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Wikiwomen’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 EntryWikipedia Workshop on Template Creation and Modification Conducted in Bengaluru
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-on-template-creation-and-modification-conducted-in-bengaluru
<b>A Wikipedia workshop on template creation, modification was conducted in Bengaluru on 30 July 2017. Here is a report.</b>
<p>A Wikipedia workshop on template creation, modification was conducted in Bengaluru on 30 July 2017. 9 Wikipedians, mostly associated with <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Karavali_Wikimedians">Karavali Wikimedians</a> and Kannada Wikimedia projects attended the workshop. A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages. Templates usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on any number of articles or pages. They are commonly used for boilerplate messages, standard warnings or notices, infoboxes, navigational boxes and similar purposes.<sup>1</sup> The workshop was requested by Kannada Wikimedians.</p>
<p>The workshop started with explaining template and its importance. This was followed by discussing structure of a template, and creation of a simple template with a couple of variables. This activity continued for sometime, and designing a template with CSS markup was shown. Following this different types of templates such as infobox, navbox, sidebar, informational templates such as Hatnote were shown and discussed. On Wikipedia there is a Special page with a list of wanted templates. The participants studied the page and started making a list of templates they should create or improve. It was found that a good number of templates on Kannada Wikipedia don't have proper documentation in native languages. The participants came to a conclusion that attempts should be made to properly localize the template. During the workshop the participants spent sometime to translate and localize some template documentations.</p>
<p>The workshop was a preliminary one in nature and should be followed up by an advanced workshop.</p>
<h2>Image credit<br /></h2>
<ul><li>
<a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kannada_wiki_workshop_on_Template_02.jpg">File:Kannada wiki workshop on Template 02.jp</a>g by <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gopala_Krishna_A">User:Gopala Krishna A</a> from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license<br /></li></ul>
<h2>Footnotes</h2>
<ol><li><a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Template">Help:Template</a> on English Wikipedia, accessed 10 August 2017</li><li>Special:WantedTemplates on a Wikipedia<br /></li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-on-template-creation-and-modification-conducted-in-bengaluru'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-on-template-creation-and-modification-conducted-in-bengaluru</a>
</p>
No publishertitoWikipediaWorkshopKannada WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2017-08-10T06:48:26ZBlog EntryWikipedia taps students for Kannada content
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-24-2014-wikipedia-taps-students-for-kannada-content
<b>Conducts workshops in Ujire, Moodbidri for training in vernacular editing.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Renuka Phadnis was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/wikipedia-taps-students-for-kannada-content/article5824580.ece">published in the Hindu</a> on March 24, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedia is tapping college students in tier II and III cities in India to increase vernacular content on the web-based encyclopaedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">U.B. Pavanaja, Programme Officer – Indian Language, Access to Knowledge, Centre for Internet Studies (CIS), Bangalore, says there is adequate content on Kannada, Kannadiga, Karnataka on Kannada Wikipedia but on science and technology, the content is a little less.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To fill this gap, he is conducting workshops to teach students to turn volunteers for Wikipedia in far-flung places like Ujire and Moodbidri.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Sunday, 47 students attended a workshop at Shri Dharmasthala Manunatheshwara (SDM) College in Ujire. And most of them immediately donned the volunteer’s cap. “More people who write Kannada should contribute to Wikipedia in Kannada,” says Shalini, a student of M.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism (MCJ) at SDM College, after the workshop.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Murali Krishna, also a journalism student of SDM College, says typing in the language was “a bit difficult” but some practice will make it simpler. “I had no idea about (editing) Kannada Wikipedia,” he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Saturday Mr. Pavanaja — who has been editing the Kannada Wikipedia for the past 10 years — conducted a similar workshop for 30 students at Alva’s College, Moodbidri.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Pavanaja says contributions peaked in between 2006 and 2008, then declined “due to many reasons” and “picked up last year”. There was a significant increase in the number of editors after 500 students of Christ University, Bangalore, were trained in editing at a workshop held in January this year.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He says Kannada Wikipedia has very few women editors. Of the 557 editors of Kannada Wikipedia, who have contributed 16,670 articles till now, 226 are active editors and, of them, five men and three women editors are “very active”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Bhaskar Hegde, Head of the Department, MCJ, SDM College, said he got the workshops organised at the college after hearing about them from friend Niranjan Vanalli (Chairman, Department of MCJ, Mysore University). He said, “This is the second workshop here. The students are enthusiastic and it sharpens their writing skills.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mangalore will host a workshop to get people to contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. U.B. Pavanaja, Programme Officer – Indian Language, Access to Knowledge, Centre for Internet Studies (CIS), Bangalore, said a workshop will be held in Theosophical College, Balmatta, on April 6.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-24-2014-wikipedia-taps-students-for-kannada-content'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-24-2014-wikipedia-taps-students-for-kannada-content</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2014-04-03T10:01:27ZNews ItemWikipedia Mangalore Workshop (Coverage in Prajavani)
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-workshop-mangalore-coverage-prajavani-february-27-2014
<b>Dr. U.B.Pavanaja gave a presentation on Wikipedia with a special focus on students and women at Roshini Nilaya, Mangalore on February 26, 2014. An event report was published in Prajavani the following day.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Scanned version of the report published by Prajavani on February 27 is below. The event was organised by Roshini Nilaya and co-sponsored by CS-A2K.</p>
<hr />
<table class="plain">
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy2_of_Prajavani.png" alt="Prajavani" class="image-inline" title="Prajavani" /></th>
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</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-workshop-mangalore-coverage-prajavani-february-27-2014'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-workshop-mangalore-coverage-prajavani-february-27-2014</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2014-03-05T11:04:24ZNews ItemWikipedia Event in Mangalore
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/vijaya-karnataka-december-18-2016-wikipedia-event-in-mangalore
<b>The article was published by Vijaya Karnataka on December 18, 2016.</b>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_VijayaKarnataka.png/@@images/cdd03817-c94d-4aa9-90aa-8de08db72573.png" alt="Vijaya Karnataka" class="image-inline" title="Vijaya Karnataka" /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/vijaya-karnataka-december-18-2016-wikipedia-event-in-mangalore'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/vijaya-karnataka-december-18-2016-wikipedia-event-in-mangalore</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KKannada WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-12-20T16:43:30ZNews ItemUTF-8, Indic and Stub Length Article in Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/utf-8-indic-and-stub-length-article-in-wikipedia
<b>One of the activities conducted as part of Wiki Conference India 2016 was the Punjab Editathon. It was about adding articles related to Punjab to Indian language Wikipedias and English Wikipedia. There was also an announcement made about some award for highest contribution.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">See the original blog post at <a class="external-link" href="http://pavanaja.com/english/utf-8-indic-stub-length-wikipedia/">Dr. Pavanaja Blog</a></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This lead to continued discussions in a closed chat group on how do we decide the winner. People thought it is very simple to announce the winner just based on highest number of bytes added. On first look, it looked very trivial and a simple case. I pointed out during the discussions about the encoding used in Wikipedia is UTF-8 and it uses different number of bytes for English and Indian languages. Before giving more details I would like to draw your attention to a simple experiment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I typed Kannada letter ಅ (a) in my Sandbox in Kannada Wikipedia and saved it. Then I checked the RecentChanges page in Kannada Wikipedia. That showed that I have added 3 bytes to my Sandbox page. But I had added just one Kannada character. I did the same experiment in English Wikipedia. I just added one letter, the English letter “A” to my Sandbox in English Wikipedia and checked the number of bytes added. It showed just one byte.</p>
<table class="invisible">
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<th><img alt="whatsapp-image-2016-10-19-at-11-20-09-pm" class="alignleft wp-image-2053" height="91" src="http://pavanaja.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/WhatsApp-Image-2016-10-19-at-11.20.09-PM-300x136.jpeg" width="200" /></th><th></th><th><img alt="whatsapp-image-2016-10-19-at-11-20-14-pm" class="alignleft wp-image-2052" height="102" src="http://pavanaja.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/WhatsApp-Image-2016-10-19-at-11.20.14-PM-300x153.jpeg" width="200" /></th>
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<td><img alt="english-a" class="alignleft wp-image-2056 " height="121" src="http://pavanaja.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/English-A-300x181.jpg" width="201" /></td>
<td></td>
<td><img alt="english-1-byte" class="alignleft wp-image-2055 " height="127" src="http://pavanaja.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/English-1-byte-300x190.jpg" width="201" /></td>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">What is going on? Here is the explanation. There are different ways Unicode text can be stored. UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 are the prominent ways. UTF-16 uses 2 bytes for all characters. UTF-32 uses 4 bytes. UTF-8 is a special kind of encoding. It uses series of single bytes to represent Unicode data. The first character, called Byte Order Mark (BOM) indicates what encoding is being used. Unicode website has more details on these. UTF-8 was mainly used for web as the networking devices used on the initial days of Unicode could handle only 8 bits (1 byte) of data. In other words, UTF-8 was used for backward compatibility with ASCII, the original 8-bit encoding used prior to the advent of Unicode. Even today the default encoding used by HTML is UTF-8.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Does these answer our original question? Not yet. I said UTF-8 uses series of single bytes. It uses 1 byte for English, 2 bytes for European languages and 3 bytes for Indian languages. That is the reason why we saw 3 bytes for one Kannada character.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This pops up another interesting question regarding the definition of a stub article in Wikipedia. As per Wikipedia, an article which has less than 2048 bytes is considered as a stub article. Go to any language Wikipedia’s search page and type Special:ShortPages to get the list of all articles which are having less than 2048 bytes. If we convert this into number of characters it turns out to be 2048 for English but about 682 for Indic. That means the length of a stub article will be different for English and Indian language Wikipedias. Should we have a different yardstick for the definition of a stub article for Indian language Wikipedias then? I think yes.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/utf-8-indic-and-stub-length-article-in-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/utf-8-indic-and-stub-length-article-in-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherpavanajaCIS-A2KKannada WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-10-20T02:26:29ZBlog EntryUsing Kannada in technology made easier with smartphones
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-november-1-2016-using-kannada-in-technology-made-easier-with-smartphones
<b>With the IT revolution, many believed that the younger generation would prefer to type and communicate in English than Kannada.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was interviewed by the New Indian Express. The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2016/nov/01/using-kannada-in-technology-made-easier-with-smartphones-1533650--1.html">article was published</a> on November 1, 2016.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But U B Pavanaja, a member of Kannada Software Committee and a Kannada Wikipedia administrator, believes with latest technology, the use of Kannada has only been increasing. As the state celebrates Karnataka Rajyotsava today, Ashwini M Sripad spoke to Pavanaja on adapting Kannada language to the latest technology.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Where does Kannada stand when it comes to adopting technology?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Quite good. But not the best. Most tools needed to use Kannada in technology are available now. They are almost perfect.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Has there been any change in the use of Kannada in computer/mobile by youngsters in the last decade?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yes. Due to the availability of Kannada input methods, and advent of smartphones, many youngsters are now using Kannada on their computers and smartphones. More people are typing in the Kannada script itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What should the state government do to popularise Kannada in technology?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A lot needs to be done. There was a committee to look into the standardisation and proper implementation of Kannada in technology. The committee submitted its report. The government implemented some parts of the report. After that nothing has been done. Now the committee does not exist. Standardisation is a continuous process. There must be a permanent committee to look into this. For example, domain names (website names) are available now in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, etc., but not in Kannada. This is due to the fact that no one represents Kannada in meetings of W3C India, an international community to develop web standards.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>How is the response to Kannada Wikipedia?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A lot of awareness has been created among people about the existence of Kannada Wikipedia in the last three years. But more needs to be done.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What can be done to improve it further?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At present, the articles are written by enthusiastic Kannadigas who are not really writers. They are doing this out of passion for the language. But well-known Kannada writers don’t edit Kannada Wikipedia. Kannada has a good number science writers, but they are not editing Kannada Wikipedia, which is very badly needed at this time. Also, there is no comprehensive printed encyclopaedia in Kannada for science and technology. The last one came out 18 years ago. Therefore students in Kannada medium schools need a good Kannada encyclopaedia. This requirement can be met by Kannada Wikipedia. But the number and quality of articles is far from sufficient. Writing for Kannada Wikipedia could be made compulsory for degree and post-graduate students to bring in some well-researched articles. Such programmes already do exist in some colleges in the state but we need more.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-november-1-2016-using-kannada-in-technology-made-easier-with-smartphones'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-november-1-2016-using-kannada-in-technology-made-easier-with-smartphones</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KKannada WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-11-01T05:19:17ZNews ItemUpload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/indian-express-july-5-2015-upload-more-kannada-articles-on-wikipedia
<b>Uploading information in Wikipedia helps to develop language, said Indian Languages Programme Manager U B Pavanaja here on Saturday. The article was published in Indian Express (Mangaluru edition) on July 5, 2015.</b>
<table class="grid listing">
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/UploadKannada.png" alt="Upload Kannada" class="image-inline" title="Upload Kannada" /></th>
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<td>Above: A scanned version of the article that appeared in Indian Express on July 5, 2015.</td>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/indian-express-july-5-2015-upload-more-kannada-articles-on-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/indian-express-july-5-2015-upload-more-kannada-articles-on-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherpavanajaOpennessKannada WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2015-09-13T06:09:34ZNews ItemUniversity of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license
<b>The University of Mysore and the Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the Open Knowledge Day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.uni-mysore.ac.in/">University of Mysore</a> can easily be termed as the best encyclopaedia in Kannada. It has been modelled after the famous Britannica encyclopaedia. Mysore University Vishwakosha has 14 volumes having a total of 13802 pages. The very first volume was brought out in the year 1969 and the final volume was released in 2004. Many famous Kannada authors, scientists, academicians and stalwarts from other fields have worked on creating this encyclopaedia. The print volumes of the first version of the encyclopaedia are out of stock now. Recently UoM has started revising and reprinting the encyclopaedia. So far 4 volumes have been revised, enhanced and published.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">UoM believes in Open Access to Knowledge. It has put up the research outputs from its departments online for <a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/">free access to the public</a>. UoM has done these as a subscriber to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read">idea of Budapest Open Access Initiative</a>. The Open Access Institutional Repository, of UoM, covers scholarly publications covering journal articles, conference papers, books, book reviews, presentations, reports and patents ever since UoM was established in 1916. Extending the philosophy of open knowledge to the Kannada encyclopaedia published by UoM becomes a natural extension. UoM is in the verge of celebrating its centenary soon and has taken many initiatives in that direction.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K has been in negotiations with UoM towards releasing of its high quality Kannada Vishwakosha (Kannada Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons license. CIS and UoM signed a MoU on February 22, 2014. Here is the relevant extract from the MoU: "They will work together to digitize all encyclopaedic publications for which the copyright is owned by UoM, and re-release them under the Creative Common license (CC-BY-SA 3.0). The digitized content will be made available for everyone through free content distribution platforms like Wikipedia and Wikisource. The digitization will be done employing the global standard Unicode so that the content has longevity, is universally portable and is easily searchable. Both parties have joined hands to undertake the above in order to enhance digital literacy in the Kannada language and facilitate collaborative production and free dissemination of knowledge in Kannada to the students, academics, researchers and the wider public. The parties also believe that by reintroducing the knowledge in digital and openly accessible formats could significantly enhance the production of knowledge in Kannada and give a new lease of life to Kannada language in the digital era. The parties will co-design and jointly implement relevant programmes to achieve this objective." As part of this MoU, UoM agreed to release the first six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under CC.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Volume numbers 1, 2, 4 and 6 of Kannada Vishwakosha of UoM have been revised and published recently. A project page has been created in Kannada Wikipedia <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp">for this project</a>. Kannada Wikipedians joined hands in the project. The project involved extracting the text from the soft copies of the files, converting them into Unicode, extracting articles from these files and uploading them to Kannada Wikisource.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A team of interns from Christ University had a major role to play in this development. These were students from the Wikipedia in Education Program that was conducted in Christ University during the academic period of 2013-14. These students took active part in the current project and uploaded about 1200 articles so far (till July 21, 2014).</p>
<hr />
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The event attracted very good media coverage. Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-knowledge-day-mysore-media-coverage-zip" class="external-link">downloaded here</a>.</p>
<p><b>Other Links:</b></p>
<ul>
<li>UoM Kannada Vishwakosha conversion project page in Kannada Wikipedia - <a href="http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp">http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp</a></li>
<li>Articles from UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - <a href="http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv">http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv</a></li>
<li>Category UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - <a href="http://bit.ly/mysoreunivws">http://bit.ly/mysoreunivws</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For pictures from the Open Knowledge Day event in Mysore - <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysore_University_Open_Knowledge_Day">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysore_University_Open_Knowledge_Day</a></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license</a>
</p>
No publisherpavanajaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaHomepageWikipediaFeaturedOpennessKannada Wikipedia2014-07-24T07:03:45ZBlog EntryTenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia: Vijayavani Coverage
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tenth-anniversary-kannada-wikipedia-vijayavani-report
<b>Vijayavani published a report of the forthcoming tenth anniversary celebration of Kannada Wikipedia on November 17. </b>
<p>The details of the event can be <a class="external-link" href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%95%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%AA%E0%B3%80%E0%B2%A1%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%AF:%E0%B2%B8%E0%B2%AE%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%AE%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%B2%E0%B2%A8/%E0%B2%A6%E0%B2%B6%E0%B2%AE%E0%B2%BE%E0%B2%A8%E0%B3%8B%E0%B2%A4%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%B8%E0%B2%B5">found here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/VijayaVani10thAnniversaryCurtainRaiserNov142013.jpg" alt="VijayaVani Report" class="image-inline" title="VijayaVani Report" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tenth-anniversary-kannada-wikipedia-vijayavani-report'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tenth-anniversary-kannada-wikipedia-vijayavani-report</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2013-11-20T07:16:23ZNews ItemTenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia: Udayavani Coverage
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-udayavani-november-15
<b>Udayavani, on November 15, 2013 published about the upcoming tenth anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia.</b>
<p>See the original published by <a class="external-link" href="http://kannada.oneindia.in/news/bangalore/kannada-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-on-17th-november-079308.html">Udayavani here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">ನ.17ರಂದು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ಕನ್ನಡ ನೆಟ್ಟಿಗರ ಜ್ಞಾನದಾಹವನ್ನು ತಣಿಸುತ್ತಿರುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ 10 ವಸಂತಗಳನ್ನು ಪೂರೈಸಿರುವ ಸಂತಸವನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಇದೇ ಭಾನುವಾರ, ನವೆಂಬರ್ 17, 2013ರಂದು ಡಾ. ಎಚ್. ನರಸಿಂಹಯ್ಯ ಸಭಾಂಗಣ, ನ್ಯಾಶನಲ್ ಕಾಲೇಜು, ಬಸವನಗುಡಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ ಸಮಾರಂಭವನ್ನು ಆಯೋಜಿಸಿದೆ.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಮುಖಾಂತರವೇ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ವಿನಿಮಯ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರು ಈ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿ, ತಾವು ಬರೆದ ಲೇಖನ, ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮುಖತಃ ಚರ್ಚಿಸುವ ಅವಕಾಶವನ್ನು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಒದಗಿಸಿದೆ. ಜೊತೆಗೆ, ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಪರಿಚಯ, ಸಂಪಾದಕ ಆಗುವ ವಿಧಾನ, ಲೇಖನ ಬರೆಯುವ ಬಗೆ, ಚಿತ್ರಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ವಿವರಗಳನ್ನು ಈ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಡಲಾಗುವುದು.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ಕನ್ನಡದ ಖ್ಯಾತ ಲೇಖಕ ಡಾ. ಯು.ಆರ್. ಅನಂತಮೂರ್ತಿ, ಸಂಶೋಧಕ ಡಾ. ಜಿ. ವೆಂಕಟಸುಬ್ಬಯ್ಯ ಮತ್ತು ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತ ರವಿ ಹೆಗಡೆ ಅವರ ಮಾತುಗಳನ್ನು ಕೇಳುವ ಸುಯೋಗ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರಿಗೆ ಲಭಿಸಲಿದೆ. ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲಿಚ್ಛಿಸುವವರು ಮೊದಲೇ ನೋಂದಾಯಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬೇಕು.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>ಸ್ಥಳ :</b> ಎಚ್.ಎನ್. ಮಲ್ಟಿಮೀಡಿಯ ಹಾಲ್, ನ್ಯಾಶನಲ್ ಕಾಲೇಜು, ಬಸವನಗುಡಿ</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ದಿನಾಂಕ : ನವಂಬರ್ 17, 2013<br />ಸಮಯ : 9:30ರಿಂದ 13:00<br /><br />ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ವಿವರ:<br /><br />9:30-10:00 ನೋಂದಣಿ<br />10:00 ರಿಂದ 11:00 ಸಭಾ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ<br />ಸ್ವಾಗತ ಗೀತೆ - ಲಕ್ಷ್ಮಿ ಚೈತನ್ಯ<br />ಸ್ವಾಗತ ಮತ್ತು ನಿರ್ವಹಣೆ - ಡಾ. ಎ. ಸತ್ಯನಾರಾಯಣ<br />ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವನೆ - ಡಾ. ಯು. ಬಿ. ಪವನಜ<br /><br />ಮುಖ್ಯ ಅತಿಥಿಗಳ ಮಾತು<br /><br />ಡಾ. ಯು. ಆರ್. ಅನಂತಮೂರ್ತಿ<br />ನಾಡೋಜ ಪ್ರೊ.ಜಿ. ವೆಂಕಟಸುಬ್ಬಯ್ಯ<br />ರವಿ ಹೆಗಡೆ, ಸಮೂಹ ಸಂಪಾದಕ, ಉದಯವಾಣಿ<br /><br />ಹತ್ತು ವರ್ಷದಲ್ಲಿ ಉತ್ತಮ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಿದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರುಗಳಿಗೆ ಮತ್ತು ನಿರ್ವಾಹಕರುಗಳಿಗೆ ಸ್ಮರಣಿಕೆ ನೀಡಿಕೆ<br />ಧನ್ಯವಾದ ಸಮರ್ಪಣೆ<br />11:00 - 11:15 - ಚಹಾ</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">11:15 - 12:00</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಪ್ರಾತ್ಯಕ್ಷಿಕೆ - ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ<br />ಕ್ರಿಯೇಟಿವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್ - ಕಿರಣ್ ರವಿಕುಮಾರ<br />ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರುಗಳ ಮಾತು</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">12:00-13:00 - ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವ (edit-a-thon)<br />ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸಿದ್ಧ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಂಡು ಬಂದು ಲೇಖನ ಸೇರಿಸುವುದು.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ಸಾಧ್ಯವಿದ್ದವರು ಲ್ಯಾಪ್ಟಾಪ್, ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಡಾಂಗಲ್ ಮತ್ತು ಒಂದು ಸಿದ್ಧಪಡಿಸಿದ ಲೇಖನ ತಂದು ಕೊನೆಯ ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವದಲ್ಲಿ ಪಾಲ್ಗೊಳ್ಳಬಹುದು. ಬರುವವರು ದಯವಿಟ್ಟು ಈ ಪುಟದಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಂದಾಯಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಿ - https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ/ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ</p>
<div class="mobile_content_text" style="text-align: justify; ">ಎಲ್ಲ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಸುದ್ದಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಒನ್ಇಂಡಿಯಾ ನೋಟ. ನಿರಂತರ ಸುದ್ದಿ ಪಡೆಯಲು <a href="http://www.facebook.com/oneindiakannada" target="_blank">Facebook</a> ಮತ್ತು <a href="http://www.twitter.com/oneindiakannada" target="_blank">Twitter</a> ಮೇಲೆ ಇರಲಿ ಕಣ್ಣು.</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-udayavani-november-15'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-udayavani-november-15</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2013-11-20T07:25:08ZNews ItemTenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/tenth-anniversary-of-kannada-wikipedia
<b>Kannada Wikipedia has completed 10 years. The Kannada Wikipedia community will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of Kannada Wikpedia on Nov 17, 2013 from 9.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. at H N Multimedia Hall, National College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore. CIS-A2K is a co-sponsor for the program.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The guests of honour will be <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._R._Ananthamurthy">Dr. U R Ananthamurthy</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Venkatasubbaiah">Prof. G. Venkatasubbiah</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://glocalfunda.blogspot.in/">Ravi Hegde</a>. There will be speeches by the chief guests from 10.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m. <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/pavanaja-profile.pdf" class="external-link">Dr. U.B. Pavanaja</a>. This will be followed by a talk by some Kannada Wikipedians. At the end there will be a edit-a-thon where Wikipedians will add some articles to Kannada Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/KNWP10">Register for the event here</a></b>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/tenth-anniversary-of-kannada-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/tenth-anniversary-of-kannada-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada WikipediaEvent2013-11-14T10:17:23ZEventStats 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 EntrySix Kannada encyclopaedias released
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/web-india-123-july-15-2014-six-kannada-encyclopaedias-released
<b>The first six online volumes of the University of Mysore's Kannada Encyclopaedia were launched on wikipedia's Creative Commons (CC) to mark the 'Muktha Jana Dina Dayu' (Dissemination of Knowledge) today.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20140715/2425035.html">Click to read</a> the blog entry posted on Webindia 123 website on July 15, 2014.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Launching the works Vice-Chancellor Prof K S Rangappa said the project seeks to give new lease of life to encyclopaedia editions in Kannada. The repository of information shared on the internet will surely be a boon for many. With this, the works of great Kannada writers and experts will be accessible to all, he added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The university will encourage more such works and make sure the remaining 14 volumes are launched soon, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Kannada encyclopaedia project was taken up by Dr U B Pavanaja, programme officer, centre for internet and society, and his colleague Tejas Jain, a software engineer. Mr Pavanja said the initiative will expand the reach of Kannada language across the world. Over a 1000 articles have been shared on creative commons, he added.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/web-india-123-july-15-2014-six-kannada-encyclopaedias-released'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/web-india-123-july-15-2014-six-kannada-encyclopaedias-released</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2014-07-18T05:22:56ZNews ItemSessions on Kannada Wikipedia at Tumkur University
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/sessions-on-kannada-wikipedia-tumkur-university
<b>Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a session on Kannada Wikipedia for students of M.Sc. Library and Information Sciences followed by an advanced Kannada Wikipedia session for students of M.A. Literature on March 27, 2014. The event was organized by Tumkur University. </b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/sessions-on-kannada-wikipedia-tumkur-university'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/sessions-on-kannada-wikipedia-tumkur-university</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2014-04-06T04:50:42ZNews Item