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A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur
<b>The Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, on December 3, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia Workshop organized in IIT, Kharagpur, West Bengal.</b>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/OdiaIITKharagpur.png" alt="Odia Wikipedia Workshop IIT, Kharagpur" class="image-inline" title="Odia Wikipedia Workshop IIT, Kharagpur" /></th>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-12-05T05:20:38ZNews ItemKolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia
<b>Recently, Access to Knowledge team member Subhashish Panigrahi spent some time with wikipedians in Kolkata. Through this blog post he shares his experience and learning from the interaction. This post explores the journey of three wikipedians — Jayanta Nath, Deepon Saha and Ashwin.</b>
<h3>Jayanta Nath and Deepon Saha — Lecture on Bangla Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Jayanta is one of the active contributors in <a class="external-link" href="http://bn.wikipedia.org">Bangla Wikipedia</a>. He has supported community building for Bangla Wikipedia in India. Apart from contributing articles Jayanta supports many wikipedians for fixing technical issues on various language wikis. Deepon is another active wikipedian from Kolkata who contributes mostly to English Wikipedia besides contributing to WikiCommons and Bangla Wikipedia and taking active part in community building in Kolkata and other places. I met both Jayanta and Deepon recently in Kolkata and discussed about Bangla Wikipedia and the role of contributors from India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the last few years Bangla Wikipedia has seen enough growth — growth in number of articles, growth in number of outreach, growth in number of contributors and lot more. However, there is something missing in this list, and that is the growth in number of Bangla editors from India. Sadly, though Bangla speaking people constitute a major part of the intellectual sphere. Bangla Wikipedia has not seen many new faces in the recent past from the Indian subcontinent. "English has become like a mother language of most Bengalis in Kolkata and Bengalis residing in other major cities", expresses Jayanta with grief. "Most of the Bengalis speak and are adhered to Bengali language but the use of language is limited only to speaking. And they no more use Bangla in writing. That is what makes it more difficult to tell them about Bangla Wikipedia", adds Deepon. Bangla Wikipedia in India is facing one more major challenge: media coverage. There is not much coverage about Bangla Wikipedia in Bangla media, especially print media. "I was interviewed by the Times of India, Hindu, Telegraph and few other English newspapers but, surprisingly there was not much coverage in Bangla media. There are almost 12 Bangla newspapers being published from Kolkata and in spite of our efforts the outcome is far below expectation", explains Jayanta. Jayanta feels there is much scope for community building for Bangla Wikipedia in rural West Bengal. Unlike urban Bengal, Bangla is the primary medium of both verbal and written communication.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Computer literacy might be a big hurdle when it comes to spreading words about editing Bangla Wikipedia. But it is difficult to predict about the status of government schools, computer and internet penetration before initiating outreach for rural places. Deepon also suggests about making a small survey in Bangla medium schools in Kolkata to understand the scope for any Bangla education program in those schools. We discussed about the internet penetration to measure and assess the state of Bangla on internet and its public usage. Out of the ten Bangla newspapers only two are available in unicode for their online edition. The state of unicode and online usage of Bangla in unicode is much better in Bangladesh which also explains that Bengalis in Bangladesh are using Bangla to a great extent including reading, writing and upon internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Typing is another challenge to be tackled. DTP operators, government offices where Bangla typing is used normally use a different typing scheme and non-unicode fonts (mostly old ISCII or ASCII fonts). "We could bring many Bangla enthusiasts to Bangla Wiki projects by simplifying the typing solution and making people aware about the available typing tools. Simple video tutorials and smaller help pages with easy-to-understand guidelines will be helpful and these should be linked from other pages so the new editors will find them and make use of them to learn editing", adds Deepon.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The Full Story Began with Loads of Curiosity and a Small [Edit] Button!</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Deepon was searching for some information online while he discovered the available information on wikipedia is incorrect. He was searching for a help desk to ask to correct it. Suddenly he discovered the "Edit" button, when he clicked on it a new page opened up with a warning: "You are not logged in. Your <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address">IP address</a> will be publicly visible if you make any edits. Please <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Pune&returntoquery=action%3Dedit">log in</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount&returnto=Pune&returntoquery=action%3Dedit">sign up</a> to have your edits associated with a user name, among <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account%3F#Summary_of_benefits">other benefits</a>." He clicked, signed up and created a new account and corrected the mistake. That was the first time Deepon made his first edit on Wikipedia and never stopped after that.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Ashwin (User:AshLin): Passion to Contribute to Wikipedia still Flying like Butterflies</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was no book available in the early 80s when Ashwin wanted to know more about Indian butterflies. There was no article on Wikipedia about Indian butterflies and there were very less available resource on Indian butterflies. Ashwin along with Shyamal and other enthusiasts collaborated to start working on this project which brought many other contributors. The other project he was quite involved was about Indian snakes. One of his key motivations for contributing to Wikipedia was making the resource about Indian butterflies available for others.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ashwin is one of those active contributors from India who are active for the last few years for bringing more editors onboard to write on articles of Indian context, primarily on English Wikipedia. Out of his own passion Ashwin started contributing to several projects like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Lepidoptera">WikiProject Lepidoptera</a> which brought many wonderful articles on Wikipedia. Ashwin is greatly appreaciate for his participation in projects like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWIS">WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:INCOTM">Collaborations of the month</a>. Ashwin extended his help to the Pune community when he was in Pune from organizing outreach events to bringing editors onboard to take leadership for new projects. "There is a lot of scope for regional language wikipedians to learn from the English Wikipedia projects. Projects on English Wikipedia involves more people and the lessons would be helpful for other regional language wikipedians and English wikipedians in India are always interested to help", expresses Ashwin. Currently he is in a small wikibreak and will be back soon!</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia</a>
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No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaVideoInterviewOpenness2012-12-04T07:19:54ZBlog 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: 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>
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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 EntryAccess to Knowledge Bulletin — October 2012 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-october-2012-bulletin
<b>This is the second bulletin from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. This issue features education program updates of the Assamese, Malayalam and Gujarati Wiki communities, a hackathon held at BITS, Hyderabad, press coverage of the Odia Wikipedia workshop in Pune, and reports of workshops organised in Bangalore, Ghaziabad and Pune during the month of October.</b>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Education Program Updates</h3>
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<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program">Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University</a> (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update">Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates</a> (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot">Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot</a> (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/gujarati-wikipedia-article-competition">Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia</a> (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).</li>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Workshop Reports</h3>
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<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia">Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad">Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad</a> (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/wiki-women-day-2012-pune">Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012).</li>
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<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized">First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized!</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012).</li>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Event Organised</h3>
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<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-hackathon-bits-hyderabad">Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad</a> (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012).</li>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Press Coverage</h3>
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<li><a href="http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=37463">Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language</a> (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012).</li>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Team Updates</h3>
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<li>The <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Team" title="Access To Knowledge/Team">A2K team</a> consists of three members based in Delhi: <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Nitika Tandon</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> and <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Noopur Raval</a>.</li>
<li>We are seeking applications for the post of <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/jobs/vacancy-for-programme-director">Programme Director</a> (Access to Knowledge) for New Delhi office.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Shiju Alex</a>, Programme Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours. </li>
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<h2><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/">About CIS</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness">Openness</a>, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a>, and <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i> </i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Follow us elsewhere</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cis_india">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/28535315687/">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/">http://cis-india.org</a></li>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-october-2012-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-october-2012-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessNewsletter2012-12-14T08:19:52ZPageવિકિપીડિયા ગુજરાતી માં પણ છે
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/article-in-cybersafar
<b>We've recently been featured in the Gujarati magazine on technology: Cybersafar. The below article was written by Harsh Kothari.</b>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/article-in-cybersafar'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/article-in-cybersafar</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-12-07T10:36:20ZNews ItemOdishaDiary conferred prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to Odia Wikipedia team
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-november-23-2012-pravuprasad-routray
<b>OdishaDiary (Orissadiary.com) conferred the prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to the team of contributors of Odia Wikipedia.</b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">This report by Pravuprasad Routray was <a class="external-link" href="http://orissadiary.com/ShowOriyaOrbit.asp?id=37867">published in the Orissa Diary</a> on November 23, 2012. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Health Minister Dr. Damodar Rout, Revenue Minister Surjya Narayan Patro and Energy and IPR Minister Arun Sahoo presented this award to the the Odia Wikipedians in a function in Jayadev Bhawan, Bhubaneswar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia Wikipedia (<a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org">http://or.wikipedia.org</a>) is a web based free encyclopedia in Odia language. Odia Wikipedia is flagship project of Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization based in the US. The content of Wikipedia are crowd sourced from the voluntary contributors across the world. English Wikipedia being the 5th popular website on internet Odia Wikipedia is the most visited website with more than 4.7 lakh unique visitors every month and the largest website in Odia language with more than 3100 articles. Currently more than 25 editors are contributing in this project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia Wikipedia aims to provide free encyclopedic content in Odia language which could be accessed online and used for academic, research and expanding someone's own knowledge base. The interesting part of wikipedia is the openness for giving the freedom to users to edit and enhance an article. Most of the articles on Wikipedia start from scratch, small articles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the period of time many readers find more information and start adding them on it and that is how articles grow in quality and content. Most people end up thinking that Wikipedia articles are written by paid editors just like any other newspapers and journals. But surprisingly, any person can who notices a factual mistake can correct it and add more information to enhance the articles. Contributing to Odia Wikipedia will not only create more free content online in Odia language, but also will bring more academicians and intellectuals together to a common platform.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the same time students and academicians who are seeking information in Odia language can make use of it without even buy volumes of books and spending time in library. “We are receiving this award for all the Odias, who has contributed a bit for the language. Everyone here is welcome to join us and be a part of this family”, said Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer of Centre for Internet Society, a grantee of Wikimedia foundation while receiving the award. Odia Wikipedia could be accessed at: <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org">http://or.wikipedia.org</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-november-23-2012-pravuprasad-routray'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-november-23-2012-pravuprasad-routray</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-12-05T04:55:20ZNews ItemWikipedia 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>
<p>
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 EntryA Report of the Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad
<b>(By Debapriya Priyadashi Chakra) Sambad, Odisha's most widely read and largest circulated daily, on November 19, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.</b>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/OdiaWikipediaworkshopKMBBBhubaneswar.png" alt="Odia Wikipedia Workshop" class="image-inline" title="Odia Wikipedia Workshop" /></th>
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<p>Read a <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar" class="external-link">detailed report</a> about this workshop.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-12-07T22:37:59ZNews ItemAn 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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<p>
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 Entry‘Some Indian laws could be challenging’
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-article-kalyan-subramani-nov-15-2012-some-indian-laws-could-be-challenging
<b>Wikipedia’s founder member Erik Möller says their principle is not to decide the map of India, but to explain that there is a controversy.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/10/2012111520121115012325828c5530870/%E2%80%98Some-Indian-laws-could-be-challenging%E2%80%99.html">published in Bangalore Mirro</a>r on November 15, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Erik Möller, vice-president engineering and product development, Wikimedia Foundation, is one of the founder members of Wikipedia, along with Jimmy Wales, since it started in 2001. Möller was in Bangalore over the weekend to speak at a technical seminar at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a local chapter of Wikimedia. He spoke about India’s role in the growth of Wikipedia not just in the sub-continent, but globally.</span><span> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>BM: How significant is India in the Wikipedia movement?</b></span><span><b><br />EM:</b> Very significant and growing. I don’t have the data on exact number of editors based in India. However currently, 2.4 per cent of all Wikipedia edits globally are made from India. As a comparison, the UK’s is 6.5 per cent. India has overtaken Australia and (narrowly) Brazil since last year. In the 2011 fundraiser, India reached the top 10 of countries giving to the Wikimedia Foundation, with 39,000 donors from India giving the equivalent of $360,468. The 2012 fundraiser will be launched in a few days. (Interestingly, India is the only developing nation in the Top 10 contributing nations).</span><span><b><br /><br />Does the financial support from India surprise you?</b></span><span><br />Of course not. You are a country of a billion people (laughs). I think Wikipedia appeals to a lot of cultural sensibilities, sharing of knowledge and culture. I think people here want to share.</span><span><b><br /><br />Where does India stand in the future of Wikipedia’s roadmap?</b></span><span><br />India was identified as one of three global priority areas in our 2010-15 strategic plan (alongside Brazil and Arabic language countries). While there are active Wikipedia communities in many Asian countries, India continues to be the Foundation’s main focus area in (non-Arabic) Asia through the “Access To Knowledge (A2K)” programme conducted by CIS as our local partner, funded via a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation.</span></p>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>From the standpoint of freedom to internet access, what do you think of Indian laws?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><span>Depending on your interpretation, specific laws in India could be challenging, particularly in areas of mapping (geographically). We are concerned about those things, but have to run with it. We consider ourselves specifically (governed by) US laws from where we are legally published. But then, Wiki is not an advocacy organisation that goes around telling people which politician to vote for. As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, it’s very important all people become educated on the issues. It’s not up to us to decide what’s the correct map of India, of course, but it is up to us to explain there is a controversy.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><span><b><br />Are you constantly bombarded with litigation world over?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><span>Surprisingly not. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><span><b><br />What are the big developments happening in Wikipedia?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><span>We are currently running two pilot projects – Wikidata and Wikivoyage. For example, today you can find out the GDP of each country on Wikipedia but cannot query and arrange countries by GDP size. Wikidata will allow you to do that. Similarly, Wikivoyage will provide matter-of-fact information on local sites that are of interest to travellers.</span></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-article-kalyan-subramani-nov-15-2012-some-indian-laws-could-be-challenging'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-article-kalyan-subramani-nov-15-2012-some-indian-laws-could-be-challenging</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-11-19T04:40:46ZNews ItemOdia Wikipedia Gets a New Typing Solution!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-gets-new-typing-solution
<b>Subhashish Panigrahi worked with Yuvi Panda to create a new typing scheme for Odia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This blog post gives a summary of this development and its outcome.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><span style="text-align: justify; "> </span></span></p>
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<th style="text-align: center; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/Odia_Lekhani_keyboard_layout.png" title="Odia Lekhani Keyboard Layout" height="230" width="599" alt="Odia Lekhani Keyboard Layout" class="image-inline" /></th>
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<p style="text-align: center; "><a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:Lekhani">Odia Lekhani Phonetic Keyboard Layout</a></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">A new typing scheme <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Lekhani">Lekhani</a> (Odia for a stylus which was used for writing on palm leaves) to be used for <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/">Odia Wikipedia</a>, other sister Wikimedia projects and for offline and <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/typing-in-indic-languages-from-mobiles">typing using mobile devices</a> was researched upon.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="text-align: justify; ">Indian languagFedora's Phonetic Keyboard Layoutes use various typing schemes (key combinations for output in Indic languages) which could be used for writing, printing, publishing and for any other purpose both for offline and online publication as well as printing. Development for </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unicode_chart_Oriya" style="text-align: justify; ">Unicode standard</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> in Odia language progressed lately. </span><a href="http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiPatrika/2011-06/Community_News/or" style="text-align: justify; ">Revival of Odia Wikipedia</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> after 2011 helped the use of unicode more on internet because of its extensive content (more than 3100 articles on various topics) and </span><a href="http://facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki" style="text-align: justify; ">online activities</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> on </span><a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Pilot_Designs/Social_Media#Social_Media_Pilot-Odisha" style="text-align: justify; ">social media</a><span style="text-align: justify; ">. Currently there are over different typing schemes available for Odia including the non-unicode typing schemes used mostly by the DTP operators and many newspapers and publication houses. One of the earliest development was the </span><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/ସହଯୋଗ:ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ_ଟାଇପ_କରିବେ_କେମିତି#Odia_InScript" style="text-align: justify; ">Inscript keyboard layout</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> which follows a global standard for most Indic languages. Inscript is useful and once someone gets his fingers used to typing it is fun. But, most of the beginners find it difficult to type in Inscript. In those cases phonetic keyboards are quite helpful where someone need to press the English keys which corresponds to the Roman characters, e.g. R-a-d-h-aa for "Radha". Based on these sort of logics a keyboard layout was deployed for all the Indic languages on </span><a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam" style="text-align: justify; ">Narayam</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> including Odia. (See </span><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/ସହଯୋଗ:ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ_ଟାଇପ_କରିବେ_କେମିତି#Odia_Transliteration.29" style="text-align: justify; ">Odia transliteration</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> for details). The primary developer for transliteration was </span><a href="http://junaidpv.in/" style="text-align: justify; ">Junaid PV</a><span style="text-align: justify; ">, a Malayalam Wikipedian who helped for the Indic languages and few other Asian languages. As transliteration follows more a common rule there are many ambiguities and bugs reported after it was deployed on Odia Wikipedia. Even though many rounds of changes there are still bugs which doesn't allow many editors to type accurately. This is one of the reasons when there was a need for a purely phonetic typing scheme which has more affinity to the way an Odia user would type the words using a Roman key board.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><span style="text-align: justify; ">The idea for deploying a new phonetic typing scheme was started during </span><a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/India_Hackathon_2011" style="text-align: justify; ">Mumbai Hackathon in 2011</a><span style="text-align: justify; ">. Subhashish brought the proposal in community village pump for ideas and consensus and the basic layout and testing was done. The whole project went into a slumber for a long time! Recently when </span><a href="http://yuvi.in/" style="text-align: justify; ">YuviPanda</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> was in Delhi and met Subhashish the idea of hacking and testing the tool came again. The whole keyboard layout was </span><a href="https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/blob/master/rules/or/or-lekhani.js" style="text-align: justify; ">revised and deployed on github</a><span style="text-align: justify; ">. Two main keyboard layouts which were used for keeping the major inputs as standard were Fedora Phonetic keyboard and Apple Oriya Qwerty.</span></span></p>
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<th style="text-align: center; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/IndicOriya.png" alt="Indic Oriya Typing" class="image-inline" title="Indic Oriya Typing" /></th>
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<td style="text-align: center; ">Fedora's Phonetic Keyboard Layout</td>
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<th style="text-align: center; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/AppleQuertyKeyboard.png" title="Apple Querty Keyboard" height="244" width="585" alt="Apple Querty Keyboard" class="image-inline" /></th>
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<td style="text-align: center; ">Apple QWERTY Keyboard</td>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Majority of the key combinations have been kept same except for few small changes. The typing scheme is deployed on <a href="http://translatewiki.net/">TranslateWiki.net</a> for <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/ULS">Universal Language Selector</a> and <a href="http://gerrit.wikimedia.org/">gerrit</a> which will be enabled on Odia Wikipedia soon for Narayam. The recent mobile typing tool, "Indic typing tool" which was developed at Delhi office of the Centre for Internet and Society by Yuvi Panda and Subhashish Panigrahi also uses Lekhani as a default typing tool.</p>
<p>Quick links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Lekhani">Lekhani</a> typing scheme for Odia</li>
<li>Source file: <a href="https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/blob/master/rules/or/or-lekhani.js">https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/blob/master/rules/or/or-lekhani.js</a></li>
<li>Check the <a href="https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/tree/master/rules/or">github page</a> for other Odia typing tools and <a href="https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/tree/master/rules">here</a> for all other languages</li>
<li><a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Community_support/Tools_and_apps/Indic_typing_tool">Typing in Lekhani using mobile phone</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Credits:</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:Lekhani">Odia Lekhani Phonetic Keyboard Layout (CC-BY-SA 3.0):</a> Manoranjan Behera</li>
<li>Fedora's Phonetic Keyboard Layout: RedHat</li>
<li>Apple QWERTY Keyboard: Apple Inc.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-gets-new-typing-solution'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-gets-new-typing-solution</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-12-12T12:28:57ZBlog EntryTyping in Indic Languages from Mobiles made Easy!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/typing-in-indic-languages-from-mobiles
<b>A new app is up for typing in Indic languages from mobile phones. This is is available online at: http://bitly.com/indictyping and supports on iOS. Android version is to be released soon.</b>
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<p class="quoted"><i>"There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."</i><br /><b>Phil Karlton</b></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yuvi Panda smiles saying this. <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Yuvipanda">Yuvi Panda</a>, a former Wikimedia Foundation contractor and developer was here in our Delhi office and I had an opportunity to spend some time discussing some of the technical problems that we have been facing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the major setback most people have with their phones is the lack of language support and lack of typing support for Indic languages. Fortunately most of the new generation phones support Indic languages. Three of the major operating systems used currently by most phones are Android, Windows, Blackberry and iOS. Android being an open source operating system has extensive community support and developments which is something we were primarily hopeful while starting this project. Windows phones also have a good number of user base in India and support for Indic languages on Windows is really good. Though iOS has good support for Indic display there is no support for typing. IOS, Windows and Blackberry all being proprietary have really less community support and any tool available on these app market would be proprietary. So, our idea was to start a cross platform app which will use the available jQuery ime used for Indic typing for Indic Wikipedias and sister projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Currently, most of the Indic language Wikipedias use a typing tool called <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam">Narayam</a> ( "Narayam" is a Malayalam word which refers to a metal stylus that was used for writing on palm leaves and papyrus in ancient days). By default the typing scheme for most of the language wikipedias is set to transliteration or phonetic. An Indian mobile user would normally type his own language using Roman letters from a mobile. "और दोस्त सब ठीक है?" in Hindi would be typed as "Aur dost sab thik hai?" when someone pings a friend on facebook or sends a text message. Now with the new typing tool you need to type "aur dosta saba thiika hai?" to get the same text in Devanagari script. This typing scheme is almost same like the phonetic typing most people use for regional languages on mobile which is why typing won’t be much of difference. In terms of usability most people would use the typed text either for web search in regional languages, Facebook posts, tweeting or even sending mails and text messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The detailed procedure for typing using this tool is documented at: <a href="http://goo.gl/HdVJW">http://goo.gl/HdVJW</a>. Indic typing tool is available at: <a class="external-link" href="http://bitly.com/indictyping">http://bitly.com/indictyping</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Scan the QR code below using your QR code application to go "Indic typing tool".</b></p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/QRCodeIndictypingtool.png" title="QR Code for Indic typing tool" height="193" width="193" alt="QR Code for Indic typing tool" class="image-inline" /></p>
<h3>Developer speaks:</h3>
<p>This is a simple tool that lets you type in your native language on mobile phones. Currently only iOS devices are supported.</p>
<p>The tool is a simple wrapper around Wikimedia Foundation <a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Language_Engineering_team">Language Engineering</a>'s <a href="http://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime">jquery.ime</a> project. It simply adds a much easier to use (on a mobile device) language selector, and makes it available offline (on iOS devices).</p>
<h3>Quick links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Source code: <a class="external-link" href="https://github.com/yuvipanda/indic-typing-tool">https://github.com/yuvipanda/indic-typing-tool</a></li>
<li>Test the app and report the bugs directly on <a class="external-link" href="https://github.com/yuvipanda/indic-typing-tool/issues">GitHub</a> or on <a class="external-link" href="http://goo.gl/sBiaF">Meta</a>.</li>
<li>Credits: <a class="external-link" href="http://yuvi.in/">YuviPanda</a>, <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish Panigrahi</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Santhosh.thottingal">Santhosh Thottingal</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/typing-in-indic-languages-from-mobiles'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/typing-in-indic-languages-from-mobiles</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessInformation Technology2013-07-17T09:02:46ZBlog 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 Entry