The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain. This article promotes the idea that the Government works should be freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable.

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Free knowledge movement is a worldwide movement that creates and tries to get works under free and open licenses. It claims that knowledge is a common human property, and must be easily, freely accessible.

While discussing the topic "Access to knowledge: a basic human right", American scientist and researcher Jack Andraka feels:

Access to knowledge is, you know, a basic human right. Knowledge should not be commoditized; it wants to be free.

The Open Definition defines the term “Open Knowledge” in Open Definition 2.0 as:

"Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness."

All open content must be a) available under free licenses, b) accessible as a whole, and c) should be in open format (see more details)

A big name in the world of free content is (of course) Wikipedia, where you can use, share, remix content from the site under the Creative Commons licenses. There are many organizations, networks and groups working to get more and more content under free and open licenses such as Creative Commons (text, audio, video, image), Free and Open Source Software or FOSS (software), Open design principle (machine, engineering), Open Access (academic works) etc.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that education should be free. Right to information is also a human right and Article 27 of the declaration states:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

These are just not possible unless knowledge /information is easily and preferably freely accessible to everyone without restrictions. If the first barrier is accessibility, i.e, not having enough digital content or information or content behind paywall, then the second barrier is its openness. Just having access to some web pages is not enough, it also requires rights like free using, sharing, remixing, Unrestricted content can be utilized in the best way.

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Government websites are not freely licensed. In section 2(k) of Indian Copyright Act, 1957 the meaning of “Government work” is explained:

"Government work" means a work which is made or published by or under the direction or control of—
(i) the Government or any department of the Government;
(ii) any Legislature in India;
. . .

Read Indian Copyright Act, section 2(c) here.

Indian Copyright Act section 17(d) informs about the “First owner of copyright” of a Government work:

in the case of a Government work, Government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein;

Read section 17(d) here.

Section 28 is about “Term of copyright in Government works”. It states:

In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published.—In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published."

Read section 28 here

Section 52 of the act allows some “fair use” and informs how content can be used for research, education, review, criticism and some other purpose. The lengthy copyright section may be read here. However, it does not make the content free. You are not allowed to remix the work or use for commercial purpose. You can not freely use, modify, distribute it.

Now let’s have a look at a few Government websites and their license details pages.

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

(http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/website-policies)

In this website the copyright policy page informs:

Material featured on this website may be reproduced free of charge. However, the material has to be reproduced accurately and not to be used in a derogatory manner or in a misleading context. Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged. However, the permission to reproduce this material shall not extend to any material which is identified as being copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the department/copyright holder concerned.

A screenshot may be seen below:

Here-

“Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged.” -- this part of the policy is similar to the Creative Commons licenses, where the owner or author of a work must be given attribution.

but,

“has to be reproduced accurately” -- it prohibits remix or modification works,
“not to be used in a derogatory manner” -- it is unclear that what is “derogatory manner”! Can it be used for criticism?

Indian Vice President’s official website
(http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/website-policies)

This is similar to the Prime Minister’s website policy and does not allow remix, commercial use etc. See screenshot:

Indian President’s official website
(http://presidentofindia.gov.in/copyright-policy.htm)

Although the Vice President’s website allows some fair use, the Indian President’s official web portal’s license is different and does not allow to reproduce the work “partially or fully”. The copyright policy states:

This contents of this website may not be reproduced partially or fully, without due permission from The President of India, If referred to as a part of another publication, the source must be appropriately acknowledged. The contents of this website can not be used in any misleading or objectionable context.

We have shown 3 example above, but it is more or less similar in all government web portals.

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

It might be interesting to note that unlike India, a large number of countries publish their Government works under open licenses or public domain. We’ll discuss only a few here:

United States

The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain.
The White House website and third party content such as text or speeches by the first lady are licensed under CC SA 3.0 US license. U.S.
On 18 June, 2013, Barack Obama and other G7 leaders endorsed the Open Data Charter. Open Data Action plan is licensed under CC0.
Several other works such as works created by New York State Senate, works created by the State of Virginia are also under different creative commons licenses. Details may be seen here.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Open Government License (OGL) is used for Crown Copyright works published by the UK government. Since 2001, some works by the UK government were available under the Click-Use license. This license was replaced by OGL in 2010. The first version of OGL was released on 30 September 2010. OGL is compatible with the CC licenses. OGL allows to:

copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information,
adapt the Information,
exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

However,

Attribution must be given to with source link, which is similar to the creative commons licenses.
Some documents such as the British passport, military insignia, property rights, including patents, trademarks, and design rights, personal information in data don’t come under OGL.

More about the Open Government License may be seen here.

France

France government’s website http://www.gouvernement.fr/ is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 FR license. The English version of the policy page may be seen here.
France government’s cultural department’s website http://www.culture.fr/ is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
The Culture Communication website http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/ is also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.

Russian Federation

Content of the website http://kremlin.ru are under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. License policy page may be seen here. Many other Russian government works are under different open licenses, details may be seen here.

Netherlands

The Dutch government official website http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ is licensed under CC 0. All content of this website is under public domain, unless any other license is specified.

Bulgaria

The President of Bulgaria’s official website https://www.president.bg/ is licensed under CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.

Croatia

Croatian Government website http://otvorenikod.nsk.hr/ is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 Croatia.

The Long list

More than 30 countries have adopted and publishing their works under the Creative Commons and other free licenses. Other the above mentioned countries, the list include countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela etc. Other than the counties, several international organizations such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) endorsed the free license concept and have adopted the same. See a long list of countries using free licenses here.

Last line

It is unfortunate that the Indian Government works are not under free licenses, however it would be great if the Government rethinks and relicense their general content under the free licenses. This will help not only the movement, but the content itself can be utilized in a much better and broader way.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-knowledge-and-indian-government-work

100wikidays: the journey so far

tito — 2017-06-28T10:04:33Z

In this article we'll chat with Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) on the journey of 100wikidays so far, initial difficulties, and participation of Indian Wikipedia communities in the challenge.

100wikidays is a personal Wiki challenge, in which a participant attempts to create at least one new article on Wikipedia, for 100 days in a row. This initiative is a brainchild of Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) and it started on 16 January 2015. As of 22 November 2016, 194 Wikipedians have taken this challenge and 63 of them have successfully completed it. A delighting fact is a large number of Indian Wikipedians have participated in this initiative and successfully completed this challenge. In this blog post we’ll try to focus on the project and its influence on Indian Wikimedians.

Let’s start the conversation with Vassia Atanassova, (User:Spiritia), the editor who started this initiative.

CIS-A2K: First, we congratulate you for the success of 100wikidays. When you started this challenge in January 2015, did you think that one day it would become so big?

Vassia: No, actually I wasn’t completely sure that I myself will be able to complete it. :) The story behind the 100wikidays is that earlier in 2014 I had already tried the so called “100happydays” challenge, in which you prove that 100 days in a row you have found happiness, even in the smallest things, by posting a photo of what made you happy. Needless to say, I failed it, around the 11-th day, which according to statistics happens with 7 out of 10 people. :) So, when in the end of 2014 I got the idea of retrying the challenge, already only knew that happiness was obviously not “my cup of tea” :) so I had to try something I am good in and have more chances for success, like writing in Wikipedia. :) But back then, I didn’t believe that I will be able to finish it myself – it was such a crazy idea – and no, I had never planned it as anything bigger than my own personal challenge. :)

CIS-A2K: Let’s talk about the initial days. What were the difficulties you faced?
Vassia: As I had already failed the happy photography challenge before, I was really nervous in the beginning. The challenge – as the rules of the #100happydays postulate – requires you to make a public commitment and announce your daily progress, and this is very demanding. You commit in front of a community you care for and don’t want to lose your face, or disappoint them. For me, this is half of the difficulty – and half of the magic.

The other half, of course, is to really find the time to create a decent encyclopedic article every day. We are definitely not talking about long featured articles, of course, but decent articles, giving the basic necessary information about a topic, referenced with reliable sources. I am not really eager about the idea of #100stubdays, although, of course, I have also had extremely busy days when I am not able to produce anything longer than a stub.

Thus, one of the first lessons I had to learn from the challenge was how to find the right balance between the inborn perfectionism and the unavoidable time limitations. I think that everyone who commits to the challenge and doesn’t quit it immediately, has such a period of adapting one’s style of contributing, of rearranging life priorities, and stealing from oneself precious time that would otherwise spend with the family, with friends, for other hobbies, or simply for sleeping. Oh, sleeping, how much I started appreciate sleep after the beginning of the challenge! #100wikidays is famous for jokes related with sleep deprivation. :)

CIS-A2K: How did you promote this initiative among the Wikipedia communities around the world?
Vassia: Hmm… I didn’t! It all happened naturally, by word of mouth. It is editors who are promoting it by getting involved in the challenge, I am not doing anything special. 100wikidays is living its own life. :)

In the beginning friends of mine who followed my Facebook wall liked and sometimes commented on the posts with the new articles. It took about one month before the first follower appeared, one of the ex-students in my university course “Wikipedia and Wiki Technologies”, Vladislav Nedelev. About that time I decided to propose the idea of the #100wikidays as a topic for talk at Wikimania. Funny detail is that initially this talk proposal got rejected, and it took weeks before it was reevaluated and approved :)

In the meanwhile, in early March, the next follower, or “victim”, joined, and happily that one was Asaf Bartov, Wikimedia Foundation’s senior officer in emergent Wikimedia communities. He didn’t want to be alone in the trouble :))) so one day he posted on his wall the question “Who will be the first Indian Wikipedian to commit to #100wikidays?” And by the end of the day there were four people (you, Tito, included)!!! And it was amazing, absolutely mindblowing!

Asaf also proposed the idea of the Facebook group and the Meta coordination page, where people report their daily progress. In my opinion, he is the most efficient victims recruiter in the #100wikidays :)

As of today (22 November 2016) we have 194 “victims” from 54 language versions of Wikipedia – and several sister projects like Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary and Commons and about 1/3 of all who have started it, have also completed it successfully. So, yeah, somehow it really became a global thing :) And real life meetings very much helped for that. Nikola Kalchev’s lightning talk at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, my talks at Wikimania in Mexico, at the Central and Eastern European Meetup in Voore, and at WikiLive conference in Belgrade, Alex Stinson’s speech at WikiConference USA 2015, Asaf also. Everyone who has taken the challenge can become its ambassador.

CIS-A2K: Tell us about a few participants who performed really well in this challenge?
Vassia: Oh, there are so many wonderful editors in #100wikidays, so many examples to be followed, people who are trendsetters on their own! Of course, Antanana and Lord Bumbury, who couldn’t stop themselves after the 100-th day, and made more than 220 wikidays in a row, each of them! Armine, who is now doing her 5th run of #100wikidays. Adam Cuerden with his runs of #10commonsdays of restoring old photographs, pixel by pixel! Asaf, Rosiestep, Penny Richards, Patricio, Maor X, and others whose focus is solely on biographies of notable women. Mervat Salman who introduced the #WikiWomenWeeks driving even more attention to this topic. Everyone in the challenge has brought to it something new and unique. And the most beautiful of it all is when ideas spread virally among the #100wikidays community, and people inspire each other with their choice of articles, and the way they communicate them.

CIS-A2K: 100wikidays is a difficult challenge. If someone writes articles for 60 or 70 days in a row, and then for some reason fails to continue, would you call it a failure, or what would be your suggestions?
Vassia: Heh, my favourite question. :) The word “failure” does not exist in my #100wikidays vocabulary. If you quit before the end of the 100 days, or if it takes you more than 100 days to finish, you have still made contributions to Wikipedia and has allowed someone to learn from the free knowledge that you have shared with the world. :) I know, the challenge has rules that really seem to be discouragingly severe. And it is normal that not everybody opts for it. But once you dare to opt, in the FB group you receive enormous support and appreciation – every day, for every new article. Also, among the challenge rules, the last one is “Ignore All Rules”. So, it is only up to you to decide whether a missed day is really a failure or not. My advice to everyone in this situation is: continue as if nothing has happened and no one has noticed :)

CIS-A2K: Several Indian Wikipedia communities participated in 100wikidays. Tell us about the participation of Indian Wikipedians in this challenge.
Vassia: So far, there have been contributors in 9 Indian languages: Punjabi (17), Oriya/Odia (3), Telugu (4), Bengali (3), Tamil (5), Hindi (4), Kannada (1), Malayalam (8). Correct me if I am missing anything. :) The total figure makes Indians the most active participants in the challenge, globally, with Armenia scoring second with 27 editors by now. No less than 13 are the Indian alumni, so far, which is quite of a big percentage of all. And the projects covered are different, not just Wikipedia in all those different languages, but also Wikisource, Wiktionary. This is truly impressive because some of the sister projects, like Wikisource, are really very demanding in terms of human resources and time, and usually not so populated with editors, which makes it even a greater challenge to undertake #100wikidays there. And I can’t but mention the recent notable interest in the challenge, registered in Malayalam Wikipedia. I’d be really very happy to know that the challenge has helped for the substantial growth of their, and generally, to any language version of Wikipedia. :)

Credits

Image source: Wikimedia Commons, license: CC-BY-SA 4.0, author: Kacie Harold

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/100wikidays

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November

tito — 2017-06-28T10:05:20Z

The second iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM), a month-long edit-a-thon to create and improve Asia-related articles on Wikipedia, is going to start on 1 November 2016. In this blog post we'll revisit the stats of the 2015 iteration of the event. We'll also talk to Addis Wang, an organizer of WAM, to know more about their progress and preparation.

Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM) is a month-long online edit-a-thon where the participants create or expand Asia-related articles on Wikipedia. The main rules of this initiative are: a) the articles must be created or expanded during the mentioned period (i. e. November), b) new articles must not be stubs and should be at least 3,000 bytes and around 300 words in length, c) the article must follow Wikipedia guidelines such as Neutral point of view, notability, verifiability, copyright etc.

The first iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month was conducted between 1-30 November 2015 and saw enthusiastic participation from Asian Wikipedia communities. These are some statistics from the last iteration of WAM:

1,286 editors from 43 different communities participated in 2015 edition of WAM. The following Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the challenge- Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
6,096 articles were created or expanded over-all, and of these 4,306 articles followed all the suggested rules.
During the Asian Month, 42,067,774 bytes were added on Wikipedia.
190 new editors participated in this challenge.

Now after the successful first iteration, the organizers of Wikipedia Asian Month are all set to kick off the second iteration of the event. This year's WAM edition will be organized between 1–30 November 2016. Before the beginning of this event, we have taken an interview of Addis Wang, a primary organizer of the event.

CIS-A2K: So, you are all set for another edition of Wikipedia Asian Month. Are you excited?

Addis Wang: Yes. I’m excited to see our Asian community collaborate together once again and looking forward to make more contributions in this years’ edition.

CIS-A2K: Tell us a few things you learnt during the last edition of WAM? Are you going to bring any changes this year?

Addis Wang: The most important thing we will change from the experience of last year is speeding up the postcard processing. We did not start collecting address until we had all the language communities finish the analysis of contributed articles. So this year, we will have multiple rounds of address collection to ensure most people receive their postcards by the end of the year. We will also ask local communities who are making the postcards to finish the process before the end of the November, and be prepared to send postcards in early December.

CIS-A2K: 2016 edition of WAM will start soon. How are the responses so far? Do you feel that this edition will be bigger than the earlier one?

Addis Wang: I think we will have a bigger Edit-a-thon in term of number of new articles, and number of editors participating. Supporting communities were comparatively less than the number of active editors during last WAM. Increasing the number of supporting communities is also one of our goals and we are working to get more communities involved.

CIS-A2K: That’s a good point. How are you going to support such communities?

Addis Wang: We provide easy set-up guideline so there is not much work needed to do to organize the Wikipedia Asian Month. We are also using Central Notice so there will be a good opportunity to get publicity, and opportunity to engage both old and new editors. Making and sending Wikimedia souvenirs could be difficult for many communities, but they can easily achieve these by joining the Wikipedia Asian Month.

CIS-A2K: Let’s talk about Indic Wikipedia communities. You saw very enthusiastic participation from Indic Wikipedia communities, is it not?

Addis Wang: Yes! As the one of the largest Wikimedia community in the Asia, and maybe the most diverse comunity in the world, Indic community is highly involved into the Wikipedia Asian Month since the idea was proposed during Wikimania 2015. In the last year edition, India is the country that received most postcards sent by Wikipedia Asian Month. Also, Wikipedian Asian Ambassadors of English Wikipedia, who created most articles during the Asian Month, are from India.

CIS-A2K: Thanks Addis for your time. We wish you all the best.

Addis Wang: Thank you.

Collaboration attribution: Tanveer Hasan

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/wikipedia-asian-month-2014-2016-iteration-starts-on-1-november

Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion meetup in Hyderabad

tito — 2017-06-28T10:06:34Z

The first on-ground Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion meetup was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016. 14 editors from 5 Indian Wikimedia communities participated in this event.

A Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion event was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016. Tito Dutta of CIS-A2K joined as a resource person and Telugu Programme Associate Pavan Santosh coordinated the event.

Although the Train-a-Wikipedian program was launched in January 2016, this was the first on-ground workshop for Telugu Wikipedians. The event was organized at Golden Threshold campus, Hyderabad. 13 editors from 5 Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the event. Here is the list of the participants:

User:Meena gayathri.s (Telugu)
User:Ajaybanbi (Telugu)
User:Pranayraj1985 (Telugu)
User:Nrgullapalli (Telugu)
User:Rajasekhar1961 (Telugu)
User:Viswanadh (Telugu)
User:Kasyap (Telugu)
User:Vin09 (English, Telugu)
User:Sonalisubudhi122 (Odia)
User:Mouryan (Bengali)
User:Sakthi swaroop (English)
User:Yash.golechha (interested to contribute to Hindi and English Wikipedia)
User:Yohannvt (English, Wikimedia India representative)

Introduction

The day's program started with discussing and explaining the works CIS-A2K is currently doing to support Indian-language Wikimedia communities. This session was primary focused on introducing the Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) program. There were a number of editors who either were not aware of TAW, or were attending a real-life session for the first time. The program's vision, working-process and syllabus were narrated in details so that those who were new to the program understand how TAW works better. They were also informed about the past sessions. As there were a few editors, who were very new to the world of Wikipedia, they were quickly introduced to Wikipedia's main components. User:Rajasekhar1961 discussed the basic structure of an article.

Train-a-Wikipedian: Hands-on activity

This was followed by a hands-on activity where the participants were asked to glance through random articles on Wikipedia and discuss the issues in the article. More than 20 articles from English and Telugu Wikipedia were read and the issues/concerns were listed. The new editors were asked to comment from their own perspective, and the experienced editors shared their views using Wiki-vocabulary. The aim of the activity was to make a list of issues Wikipedia articles generally have (such as prose style, article size, references) and try to discuss those with relevant policy or guideline, so that it becomes clearer that policies and guidelines are needed in every step of Wikipedia editing.

Policy discussion

After the hands-on session which ended with a sense that almost every Wikipedia-editing related issue to be directly related to one or another policy, the second session of the day, on policy discussion, started. In the beginning of this year CIS-A2K, —with the help of Indian Wikipedians—created an Indic Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines Handbook, discussing how to create Wikipedia policies and modify the existing ones, discussing on Village pump, consensus etc. The book's content was presented to the participants.

Right after this session the participants were divided into two groups with Telugu Wikipedians and non-Telugu Wikipedians, and two parallel activities were conducted. Telugu Wikipedians started discussing their Wikipedia's policy portal and with non-Telugu Wikipedians the Train-a-Wikipedian session was continued. Telugu Wikipedians discussed a number of policies and guidelines such as stub policy, notability of books, authors, academics, prose style, and, using honorifics etc. Telugu Wikipedians suggested that they should work on the policy portal on a regular basis. They proposed that for the policies where they already have consensus, they should try to work on at least policy in every 1-2 week(s). For other policies discussion should take place on the village pump on regular basis.

Train-a-Wikipedian: Tools and gadgets

Following the policy discussion, a second session of Train-a-Wikipedian was conducted where a few advanced tools and gadgets were discussed. Some of the tools, gadgets and topics discussed in this session are:

Google Books citation
Autofill option
Indian Newspaper search tool
Search Indian news website
Copyright violation tools (with and alert about Mirrors and forks)
QuickWikiEditor
ArticlePlaceHolder
UserScripts and how they help

The day's program ended with a general feedback-gathering on how the Train-a-Wikipedia program can be improved more in future.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/train-a-wikipedian-and-policy-discussion-meetup-in-hyderabad

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles

tito — 2017-06-28T10:03:41Z

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar has completed 1500 Did you know articles. This is the second highest on English Wikipedia.

Indian English Wikipedian User:Nvvchar has completed 1500 Did you know (DYK) articles. DYK is a short piece of fact (hook) taken from Wikipedia's newest content and is showcased on the "Did you know" section on the Main Page. On English Wikipedia 18-24 hooks appear on the Main Page every day. Since mid-2012 Nvvchar has been diligently working on this DYK project and has created (or expanded) articles on a very wide range of subjects such as religion, history, geography, arts, literature, women's achievement, education etc.

On 27 July 2011 Nvvchar completed 500 DYK articles. On 23 August 2013 his 1000th DYK appeared on the Main Page. The DYK nomination and review process need a lot of effort and sometimes it takes weeks to fully finish the process. However after the 1000th DYK in August 2013, in just 2 years 8 months Nvvchar touched another milestone. On 26 April 2016, his 1500th DYK appeared on the Main Page of Wikipedia and the fact was from an article Rudra Mahalaya Temple, an ancient ruined temple located Sidhpur in the Patan district of Gujarat.

A few Wikipedians congratulated him for this achievement. User:Ijon, a Hebrew Wikipedian, appreciated him saying-

Thank you for the persistent and quiet work you do to contribute much-needed knowledge to Wikipedia!

User:Victuallers, an English Wikipedia administrator, wrote on Nvvchar's talk page-

Lets just guess that the average DYK gets read by 100 people - that means you have a readership of 150,000 people. I think its more like 1000 per DYK appearance so that means that your words have been read by over 1 million people and thats just on the first day of publication! There must be multi-millions of people who know a little more about Asian settlements, buildings, people and artefacts then they would have done without the efforts of Nvvchar. . . . . . Great respect for your efforts. Thanks from the Wiki and its many readers

As of 9 May 2016, Nvvchar has 1503 DYKs.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/nvvchar-1500-dyk

Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K Co-Facilitates Punjabi Wikimedians Wikimedia Strategy Meeting

Image credit

Wikidata workshop (South India) conducted in Bangalore

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

Image credit

Dalit History Month 2017 edit-a-thon in Delhi, India

See also

Image source

Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata

Wikipedia workshop for Konkani students conducted in Mangaluru

Image credit

A Shortcut to Freedom

See also

Image credit

Freedom in Feb — an awareness increasing campaign

Event dates

Rules

Participate

FAQ

Keep in touch

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

United States

United Kingdom

France

Russian Federation

Netherlands

Bulgaria

Croatia

The Long list

Last line

100wikidays: the journey so far

See also

Credits

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November

Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion meetup in Hyderabad

Introduction

Train-a-Wikipedian: Hands-on activity

Policy discussion

Train-a-Wikipedian: Tools and gadgets

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles