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Wikipedia workshop for Konkani students conducted in Mangaluru
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-students-conducted-in-mangalore
<b>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.</b>
<p>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.<br /><br />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.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>College</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Participants</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Female</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Male</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"> Mangalore University College<br /> <br /></td>
<td align="center">2 <br /></td>
<td align="center"> 1</td>
<td align="center">1 <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">St. Aloysius College</td>
<td align="center"> 9</td>
<td align="center">4 <br /></td>
<td align="center">5 <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"> Milagress Degree College</td>
<td align="center"> 5</td>
<td align="center"> 3</td>
<td align="center">2 <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Total</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>16</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>8</strong><br /></td>
<td align="center"><strong>8</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> </p>
<p>The first day's (16 December) event was started with general introduction to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. The following topics were discussed:</p>
<ol><li>Wikipedia and Wikimedia movement</li><li>Importance of Wikipedia as a source of knowledge and information in the World Wide Web (WWW)</li><li>Free knowledge movement</li><li>Indic language Wikipedias</li></ol>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This workshop should be followed up by another iteration where the participants will be taught about the next level of editing.</p>
<h2>Image credit</h2>
<p>Source: <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Konkani_Wiki_Workshop_Mangaluru_7.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, author: User:Outofindia, CC-BY-SA-4.0</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-students-conducted-in-mangalore'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-students-conducted-in-mangalore</a>
</p>
No publishertitoKonkani WikipediaWikipediaWorkshop2017-06-28T09:57:32ZBlog EntryWikiwomen’s Meetup at St. Agnes College Explores Potentials and Plans of Women Editors in Mangalore, Karnataka
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-explores-potentials-and-plans-of-women-editors-in-mangalore-karnataka
<b>Karnataka is known for its diverse linguistic cultures. Aside from Kannada, many are native speakers of Konkani, Tulu, and other languages. A small Wikiwomen's meetup was held on Saturday, August 27th at St. Agnes College, Mangalore, to invite female Wikipedians from the region. Many of them were new to the online encyclopedia but demonstrated strong interest in learning and contributing more Indic language content online.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Mangaluru/WikiWomen/1">Wikiwomen’s meetup</a> was held at St. Agnes College on August 27<sup>th</sup> in the hope to strengthen the bonding and communication between female Wikipedians in Mangalore. Attendees of the meetup on Saturday included five Kannada Wikipedian, one Konkani Wikipedian, one from the recently gone live Tulu Wikipedia, and Ting-Yi Chang from the CIS A2K team. Two of the Kannada Wikipedians are staff and faculty members of the College’s library and Department of Kannada respectively. Both were brought into Wikipedia by <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-st-agnes-college-mangaluru-to-bridge-gender-gap-in-wikipedia">edit-a-thons</a> held on the college campus in the last few months</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The meetup started off with a round of brief self-introduction and an inspiring introductory presentation by Dhanalakshimi K T, a St. Agnes commerce student who had successfully organized the last two women’s edit-a-thons on her campus.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“<i>Wikipedia is a great tool for knowledge sharing. When we edit in our own languages, people from outside of the city who don’t speak English can learn things more easily online.... It is the respect and passion I have for my language."</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The presentation also touched upon some feasible benefits that editors gains through participating in Wikipedia/media projects: improvement in writing and research skills, nurturing a critical thinking habit when reading texts and doing research, learnings from collaborative work experience, improvement in language and communication skills, etc. One of the participants later mentioned that with the hobby of editing Wikipedia, she began actively researching in her interested topics. Even in occasions when she had no time to actually update the content onto Wikipedia, the knowledge she gained throughout the research process has already enriched her and broadened her horizon of the subject.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second half of the presentation consists of an introduction to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars">5 pillars rules</a> and some other advice of Wikipedia editing. Participants who were newcomers showed great interest and actively raised questions surrounding the use of different editing tools including the infobox templates, translation tools, useful markups, and personal sandboxes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When being asked about the barriers they have faced so far in editing Wikipedia, most agreed that time issues do prevent them sometimes as their offline commitments (work, family, school) can take priority over it. However, most participants also concluded that “those who are truly interested will eventually find the time.” On the other hand, access to internet and facilities has not been reported as a barrier in their cases, but all agreed that it can be for many other women. Awareness was emphasized as a crucial factor when trying to bring in more women to Wikipedia. One of the student participants shared her experience,</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>“Some people may have never heard of Wikipedia before; some misunderstood its use and potential… when I talked about Kannada Wikipedia with my peers, first they thought it was some website for Kannada stories writing…. But when I explained to them what it is and how we can edit, they were all very excited and very much wanted to try."</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the latter discussion of the meetup, participants talked about the tentative event plans for the next few months. Two sessions were suggested to be held by November, 2016. One as a workshop for the newcomers and the other as an editing event for more experienced female Wikipedians. All participants, old and new, are really excited to strengthen the bonding between Wikiwomens in Mangalore. Some suggested there should be more casual meetups every few weeks to help them communicate more and plan upcoming community events, including an ongoing event that can be held in March, 2017 for the International Women’s Day and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWomen%27s_History_Month">Wikiwomen’s History Month</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The meetup continued with more discussion on various language Wikipedias’ development. As an experienced Wikipedian and an actively outreaching community member, participant Harriet Vidyasagar explained the complexity in Konkani Wikipedia, which contains five scripts, and the importance of those scripts in Konkani language’s history and culture. All participants agreed that seeing their mother tongues’ scripts online and creating more content to make their culture and language visible are a great source of happiness and a motivation for them to continue editing. The session ended with exchange of contacts and group pictures.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-explores-potentials-and-plans-of-women-editors-in-mangalore-karnataka'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-explores-potentials-and-plans-of-women-editors-in-mangalore-karnataka</a>
</p>
No publishertingCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeGenderKonkani WikipediaKannada WikipediaEvent2016-09-01T14:39:53ZBlog EntryCommunity digest: Konkani language speakers are separated by scripts but unite by Wikipedia; news in brief
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-digest-konkani-language-speakers-are-separated-by-scripts-but-unite-by-wikipedia-news-in-brief
<b>Konkani-language Wikipedians on what they think of Wikipedia as a binding factor for native speakers who speak in different variations of the same language and write in different scripts.</b>
<p>This was <a class="external-link" href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/08/04/digest-konkani-unite/">published on Wikimedia Blog</a> on August 4, 2016</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I reached out to a few Goan Konkani Wikipedians to learn about their experience with the project, especially after it went live in <a class="text external" href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/07/15/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live/">2015</a>. In the interview they share what they think of Wikipedia as a binding factor for native speakers that are currently dispersed in many states, speak in different variations of the same language, and write in different scripts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Subhashish Panigrahi (SP)</b>: Hi The Discoverer [a long time contributor to Wikipedia who is actively contributing to the Goan Konkani Wikipedia], you have been actively contributing to the Goan Konkani Wikipedia since 2006 even before it went live in 2014. What potential do you see in the Goan Konkani Wikipedia bringing Konkani speakers from the states of Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala?<br /> <b>User:The Discoverer (TD)</b>: Even though my first contributions were in 2006, I have been moderately active on Wikipedia all these years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I do agree with you that Konkani Wikipedia has the potential to bind people across borders. As you have rightly pointed out, Konkani is remarkable in that, for the small geographical area where it is a native language, it has developed a large number of dialects, in addition to being used in multiple scripts. Unfortunately, in the offline world, we see that there are disagreements over certain Konkani scripts being favored or not favored in terms of official recognition. Konkani Wikipedia can not only be a platform in bringing together Konkani speakers from many regions but can also be the unifying factor among the Konkani people.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>SP</b>: How do think Wikipedia could be a good platform to help unifying the Konkani people?<br /> <b>TD</b>: For Konkani Wikipedia to succeed, it is not just a ‘good idea’ for Konkani speakers writing in various scripts to work together on one Wikipedia, but it’s also a necessity and a challenge at the same time. It’s a necessity, because as things stand, no one script has a strong enough community to run a Wikipedia by themselves. It’s a challenge because not everyone can read every script, and it’s important for all the users of a Wikipedia to be able to understand all the content on that site.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>SP</b>: Very rightly spotted. And how do you think the Wikipedia community and the CIS-A2K program should work together to tackle this challenge?<br /> <b>TD</b>: We need an <a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gom:%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%A1%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE:Script_converter" title="w:gom:विकिपीडिया:Script converter">automatic script converter</a> (see the script converter resource page for Konkani on <a class="extiw" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_in_Konkani_language" title="m:Automatic conversion in Konkani language">Meta</a> and <a class="extiw" href="https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T105121" title="phab:T105121">task on Phabricator</a>) that could make the lives of the editors easier. Most people cannot read more than two scripts. Most users are currently depending on an external site for transliteration when the user cannot read the script used in a Wikipedia article. That’s painful and a user might also would not know about a third party converter. An automatic script converter on Wikipedia would enable people to read any page in the script of their choice in a single click. This is where <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K" title="CIS-A2K">CIS-A2K</a> can really help Konkani Wikipedia, by helping to implement the script converter. In addition to the script converter, CIS-A2K could also study various multi-script Wikipedias in existence and prepare a list of such features that are used in these Wikipedias to deal with multiple scripts, so that Indian multi-script Wikipedias can consider implementing such a feature as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Konkani Wikipedia is facing another challenge right now in growing the community as there are only handful of active editors. And we need contributors from varied walks of life to add more diversity to the community. The boost that was needed initially to make Konkani Wikipedia live—thanks to institutions like Goa University (GU) and Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE) and CIS-A2K for bringing in many student-editors—needs more intensity now. Students from GU and NIE were mainly from the Konkani language and teaching disciplines. If you consider other larger Wikipedias, like the English Wikipedia, they owe their success to editing by people from a diverse backgrounds, and also to the fact that the people are comfortable with the basics of markup and coding and were able to build templates, etc. Today, there is almost no one who is working on templates and other similar technical stuff for Konkani Wikipedia. Here too, CIS-A2K can help by reaching out to Konkani speakers with a background in computing—for instance, students of Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA), Master in Computer Application, Computer Science and engineering. This will help build a community that is technically adept at creating templates and dealing with more advanced types of content for the Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Konkani Wikipedia can also take advantage of software extensions like VisualEditor and Flow that the knowledge of markup and other technicalities that the user needs to have, so that users who are uncomfortable with editing markup can focus on just adding content with a much more simple and user-friendly interface.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In these ways, participation of people from different regional and vocational backgrounds can form a vibrant editing community leading to the growth of the Konkani Wikipedia.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">In brief</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><b>WikiConference India 2016 to be held at Chandigarh during August 5–7</b>: The second <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016">WikiConference India</a> (WCI) will be held on August 5-7 in Chandigarh, India. After the first WCI in <a class="text external" href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/02/wikiconference-india/">2011</a>, this will be the largest gathering of the Wikimedians from the Indian subcontinent. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—<a class="extiw" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India" title="m:Wikimedia India">Wikimedia India</a>, <a class="extiw" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_Wikimedians">Punjabi Wikimedians</a> and <a class="extiw" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K">Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge</a> program—are working together to make this event a success. Over 100 <a class="text external" href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/05/27/wikiconference-india-scholarship/">scholarships</a> have been offered to noteworthy contributors from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Various talks, meetups and workshops are planned for the three-day event, and a <a class="text external" href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1EIgOuTjwzHqqR94m1GhDnbyKFkDG9HCXH-t17k8hZVQ/prefill" rel="nofollow">needs assessment survey</a> has been put in place for ensuring any hackathon needs are addressed.</li>
<li><b>Punjab edit-a-thon: </b>A <a class="extiw" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016/Punjab_Edit-a-thon" title="m:WikiConference India 2016/Punjab Edit-a-thon">month-long edit-a-thon</a> has been running in 12 Indic language Wikipedias and one European language Wikipedia (the Ukrainian) to enrich the content related to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjab_%28region%29">Punjab</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabis">Punjabi people</a>, and their language and culture. So far, more than 1000 articles have been created by about 100 Wikipedians. As we have already surpassed the dream target of 1000 articles, we are planning to extend the edit-a-thon through WikiConference India so many can participate during the event.</li>
<li><b>Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses</b>: A campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several noted authors from “all rights reserved” to a Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) license. This campaign was started on June 19 and copyright migration process is complete for 17 books so far. Once the copyright migration is over the books—ranging from historical figures and popular personalities to regional history—are going to be digitized on Wikisource. “I don’t want these works to be in bookshelf and get wasted by termites. My wish as an author and researcher is to make these works available to future historians who can make use of it, so that our people get to know the local history” shares Kanuri Badarinadh, a historian, novelist and journalist who has donated some of his books.</li>
<li><b>Train-the-trainer and Mediawiki training program for capacity building of community leaders from Indian subcontinent</b>: After two iterations of the Train the Trainer in <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Train_the_Trainer_Program/2013" title="CIS-A2K/Events/Train the Trainer Program/2013">2013</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Train_the_Trainer_Program/2015" title="CIS-A2K/Events/Train the Trainer Program/2015">2015</a>, CIS-A2K organized the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Train_the_Trainer_Program/2016">third program</a> during June 15-17 at <a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore" title="w:Bangalore">Bengaluru</a>. The <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/MediaWiki_Training" title="CIS-A2K/Events/MediaWiki Training">Mediawiki training</a> was designed to help groom technical leadership skills of the technical contributors of the communities. A total of 45 participants, that were selected by a collaborative consultation with the community, took part in these events. The trainers for both the events consisted of subject experts from the Wikimedia community, the free knowledge movement, the free and open source software community and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Team" title="CIS-A2K/Team">CIS-A2K program staff</a>. A series of small Mediawiki trainings will follow soon that will be led by the trained participants.</li>
<li><b>Indian women in Science edit-a-thon</b>: Organized by <a class="text external" href="http://www.indiabioscience.org/" rel="nofollow">IndiaBioscience</a>, a not-for-profit working for research and advocacy on the life sciences in India, this edit-a-thon began with an introduction to the series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that have been running to expand Wikipedia’s reach on Indian women with contribution to Science. There was a Q&A session Professor Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan followed by introduction to Wikipedia editing, its policies and guidelines, and brief on copyright, and Creative Commons licensing. <a class="text external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Indian_Women_in_Science_Edit-a-thon#Outcomes">11 new articles were created and 11 existing articles were expanded</a> in English, Hindi and Odia-language Wikipedias.</li>
<li><b>Indigenous South-Asian language gets a new open Unicode font: </b>A new font for the Ol chiki script (used to write the Santali language) along with input tools <a class="text external" href="https://opensource.com/life/16/7/indigenous-language-official-typeface" rel="nofollow">are getting ready</a> to be released soon. Santali is spoken by over 6 million people in South Asia over Bangladesh and Nepal and six states in India. This project, supported by the Centre for Internet of India, will help native language speakers type in Unicode across platforms, and also using Universal Language System in all Wikimedia projects.</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-digest-konkani-language-speakers-are-separated-by-scripts-but-unite-by-wikipedia-news-in-brief'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-digest-konkani-language-speakers-are-separated-by-scripts-but-unite-by-wikipedia-news-in-brief</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKonkani Wikipedia2016-08-07T03:11:06ZBlog EntryStats for March 2016
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/stats-for-march-2016
<b>CIS-A2K team closely works with 5 Indian languages, we call as focus language areas.
Here are the stats for the month of March 2016.</b>
<p>We generate stats for each of our focus language area month on month, and it has been used for designing and modifying our strategies from time to time. Though these stats were never published publicly, as we get them at stats.wikimedia.org already and publishing here is just repeating it; it was felt that some more metrics can be added and published month on month here at CIS blog. Also, the data here would be for the last month, while it takes two months for data to get updated at stats.wikimedia.org.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Stub articles created :</p>
<p>Kannada - 3/131</p>
<p>Konkani - 9/38</p>
<p>Marathi - 50/176</p>
<p>Odia - 8/89</p>
<p>Telugu - 59/284</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In Kannada Wikipedia, about 131 new articles were created and of these only 3 are stub class articles. This is because Kannada Wikipedia is implementing a strict policy on not allowing a stub class article. There is an abuse filter created by one of the admins, Harish MG, which does not allow an editor to submit a smaller article than 1000 bytes. While Konkani showed a good progress in creation of new articles and only 9 of these 38 articles were stub class articles.</p>
<p>Marathi and Odia had a 28% and 9% share of total articles created as stubs respectively, while Telugu has about 21% of total articles created as stubs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Active editors count has gone up in Kannada with 133 active editors during March 2016 - this could be accounted to the post 13th anniversary activities. Four focused editathons were organised as part of the 13th anniversary celebrations. The number of active editors increased in Konkani too. While in Marathi, Odia and Telugu the number was consistent with the previous months' numbers.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now. lets look at the editing activity.</p>
<p>Kannada had 3279 edits adding about 86.57 MB of data. Konkani Wikipedia saw 920 edits in all, adding 8.41 MB of data. Marathi Wikipedia had 2926 edits with 68.42 MB of data; Odia Wikipedia added 1106 edits and 15.28 MB of data and Telugu Wikipedia had 8559 edits with 122.17 MB of data.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Having a provision of local image upload, Telugu Wikipedia added 53 images to the project while Marathi, one image was added. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/stats-for-march-2016'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/stats-for-march-2016</a>
</p>
No publisherrahimCIS-A2KWikimediaWikipediaMarathi WikipediaKonkani WikipediaOdia WikipediaTelugu WikipediaKannada Wikipedia2016-06-07T04:06:03ZBlog EntryReport of Konkani Wikipedia's progress (July-December 2015)
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-progress-from-july-to-december-2015
<b>Konkani language is one of the 22 languages recognized by Indian union in 8th schedule. As per the 2007 census there are about 7.4 million Konkani speakers.[1] Konkani language has its own Wikipedia created on 15th June 2015. This blog post will try to put out Konkani Wikipedia's growth from a perspective based on Wikimedia stats.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Konkani language has varied scripts used by its speakers. There are more than six different scripts in which Konkani people seem to be writing, of these, Devanagari (same as Hindi, Marathi), Romi (Roman or Latin script) and Kannada script are more popular. The project went out of incubation and became a live Wikipedia project as Goan Konkani Wikipedia (language code <b>gom</b> and is available at <a class="external-link" href="http://gom.wikipedia.org">gom.wikipedia.org).</a>The Konkani community that contributes on Wikipedia is mostly present in Goa with a few contributors living elsewhere.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Below is the last 6 months' statistics of Goan Konkani Wikipedia:</p>
<table style="text-align: justify; ">
<colgroup span="7" width="85"> </colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="left"><br /></td>
<td align="left">Total Editors</td>
<td align="left">New editors</td>
<td align="left">Active editors</td>
<td align="left">Very active editors</td>
<td align="left">Article count</td>
<td align="left">New article created per month</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">July 2015</td>
<td align="right">124</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="right">8</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">2100</td>
<td align="right">8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">August 2015</td>
<td align="right">125</td>
<td align="right">1</td>
<td align="right">6</td>
<td align="right">3</td>
<td align="right">2300</td>
<td align="right">6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">September 2015</td>
<td align="right">125</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="right">5</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">2400</td>
<td align="right">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">October 2015</td>
<td align="right">125</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="right">5</td>
<td align="right">3</td>
<td align="right">2400</td>
<td align="right">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">November 2015</td>
<td align="right">125</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="right">2400</td>
<td align="left"></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Observations:</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>As we see the total number editors is at a good state as compared to other language Wikipedia projects that have gone live recently. Also the article count seem to be significant.</li>
<li>But the growth in total number of editors is not that encouraging and needs to be worked upon. This might be probably because of unawareness of Konkani Wikipedia among the native language speakers.</li>
<li>The active editor count has been declining over the 6 months. For the month of December, there has been no activity from the active community on Konkani Wikipedia.</li>
<li>Number of the most active Wikipedians will grow once we proactively engage with the existing community in organising outreach to bring new editors.</li>
<li>There has been no new article created on Konkani Wikipedia in November and December at all. This is an alarming issue.</li>
<li>This is slightly disturbing as we can see from <a class="external-link" href="https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaGOM.htm">stats tables. <br /></a></li>
<li>Of the 40 or so active Konkani Wikipedians, only 2 of them have done some small activity on Konkani Wikipedia, whereas the rest have not visited the site for almost 3 months.</li>
<li>The community needs to be engaged with more and there is a need for bringing leadership. May be Konkani language encyclopedia Konkani Vishwakosh that was <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/re-release-konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa-3.0">relicensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license</a> by the Goa University will be a useful resource to enhance the Goan Konkani Wikipedia.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Note:</b><br />1. <span class="reference-text">Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalencyklopedin" title="Nationalencyklopedin">Nationalencyklopedin</a></i></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-progress-from-july-to-december-2015'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-progress-from-july-to-december-2015</a>
</p>
No publisherrahimKonkani WikipediaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2016-02-05T02:49:29ZBlog EntryKonkani-language books from Konkani-language culture center Mannd Sobhaann to enrich Konkani Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/konkani-language-books-from-konkani-language-culture-center-mannd-sobhaann-to-enrich-konkani-wikipedia
<b>Mangalore based cultural centre Maand Sobhaann has recently relicensed 3 of their publications under a free license so that the books could be digitised on Konkani Wikisource and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.</b>
<p><a class="external text" href="http://www.manddsobhann.org/" rel="nofollow">Mannd Sobhaann</a>,
a private organisation working for unification of Konkani people around
the world, preservation and promotion of Konkani language and culture,
has recently relicensed 3 of their published books under a <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0" rel="nofollow">CC-by-SA 4.0</a>
license. Erik Ozario, founder of the organisation has kindly permitted
to open these books under free license so they get digitised on <a class="external text" href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page/Konkani">Konkani Wikisource</a> and contribute in enriching the <a title="w:gom:मुखेल पान" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gom:%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%96%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B2_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8">Goan Konkani Wikiepdia</a>. Thanks to Wikimedian <a title="en:User:Outofindia" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Outofindia">Harriet Vidyasagar</a> for her help in acquiring these books. The three books that are relicensed are Konkani pustakaam, a compilation of Konkani books published for last century; Prabhaav, compilation of Konkani stories and writers; and another book containing compilation of songs in praise of Jesus.</p>
<p>Mannd Sobhaann as an organisation has been quite instrumental in
taking Konkani language to masses. They have opened up a space called
Kalangan in Mangalore for Konkani speakers to gather and organise
various language and cultural celebrations. They have published 13 books
and 23 music albums on Konkani language and culture. Their publication
and association of them will hopefully lead to better the Konkani
Wikimedia projects and unite the Konkani speakers in Mangalore and Goa
to grow the Wikimedia community.</p>
<p>CIS-A2K's work with the Konkani Wikipedia received a boost when two prominent organisations working for popularisation and conservation of Konkani culture, Maand Sobhaan and World Konkani Centre decided to join hands with us. They have agreed to not only host GLAM (unleashing cultural data by institutional partnership with galleries, libraries, archives and museums) activities at their premises and the proposed museum at Maand Sobhaan but by donating three invaluable books to be released under CC-BY-SA license have paved the way for introduction of new content and also provided sources for citation and reference.</p>
<p>These organisations have worked relentlessly in their own capacity to spread the Konkani language, culture, aspects of life and introduce prominent personalities that have worked to promote Konkani language. Their association with the Konkani Wikimedia projects is a sure way of not only addition of content but leads to the definite possibilities of increase in readers, increase in editors. A2K has proposed to digitise their archives which contains invaluable resources (audio, video and text) that shall be of immense help in growing Konkani Wikimedia projects.</p>
<p>By securing the help of these organisations, CIS-A2K has been able to spread the utility and functionality of Konkani Wikipedia from Goa to Mangalore. CIS-A2K is also considering to conduct and organise events that bring in institutions and organisations from different Konkani speaking parts of India together.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/konkani-language-books-from-konkani-language-culture-center-mannd-sobhaann-to-enrich-konkani-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/konkani-language-books-from-konkani-language-culture-center-mannd-sobhaann-to-enrich-konkani-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherRahmanuddin Shaik and Tanveer HasanKonkani WikisourceKonkani WikipediaWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2015-11-12T13:08:07ZBlog EntryKonkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live
<b>Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Here is a blog highlighting three Konkani Wikimedians and an advocate of the Wikipedia movement whose efforts finally paid off.</b>
<p>Read the original blog entry published on Wikimedia Blog on July 15, 2015 <a class="external-link" href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/07/15/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live/">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Goan Konkani Wikipedia (available at <a href="https://gom.wikipedia.org">gom.wikipedia.org</a>) has gone live after spending nine long years in incubation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An Indo-Aryan language, of the Indo-European family of languages, Konkani is the official language of <a title="w:Goa" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa">Goa</a>. It is a minority language in other Indian states, such as <a title="w:Maharashtra" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra">Maharashtra</a>, <a title="w:Karnataka" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka">Karnataka</a>, northern <a title="w:Kerala" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala">Kerala</a>, <a title="w:Dadra and Nagar Haveli" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadra_and_Nagar_Haveli">Dadra and Nagar Haveli</a>, and <a title="w:Daman and Diu" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daman_and_Diu">Daman and Diu.</a> It is spoken by about 7.4 million people.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Konkani can be written in five different scripts: Devanagari—officially used by the Government of Goa—as well as Latin (locally known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_in_the_Roman_script">Romi Konkani</a>), Kannada, Malayalam, and Persian. Of these, the Goan Antruz dialect of the language, in the Devanagari script, is considered <a title="en:Konkani alphabets" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_alphabets">standard</a> by the Indian constitution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Konkani Wikipedia has many heroes, as we see them. <a title="gom:User:Melissa Simoes" href="https://gom.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Melissa_Simoes">Melissa Simoes</a> and <a title="gom:User:Darshan kandolkar" href="https://gom.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Darshan_kandolkar">Darshan Kandolkar</a> are two of the many long-term contributors who joined during the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Konkani_Wikipedia_@Goa_University">Konkani Wikipedia @ Goa University</a> program and are still active even after the program formally concluded. Darshan is an assistant professor at the <a title="w:Government College Pernem" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_College_Pernem">Government College Pernem</a> in Goa. His professor at <a title="w:Goa University" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_University">Goa University</a>, Dr. Madhavi Sardesai—who passed away last year—played a vital role in inspiring him to go for higher studies in Konkani. Darshan realized that there is a lot to be written in Konkani when he was introduced to Wikipedia, and after that, he became dedicated to contributing to the project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“I would like to bring more students as contributors to our Konkani Wikipedia,” Darshan says. “My aim is to start with my students at Government College Pernem. Being an alumnus of Goa University, I also want my juniors there to join our community and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“I have a dream to start a project for the freedom fighters of Goa and involve a diverse set of people, from students to journalists and columnists. I also want to build partnership with educational institutions so we could engage with the students for a longer run and the existing Konkani community could mentor them,” he continues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“Being a new Wikipedia project, Konkani Wikipedia needs more quality measures and the articles have to grow to good quality articles with more images and templates, I want to take it to the level of English Wikipedia with both quantitative and qualitative growth in articles!”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Konkani Wikimedia community has been using social media actively to promote the Konkani Wikipedia project, and to celebrate the successes of its contributors. After Melissa became the top contributor to the project, her fellow editor <a title="incubator:User:Konknni mogi 24" href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Konknni_mogi_24">Luis Gomes</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/konkaniwikipedia/permalink/485802771575565">congratulated</a> her. That brought Melissa into the spotlight, gaining the attention of editors from the global Wikimedia community. The community is continuing a tradition to rewarding the most prolific contributor of each month as the “Wikipedian of the Month”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Melissa was introduced to the Wikipedia program at her university where the target for each participating student was to write one article each about a village in Goa. “I wrote my article just for the sake of the marks, but never bothered to think about why I am writing it. After the program was over, I became inactive on Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“After some time, I met Father [Luis Gomes] in parish and then Darshan and Father inspired me to resume editing. Then, it became an addiction and I never stopped even for a day. I would come back from work and sit in front of my computer.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“Now, I am a teacher, and my fellow teachers are mostly women. I would like to introduce the Goan Konkani Wikipedia to them so they could also contribute to Wikipedia,” Melissa says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As Konkani Wikipedia went live, long term Wikimedian Fredrick Noronha, an early advocate of Konkani Wikipedia, said, “It is a wonderful feeling to see the Goan Konkani Wikipedia live. I would like to congratulate all who have been involved in some or the other way with the making of Konkani Wikipedia live from the days of its inception and incubation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“I am not a great contributor or even a language expert. I come from a content background and found my interest in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons long ago. But this helped me to associate myself in some way with the Konkani Wikipedia incubator. I am happy that CIS-A2K chipped in to help build a community and help it grow in collaboration with the Goa University.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“Students of the Konkani department in the university are the real heroes to take this effort forward by filling the Wikipedia incubator with more editing activity to which the institutional backing acted as catalyst,” he added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Fredrick feels there are major challenges that the community now has to start taking measures for: “The macrolanguage is written in multiple scripts. Out of five of the scripts three—Devanagari, Romi/Latin and Kannada—are actively used in printing and publication currently. People using all the scripts should be equally participating in a movement like Wikipedia to take their languages to other native speakers using Wikipedia as a digital tool.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“The second challenge is with the contributors. Goa, being home to majority of the Konkani language speakers, has English education from the primary level. This means many have a great level of technical ability. The technical contributor community here would be of great use to Konkani Wikipedia if tapped,” he adds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“The technical contributors are eager to contribute but have not been approached in a manner that would interest them. Similarly the Konkani authors who are helping propagate the language to masses have sadly no or very little clue about Wikipedia’s existence in Konkani. This disparity is stopping a massive flow of local encyclopedic content to the Konkani Wikipedia. Unless we tap into the technological and the linguistic groups it will be only a tip of the iceberg.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Fredrick explains that the the current Konkani Wikipedia community is primarily made up of students of Goa University. “This is both good and bad,” he says. “Having young and enthusiastic students as Wikipedia editors is helping the project to leap forward, which might not have happened if the faculty were targeted instead. There is, however, a great need for diversification.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“The approach to bring in authors in the 60–70 years age group will vary from the approach to bring in, for example, technical people. Our outreach strategies should ultimately fulfill both the literary and technological contributors, so that their work can help us to both grow content and to solve the problem of the multiple scripts, respectively,” Fredrick adds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Konkani Wikipedia community is organizing a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1449555445347537/">public seminar</a> on July 18 at <a href="https://www.unigoa.ac.in/">Goa University</a> to celebrate the launch of the Konkani Wikipedia and to pay tribute to Dr. Madhavi Sardesai, who always dreamed of the Konkani Wikipedia getting out of incubation.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Video</h2>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADarshan_Kandolkar_talks_about_Konkani_Wikipedia.webm?embedplayer=yes" frameborder="0" height="288" width="512"></iframe><br /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p>Wikimedian <a title="w:gom:User:Darshan Kandolkar" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gom:User:Darshan_Kandolkar">Darshan Kandolkar</a> shares his experience of contributing to Konkani Wikipedia. <br />Video in Konkani. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Darshan_Kandolkar_talks_about_Konkani_Wikipedia.webm">Video</a> by <a title="m:Wikimedia India" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India">Wikimedia India</a>, freely licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">CC-BY-SA 4.0.</a></p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaCreative CommonsAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedKonkani WikipediaHomepage2016-06-18T18:15:05ZBlog EntryReading Devanagari script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/reading-devanagri-konkani-wikipedia-in-kannada-script
<b>This is a small hack to read websites with Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili and a few more languages) based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada script.</b>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-ff83ed1f-466f-a710-9ab0-9e891e7f5af6" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://gom.wikipedia.org/">Konkani Wikipedia</a> finally <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/07/15/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live/">went live</a> in this June after being in <a href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom">Incubator </a>for nine years. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_language">Konkani language</a> is written using five different scripts; Devanagari (official script for Konkani in Goa), Kannada, Latin, Malayalam and Persian. The current Konkani Wikipedia is available at <a href="https://gom.wikipedia.org">https://gom.wikipedia.org</a> where “gom” is for the Goan variation of Konkani.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Wikipedia.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Wikipedia" /></p>
<p>There is a significant Konkani population in coastal Karnataka and to a small extent in northern Kerala that use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_alphabet">Kannada script</a> for writing Konkani. Many of these people might be facing issues with reading the Konkani articles in Devanagari script in the Goan Konkani Wikipedia which brings the need for making the Wikipedia available in Kannada and other scripts that Konkani uses.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">There are various ways to go about it. Some of the Wikimedia projects like the <a href="https://sr.wikipedia.org/">Serbian </a> and <a href="https://zh.wikipedia.org">Chinese Wikipedia</a> already had this issue and had multi-script transliteration as a solution. Transliteration between Devanagari and Kannada scripts could be transliterated in multiple ways and below is one of them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Noted typographer <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%95%E0%B3%86._%E0%B2%AA%E0%B2%BF._%E0%B2%B0%E0%B2%BE%E0%B2%B5%E0%B3%8D">K. P. Rao</a> who is known for creating fonts for almost all the Indian scripts has recently come up with a solution for Devanagari⟷Kannada transliteration by creating a new font “Devama” that has Devanagari Unicode encodings with Kannada glyphs. The font has the rendering logic as per Kannada rules which means if we set this fonts for any text typed using Devanagari script, it will display it in Kannada script. This will help anyone who can read Kannada script to read something written in Devanagari. Mr. Rao has generously released “Devama” under Open Font License (OFL) ver. 1.1. The source file for the font is currently available at<a href="https://github.com/pavanaja/DevamaNew"> https://github.com/pavanaja/DevamaNew</a> for anyone to use and modify with attribution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">How to use the font:</p>
<ol>
<li style="list-style-type: decimal;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://github.com/pavanaja/DevamaNew/archive/master.zip">Download and install the font as a .zip file</a>.</p>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: decimal;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Unzip the file and find the “Devama.otf” file. Install it. (the installation will vary based on your operating system, check a <a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/192980/how-to-install-remove-and-manage-fonts-on-windows-mac-and-linux/">how-to guide</a> to learn).</p>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: decimal;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Now inorder to make the font working you need to change the browser settings. (check <a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/208552/how-to-change-the-default-fonts-in-your-web-browser/">here</a> for Firefox and Chrome browser settings). You need to set “Devama” as the display font for Devanagari script. <br class="kix-line-break" />In Mozilla Firefox:</p>
</li>
<ol>
<li style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;" dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Select “Options” from Tools menu. It will open a new tab. Select the “Content” tab. Click on the button “Advanced...”. Select Devanagari from the drop-down list from “Fonts for” and set “Devama” as the font for all options. Click on “Ok” and close the dialog box. Now reload the Konkani Wikipedia to check if it is working or not.</p>
</li></ol>
</ol>
<p>Not just Konkani Wikipedia, any other site in Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili, Bihari and a few other Indian languages) could also be read in Kannada. This might be useful for those who could read in Kannada and have problems reading in Devanagari.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/reading-devanagri-konkani-wikipedia-in-kannada-script'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/reading-devanagri-konkani-wikipedia-in-kannada-script</a>
</p>
No publisherpavanajaKonkani WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-06-18T18:14:43ZBlog EntryNIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nie-steps-in-to-grow-konkani-wikipedia
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoU) with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS, in its sustained efforts to enhance the content and reach of <a class="external-link" href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/Mukhel_Pan">Kokani Wikepedia </a>(which is in incubation), has signed an MoU for a period of five years with <a class="external-link" href="http://dhe.goa.gov.in/nongovtnirmalainstitute.html">Nirmala Insitute of Education</a> (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College established in 1963 by the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in response to the then urgent need for trained teachers in post liberation Goa. The key objectives of this partnership are: a) to design, develop and execute a certificate course titled "Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia", which is aimed at middle and high school teacher-trainees and teachers; and b) to introduce Wikimedia projects into the pedagogic curriculum of NIE.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Both CIS and NIE share a mutual interest in conserving, developing and disseminating knowledge free of cost in Konkani, which incidentally is Goa’s official language. Konkani as a language faces several challenges — it has no official script. The population who speak it are dispersed across the world and have little motivation to further the cause of Konkani, and there are few educational venues that offer a formal course to study Konkani or offer Konkani based curriculum. NIE Principal Dr. Denzil Martins welcomed this MoU and said that "it will guide our teacher-trainees to upload relevant information in Konkani that can be freely accessed by the local population" and "provide the volunteer-trainees with skills that they will be able to use to contribute and enhance the free knowledge in Konkani". The MoU was signed by Dr. Denzil Martins from NIE and T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director, Access to Knowledge, CIS) in the presence of staff and students of NIE and volunteers Harriet Vidyasagar and Gayathri Rao Konkar. Dr. Rita Paes, ex-Principal of NIE who worked to forge this MoU sent her best wishes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K since 2013, has worked to develop partnerships with key educational institutions to promote and grow Konkani Wikipedia. It has previously worked with NIE to design and implement a program to enroll 100 B.Ed. students to increase the amount of information available in <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Goan_Towns_%26_Villages_@_Nirmala_Institute_of_Education"> Goan villages and towns </a> on Konkani Wikipedia. A2K has also been instrumental in convincing Goa University to <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/re-release-konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa-3.0"> re-release Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopedia) under CC-BY-SA 3.0 </a> , making it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The course ‘Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia’ will enable the teacher participant to have a) a comprehensive understanding of changes due to digital technology to the knowledge domain; b) an introduction to various openness movements that inform the discourse on Open Educational Resources; c) exposure and training to participate on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia; and d) practical examples and best practices of using Wikipedia and sister projects within the classroom context. The parties will also co-design and jointly implement programmes to introduce Wikipedia in the NIE curriculum. The curriculum for this workshop is positioned within the context of indian languages (particularly Konkani) and school education to ensure that any learning is practical and can be applied within the teachers immediate pedagogic environment. Speaking about the relevance of this course Gayathri and Harriet (who have been associated with NIE as volunteers) mentioned that "the Goa government has handed out tablets to all school going children in Goa. In order to use them effectively in the classroom will require teachers to rethink their role and teaching methodologies and this course is an important step towards that". Agreeing with this Denzil Martins feels that this course "will provide the teacher-trainees with ideas and inputs for using Wikipedia in creative ways in the classroom".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This partnership could bring huge momentum and scale for the growth of Konkani as participants who graduate from this course will as teachers act as anchors and mentors to teach and assign Wikipedia editing assignments in their respective schools and classrooms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As Gayathri feels "such courses once fine tuned should be made available to teachers from all over the country and should be part of the package for introducing the digital technology in the school system. Today it ends with setting up computer labls in schools or distribution of hardware to students - they may have a 'computer teacher' but the class and subject teachers never become part of these new initiatives. Only when this happens can we move away from 'teaching computers' to using computers as tools to learn and teach, which is the primary objective of digital technology in schools".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS will develop this open course and welcomes anyone to partner in this effort, which will be made available for anyone to use it within their context. The efforts to build free and open knowledge platforms like Konkani Wikipedia will continue and partnerships like NIE will play a crucial role in building a robust knowledge society in India.<b> </b></p>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nie-steps-in-to-grow-konkani-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nie-steps-in-to-grow-konkani-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publishervishnuAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedKonkani WikipediaOpennessHomepage2014-10-10T11:26:26ZBlog EntryCommunity led Konkani Wikipedia Outreach
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-outreach
<b>Goa University students organised the first ever community led Konkani Wikipedia outreach on May 14, 2014. Fifteen first year M.A. students from Konkani Department participated in the six hour long workshop. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The primary focus of this workshop was to educate the MA first year students about contributing to Konkani Wikipedia which is currently in <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/Mukhel_Pan" title="incubator:Wp/gom/Mukhel Pan">incubation</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) took this up as an assignment to build capacity of interested community members to conduct effective outreach sessions in Konkani. By way of supporting and mentoring such workshops CIS wants to make sure that we do not reach a situation where Konkani Wikipedia community is entirely dependent on CIS-A2K for its growth. The community should be able to sustain even if CIS-A2K pulls out of its Konkani work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The workshop was organised by, User: <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Darshan_kandolkar" title="incubator:User:Darshan kandolkar">Darshan kandolkar</a> , User: <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Konknni_mogi_24" title="incubator:User:Konknni mogi 24">Konknni mogi 24</a>, User: <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Supriya_kankumbikar" title="incubator:User:Supriya kankumbikar">Supriya kankumbikar</a> and User: <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:John_Noronha" title="incubator:User:John Noronha">John Noronha</a>. The presenters were trained, mentored and supported by CIS-A2K to organise this workshop. This included:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Helping the trainers get physical space to organise this workshop at Goa Central State Library.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Training the presenters on how to best organise the workshop and divide it into different sections such as a) Introduction to Wikipedia b) Introduction to Basic Editing c) Hands on workshop on basic editing d) Advance Editing e) Hands on workshop on advance editing</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Providing all the training documents such as presentation and presenters note.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Providing registration and feedback forms.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Helping in getting the IP released from '7 accounts creation per IP rule'.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Helping the trainers to design customised energisers, Wikipedia quiz and Wikipedia games to keep the participant's enthusiasm high.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Konkani1.png" alt="Konkani1" class="image-inline" title="Konkani1" /></th>
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<th>Above: Participants take part in Wiki editing at the workshop.</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-outreach'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-outreach</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKonkani WikipediaOpenness2014-06-10T08:44:22ZBlog EntryCIS-A2K: Work Accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/work-accomplished-konkani-wikipedia
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K team) is pleased to share with you the key accomplishments about the work it accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia from September to December 2013 in this report. In accordance with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Program’s (CIS-A2K) Konkani Work Plan 2013-14 the program has invested time and effort to build Konkani Wikimedia community and projects.</b>
<h2>Highlights</h2>
<h3>Increased editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K has been organising different programs and workshops. The idea is to bring in as many volunteers as possible who can contribute to Konkani Wikipedia for years to come. We have organised these outreach sessions mainly in Devanagari, Romi and Kannada scripts. As a result of these programs we have been able to significantly increase no. of editors, consistently have minimum of 5-6 active editors per month and build a community of volunteers. You can also view level of editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia for the past few months in the chart below:</p>
<table class="invisible">
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/EditsonKonkaniWikipedia.png" alt="Edits on Konkani Wikipedia" class="image-inline" title="Edits on Konkani Wikipedia" /></th>
</tr>
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<td><i>Above: Edits Per Month on Konkani Wikipedia (Mar-13 to Dec-13) (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0) </i><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Increased number of articles on Konkani Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Total number of articles increased from 150 in Sep 2013 to 315 in Nov 2013. The number of articles have doubled over a period of 3 months. We should keep in mind that out of those who edited in Devanagari; 95% of them were completely new to the input method and had to spend considerable time learning and practicing it.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ArticlesonKonkaniWikipedia.png" alt="Articles on Konkani Wikipedia" class="image-inline" title="Articles on Konkani Wikipedia" /></th>
</tr>
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<td><i>Above: No. of articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)</i></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Translated Media Wiki messages</h3>
<p>CIS-A2K organised translation sprint to help translate Media Wiki interface messages. We achieved translating <a class="text external" href="http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&language=gom-deva&group=core-0-mostused&filter=&action=translate" rel="nofollow">79% of these messages in Konkani Devanagari</a> while all <a class="text external" href="http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&language=gom-latn&group=core-0-mostused&filter=&action=translate" rel="nofollow">100% messages have already been translated in Romi script</a></p>
<h3>Re-release of Konkani Vishwaksh under Creative Commons License</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Upon CIS-A2K‘s explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era. Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work that took over 14 years to develop. It encompasses the world’s information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. To know more about click <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Konkani_Vishwakosh_CC" title="India Access To Knowledge/Events/Konkani Vishwakosh CC">here</a> and <a class="text external" href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/26/konkani-vishkawosh-free-license/">here</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Initiated & Completed 30% of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Goa University in collaboration with the CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. 37 participants are enrolled in this project who are working to digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized. The program started on 19th October and in just about 2 months 30% of the encyclopedia had already been digitized. You can monitor the progress of this project on Wikisource. Here are the links for <a class="text external" href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Konkani_Viswakosh_Vol1.pdf">Volume 1</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Konkani_Viswakosh_Vol2.pdf">Volume 2</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Konkani_Viswakosh_Vol3.pdf">Volume 3</a> and <a class="text external" href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Konkani_Vishwakosh_-_Volume_4_Released.pdf">Volume 4</a>. Please note that some of the participants firstly digitize the encylopedia either in their Sandbox or offline and then move it to Wikisource. To know more about the project click <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Konkani_Vishwakosh_Digitization" title="India Access To Knowledge/Events/Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization">here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Signed an MoU with Goa University</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Goa University entered into a three year MoU with CIS for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University and CIS-A2K will work together to help build Konkani Wikipedia and community.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">White paper by a Linguist</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="text external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratap_Naik">Fr. Pratap Naik</a>, S.J. B.Sc., B.Ed. M.A. (Linguistics), M.Phil. (Linguistics), Ph.D. (Linguistics) has written a white paper discussing issues faced by Konkani language and his views on how it should be dealt on Wikimedia projects. We'll soon upload the white paper on Wikimedia Commons and make the link available.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">14 Outreach session, over 450 participants, in 3 months</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K organised about 14 outreach sessions and reached out to over 450 people to create awareness about Konkani Wikipedia and the community between Sep-Dec 2013. Details of these sessions can be found <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Konkani_Wikipedia_@Goa_University/Events" title="India Access To Knowledge/Konkani Wikipedia @Goa University/Events">here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Got consensus from field experts</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the past few months CIS-A2K has spoken with Konkani Wikipedians (such as <a class="text external" href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fredericknoronha">Frederick Noronha</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Deepak_D%27Souza">Deepak D'Souza</a>, Seby Fernandes) Konkani linguists (such as Fr. Pratap), professors from Konkani Department at Goa University (<a class="text external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhavi_Sardesai">Dr. Madhavi Sardesai</a> and <a class="text external" href="http://www.unigoa.ac.in/academic_staff.php?staffid=40&adepid=7&mdepid=1" rel="nofollow">Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar</a>), cultural experts (such as Prof. Alito Siqueira and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Outofindia" title="User:Outofindia">Harriet Vidyasagar</a>) and other experts to propose a solution for Konkani Wikipedia that faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. To a great extent we have got consensus from different field experts that we should strive to create separate Wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedians Speak</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the ongoing projects of CIS-A2K is 'Wikipedians Speak' which are small videos of Wikipedians that captures their expereinces, learnings and challenges. As a part of this project CIS-A2K published several videos of Konkani Wikipedians.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nitika.t/Draft2">Link to the post published on Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/work-accomplished-konkani-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/work-accomplished-konkani-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedKonkani WikipediaOpennessHomepage2013-12-31T11:48:02ZBlog EntryPooja Tople on Wikimedia Projects
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/pooja-tople-wikipedia-projects
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.</b>
<h3>Video</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedians_speak_-_Participant_of_Konkani_Vishwakosh_Digitization_Project,_Pooja_Tople.webmhd.webm?embedplayer=yes" width="320"></iframe></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Above: Participant of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project, Pooja Tople, talks about her experiences with Wikimedia Projects</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/pooja-tople-wikipedia-projects'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/pooja-tople-wikipedia-projects</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKonkani WikipediaVideoOpenness2013-12-31T11:04:59ZBlog EntryDarshana Mandrekar speaks on Konkani Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshana-mandrekar-on-konkani-wikipedia
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Darshana Mandrekar a participant at the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program speaks about her inspiration to edit Konkani Wikipedia.</p>
<h3>Video</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedians_Speak_-_Konkani_Wikipedia_Editor,_Darshana_Mandrekar.webmhd.webm?embedplayer=yes" width="320"></iframe></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above: Darshana Mandrekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshana-mandrekar-on-konkani-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshana-mandrekar-on-konkani-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKonkani WikipediaVideoOpenness2013-12-31T10:38:07ZBlog EntryDarshan Kandolkar on Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshan-kandolkar-konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-process
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Darshan Kandolkar, talks about his experience with Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process and Konkani translation sprint.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Video</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedians_speak_-_Konkani_Wikipedia_Editor,_Darshan_Kandolkar.webmhd.webm?embedplayer=yes" width="320"></iframe></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above: Darshan Kandolkar's interview on Konkani Wikipedia<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshan-kandolkar-konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-process'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshan-kandolkar-konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-process</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKonkani WikipediaVideoOpenness2013-12-31T10:47:46ZBlog EntryVarsha Kavlekar on Konkani Wikipedia Incubator
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/varsha-kavlekar-konkani-wikipedia-incubator
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Konkani Wikipedia Editor, Varsha Kavlekar, talks about her experience with Konkani Wikipedia Incubator.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Video</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedians_speak_-_Konkani_Wikipedia_Editor,_Varsha_Kavlekar.webmsd.webm?embedplayer=yes" width="320"></iframe></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above: Varsha speaks about Konkani Wikipedia<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/varsha-kavlekar-konkani-wikipedia-incubator'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/varsha-kavlekar-konkani-wikipedia-incubator</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaKonkani WikipediaVideoOpenness2013-12-31T10:56:22ZBlog Entry