The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 51 to 65.
Odia Wikipedia's 9th Anniversary and Workshop on Application of Odia in Media
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/sambad-e-paper-january-30-2013-odia-wikipedia-workshop-coverage
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Odia-Wikipedia and Academy for Media Learning organized a workshop on January 29, 2013. This was covered in Sambad on January 30, 2013.</b>
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<p>This was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://sambadepaper.com/epapermain.aspx?edcode=10&eddate=1/30/2013%2012:00:00%20AM&querypage=19">Sambad</a> on January 30, 2013.</p>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Odia.png/@@images/4c970c5f-75ad-435c-8bd7-28554c6d62eb.png" alt="Odia Wikipedia Coverage" class="image-inline" title="Odia Wikipedia Coverage" /><br /></th>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/sambad-e-paper-january-30-2013-odia-wikipedia-workshop-coverage'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/sambad-e-paper-january-30-2013-odia-wikipedia-workshop-coverage</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWorkshopWikipediaWikimedia2013-01-31T03:10:05ZNews ItemPromoting GLAM in Goa
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa
<b>We organised an introductory Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) session at Goa State Central Library on December 13, 2012. It was well attended by about 45 interested people coming from over 10 different GLAM institutes in Goa. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nitika Tandon from CIS and Debanjan from Pune community led the session about Wikipedia and GLAM activities that have been undertaken by our global community since 2010. The talk instilled a lot of enthusiasm in librarians and curators in Goa to start similar programs in their associated institutes.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Some of the institutes attending the session were: <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Christian_Art">Museum of Christian Art</a>, <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Chitra_Museum">Goa Chitra</a>, <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookworm_Children%27s_Library">Bookworm Library</a>, K.S. Goa State Library, GTL Bicholini, and DFLG District Library. Participants had a lot of interesting questions about starting GLAM projects in English, Marathi and Konkani, starting point of the project, logistical/financial support required to run a GLAM project, etc.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><span><span>To begin with we'll be meeting Victor Hugos Gomes from <a href="http://www.goachitra.com/">Goa Chitra</a> who has shown keen interest to start a GLAM project. Goa Chitra showcases the rich tradition of implements, tools, arts and crafts. Goa Chitra has archived Goa's cultural heritage through documents, books, photographs, handicrafts, electronic recordings, costumes, musical instruments, and artifacts. In the coming weeks we'll be following up with Goa Chitra and more institutions to figure out the possibility of starting new projects in 2013.</span></span></p>
<h3><span><span>Audio </span></span></h3>
<p>Here's an audio recording of the entire event: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/XEmylE">http://bit.ly/XEmylE</a></p>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GoaLibrary2.png" alt="Goa Library Lecture" class="image-inline" title="Goa Library Lecture" /></th>
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<td><span class="description">A GLAM lecture at Goa Central Library</span></td>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:27:22ZBlog EntryBringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain
<b>On December 14, 2012, a meeting was scheduled with the Vice Chancellor Dr. Satish R Shetye to discuss the possibility of bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in public domain. Nitika Tandon shares the development in this blog post.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>As for now the four volume Konkani Encyclopedia is under the copyright of the <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Goa">University of Goa</a>. Dr. Shetye has gifted one whole set of Konkani Encyclopedia to the Centre for Internet and Society and is interested to relinquish the copyright to release it under creative common license and digitize it on Wikipedia.</span> In the coming weeks we'll be working closely with Dr. Shetye and his team to bring this free encyclopedia on Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A Special thanks to Goa State Library, Goa University, Dr. Shetye, Prof. Alito Siqueira, and Prof. Gopakumar for such a wonderful gift. And a big thanks to Harriet Vidyasagar and Debanjan and all those who helped to pull this through.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:35:29ZBlog EntryWikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa
<b>A three hour Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, in the morning of December 14, 2012 at St. Xavier's College in Mapusa, Goa. Over 30 participants attended the session.</b>
<p>The workshop started with a short introductory presentation followed by a learning session on how to edit the Wikipedia. Since there were lesser number of computers, participants were divided in groups of 2 or 3 at the maximum. Each group made at least 3 edits with the help of volunteers present in the room.</p>
<p>A follow up session will be organised in January or February of 2013 to organise an edit-a-thon for all the interested and enthusiastic participants.</p>
<p>A special thanks to everyone who helped organising this event, especially to Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick, Debanjan - all from the Wikipedia family and Nitin Volvoikar, the Head of Journalism Department from <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Xavier%27s_College,_Mapusa,_Goa">St. Xavier's</a>.</p>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GroupSt.Xavier.png" alt="St.Xavier GLAM" class="image-inline" title="St.Xavier GLAM" /></th>
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<td>Above is a picture of the whole group of participants at the St.Xavier's College at Mapusa, Goa</td>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:33:29ZBlog EntryTwo-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university
<b>Last month, on December 12 and 13, 2012, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society along with Wikipedia community members organized a two-day workshop for M.A. and Ph.D. students at the Goa University. Nitika Tandon participated in the event and shares with us the developments. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All efforts invested in discussions and planning the workshop over multiple mail trails, conference calls, one-on-one calls paid off extremely well. Over 35 participants attended the two-days workshop and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most of the participants had already created their usernames before the first session, as it was instructed to them earlier, though there were some participants who created their user accounts during the session. Despite creating a <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42767">ticket</a> for releasing the IP from the "seven accounts creation limit" we ran into an IP block. This was the second time we encountered such a problem. We will look more closely into this matter for smoother operations in future.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was pre-decided by the organisers that the first session will be theoretical while the second session will be a complete hands-on-traning session. Hence, the first session started with a general introduction about Wikipedia, the five pillars, how Wikipedia works, a brief introduction about the Wikipedia community, and the state of Wikipedia in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The following day participants pre-selected articles that they wanted to edit during the course of the second session. They were taught how to do minor edits, add edit summary, add references, view history and page statistics, and also briefed about the importance of publishing articles, and user talk pages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The two day long workshop came to an end with a meeting organized by all the participants to decide what should be their next steps. The workshop created a lot of enthusiasm in the participants. They got to know how individual researchers and professors build pages on Wikipedia, and they too can start by contributing one page at a time. They also showed keen interest to understand how monthly meet-ups are organised in other cities so that they could also organise meet-ups in Goa starting 2013 (the proposed date was January 16, 2013 — when Wikipedia's anniversary can be celebrated).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The feedback received from the participants was extremely positive. In the meanwhile there have been some discussion about forthcoming workshops — we have already received inquires from five more institutes to organize similar events in Goa. It seems like the initial seeds have been sown for a flourishing Wikipedia community in Goa.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A special thanks to Prof. Alito Siqueira from Department of Sociology Goa University, Harriet Vidyasagar from OLPC, Prof. Gopakumar from Goa University, Debanjan and Frederick from Wikipedia community and the CIS team for making this workshop a huge success.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-01-25T06:30:54ZBlog EntryA Wikipedia Workshop at SRM University, Chennai
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi in association with Metawings Institute organized a one-day workshop on contributing to Wikipedia at SRM University on December 17, 2012. About 40 students from different engineering colleges in Chennai participated in the workshop. Metawings coordinated for the logistics and for spreading the word among the students.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The three-hour workshop was mostly interactive. Since most students had a fair idea of what Wikipedia is and who writes articles on Wikipedia, they had many queries on who the 'editors' were, who selects them, how one can become an editor, how to determine reliability and authenticity of Wikipedia articles and so on. This was a pattern that I observed in many workshops that we conduct where people who have a level of ease and familiarity with using Wikipedia to get information, have often wondered if the information they are using is reliable or not. This also gives us a chance to explain how their contributions can make the encyclopedia more inclusive, informative and reliable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One student was called upon to create a user account and instead of answering his query on patrolling edits, I encouraged him to vandalize a popular article just to see how quickly it is reverted and the correct version is restored. Some students were also interested in knowing about Indian language Wikipedias. So, I invited a student to create his account in Tamil Wikipedia and create his user page subsequently.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the workshop the students wanted to stay in touch and receive more information on Wikipedia projects they could contribute to and filled up contact forms.</p>
<p>Special thanks to Metawings for helping us out with the logistics and to the student coordinators at SRM University for their cooperation!</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-27T05:57:34ZBlog EntryAccess to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Metawing Technologies (P) Ltd. is organizing a Wikipedia workshop at NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka on December 21, 2012, from 9.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 100 students are expected to participate in this workshop. The primary aim of the workshop is to educate them about Wikipedia in Indian languages and tell them how they can contribute to Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is willing to bear the travelling expense for upto two wikipedians to and from Bangalore (or any other place in Karnataka that is close to Karkala).</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpennessEvent2012-12-19T07:20:31ZEventMarathi Wiki Workshop at Tata Institute of Social Sciences
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss
<b>The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is taking up a number of activities and conducting workshops focusing on Indian languages across cities. A series of workshops in Marathi, Kannada and Bangla have been planned with Wikipedia sessions in each of these events.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Marathi workshop was organised on December 8, 2012 at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). It was a three-hour workshop.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Following preparations were made before the session:</p>
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<li style="text-align: justify; ">Yogesh Khandke and Kartik Nadar from Mumbai community visited the venue three days prior to check technical requirements.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Programme participants were suggested to select a subject of their choice and find sufficient resources to add information during the course of the event. This proved to be extremely helpful and an efficient way. Participants didn't spend any time looking for resources during the event; they were already ready with the content they wanted to add.</li>
<li>Programme participants were requested to create usernames before they came for the session.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A tailored presentation was made ready.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42765">ticket</a> was raised to release the IP address of TISS computer labs. Despite the ticket being resolved the IP address got blocked after creation of seven accounts. We will be looking deeper into this problem to make sure that we do not face such issue again.</li>
<li>Multiple conference calls were organised between the conductors — Yogesh, Nikita and Nitika.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Details of the event</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The morning session of this workshop focused on digital humanities and social sciences research, and exposed students to different kinds of resources. The afternoon session focused on Wikipedia literacy and Marathi-language computing. There were be about 25 participants (MA and PhD level) and 5 conductors - Yogesh, Nikita, Moksh, Kartik and Nitika.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nikita gave a brief 40 minutes introduction about Wikipedia using a presentation followed by a hands on session which was led by Yogesh and supported by rest of the conductors. Many of the participants were comfortable with Marathi computing while some were struggling. There were a few participants who were editing in other languages including Hindi and Malayalam. Kartik & Moksh jointly led the session with educating participants about Wikimark ups, page view stats, article and user talk pages. Rest of the conductors pitched in with insightful examples, comments and answers. The participants raised some really interesting questions and were completely involved the workshop. Several participants showed interest to organise similar workshops at other institutes they are connected with.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-02-04T04:55:56ZBlog EntryFirst Odia Wikipedia Education Program to be Rolled Out
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-odia-wikipedia-education-program-to-be-rolled-out-at-iimc-dhenkanal
<b>Odia Wikipedians gathered at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal on November 8, 2012 to start the first Odia Wikipedia Education Program. This program aims to bring students edit articles on Odia Wikipedia through a series of assessments by professors. The local community members from Nalconagar would be supporting the four month program.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since March 2011, Odia Wikipedia has started growing in terms of readers, editors and content. Last few months have seen many new faces added to the community who are willing to take part in both offline and online outreach. Though many of the community members are staying out of state, there are community clusters in three different places: Cuttack, Nalconagar and Bhubaneswar. We approached many institutions from these three places and some of them showed interest for an Odia Wikipedia workshop to assess and evaluate students for the education program. We conducted workshops in some of those institutions in the initial level. After successive workshops and meeting with the faculty members, some of the potential institutions were chosen for the education program. One of those colleges was the IIMC in Dhenkanal. We had a meeting with the professor of this organization along with teaching associates and a visiting professor and a full day workshop on editing wikipedia. Odia wikipedians, Mrutyunjaya Kar, Manoranjan Mallick, Srikant Kedia and Kamalakanta Nayak supported for organizing the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">IIMC, Dhenkanal is one of the six IIMCs of India and a pioneer in the field of Mass Communication. We met Professor Mrinal Chaterjee along with teaching associates, Sucharita and Bhagaban Sahu, retired professor of Revenshaw University and visiting professor of IIMC. The college is home to 83 students across India. Students enroll for a one year diploma program for Journalism and Mass communication in Odia and English.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The full day session was made to two separate sessions: an introductory session and one hands-on training on editing. Prof. Chaterjee introduced the agenda of the session and why it is needed for the students from a student's point of view. I continued the discussion and presented the key points of wikipedia editing and details of the education program, why and how we are going to start it focussing on the key roles of students and the institution and how it will help them. We announced about the hands on training session post lunch for the interested students. Twenty one students gathered for the second session. Interestingly all of the Odia department students were present and there was one student from English department. Students were briefed about editing. During the workshop we found that majority of them knew a typing layout called "Modular layout" which is used by non-unicode ISCII/ASCII typing softwares like Leap office, I-Lipi, Shreelipi, etc. As this layout is yet to be enabled for Odia we continued explaining about typing using the default typing scheme.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img alt="The Reporter, a bilingual newspaper published by students on college noticeboard" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Odia_WEP_IIMC-10.jpg/223px-Odia_WEP_IIMC-10.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><span>"The Reporter", a bilingual daily published by students on college notice board</span></p>
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<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/15366884" width="427"> </iframe></p>
<div><b><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/odia-education-program-proposal-iimc" target="_blank" title="Odia education program proposal IIMC">Odia education program proposal IIMC</a> on Slideshare</b></div>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the end of the workshop we had another meeting with the professor and other faculty members to assess and discuss about the further steps. IIMC has a very close student-teacher relation which we observed from the beginning of the workshop. Students were really keen and patient to learn and all of the students who attended the hands-on training session stayed back till the end of the session. Apart from their regular assignments and projects, students also publish a daily bilingual newspaper, "The Reporter".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Writing is a part of their their study and we emphasize much on getting the most of their short program. If Wikipedia could give them a global platform to and larger audience for their work to be read, reviewed and enhanced then why not adding it to their task list?", expresses Prof. Chatterjee. The only hurdle which students are going to face in the initial phase is typing in Odia. So, modular layout needs to be added in "Narayam", the typing tool integrated in Odia Wikipedia. To begin with this program an Odia Wikipedia club was formed at Nalconagar which would primarily support this program at the ground level.</p>
<h3><span>Video</span></h3>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nm7dRQ7LmVI" width="300"></iframe></p>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Read a detailed four month work plan for this program on Odia Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cgk">Read in English</a> | <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cgj">Read in Odia</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Presentation for Odia Education Program: <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odia_Education_Program_proposal_IIMC.pdf">On Commons</a> | <a class="external-link" href="http://bitly.com/iepiimc">Source file</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Commons picture gallery: <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Odia_Wikipedia_Education_Program">See here</a></li>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-odia-wikipedia-education-program-to-be-rolled-out-at-iimc-dhenkanal'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-odia-wikipedia-education-program-to-be-rolled-out-at-iimc-dhenkanal</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaHigher EducationAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-12-14T12:17:04ZBlog EntryWikipedia Women's Workshop in Mumbai
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-womens-workshop-in-mumbai
<b>The Wiki Women Workshop was organized at the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Wadala in Mumbai on November 4, 2012. It was attended by over 60 women participants who were taught how to contribute to Wikipedia articles and briefed about the knowledge gaps in Wikipedia — the free encyclopedia. Noopur Raval has prepared a report of the event.</b>
<p align="JUSTIFY">It is a well known fact that over 91 per cent of the contributors on Wikipedia are men. Women contribution comes to around 9 per cent only. As illustrated by this infographic, the articles edited by women also significantly differ from those edited by men or users who do not identify themselves. The major articles are on people, philosophy and arts. The month of November was celebrated by wikipedians across the globe to promote women editors and do women related outreach in different parts of the world. I was part of a similar initiative organized by the Wikipedia community of Mumbai in India on November 4, 2012.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The workshop was planned on e-mail more than a month in advance with inputs from various volunteers of the community as well as members of the Wikimedia India chapter. Once the logistics were taken care of, it was also suggested that the workshop be kept exclusively for women to provide them an uninhibited space to express themselves and learn editing. Although the initial response was huge (over a hundred registrations), eventually about 65 women turned up for the event.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Agenda of the workshop</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The community members conducted this workshop differently to how it is usually done — they started with hands-on editing straightaway instead of giving an introduction to the Wikimedia movement and Wikipedia policies. After an hour of teaching the basics of wiki editing the participants were shown a presentation on making user accounts and start contributing articles of their choice. I helped a participant create an article on her village: Vempadu.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">In the post-lunch session, participants were asked about the problems they faced and were shown how to contribute images to Commons — the free repository. The winners of the Indian leg of Wiki Loves Monuments were also announced at the workshop. The workshop ended with feedback, Wikipedia quiz and group photographs with the participants.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Feedback</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">For me, the feedback was particularly interesting because not many women-centric workshops have been conducted in the past. It was good to know that most of the women participants were not feeling left out or grappling with the Wiki interface. There was a diverse age range — from young school girls to retired professionals. Wireless internet access was irregular and not all could connect, which caused a lot of time to be wasted. We (community members and A2K team) would be keeping the participants updated on more events and hope they become an active part of the Wikipedia community as well. This workshop has also opened up avenues for more outreach events in other institutions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A special thanks and acknowledgement to Vidyalankar Institute (VIT), Wadala for hosting us and to Bishakha Dutta, Moksh Juneja, Aditi Vashisht, Pranav, Krutika, Rohini, Netra, Pradeep, Samir, Netha, Nikita, and everyone else who put this event together.</p>
<p><i>Here is the blog post written by community members who attended the workshop: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/S78z93">http://bit.ly/S78z93</a><br /></i></p>
<p><i> </i></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-womens-workshop-in-mumbai'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-womens-workshop-in-mumbai</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-03T06:01:18ZBlog EntryAn Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB College, Bhubaneswar
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society along with Odia Wikipedians in Bhubaneswar organized an Odia Wikipedia workshop on November 18, 2012. It was held in KMBB College of Engineering. Odia Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in Odia language which everyone can edit. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia Wikipedians gathered in the temple city of Bhubaneswar on November 18, 2012 to organize the third <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/c8x">Odia Wikipedia workshop</a> in <a href="http://www.kmbb.in/">KMBB College of Engineering</a>. KMBB College of Engineering is a BPUT affiliated engineering college supported by Ama Odisha, an organization working for media, communication and development of Odia language. <a href="http://kmbb.academia.edu/DhanadaMishra">Dr. Dhanada Mishra</a>, Director-Academics, KMBB and a veteran educationalist and open source source enthusiast supported this event. Forty-five students from KMBB attended this workshop. The agenda for the two-and-a-half hour session was to educate students about open source movement, journey of Wikipedia and how to contribute to Odia Wikipedia and how it would help them. Nine active Odia Wikipedians joined to support this event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Mishra began the session by introducing Odia Wikipedians to the students. He spoke about Open source movement, how the community supports various open source projects, how Wikipedia was started and how it is essential for students to take part in such activities. Subhashish Panigrahi briefly spoke about the history of Odia wikipedia, how it grew up in the recent years to its present state. Odia Wikipedian <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ManXiii">Manoranjan Behera</a> discussed about how everyone can contribute to the Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To explain the easiness of typing in Odia, some of the students were invited to write text on a board and test the typing tool on Odia Wikipedia. A new article about the college was created and one of the students wrote few sentences. Wikipedians explained the importance of creating user accounts and demonstrated how to search an article, how to create an article and the basics of editing an article. A Question and Answer session was held for students to put their queries. At the end of the session, contact details were shared with the students and the Facebook group (<a class="external-link" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki">https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki</a>) of Odia Wikipedia was shown so that students could continue editing and remain in touch with fellow wikipedians.</p>
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<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OdiaWikipediaworkshopKMBB1.jpg/@@images/694e75a5-4847-4145-9911-02682bd9c12e.jpeg" alt="" class="image-inline" title="" /></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia daily “The Sambad” <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad" class="external-link">covered this event</a>.</p>
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<h3 style="text-align: center; ">Presentation:</h3>
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<p><a href="http://prezi.com/ljk3w0m44w6x/copy-of-introduction-to-wikipedia/" title="Copy of Introduction to Wikipedia!">Copy of Introduction to Wikipedia!</a> on <a href="http://prezi.com">Prezi</a></p>
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<h3>Video:</h3>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wqRBIqPdRMU" width="500"></iframe></td>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaHigher EducationAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-12-07T22:40:32ZBlog EntryFollow up to Wikipedia Introductory Session at Bharati Vidyapeeth — More Interested and More Involved Participants
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth
<b>A Wikipedia introductory session was organised at Bharati Vidyapeeth Engineering College in Delhi early this year and a follow up session was organised by CIS on November 19, 2012. About 12 to 15 participants attended the follow up session. Although most of the participants had attended the introductory session there were a few who were coming over for the first time.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many participants had already tried some wiki editing (such as correcting grammar, spellings, punctuations, etc.) after the introductory session but had several queries with respect to advance editing such as wiki markup, adding references, adding wiki interlinks and so on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The main aim to conduct a follow up session was to clear these editing doubts, provide editing support and more importantly make these new editors feel a part of the wider Wikipedia community. This session gave us a brilliant opportunity to inform and encourage the participants to be part of Wikipedia mailing lists, talk page discussions, Facebook pages, current Wikipedia projects and Wiki meet ups. Participants were taught difference between article and user talk pages, leaving messages on various talk pages, how to add wiki markups, add references, add inter wiki links, send private mails to other users, page view stats, etc. The good part of organizing a session with second time participants was that they were already familiar with the workings of Wikipedia from the introductory session. They had more intelligent queries especially around editing. In addition, another big advantage was the surety that only those participants will return who are genuinely interested in wiki editing and are not just attracted towards Wikipedia brand or swags.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Albeit being a short two-hour session, the workshop provided a good platform for getting in touch with participants, helping them to gain confidence and edit Wikipedia articles, informing them of different ways in which they could be more involved.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hopefully, next year we could revisit each of the institutions where we'd organised an introductory Wikipedia session in 2012. Though the number of participants for a follow up session might be small but it definitely guarantees more interested and more involved participants.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-10-30T09:17:31ZBlog EntryReport on Wikipedia Hackathon held in Hyderabad
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hackathon-hyderabad
<b>BITS Hyderabad had a tech fest from October 25 to 27, 2012, and wanted to conduct a technical wiki hackathon. We decided to do it on October 26 — all night.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We had a <a class="external-link" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGpCalViX1FCc0FwT1g2ZFNqN3FrNUE6MQ)">Google form</a> that people filled up with a few simple questions — and picked out 12 from the 70 that signed up. This was important since I was the only one conducting it — and I wanted to keep it to a manageable number. It was an all night event that started at 7 p.m. in the evening and was supposed to go on till 6 a.m. next morning.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Hackathon</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The hackathon started as scheduled around 7.00 p.m. As people trickled in I talked to them individually and mentally sorted them into two groups — 'people who are already programmatically competent enough to contribute code' and people who were not. A lot of people who were not selected but applied also showed up — since we had not sent rejection emails. I got them started on learning either Javascript or Python — and helped push them along. However, a good amount of time was spent with people who already had prior coding experience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most people worked on Gadgets, and a few on Python — exploring the API. We started off with basics of how to customize your Wikipedia experience with JS and CSS, building a very basic user script that changed colours / added new links. Some of the participants spent the entire night building this and others finished this in a few minutes and were on to the next project. Everyone worked at their own pace — and since there were smaller number of people I was able to (mostly) provide individual attention.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As people started working on stuff past hello world, I introduced them to IRC (#wikipedia-en and #mediawiki) and had them say 'hi' to editors. I also introduced them to a bunch of local hacker channels on IRC — and quite a few of them stayed on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A fair amount of people left at around midnight — but a 'core' group seemed to have formed that stayed on. We hacked on to the wee hours of the morning, and even took small naps. We wound up at around 6 a.m., and staggered back to the hostels (and then proceeded to have long conversations about Linux, history of programming, and graphical raytracing).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Outcomes</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We had some students who contributed substantially including <b>Thomas Matthew, Vishwajit Kolathur, Aravind Peddapudi and Varun Chappidi</b>. Most of them have been introduced to the local hacker community via IRC, and I see reports of continuing participation — after accounting for their ongoing exams. They all are technically very competent and have expressed interest in doing Google Summer of Code this year. Among the projects did at the hackathon are:</p>
<ol>
<li>'Reading mode' gadget</li>
<li>'Reading mode' Chrome Extension that is wikipedia specific</li>
<li>Major work on a '3 hours later' type extension (a tool to produce graphs like (<a class="external-link" href="http://xkcd.com/214">http://xkcd.com/214</a>)</li>
</ol>
<p>The fact that these people went from having no experience with Wiki related programming to being able to build code for it in a few hours time makes me very happy.</p>
<h3>Learnings</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Make sure people know that 'Hack'athon has nothing to do with cracking wifi passwords or breaking into Facebook accounts. We had a 'lot' of people apply thinking that was this despite a clear description. I was told that some of the people evangelizing the event also thought the same — so clearer messaging around this was needed.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Send rejection emails. We missed this, and sent only acceptance emails. A lot of people who weren't accepted turned up and we had to figure a way to engage them.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">More organized followups. Currently all I can do is introduce them to the local hacker community and hope they 'stick'. GSoC is a good spot, but is too infrequent — and too high stakes.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Find more things for them to do. We had to actually stretch a bit to find them things to do — they were all raring to go, but we found it hard to find 'easy' bugs for them to fix that were actually useful to editors. Clearly editors have a lot of things in their mind that would make their lives better — but they are not listed anywhere public. Having a publicly available list of such things would be helpful. (There is a Gadget requests page (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Requests%29">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Requests)</a>, but it hasn't been updated in ages).</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Finally, I would like to thank the Centre for Internet & Society for supporting my travel for the event, Thomas from BITS for organizing most of the logistics and Ravi Chandra from the Tor community for helping provide technical mentorship.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hackathon-hyderabad'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hackathon-hyderabad</a>
</p>
No publisherYuvi PandaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-03T06:37:11ZBlog EntryA Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi
<b>Wikipedian Yuvaraj Pandian visited the CIS office in Delhi and helped the Access to Knowledge team conduct a super-ad-hoc mini-hackathon with two other volunteers, Sheel from Delhi and Harsh from Ahmedabad. The aim was to get them a kickstart in developing userscripts/gadgets, and get them to a point where the prior existing documentation makes sense to them. </b>
<p>The ad-hoc plan had three parts:</p>
<ol>
<li>The execution environment (Concept of userscripts vs gadgets, ResourceLoader)</li>
<li>The API concepts (Special:ApiSandbox, concept of 'actions' in the API)</li>
<li>Accessing the API from JS (mediawiki.api module, concept of AJAX)</li>
</ol>
<p>Here is the account of what they did, written by Yuvi:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We covered all parts of them slowly, with both Harsh and Sheel working at things until they fully understood what they were doing and why whatever they were doing was working.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I introduced them to the environment first by having them execute code in Chrome's JS Console, and then in their own common.js. Once they understood the context in which the code was getting executed, the 'ResourceLoader default modules'<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a>documentation started making sense to them, and they could pick up other modules from there.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We then explored the API via the API Sandbox<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a>, which is a relatively new (and not very well known) way of letting people play around with the API. It is a massive improvement over the older, non-interactive docs<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3]</a>, and both Harsh and Sheel were very excited about being able to discover all the things they could do with the API. A fair amount of time was spent messing around with it on different wikipedias (en, hi and gu) and reading bits of the API Documentation<a href="#fn4" name="fr4">[4]</a> to understand the concepts behind the actions - and for filling in the gaps.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Finally we had them use the API from a userscript to make calls. I went through the entire process line by line, explaining how AJAX works and how asynchronous programming works. We traced the flow of code together to understand how the seamingly nonlinear asynchronous programming model works. Then we dug into a bit of how to use the mw.loader module to make dependencies work, and why the same code that was working in the chrome js console was not working in their common.js.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It ended with them trying to port HotCat to their native language wikipedias. Harsh started to explore more about getting started with MediaWiki dev itself (rather than just gadgets), but the clone took a looooong time and we had run out of time by then. I directed him to a WMF tech open chat happening today, and hopefully that could help!</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules">https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules</a><br />[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox</a><br />[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php</a><br />[<a href="#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page">https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherYuvraj PandianAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-04T07:31:21ZBlog EntryGujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot
<b>This report analyses a series of meetings and workshops held in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat, India during the month of October 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I visited Gujarat for a few Wikipedia activities – including Wikipedia meets in the cities of Ahmedabad and Rajkot, interacted with students and teachers from various colleges as well as to successfully conclude the <a href="http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/વિકિપીડિયા:પ્રચાર-પ્રસાર">Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition</a>.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">I visited Rajkot on October 17, 2012 with two Wikipedians – Harsh Kothari and Konarak Ratnakar, both from Ahmedabad. We were scheduled to take up a small introductory lecture on contributing to Wikipedia at Christ College, Rajkot in the afternoon and meet up with other Gujarati Wikipedians from Rajkot and Junagadh later in the day. Fortunately, I was able to connect with Rashmikant Makwana, a teacher at TGS (The Galaxy School) in Rajkot. I had first met up with him during the photo walk – Wiki takes Ahmedabad in January 2012. He had shown a great deal of interest in doing something for his school students. Thanks to Mr. Makwana's prompt response and support, we visited three branches of <a href="http://www.tges.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=77">TGES (The Galaxy Education System)</a> and had the opportunity of interacting with over 100 students from secondary and higher secondary divisions.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Interactions with TGES students</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">I got to read Mr. Makwana's email only after I reached Rajkot. He wrote that he spoke to a couple of teachers about our visit and their students were very eager to meet us as they had many questions about Wikipedia! I was pleasantly surprised because once we met these students (mostly 11<sup>th</sup> standard, English medium students) we realized they had already tried their hand at editing and even creating articles! So, they had far more advanced queries like how to verify information on Wikipedia, what is the authenticity of information there, questions on notability and so on. Next, we were taken to the <i>vadi branch </i>of the education group. These were children from fifth and sixth standards and who also had questions and better ones about stories of vandalism they had committed on Wikipedia! We told them how Wikipedia was one of the best ways of telling people about their culture, identities, city and language. Besides students, we also met teachers who taught Gujarati, History and Geography.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Interactions with Christ College students</h3>
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<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GujaratiWikipedian.png/@@images/6d7409d5-a94e-49f6-9172-6508f80d72ba.png" title="Gujarati Wikipedian" height="208" width="156" alt="Gujarati Wikipedian" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><i>Wikipedians giving lecture</i>.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.christcollegerajkot.edu.in/">Christ College</a> offers a variety of graduate courses. We were connected with their faculty, Mr. Rushabh, by Umesh Joshi from the Open Page publication in Rajkot.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I am thankful to both of them for their support in gathering their MBA students! Harsh Kothari, a Gujarati Wikipedian presented on how one can contribute to Gujarati Wikipedia while Konarak helped them in a live editing session. One question that everyone asked us was – WHY do people edit Wikipedia?</p>
<p>So, we called upon Jitendrasinh Chauhan, a long-term Gujarati Wikipedian. He came up and spoke to them on how he discovered Gujarati Wikipedia and has not only gained in terms of knowledge but also friendships that he has made with fellow editors across the state and overseas! We also explained the importance of learning correct ways of editing to these students who might pursue public relations as their professions.</p>
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<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Meeting Wikipedians</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The trip to Rajkot, apart from meeting a whole bunch of new people, was also about connecting offline with Gujarati Wikipedians. Their warmth and day long support in terms of logistics, context and guidance kept us enthused. I extend my gratitude to Jitendrasinh Chauhan and his friend Harsh, both Wikipedians for their help. They have also helped us establish a dialog with Saurashtra University where we hope to plan a two-day conference centered around Gujarati language and digitization.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GUWPvisual.png" alt="Gujarati Wikipedia Participants" class="image-inline" title="Gujarati Wikipedia Participants" /><br /><i>Given here is a network visualization infographic highlighting the key points</i>.</p>
<hr />
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Videos</h3>
<p><b>Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ college - 1</b></p>
<p><b><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_jhc-Ymy5k4" width="300"></iframe></b></p>
<p><b>Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ College - 2</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Jb6AF89STZU" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Write about your city on Gujarati Wikipedia </b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YJu2-gOHjaI" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-10-31T08:17:56ZBlog Entry