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Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia
<b>Kannada Wikipedia is one of those Indic language wikipedias which has seen many readers coming up every month. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the experiences of some of the very active Kannada wikipedians from the recent Kannada Wikipedia meetup held in Bengaluru on October 7, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Seven Kannada wikipedians (a couple of them also contribute to Sanskrit Wikipedia) participated in this <a class="external-link" href="http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%95%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%AA%E0%B3%80%E0%B2%A1%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%AF:%E0%B2%B8%E0%B2%AE%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%AE%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%B2%E0%B2%A8/%E0%B3%AB">event</a>. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi from the Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet & Society and Jessie Wild from the Wikimedia Foundation also participated in the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After a brief introduction about the theme of the meetup, Omshivaprakash, one of the active contributors for community building who also solves technical issues besides contributing articles explained the history and happenings of Kannada Wikipedia said “the only reason all of us joined together to contribute for Kannada Wikipedia is because we love our mother language, Kannada.” He explained how he reached out to a renowned Kannada writer asking him to document his own writings and books to become active on Kannada Wikipedia and start contributing. In the recent past Kannada community has organized many outreach events. The presentation for each outreach has been translated and customized for effective presentation. In the past they struggled for the six username creation barrier. Om also spoke about the scope of government partnership for including Kannada Wikipedia in the school syllabus (which worked out really well in Kerala) for which he is willing to meet the government officials. Additionally, he also shared the idea of recording an outreach session and presenting it to the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another active wikipedian, Tejas emphasized the importance of having Kannada Wikipedia as part of the syllabus where lecturers and teachers will be learning to teach about Wikipedia in the classroom. As this will be mandatory, both students and teachers will take it seriously and it would be a sustainable practice. To show the results about 4-5 schools could be shortlisted for a pilot program. Tejas also proposed the idea of including Kannada typing in schools because that is something most people are not taught.</p>
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<p><i> </i></p>
<p><i> </i></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/wkp2.jpg" alt="bengaluru wikipedia" class="image-inline" title="bengaluru wikipedia" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><i>The above picture shows some participants working on their laptops during the meetup.</i></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The wikipedians further discussed about Kannada Wiktionary and how collaborations will work to bridge the gap of wikipedians who contribute separately for Kannada Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Frequently Used Entries for Localization (FUEL) is a great project for creating content on Wiktionary, which will involve bringing new people to the community. In Bengaluru, CIS and <a href="http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsanchaya.net%2F2012%2F05%2Ffuel-kannada-workshop-on-kannada-computing-terminology%2F&ei=8L93UMrzD4iHrAfIsICQCg&usg=AFQjCNFfXFz-D48NPY27lCwY-cx_O4OoSw&sig2=_PkJ_65fL-q5XrczMchblg" target="_blank">Sanchaya</a><i> </i>co-hosted a two-day workshop for discussion regarding the same. Involving more wikimedians for such workshops would be helpful for both the projects, Wikipedia and Wiktionary. “I was always keen to do something for Kannada language on the web, being a software professional nothing leaves me a better chance to work for such a project like Wikipedia in my own language,” expresses Pavithra, another active Kannada Wikipedian who has supported many outreach events and translation projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedians, those who were a few weeks older, spoke about the problems they are facing when searching databases. Even the experienced wikipedians face the same problem. Options, such as having a central place, like a list of templates with little description and templates which could be standardized so that anyone could contribute to the translation and other things which need contribution, were discussed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Tejas, a long-term Kannada Wikipedian discussed about the non-standard nature of the South Asian language wiktionaries. If Wiktionary could be standardized it could be easier to ask other communities to collaborate and contribute in their respective languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Discussion on Sanskrit Wiki projects:</b><br />Abhiram, another wikipedian who initially began with editing Sanskrit WikiSource and then started contributing to Kannada Wikipedia explained the hurdles they faced while spreading the word about Sanskrit WikiSource in Karnataka. Being closely associated to <a href="http://samskritabharati.in/" target="_blank">Samskrita Bharati</a> and contributing largely to the Kannada WikiSource project, Abhiram feels not many people can write in Sanskrit though they can speak because of their fluency in the Devanagari script. People who study Sanskrit lose their grip of it after they pass 10<sup>th</sup> or 12<sup>th</sup> grades. “As Sanskrit is rarely found as a spoken language a lot of ground work and motivation for the contributors are needed to cultivate a community. We could plan for 10 spoken Sanskrit sessions in a month to kick-start before we teach how to edit Sanskrit Wikipedia”, Abhiram added.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherSubhashish PanigrahiOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-11-04T14:03:49ZBlog EntryWikipedia comes to Hyderabad!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report
<b>This post is a report on the series of Wikipedia meets organized in the city of Hyderabad on September 29-30, 2012. These workshops were a a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The city of Hyderabad is not only an IT hub but also home to many English and Indian language Wikipedians. In a recent series of weekend workshops and meet-ups conducted within the city, I had the opportunity to interact with many of them. We conducted a Wikipedia workshop at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, an Odia Wikipedia workshop as well as a general Wikipedia workshop for people interested in contributing to all language Wikipedias. I would like to convey my gratitude to the Computer Science department students at BITS, Hyderabad, Odia Wikipedians Swetapadma and Amaresh and English Wikipedians Tausif and Abhijith for making these events happen despite festivities and protests in the city.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To provide a brief report on the events, the BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad workshop was organized as a general introduction to Wikipedia. The event was organized with the support of the Computer Science department at the college and saw a presence of more than 60 students. It was 2 hour session where 6 students created their Wikipedia user accounts and entered their names on the BITS project page. They were also shown how Wikis work – live and global.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Students were encouraged to make changes to their college article and they discovered how to view recent changes, page views and other functions. It was a particularly informative session because majority of the group did not know that Wikipedia articles are written by common people from all walks of life! The session ended with a proposal to start a Wiki club for their college. The Odia Wikipedia meetup organized on the same day registered 11 participants while the general meetup on the next day had over 20 participants. In all three workshops, the majority of participants were not aware how one could contribute to Wikipedia articles.</p>
<h3>Next steps:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was great to see existing Wikipedians discuss the idea of having a Hyderabad SIG (special interest group) to conduct regular meetings, workshops, photo walks and more! Since the participants have shared their email-IDs, we will stay in touch and inform them about upcoming Telugu and English editing workshops. Students at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad have also requested a Wikipedia workshop and hackathon for their upcoming techfest this month. A Telugu Wikipedia workshop has been proposed for the second week of October.</p>
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<p>For more information on how to conduct a Wikipedia workshop in your city, you could contact <a href="mailto:noopur@cis-india.org">noopur@cis-india.org</a></p>
<hr />
<p>There was newspaper coverage about this event:</p>
<ul>
<li>Wiki Meetup, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/drumming-session/article3943855.ece">Hindu</a>, September 28, 2012</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-02-13T11:40:06ZBlog EntryPunjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar
<b>After Ludhiana and Patiala we came to Amritsar, which we all know is home to the Golden Temple and the spiritual centre of Sikh religion, to introduce Punjabi Wikipedia. The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When we decided to conduct a Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop at Amritsar, the location was an issue. We tried to contact many institutes (mostly colleges) over phone. We couldn't get the permission. Finally, Punjabi Wikipedian G.S. Guglani directly approached the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.springdaleeducation.com/">Spring Dale senior school </a>management with the request for a space to do the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop. Spring Dale is a famous English medium school in Amritsar. The school principal, Rajiv Sharma not only agreed to host the workshop but also made arrangements to bring selected students and teachers from eight other schools in Amritsar to join the workshop. Actually this was a bonus for us since we asked just a meeting place to host our workshop but not only we got the meeting place, we got assured participation from eight other schools and the permission to use the computer lab to conduct the hands-on wiki editing session.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; ">Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh lead the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.</div>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The event started with a formal opening talk in Punjabi by a student of Spring Dale. The Principal of the Spring Dale Senior School Rajiv Sharma introduced the guests to the audience and briefed the participants about the workshop. Guglani took the participants through a brief presentation (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Rnki2r">http://bit.ly/Rnki2r</a>) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Few participants were invited to create user account in Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani demonstrated Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing. There was a question-answer session where participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012-10.JPG" class="decoded" height="671" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012-10.JPG" width="894" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><i>Participants asking questions in the Question-Answer session</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After a short break and students and teachers gathered in the computer lab. Booklets containing Punjabi typing scheme were distributed among the participants. Guglani, Shiju, and Subha supported them with editing various articles in Punjabi. As none of the students was exposed to Punjabi typing before they took much interest to type Punjabi. We were able to see the surprise in the eyes of the students and teachers when Narayam converted the typed words to Gurumukhi Punjabi. However, all the present typing tools integrated to Punjabi Wikipedia have some issues. After getting inputs from users I logged some bugs to enhance it. Bug 1 (<a class="external-link" href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39523">Phonetic keymap update</a>), Bug 2 (<a class="external-link" href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39218">My Best Keyboard update</a>). Hope WMF developers will look into it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the end of the session email addresses were exchanged for future communication. New wikipedians were given pointers to stay in touch and ask questions when they face problems with editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This workshop involving school childern was really a very good experince for us. I would like to thank the Spring Dale Senior School management for the warm hospitality that they extended to us. We are touched. I could see the possibility of doing programs there.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After conducting three workshops for Punjabi (two workshops (Luhiana and Patiala) involving college students and one workshop (Amritsar) involving school children), I am sure there is bright future ahead for the Punjabi Wikipedia if community can come forward to build the community further. <a class="external-link" href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/">From the statistical report of last year</a> we can see that it was only Guglani editing Punjabi Wikipedia. Now Guglaniji and Surinder came forward to build it and we have around 6-7 active users now. For a language with almost 3 crore speakers 7 active users is not an encouraging number. So we need to have more programs to build it further. Hope community will be able to come forward for that.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">More pictures of this workshop is available at: <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Note:</b> Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju AlexOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-10-04T16:11:34ZBlog EntryAccess to Knowledge — September 2012 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin
<b>This is the first newsletter from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. The issue introduces you to the CIS Access to Knowledge program, the team members in Delhi and reports from Workshops conducted by the Wikipedia community.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India:</p>
<hr />
<h3><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">Access to Knowledge Programme</a></h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS. </li>
</ul>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">CIS Office in Delhi</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>The <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Team" title="Access To Knowledge/Team">A2K team</a> consists of four members: <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">Shiju Alex</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>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Statistical Report</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012">Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report</a> (January – June 2012) (by Shiju Alex). The data for this report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedia Workshops</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="visualHighlight"><b>Note</b>: Although most of these workshops were conducted prior to the grant period, the reports for all of these were written during September, hence we are featuring these:</span></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop">The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012). </li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala">Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 28, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar">Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 30, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library">Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university">Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University</a> (Tumkur, Karnataka, September 15, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-hyderabad-report">Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad!</a> (by Noopur Raval, September 30, 2012). There was coverage in the <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/drumming-session/article3943855.ece">Hindu</a> on September 28, 2012.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Blog Entry</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia">Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia</a> (by Nitika Tandon, September 29, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<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>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessNewsletter2012-12-14T06:18:01ZPageEditor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia
<b>Nitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps. </b>
<h3>What is Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Editor Growth & Contribution Program is an online outreach program that will help raise the number of active editors on Telugu Wikipedia. The program will provide an entrance point for newcomers to Wikipedia, enabling them to contribute to its contents and share the knowledge they possess, while participating and communicating with existing Wikipedia community members. Such a program will serve as a compliment to off-wiki outreach activities already underway.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the Telugu Wikipedians like Arjuna, Dr. Rajshekhar, Sujatha are in the initial stage of discussing the possibility and ways of running an Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How will the program run?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The idea is to run outreach banners using the local site notice on Telugu Wikipedia for three consecutive months. These banners will be in the form of short bios/stories of Telugu Wikipedians who agree to be featured in the editor campaign. Most Wikipedia visitors are unaware of the fact that regular folks write articles on Wikipedia and not scholars or paid writers. These personal stories from active Wikipedians could feature their motivation to contribute, their passion for building and developing Wikipedia, their early experience with Wikipedia as an editor, their invitation to site visitors to become Wikipedia editors, etc. Such personal stories will add a human touch to Wikipedia and will help new visitors related to real life stories. <br /><br />Each of these banners will link to a landing page. The landing page will start with a question at its top saying “What would you like to do in Wikipedia?” followed by six buttons each listing an answer to this question, and linking to the corresponding tutorial page. These six buttons will be: create your username, create your userpage, edit an existing article (fix a typo), add a reference, create a new article, and send a message.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Landing page will be designed in a simple way to avoid any visual distraction for the visitor. Each button will provide a detailed graphical explanation on how to perform each of those actions. To understand the workings of the program in greater detail please <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Outreach_Programs/Editor_Growth_&_Contribution_Campaign">click here</a> (this program design is just a rough draft and may change as required).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Why Telugu Wikipedia?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As per <a class="external-link" href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaTE.htm">Wikimedia Stats</a> Telugu speaking population is around 8 crore. Telugu Wikipedia has about 18 lakh page views per month and 21 active editors (5+ edits in a month). In a community with such large numbers of speakers but extremely low number of Wikipedia editors, there seems to be a lot of scope and opportunity to increase Wikipedia's reach and awareness amongst Telugu speaking population and more so amongst reader of Telugu Wikipedia to start improving and expanding Wikipedia articles and foster the growth of Telugu Wikipedia community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Telegu.jpg" alt="Telegu Wikipedia" class="image-inline" title="Telegu Wikipedia" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Telugu Wikipedia at a glance July 2012</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Number of speakers of other Dravidian languages like Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil is relatively low but have higher number of page views and active editors as compared to Telugu as seen in the table on the right. KA, ML and TA Wikipedia communities have run different programs over time to increase it's reach, spread more awareness and invite new editors. Some of these programs were TamilWiki Media Contest, Tamil Wikipedia Contribution Campaign, Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program, Kannada Medical Project, etc. Telugu Wikipedia requires a similar high impact project that can help them grow their community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/languages.jpg" alt="Indic Languages" class="image-inline" title="Indic Languages" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Comparison of Telugu Wikipedia with other langauge Wikipedias</i>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Cross pollinating ideas</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil and Arabic Wikipedia communities have already experimented with Editor Growth & Contribution Program and have produced amazing results. Ravi from Tamil Wikipedia and Haitham from Arabic Wikipedia were actively involved in running the contribution programs on their respective language Wikipedias and have offered help to run similar project on Telugu Wikipedia and provide regular guidance and support.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Next steps ahead</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Strong community support will be required to run such a program. The larger Telugu Wikipedia community will plan a meet up sometime in October in Hyderabad to take this program forward. Special thanks to Dr. Rajshekhar who has offered to organise this meet-up.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherNitika TandonOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-09-29T12:13:04ZBlog EntryPunjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala
<b>Patiala is the home to the famous Punjabi University. A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012.
</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When the veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani agreed to come forward to spread the message of Punjabi wikipedia among Punjabi speakers it opened a way to revive and build the Punjabi Wikipedia community. Once Guglani's support was confirmed we looked for suitable places to conduct the introduction workshop for Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani himself suggested Patiala, Ludhiana, and Amritsar as the probable places to conduct the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshops. Prof. Rajinder Brar, Head of the Punjabi Department agreed to provide full support to conduct a workshop at Patiala. <br /><br />About 30 participants including students and teachers attended the workshop. Guglani played a pivotal role in organizing the workshop. Shiju Alex gave ample support. The workshop began with a welcome message by Prof. Rajinder. Guglani then took the participants through a brief presentation (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Rnki2r">http://bit.ly/Rnki2r</a>) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia. To our surprise two of the participants, Satdeep Gill and Paramjeet Singh were already aware about the Punjabi Wikipedia and they had created their accounts sometime back even though they didn't do much editing. The presence of Satdeep and Paramjeet and their previous experience with Punjabi helped us during the course of the workshop. Guglani taught one of the participants to create a user account and do the wiki editing. He showed them Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was followed by a question-answer session where the participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions. The workshop ended with a small photo session.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are happy to share that Satdeep has become quite active after this workshop and as of now is one of the very active users in Punjabi Wikipedia. We are sure his presence will attract more Punjabi people from Patiala to Punjabi Wikipedia.</p>
<p>More pictures of this workshop is available at: <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-16Aug2012">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-16Aug2012</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Note:</b> Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju Alex and Subhashish PanigrahiOpennessWorkshopAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-10-04T12:18:36ZBlog EntryWikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library
<b>A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The session on Day 1 was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi and the session on Day 2 was conducted by Subhashish and Piyush.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Day 1: Introductory Session</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was news coverage about <a class="external-link" href="https://plus.google.com/111646825844146884911/posts/Yy9xGd9kV14">this session</a> in the Hindustan Times. Members of the British Library (members above 16 years) were informed about the event through the British Council's <a class="external-link" href="http://www.britishcouncilonline.org/events/besuccessful_event_details.aspx?EventID=776">mailing list</a>. About 32 participants attended this session on Day 1. These included people from different age groups and backgrounds. Amazingly there were more elderly folks than the youngsters! Most of them were from Ludhiana, Mohali and Panchkula (Mohali and Panchkula are two nearby cities).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Subhashish gave the welcome address and asked the participants to introduce themselves and speak about their Wikipedia experience and interaction as a user. Many of them asked questions in the beginning itself which was quite beneficial as we got to spending some time to know each other. The participants were taken through the presentation by questioning about "Who edits Wikipedia and why they edit it", and since the participants continued asking a lot of questions in between, the intro session was longer. Most of them were still not believing that Wikipedia articles could be edited by common men like them. So Subhashish decided to do some vandalism. One of the participants volunteered for creating her user account, and the year when Chandigarh was declared as being the "cleanest city" of India was changed. She then corrected it. Subhashish explained how experienced editors correct such mistakes. The participants were briefed about a few formatting options like bold, italics, hyperlinking and creating heading levels, etc., and showed the "help" tab through which they could learn more. Majority of them had doubts about the credibility and they brought examples of many articles having wrong information. So the rest of the session was spent discussing about the low visibility being one of the reasons of articles with wrong information and how more editor contribution is essential for articles in the Indian context. The participants were also shown articles with "cleanup / more citations needed" maintenance tags and told how they could be improved.</p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Day 2: Editing Workshop</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ten participants from the previous day (including a sports-blogger, a techie, four students, a ELT trainer, a pediatrician and a lady from Ludhiana who created her user account on Day 1 and brought her father for Day 2) came over for this workshop. There were four new student participants as well. Subhashish and Piyush spoke briefly about what is intended for the editing session. All the participants created their user accounts. Some of the participants helped the ones who were new to create their user accounts. The participants chose various articles including articles of local importance such as Banka Bihari Temple in Chandigarh, paratha (few of the participants raising queries on why it is not spelt "paraNtha", Assam tea, and so on.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img alt="File:Wikipedia workshop-Chandigarh-25 August 2012.jpg" height="480" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Wikipedia_workshop-Chandigarh-25_August_2012.jpg" width="640" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center; ">Figure 1: Above is a picture of participants doing Wiki editing</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The audience listened patiently and asked interesting questions like "what is there for me", "what we are going to do next", etc. They all gathered together for a photoshoot, discussed on setting a wiki club to stay connected and agreed to continue editing after the session is over. The participants were also excited to hear that the <a class="external-link" href="http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Chandigarh">Chandigarh British Library Wikipedia Club</a> would be India's third Wikipedia club.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="File:Wikipedia workshop-Chandigarh.jpg" height="600" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Wikipedia_workshop-Chandigarh.jpg/800px-Wikipedia_workshop-Chandigarh.jpg" width="800" /></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center; ">Figure 2: Above is a picture of the participants on Day 2</p>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Meeting with British Library Staff</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the session got over there was a meeting with British library's Deputy Manager Christina and IT Head Varinder. We were joined by a columnist from Tribune and one participant. We explained how the wiki club will function and how it would help them as well. Being a library they could involve many of their members in this. A woman editor from Ludhiana has showed interest for conducting workshops in her town. There was a sports-blogger and techie who explained how the local blogger community (over 125+ bloggers) meet up regularly and blog actively. This is a community we could explore more to promote Wikipedia amongst techies. We found that the British Library was quite open to ideas and showed interest for this collaborative model. The participants also asked about defining positions for the wiki club so that people having different interest could take up the lead for different activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Post event steps:</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Emails with thanks and appreciating their interest were sent to the participants.</li>
<li>Formal opening of the club was done on <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Chandigarh">Wikipedia</a> and participants and new editors have been informed.</li>
<li>Help/support desk on <a class="external-link" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikiClubChandigarh">Facebook</a> was set up to provide online support.</li>
<li>Press releases were sent to newspapers.</li>
<li>Distributing work among new editors has begun.</li>
<li>Discussion for next meetup and keeping them updated on regular basis is being implemented.</li>
</ul>
<p>Meetings were also held with the curator of Chandigarh museum and with Sheetal Prakash, former professor in Public Administration at Punjab University who could help us in reaching out to Punjabi media.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Note:</b> Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library</a>
</p>
No publisherSubhashish PanigrahiOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-10-04T12:08:03ZBlog EntryThe First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop
<b>For those who might not be aware, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the first Indic Wikipedias where community started editing way back in 2002. However, after the initial few edits all activities got stopped and it was inactive over the last decade. Recently we conducted a few workshops that led to the revival of Punjabi Wikipedia. This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Surinder Wadhawan, a Mumbai based Wikipedian played an important role in designing this workshop and introducing Punjabi Wikipedia to the Punjabi speakers. The interest and enthusiam showed by Surinder encouraged long-time Punjabi wikipedian G.S.Guglani to join this workshop.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">About 25 participants came over for this workshop. The College of Computer and Information Technology (CCIT) supported in hosting this event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sarabjit Singh, CEO of the organization introduced the invited guests and explained briefly about the session. Surinder thereafter made a presentation explaining the basics of Wikipedia editing. Guglani, one of the old and active editors of Punjabi Wikipedia talked about the Punjabi Wikipedia and its present situation. He then invited one of the participants and helped her creating her user account and edit an article. Janmeja Singh, a Punjabi language researcher spoke about unicode standards and the importance of Wikipedia for Punjabi language. Gurjeet Singh, another new wikipedian demonstrated Punjabi typing using commonly used keyboards with Roman characters for those who were not aware of typing in Punjabi.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We then started the editing session. Out of them 15 new editors (of which 13 were female) edited various articles. We showed them the typing support page (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Uw8WaV">http://bit.ly/Uw8WaV</a>) on Punjabi Wikipedia and distributed the same in printed form (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Rk9wde">http://bit.ly/Rk9wde</a>). Guglani, Subhashish and Surinder helped editors with basic editing and referencing. New Wikipedians were also informed about the Punjabi Wikipedia Facebook page (<a class="external-link" href="http://on.fb.me/Pr7tBE">http://on.fb.me/Pr7tBE</a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/PunjabiWikipedia" target="_blank"></a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="File:1st Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop-9.jpg" height="600" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/1st_Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-9.jpg/800px-1st_Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-9.jpg" width="800" /></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center; ">Above is a picture of all the participants from the Punjabi Wikipedia workshop</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The workshop was covered in Signpost (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/SSvUYh">http://bit.ly/SSvUYh</a>). There was some media coverage as well:</p>
<ul>
<li>Daily Ajit: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/OWPozC">http://bit.ly/OWPozC</a></li>
<li>The Tribune: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UMrDvs">http://bit.ly/UMrDvs</a></li>
<li>Hindustan Times: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UMrNTn">http://bit.ly/UMrNTn</a></li>
<li>PunjabInfoline: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UZhoT8">http://bit.ly/UZhoT8</a></li>
<li>YesPunjab.com: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/OcMANc">http://bit.ly/OcMANc</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Photos: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:First_Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop,_Ludhiana" target="_blank">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:First_Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop,_Ludhiana</a></p>
<p><b>Note:</b> Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju Alex and Subhashish PanigrahiOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-10-04T12:16:44ZBlog EntryIndic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report: January – June 2012
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012
<b>The following is a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. The author provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The period of analysis is editor contributions between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012. (Read <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">last year’s report here</a>). The data for this report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at <a class="external-link" href="http://stats.wikimedia.org">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>. Thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this information.</p>
<p>Some of the important points from this report are:</p>
<ul>
<li>As always Indic wikipedia communities that are focused on community building had done well. Progress is slow but the results are steady and sustainable.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The communities that have made substantial progress in community building are Urdu, Oriya, Assamese, and Malayalam. (among this, for Urdu Wikipedia most of the activity is from Pakistan). The most recent entry to this club is Punjabi which will show up in the statistics of next few months.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Providing adequate support for newbies is very much required after each outreach. But many communities are failing here. This is affecting the conversion rate even though many outreach activities are happening across the country,</li>
<li>As seen in the past the readership of Indic language wikipedias is still growing up.</li>
</ul>
<p>This report is presented in the following sequence.</p>
<ol>
<li>Community</li>
<li>Content</li>
<li>Readership</li>
</ol>
<h2>Community</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As community is the backbone of every Indic language Wikipedia, it is important that the respective language wiki communities give adequate importance to community building. Many language communities are still not understanding the importance of building the community. To achieve the goal of building free knowledge database in the respective language we need participation from maximum number of speakers of the respective language. The following table gives information on two important parameters about the community in the respective language Wikipedia:</p>
<ul>
<li>Number of users who had 100 or more edits in a month (high active Wikipedians)</li>
<li>Number of users who had at least 5 or more edits a month (active Wikipedians)</li>
</ul>
<p><img class="wp-image-337 size-full" height="518" src="http://shijualex.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/users.png?w=640&h=518" title="2012 Jan-June user growth" width="640" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><span class="visualHighlight">User growth in Indic language Wikipedias during 2012 January-June</span></p>
<p>Some of the important information that we can make out from this table are:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The number of high active editors (editors with more than 100 edits per month) are the backbone of each language wikipedia. Apart from doing normal article editing they are the users maintaining the wiki. Tamil and Malayalam continue to be on the top spot with almost 24 active users . Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, and Urdu also showed growth in the number of high active users.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Assamese Wikipedia is showing a reduction in the number of high active users even though its number of active users increased. This means that Assamese Wikipedia requires some more current active users to take up the role of wiki adminship and similar leadership roles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The number of active users (editors with more than 5 edits per month) give an overview of the overall activity in wikipedia. Here also Malayalam and Tamil continue to be on the top. Some of the languages that showed notable growth in the number of active users are Urdu, Oriya, and Assamese. As we know there are lot of community building activities happening in both Oriya and Assamese. Along with community building activities both the communities are making sure they are providing sufficient support to newbies using various options. And there efforts are showing up in the form of community strength.</li>
<li>The number of active members in Odia has increased to 25 which means community has grown 3 times over the past 6 months.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The number of wiki editors per million for most Indic languages is still below 1. This shows that awareness about Indic language wiki projects is still an issue for most Indic Wikipedias. From this statistics (<a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm" target="_blank">http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm</a>), we can see that for Sanskrit the number of editors per million speakers has become <b>280</b> which is one of the highest in the world. No other Indic language Wikipedia is near Sanskrit in this parameter. Malayalam comes second with 3 editors per million and Assamese and Bishnupriya Manipuri comes third with 2 editors per million. Tamil is in the fourth place with 1 editor. For all other Indic languages the number of editors per million population is below 1. This shows that still the penetration of respective language Wikipedia among the speakers of a language is very low. We need more outreach programs to reach the speakers of the respective language.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Content</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The number of articles is an important parameter which has misguided some wiki communities. However, it is a very important parameter if communities are increasing the number of articles in a way helpful to the readers of the wiki.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img class="wp-image-341 size-full" src="http://shijualex.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/articles.png?w=640" title="Article growth during 2012 January - June" /></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Hindi continues to be on the top spot with 1,02,902. During the past 6 months almost 2000 articles got added to Hindi Wikipedia.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Telugu Wikipedia crossed the 50,000 article milestone is one of the major accomplishments during this period. I remember reading the news about Telugu Wikipedia crossing the <a href="http://crossroads.veeven.com/2007/06/26/telugu-wikipedia-reaches-30000-articles/" target="_blank">30,000 article milestone in June 2007 </a>which shows that it took almost 5 years to reach 50,000 article milestone. As pointed out by <a href="http://crossroads.veeven.com/2012/03/15/telugu-wikipedia-50000-articles/" target="_blank">User:Veeven in his blog post</a> (about Telugu Wikipedia crossing the 50,000 articles), Telugu Wikipedia needs more support from Telugu speaking population to build the free knowledge project in Telugu. The current number of active users in Telugu Wikipedia is not showing justice to the huge speaker base (more than 8 crores) of Telugu.</li>
<li>Another major milestone was Assamese Wikipedia crossing the 1,000 article milestone.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil and Malayalam are the two language wikipedias that added most number of articles during this time period. Both the language wikipedias added close to 3000 articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Sindhi, Newari (Nepal Bhasha) and Bishnupriya language wikipedias showed reduction in the number of articles. There are 2 reasons for this:</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li>There is no active community to add new articles (see the first table for the number of active users) </li>
<li>Spam/vandalism pages were deleted by stewards/global sysops.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Readers (Pageview)</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Number of people visiting the website continue to increase for all Indic language wikipedias and the total visits for all Indic language wikipedias combined is close to 4 crore now.<br /><br />Please note that the information available in the below table is the total visits (page views) for a language wikipedia for a month from all the platforms combined. It includes visits by readers and editors. This is NOT the list of <b>Number of Unique Visitors</b> to the website.</p>
<p>(The number of readers shown in the below table is in lakhs)</p>
<p><img alt="Growth of Readers during January 2012 - June 2012" class="wp-image-344 size-full aligncenter" src="http://shijualex.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/readers.png?w=640" title="Growth of Readers during January 2012 - June 2012" /></p>
<p>(The <b>Number of Readers</b> shown in the above table is in lakhs)</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For most of the Indic languages readership has gone up. For Assamese and Odia it almost doubled.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Among big languages unlike the number of active users when it comes to readers most Indic languages are doing justice to its speaking population volume. So even though many of our speakers are not editing the respective language wikipedia they are reading it. Bengali and Telugu are two languages that behaves different here which shows that awareness is very low for both the languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">As the Indic language support in smart phones and different OSs is in better position now, I am sure the readership is going to increase further in future.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Still a major percentage of our speakers (I mean speakers who has access to internet) doesn’t know that there is a Wikipedia exists in their own mother language and they not using it is a big issue. If our reader base is not increasing it will affect the community growth also. Hope things will improve as at least few language communities are involved in various awareness and outreach programs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: left; "><i>Originally posted at</i> <a class="external-link" href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012-january-2012-june/">http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012-january-2012-june/</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju AlexOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-09-28T15:41:31ZBlog EntryKannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university
<b>Tumkur University, Karnataka hosted a Kannada Wiki Workshop on September 15, 2012. This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Ashwin Kumar from the Department of English, Tumkur University and Kannada wikipedians, Omshivaprakash, Hareesh, Tejus and Pavithra played vital roles in organising this workshop.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">About 30 participants including students and teachers participated in this workshop. Students were mostly from the Department of English and Library Science.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The workshop began at 10.30 a.m. Prof. Ashwin Kumar gave the welcome address and spoke about the importance of Kannada Wikipedia. Thereafter, Om Shiva Prakash made a presentation on "Introduction to Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia". This was followed by the "Editing Session". The university had provided 10 computers for the session. Harish and Tejas lead the editing session with the rest of the team supporting the students to do the "wiki editing". The session went upto 2.00 p.m. since the participants showed keen interest. As there were some restrictions associated with the "username creation" only "six" students were able to create their wiki username.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UsuqFv"><img alt="ಚಿತ್ರ:Tumkur University Kannada Wiki Workshop.jpg" height="533" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Tumkur_University_Kannada_Wiki_Workshop.jpg" width="800" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Seen above: Participants from the Kannada Wiki Workshop held in Tumkur University</i>. For more pictures, visit <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UsuqFv">http://bit.ly/UsuqFv</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Kannada Wikipedia community is holding talks with the university officials to begin a Kannada Wikipedia education program. These types of initiatives will attract more Kannada speaking people to Kannada Wiki related activities.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju AlexOpennessWikimedia2012-10-16T12:35:10ZBlog Entry