Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs

subha — 2014-02-03T06:24:18Z

KIIT University, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) for furthering Odia Wikipedia.

Dr.Achyuta Samanta, Founder-Chairman of KIIT and KISS inaugurated both the collaborations formally. Dr. Sasmitarani Samanta, Registrar, KIIT and Surjya Kanta Mohanty, Chief Operating Officer, KISS signed the MoUs of KIIT and KISS respectively whereas T. Vishnuvardhan, Programme Director, CIS-A2K was there to sign in both the MoUs on behalf of CIS along with Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, CIS-A2K. Odia Wikipedians Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, Shitikantha Dash, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Sailesh Patnaik, senior faculty and management members; Prof. Parthosen Gupta, Professor-KIIT School of Management, Sucheta Priyabadini, Joint Registrar, KIIT Santosh K. Pani, Dean-KIIT School of Electrical Engineering and other staff members from KISS were there for this event.

The event was held on January 11, 2014 from 10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/cis-a2k-kiit-university-kaling-institute-of-social-sciences-mou

Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians

subha — 2013-11-18T08:24:52Z

Twenty Wikimedians from 10 cities speaking 8 languages attended the 4-day Train-The-Trainer (TTT) programme conducted last month by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge programme (CIS-A2K) at Bangalore. The programme aimed to improve and enhance Wikipedians' skills for outreach and community-building activities.

The article by Subhashish Panigrahi was edited by Rohini Lakshane and published in DNA on November 14, 2013.

Twenty Wikimedians from 10 cities speaking 8 languages attended the 4-day Train The Trainer (TTT) programme conducted last month by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge programme (CIS-A2K) at Bangalore. Twenty active Indian language Wikimedia communities spread across the world are moving ahead the bandwagon of collaborating with each other and carving their mark on the world's largest encyclopaedia and its other sister projects. Apart from editing Wikipedia articles, some Wikimedians devote their time to bringing new blood into the community and fostering it, so that the community grows. Indian language Wikimedia communities need to empower Wikimedians who would lead the outreach activities locally in their vernacular communities. The idea of the TTT programme was born out of this need.

The TTT programme kicked off on October 3 with Wikimedians from Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. They delivered presentations on various topics: Why the society needs Wikipedia; Wikipedia in Indian languages; How articles about diseases and other common medical science topics could be improved to help people; etc. Their presentation delivery skills were assessed by CIS-A2K's Director and Manager and they were offered individual assessment and feedback. Personal trainer Sachin Nagarajappa spent time with Wikimedians discussing mistakes that trainers do while conducting workshops and gradual improvement techniques for impactful outreach. Malayalam Wikimedian Viswanathan Prabhakaran held a session on "Crowd Sourcing from the Future" explaining various layers of crowdsourced projects.

On the next day, groups of Wikimedians were assigned the task of delivering a Wikipedia editing session to the audience as if the latter were new editors. Sachin conducted an advanced presentation skill improvement workshop based on inputs gathered from participants and the assessment of the group presentations. Veteran Wikimedian Hari Prasad Nadig shared lessons on "Challenges and Opportunities in building an Indian Language Community online". FOSS activist and CIS Executive Director Sunil Abraham conducted two sessions: "A spectrogram-based activity to simplify the criticality of Neutral Point of View" and an interactive session on offline and online outreach, "Speed Geeking". These were followed by one-on-one discussions on improving presentation skills.

	Typing in Indian languages is not easy, especially with the many typing layout standards used in the public and private sectors in India. CIS-A2K's Programme Officer Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted a session on the Unicode standard for Indian languages, its use and fonts in different operating systems. Social media expert and Wikimedian Tinu Cherian shared the secrets of popularising Indian language Wikipedias and bringing outstanding contributors to the limelight. He also spoke about how the media played an important role in showcasing initiatives for free encyclopaedic content contribution in India, and shared tips on using the social media. CIS-A2K's Programme Director Vishnu Vardhan shared case studies of making Wikipedia workshops interesting, interactive and fun. Viswanathan and CIS-A2K's Programme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi demonstrated how to set up a handheld digital camera-based prop to easily digitise books without using a scanner.

Typing in Indian languages is not easy, especially with the many typing layout standards used in the public and private sectors in India. CIS-A2K's Programme Officer Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted a session on the Unicode standard for Indian languages, its use and fonts in different operating systems. Social media expert and Wikimedian Tinu Cherian shared the secrets of popularising Indian language Wikipedias and bringing outstanding contributors to the limelight. He also spoke about how the media played an important role in showcasing initiatives for free encyclopaedic content contribution in India, and shared tips on using the social media. CIS-A2K's Programme Director Vishnu Vardhan shared case studies of making Wikipedia workshops interesting, interactive and fun. Viswanathan and CIS-A2K's Programme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi demonstrated how to set up a handheld digital camera-based prop to easily digitise books without using a scanner.

The most vital part of Wikipedia articles is citing references. Wikimedian Shyamal Lakshminarayan demonstrated how finding sources of references and citing them on Wikipedia could be made easier using various tools. Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation and writer Achal Prabhala shared stories of documenting orally continued traditions in Kerala and South Africa for building references on Wikipedia. He also shed light on how copyright laws evolved in the context of copyright issues that Wikipedia contributors face, and on content donation on WikiSource and other platforms.

Wikimedia India's founding member and veteran Telugu Wikimedian Arjuna Rao Chavala spoke about the history and future plans of Wikimedia India.

The participants then went to M.G. Road Boulevard to see the weaving work by Gandhians, a philately exhibition on Gandhi, and spent some time with Namma Metro's staff to learn about the operations of the Metro. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Kannada Wikimedian Om Shivaprakash guided the Wikimedians to the office of Deccan Herald-Prajavani where they observed the newspaper production process and learnt about the use of Kannada Unicode fonts in newspaper printing. The editor and staff of Prajavani learnt about the use of the Wikimedia Commons as a free media repository. The Wikimedians left Bangalore with happy faces with the hope of cultivating more editors in their communities.

Link to the meta page here

More pictures here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dnaindia-november-14-2013-subhashish-panigrahi-train-the-trainer-programme-for-wikipedians

Train the Trainer Program

subha — 2013-11-18T07:52:26Z

Wikipedians, about 20 of them, from 10 different cities, speaking 8 different languages, joined together for the first ever four days "Train the Trainer Program" organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in Bangalore from October 3 to 6, 2013.

Read the original published on the Wikipedia meta page

CIS-A2K organised the residency training program to build capacities amongst different language Wikimedia communities. A good diversity of Wikipedians from various language communities such as Bengali, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Odia, came over for the event.

CIS-A2K identified two prominent reasons for organizing the event: (1) Limitations of a virtual sphere, and (2) Limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities.

Limitations of a virtual sphere
Most open source communities face problem of a lack of time and space for sharing ideas in a non-virtual sphere. Similary Wikipedians, who are voluntary contributors and authors of the articles posted on Wikipedia merely get time and opportunity to meet fellow editors because of the limitations of a virtual platform on which Wikipedia is built. There are twelve active Indian language Wikimedia communities that are spread across the world and moving the bandwagon of collaborating with each other and carving their historic mark of compiling the world's largest encyclopaedia and its other sister projects. To keep this movement alive there is a need of cross-sharing ideas of working together for a common goal and strengthening the leaders of these communities.

Limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities
Only a handful of Wikipedians devote their time in leading outreach activities and bringing new blood to the community. Indian language Wikimedia communities are in need of empowering Wikipedians who would lead outreach sessions in order to expand their editor community and strengthen their language projects.

The inception of this program began with the discussion of organizing a training program for the Wikipedians who are willing to conduct more activities in their home cities. Finally on October 3, 2013, Bangalore heard the voices of prominent Wikipedians from Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Wikipedians delivered presentations on various topics such as — why Wikipedia is needed for the society, why Wikipedia in Indian languages, importance of starting new Wiki projects and so on.

Their presentation delivery skills were judged by Vishnu Vardhan and Nitika Tandon and all other community members present. They gave individual assessments and feedback for improvement towards the end of the day. Personal trainer Sachin Nagarajappa spent time with Wikipedians discussing mistakes that trainers do while conducting workshops and gradual improvement techniques for impactful outreach. Wikipedia is built on the concept of crowdsourcing and Malayalam Wikimedian Viswanathan Prabhakaran carried out a session about “Crowd Sourcing from the Future” explaining the various layers of crowdsourced projects.

The first day ended with a task where different language Wikipedians formed groups to prepare presentations for the following day.


Above: Wikipedians Satdeep Gill, Shyamal Lakshminarayan and Shubha during at the CIS-A2K Train-the-Trainer Program (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Groups were given a challenge of imagining the audience as new wikipedians. Five groups presented on the second day. Sachin conducted an advanced presentation skill improvement workshop based on the inputs from the participants and the assessment of the group presentations. Veteran Wikipedian Hari Prasad Nadig shared learnings from Challenges & Opportunities in building an Indian Language Community online. Open source activist and CIS's Executive Director Sunil Abraham conducted two sessions — a spectrogram based activity to simplify the "Criticality of Neutral Point of View" and an interactive session called “Speed Geeking” on offline and online outreach followed by a one-on-one discussion on the presentation skill improvement.

Typing in Indian languages is not easy especially when it comes to multiple typing layout standards followed in the public and private sectors in India. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted a session on Unicode standard for Indian languages and its usefulness with a brief context on the fonts and their different operating systems. Social media expert and Wikimedian Tinu Cherian shared the secrets of popularizing Indian language Wikipedias and bringing outstanding contributors to the limelight, how media played an important role in showcasing initiatives for free encyclopaedic content contribution in India and tips of social media. With fun activities Vishnu Vardhan shared case studies of making Wikipedia workshops interesting. Wikimedia Foundation board member and writer Achal Prabhala shared stories of documenting Oral traditions in Kerala and South Africa for Wikipedia referencing and how copyright laws evolved in the context of copyright issues that Wikipedia contributors face. Achal also threw light on content donation on WikiSource and other platforms that would be useful for people to consume for knowledge production on diverse platforms where Wikipedia could play a central role. Viswanathan and Subhashish Panigrahi demonstrated how to set up a handheld digital camera based prop to easily digitize books without using any scanner and then create electronic books.

The most vital part of Wikipedia articles is referencing. Wikimedian Shyamal Lakshminarayan demonstrated how finding sources of references and citing them for the facts on Wikipedia could be made easier through detailed research and by using several tools available. Wikimedia India's founding member and veteran Telugu Wikipedian Arjuna Rao Chavala gave a talk about the history and future plans of Wikimedia India. Wikipedians then went to M.G. Road boulevard to see the weaving work by Gandhians, Philately exhibition on Gandhi and spent some time with Namma Metro's staff to know about the metro operation. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Kannada Wikipedian Om Shivaprakash guided Wikipedians to the office of Deccan Herald Prajavani where they got to see the entire newspaper production and spent time with the technical staff to learn about the use of Kannada Unicode fonts for newspaper printing. Editors and staff at Prajavani got to know about the use of WikiCommons as a free image repository.

The four action filled days involved learning new concepts, training on presentation skills, collaborating to create outreach documents, sharing stories from different language communities, understanding new mediums of outreach, meeting Wikipedians from different cities and also having lots of fun. Wikipedians left Bangalore city with happy faces and we hope to cultivate new editors in their communities.

List of Participants

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program

Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language

subha — 2014-01-31T06:20:11Z

CIS-A2K team interviewed Priyadarshini Tadkodkar about Konkani language. She speaks how editing/contributing to Konkani Wikipedia would help students.

Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team was there in Goa University to conduct a four day long Konkani Wikipedia workshop for the MA Konkani students. During these days Subhashish Panigrahi of CIS-A2K caught up with Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar, Head, Konkani department of Goa University and asked about the brief history of Konkani language. In this video Dr. Tadkodkar shares the origin and movements that has affected Konkani, influence of other languages on it and the documentation process of the language. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).

Video


Above: Video of Priyadarshini Tadkodkar speaking on Konkani language

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/priyadarshini-tadkodkar-konkani-language

WikipediansSpeak: Piotr Konieczny

subha — 2013-09-18T12:22:36Z

WikipediansSpeak is a video interview show hosted by Subhashish Panigrahi at the Centre of Internet and Society. It brings you series of posts about Wikipedians across the globe. Wikipedians are those voluntary contributors who write Wikipedia articles, correct mistakes made by other wikipedians and share knowledge for free to the world.

Video production: Subhashish Panigrahi, Access To Knowledge Programme (Centre for Internet and Society), CC-BY-SA 3.0

This episode brings you a conversation with Piotr Konieczny, a veteran Wikipedian from Poland. He has contributed to over 514 DYK articles on Wikipedia. Being a sociologist and academician Piotr has always tried to divert attention more students, academicians, researchers, scholars to contribute to Wikipedia. I first met Piotr during WikiSym + OpenSym Conference at Hong Kong and again at Wikimania 2013. It was the beginning of my Wiki-experience of meeting more researchers and scholars who are also Wikipedians. Piotr is now based in Seoul and where he is teaching Informational Sociology at the Hanyang University (한양대학교). His keen interest in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and Wikipedia’s impact in social movement brings the expanse of diversifying Wikipedia’s outreach to masses. In academia he proposes for Wikipedia Education Programs that converts the users of Wikipedia to contribute who elsewhere use it just as a tool to accessing knowledge. If a small portion of the subject experts start contributing to Wikipedia then there would be a big change in this world.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedians-speak-piotr-konieczny

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

subha — 2013-09-12T10:22:44Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students.

Subhashish Panigrahi's blog post was published in Startup Goa Blog on September 9, 2013.

This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is in incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

Before any language, Wikipedia shapes up as a live project where an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution.The Konkani Wikipedia incubator started way back in 2006. But because of many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Because of the political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and also written in multiple scripts; Devanagari and Roman (known as Romi as well) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochin region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world’s first University to have a masters program in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar, it was found that the students were very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. The students were introduced to Konkani Wikipedia and they showed interest in taking part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of thirty eight students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. All of the students including four coordinators came with at least 2 pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning, a big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration. Soon the room was filled with 20 MA students from the Konkani department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop there was an interaction with the students in the presence of the Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Dr. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate the workshop. With their help, a majority of students signed up and created their user accounts before the first workshop. Some roughwork went on to plan for a whole day workshop.

Introduce Yourself

To start with the first day, there was an “Adjective Name” activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Then there was a discussion about articles students planned to write. Few of them were not sure if the articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into the Wikipedia framework.

Editing time

Article titles were decided and everyone was ready with their homework write ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four to five of them knew typing. Students came forward to try out typing. There was a glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. It worked well. Students managed to type with only a little typos.


Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

There was an activity break with a game called “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). According to the game rules, the host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and frog game

“Rat race” is a game where participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants becomes a rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and were taught some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references). Editing session went on until the rest of the day.

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

The agenda for the day was to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (About 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends, they were welcomed into the Konkani Wikipedia community and were shown the facebook group they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start


Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

16 new students from the MA course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the funday. The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. The students were then paired with those who knew Inscript and thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. All of the students created their first articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for the new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for the Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid farewell. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/start-up-goa-blog-september-10-2013-subhashish-panigrahi-recap-on-konkani-wikipedia-workshop

ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା

subha — 2013-09-13T08:38:01Z

This is a column about Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, a noteworthy wikipedian who started contributing to Wikipedia articles on Odia Wikipedia related to medical science after retiring as an Orthopedic Specialist-Assistant Professor of a Medical college.

This guest column by Subhashish Panigrahi was published by Odiapua on September 10, 2013.

(ଶୁଭାଶିଷ ପାଣିଗ୍ରାହୀ)
ଅଧିକାଂଶ ସମୟରେ ଦେଖାଯାଏ ଯେ ଅବସର ପରେ ଚାକିରୀରେ ଥିବା ଲୋକେ ସ୍ଥାଣୁ ହୋଇପଡ଼ନ୍ତି୤ ଅବସର ସମୟ ବିତେ ଟିଭି ଦେଖିବାରେ କିମ୍ବା ଛୋଟ ମୋଟ ଘର କାମ କରିବାରେ୤ ତେବେ ଜୀବନର ଅଧାରୁ ଅଧିକ ସମୟ ଯାହାର କଟିଥିବ ନିଜ ବୃତ୍ତି-ବେଉସା ପାଇଁ ଅବସର ପରେ ତା' ବିନା ବଞ୍ଚିବା କଷ୍ଟକର ହେଉନ‌ଥିବ କି? ଏ ପ୍ରଶ୍ନଟିର ଉତ୍ତର ଦେବା ଆହୁରି କଷ୍ଟ୤ ଅବସରର ଅର୍ଥ ଦୈନନ୍ଦିନ କାମରୁ ବିରତି ନେଇ ସାମାଜିକ, ପାରିବାରିକ ଓ ଜଞ୍ଜାଳହୀନ ଚାକିରୀରୁ ବିରାମ ନେବା୤ ତେବେ ଅନେକଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଏ ବିରାମର ମାନେ କିଛି ନ ଥାଏ୤ ଢିଙ୍କି ସ୍ବର୍ଗକୁ ଗଲେ ବି ଧାନ କୁଟିବା ଭଳି କିଛି ଲୋକ ଅବସର ପରେ ନିଜର ଜ୍ଞାନର ପରିସରକୁ ଆହୁରି ପରିବ୍ୟାପ୍ତ କରାନ୍ତି୤ ଚାକିରୀର ବ୍ୟସ୍ତତା ଭିତରେ ଜ୍ଞାନ ବିତରଣର ସୁଯୋଗଟିକ‌କ ଯେଉଁ କେବେ କେବେ ହାତଛଡ଼ା ହେଇଯାଉଥିବ ତାକୁ ବଢ଼ାନ୍ତି୤ ପୁରା ସମ‌ୟକୁ ବିନି‌ଯୋଗ କରନ୍ତି ଅଧିକ ପଢ଼ିବା ଓ ଅଧିକ ଜ୍ଞାନ ବିତରଣ କରିବାରେ୤ ଏମିତି ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତର ଡା ସୁବାସ ଚନ୍ଦ୍ର ରାଉତ୤ ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରରେ ଅବସ୍ଥାପିତ ଡା. ରାଉତ ଓଡ଼ିଶା ସରକାରଙ୍କ ଅଧୀନରେ ଅନେକ କାଳ କାମ କରିବା ପରେ ଅବସର ନେଇସାରିଛନ୍ତି୤ ସେ କିଛି କାଳ କିମ୍ସ କଲେଜରେ ସ‌ହକାରୀ ପ୍ରଫେସର ଭାବେ ମଧ୍ୟ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟ କରିଛନ୍ତି୤ ତାଙ୍କର ଅବସର ସମୟ ବିତୁଥିଲା ବ‌ହି ପଢ଼ାରେ ଓ କବୀରଙ୍କ ଦୋହାବଳୀକୁ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖିବାରେ୤ ଏହି ପଢ଼ାପଢ଼ି-ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଭିତରେ ଥରେ ତାଙ୍କ ଆଖିରେ ପଡ଼ିଲା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ଫେସବୁକ ଗ୍ରୁପ୤ ସେଠି ଦେଖିଲେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ନାନାଦି ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଲେଖିବା ପାଇଁ ଜଣେ ପ୍ରମୁଖ ସଭ୍ୟ ମୃତ୍ୟୁଞ୍ଜୟ କରଙ୍କର ଆମନ୍ତ୍ରଣ୤ ଜିଜ୍ଞାସୁ ଡାକ୍ତର ମନ ପଚାରିବସିଲା ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ କଣ, ସେଥିରେ ଜଣେ ସାଧାରଣ ଲୋକର ଭୂମିକା କଣ, କିପରି ଜଣେ ସେଥିରେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗମାନ ଲେଖିପାରିବ୤ ମୃତ୍ୟୁଞ୍ଜୟ ଓ ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ସଭ୍ୟଙ୍କ ଆଦର ଓ ସମ୍ମାନ ତାଙ୍କୁ ଆଗଭର କରାଇଲା ଅଧିକ ଜାଣିବା ପାଇଁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ବାବଦରେ୤ ନୂଆ ନୁଆ ଜିନିଷ ଶିଖିବାକୁ ମିଳୁଥାଏ୤ ପ୍ରଥମେ ସେ ଏକ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ ଉଇକିକଥାରେ ନୂଆ ନୂଆ ଅସୁବିଧାକୁ ସାମ୍ନା କରିବା ଭିତରେ ଡା. ରାଉତ ଆରମ୍ଭ କଲେ ନିଜ ସାରାଜୀବନର ସାଇତା ଚିକିତ୍ସା ବିଜ୍ଞାନ ସମ୍ପର୍କିତ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଲେଖିବା୤ ଆରମ୍ଭରେ ଅସୁବିଧା ହେଉଥିଲା ୟୁନିକୋଡ଼ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରି ଲେଖିବାରେ୤ ପରେ ଧୀରେ ଧୀରେ ଅଧିକ ଲେଖୁ ଲେଖୁ ବାଟ ହୁଡ଼ୁଥିବା ଲୋକଟି ପାଲଟିଗଲା ପଟୁ ଲେଖାଳୀ୤ ୪୨ ଟି ନୂଆ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ତିଆରିଥିବା ଓ ଅନେକ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗକୁ ଶତାଧିକ ଥର ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରିଥିବା ଡା. ରାଉତ କହନ୍ତି, 'ବାକି ଉଇକିଆଳିଙ୍କ ଶ୍ରଦ୍ଧା, ସମ୍ମାନ ଓ ସହଯୋଗ ପାଇଁ ମୁଁ ଆଜି ମୋର ପୁରା ଅବସର ଜୀବନ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଲେଖିବାରେ ବିନିଯୋଗ କରିଦେଇଛି୤' ଅଗଷ୍ଟ ୭ ରୁ ୧୧ ଯାଏଁ ହଂକଂଠାରେ ଜଗତର ୨୮୬ ରୁ ଅଧିକ ଭାଷାରେ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରୁଥିବା ଉଇକିଆଳିଙ୍କ ସମାବେଶ "ଉଇକିମାନିଆ ୨୦୧୩"ରେଯୋଗଦାନ କରିଥିବା ଉଇକିଆଳିଙ୍କ ଭିତରୁ ଜଣେ ମାତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଥିଲା ଏ ଲେଖକ୤ ସେଠାରେ ଡା ସୁବାସ ରାଉତଙ୍କ ଭଳି ଆହୁରି କେତେ ଜଣ ବୟୋଜ୍ୟେଷ୍ଠ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ସମ୍ପାଦକଙ୍କ ସହ ଭେଟିବାର ସୁଯୋଗ ମିଳିଥିଲା୤ ଆଗାମୀ ଉଇକିମାନିଆ ଯାହା ଲଣ୍ଡନରେ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହେଉଛି ସେଥିରେ ଅଂଶଗ୍ରହଣ କରିବାକୁ ଆଗ୍ରହୀ ଡା. ରାଉତ୤ ସେ ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରରେ ଥିବା ବାକି ଯୁବ ସମ୍ପାଦକଙ୍କୁ ଏକାଠି କରି ଅଧିକରୁ ଅଧିକ ସଚେତନତା ତଥା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରିବା ବାବଦରେ କର୍ମଶାଳାର ଆୟୋଜନ କରୁଛନ୍ତି୤ ସହଜରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖିବା ପାଇଁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଚ୍ଚାରଣକୁ ନେଇ "ଲେଖନୀ" ନାମରେ ଏକ କି-ବୋର୍ଡ଼ ଲେଆଉଟ ଆମେମାନେ ତିଆରି କରିଥିଲୁ ଯାହା ସହାୟତାରେ କୌଣସି ବି ବ୍ୟକ୍ତି ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରିପାରିବ୤ ଏଥିରେ ଥିବା ନାନାଦି ଅସୁବିଧାକୁ ଜଣାଇବାରେ ଡା. ରାଉତଙ୍କ ଅବଦାନ କିଛି କମ ନୁହେଁ୤ ଏହା ନିର୍ଭୁଲ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଟାଇପିଂରେ ସହାୟକ ହେଉଛି୤ ଚାକିରୀ ପରର ଅବସର ଜୀବନ ତାଙ୍କର କଟୁଛି ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଡାକ୍ତରୀ ବିଷୟ ସମ୍ପର୍କିତ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ସମ୍ପାଦନା ଓ କିଛି ମାତ୍ରାରେ କବୀର ଦୋହାର ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅନୁବାଦ କରିବାରେ୤ ବିଳମ୍ବରେ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ବାବଦରେ ଜାଣିଲେ ବୋଲି କହି ମନ ଉଣା କରି ସେ କହନ୍ତି, “ଆଗରୁ ଜାଣିଥିଲେ ହୁଏତ ଆହୁରି କେତେ ଗୁଡ଼ିଏ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗରେ ଲେଖିପାରିଥାନ୍ତି"୤ ନିଜର କୁନି ନାତୁଣୀ ସହିତ ଟିକେ ଖେଳିବା ବ୍ୟତୀତ ବାକି ସମୟ ସେ ଏମିତି ଜଣେ ସ୍ୱର୍େଚ୍ଛାସେବୀ ଭାବରେ ଓଡିଆରେ ଜ୍ଞାନର ବିତରଣର ସବୁଠୁ ବିଶାଳ ମାଧ୍ୟମ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ସମ୍ପାଦନାରେ ସମୟ କାଟିବେ ବୋଲି କହନ୍ତି ଡା ସୁବାସ ଚନ୍ଦ୍ର ରାଉତ୤

ଲେଖକଙ୍କ ବାବଦରେ: ସୁଭାସିସ ପାଣିଗ୍ରାହୀ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ସ‌ହିତ ୩ ବର୍ଷ ଧରି ଜଡ଼ିତ ଅଛନ୍ତି୤ ଅତୀତରେ ସେ ଉଇକିମିଡ଼ିଆ ଫାଉଣ୍ଡେସନରେ କମ୍ୟୁନିଟି ଓ ପ୍ରୋଗ୍ରାମ ସ‌ପୋର୍ଟ କନସଲଟାଣ୍ଟ ଭାବେ କାମ କରିଛନ୍ତି୤ ଅଧୁନା ସେ ବାଙ୍ଗାଲୋରଠାରେ ସେଣ୍ଟର ଫର ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଏଣ୍ଡ ସୋସାଇଟିର ଆକ୍ସେସ ଟୁ ନଲେଜରେ ପ୍ରୋଗ୍ରାମ ଅଫିସର ଭାବରେ ଅବସ୍ଥାପିତ୤ ସେଠାରେ ସେ ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷାର ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଓ ସେଥିରେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଲେଖୁଥିବା ସ୍ୱେଚ୍ଛାସେବୀ ସମ୍ପାଦକମାନଙ୍କର ବିକାଶ ନିମନ୍ତେ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟରତ୤ ଟେକ୍ନୋଲୋଜି କ୍ଷେତ୍ରରେ ବିକାଶ ଓ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରୀକରଣ ସମ୍ବନ୍ଧରେ ତାଙ୍କର ଅନେକ ଲେଖା ନାନାଦି ସମ୍ବାଦପ୍ତ୍ର ଓ ପ‌ତ୍ରପ‌ତ୍ରିକାରେ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ୤ ତାଙ୍କୁ subhashshish@cis-india.orgରେ ଇ-ମେଲ ଯୋଗେ ଯୋଗାଯୋଗ କରା‌ଯାଇପାରିବ୤

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odiapua-subhashish-sep-10-odia-wikipedian-subas-rout

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

subha — 2013-09-06T12:30:19Z

Rusita Paryekar is one of the 38 students from the MA Konkani department of Goa University gathered at the State Central Library to learn writing and editing articles on Konkani Wikipedia. Currently Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation and needs more voluntary participation from enthusiasts who want their language, Konkani to strengthen its base in the digital knowledge domain.


					Wikipedia editor Rusita Paryekar speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia.

Thirty-eight M.A. students from the Konkani department of Goa came together for a four day long Konkani Wikipedia editing fun workshop and created history. Konkani Wikipedia is one of the Wikipedia projects that went into incubation (a phase every new Wikipedia project goes to allow the editor community to grow and take the project to a sustainable position) seven years back. Sadly it is still in incubation. One of the major reasons is the conflict for script. Konkani is written in 5 different scripts; Devanagari in Goa (as the official script of Goa) and Maharashtra, Roman (also known as Romi) and written by Goan Christian population, Kannada in Mangalore region of Karnataka, and Malayalam in Kochi region of Kerala. The Konkani speaking diaspora is now very much part of the the socio-ethnic groups of these neighbouring regions. The language of these states has naturally influenced Konkani spoken and written by the Konkani diaspora which has resulted in multiple writing standards and dialects. There are four standards of writing systems:

Writing standard that is officially approved by the Directorate of Official language, Government of Goa written in Devanagari script. Majority of the books (includes all Government of Goa publications) are written in this standard.
Writing standard that was influenced by the Portugese language during the Portuguese rule. Earliest available writings in Konkani including The Holy Bible are written in this standards.
Writing standard that Mangalorean Konkani diaspora use.
Writing standard that Keralite Konkani diaspora use.

Interestingly Konkani diaspora of all these regions have produced books in the writing standards mentioned above. The Konkani Wikipedia incubation project currently has 133 articles written in 3 different scripts; Devanagari, Roman and Kannada which has been a problem to get the approval. But this has not stopped the language enthusiasts to stop contributing. While meeting these students I felt that urge for bringing up Konkani in a digital domain and telling the Konkani diaspora about the untold story of Goa. This is the motivation that drives Rusita and many others to contribute to Wikipedia. Her first contribution was about Goan folk songs (गोंयची लोकगितां) which is the first Konkani article about this topic on the internet that is available for free. ‘If I would not write about my culture in my language who would do that?, says Rusita.

Further reading
Manohar L. Sardessai. Influence on Konkani. Journal of South Asian Literature. Vol. 18, No. 1, Goan Literature: A Modern Reader (Winter, Spring 1983), pp. 155-158.

Copyright note: The video and the content of this post are in CC-BY-SA 3.0. Feel free to use, share and remix the content and attribute me.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/voices-from-goa-wikipedia-editor-rusita-paryekar

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

subha — 2013-09-05T09:24:57Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Konkani department of Goa University organized a four-day Wikipedia workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

				Video by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Video by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikipedia editors are always volunteers which translates to “Anyone and everyone can contribute to Wikipedia”. What is that brings people in today’s date to write articles on Wikipedia. This is a question we are not sure at times. You get up late in the night and check how many times your article has been edited and feel excited. This happens to many of the wikipedians including myself. It has been a personal journey to ask Wikipedians about the same. While conducting this workshop along with my colleague Nitika, I spent some time with the students asking about their experience of Wikipedia editing. We found that many of them were shy enough to sound low and we could not take the videos. This particular video features Frania Pereira, an MA student from Konkani department of Goa University. She attended the Wikipedia workshop we organized at the Central Library at Panaji for two days and edited articles on Bebinca (Konkani article here) and Colvá fama (Konkani article here), a local festival celebrated by the Colvá Catholics. Frania is worried how people stereotype Goa to be the just land of enjoyment and not look at the diverse culture, its ethnic food and festivals. Even the Konkani speaking population in other regions (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and abroad) don’t know much about this socio-language-cultural diversity. No other language than her mother-toungue Konkani could tell about these. And that is why she edits Wikipedia.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/voices-from-goa

Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong

subha — 2013-09-13T06:03:03Z

The 7th, 8th and 9th of August 2013 saw over 600 Wikipedians across the world participating Wikimania at Hong Kong. The three day annual international conference for users and contributors of Wikipedia brought many debates about open educational research, open source technologies, gender gap, documenting the history of mankind in a free and open platform like Wikipedia and its sister sites in collaboration with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums and all of these in 286 world languages. More and more volunteers are joining this movement and it is expanding the media of accessing and disseminating knowledge.

Here is a school teacher who lives in Salem, a small industrial town in Tamil Nadu. There lives a school teacher who was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Hong Kong long back. They have never met in real life but have been helping in correcting each others mistakes in Wikipedia articles. These two school teachers have taken their knowledge from the four walls of the classrooms to a larger audience of Tamil Wikipedia. I then realized how language brings people together. This is what I heard from my inner voice when I met S.Parvathi from Salem and H.K.Arun from Sri Lanka during Hong Kong Wikimania 2013, an annual gathering of Wikipedia contributors.

Many still are not aware the existence of Wikipedias in Indian languages. There are 20 South Asian language Wikipedias with more than 2 lakh articles contributed totally by about 1500 voluntary contributors in all these languages. There are hundred more contributors like Arun and Parvathi who create new articles in Tamil Wikipedia, and rectify mistakes by new contributors.

Wikipedians are all volunteers who devote their time for building the greatest repository of knowledge on the internet. Wikipedia articles are free from any copyright infringement so anyone can freely access, share, make modifications and redistribute them. Wikipedians have been able to create this ecosystem of nurturing new editors by teaching them the process of encyclopaedic content generation which not only polishes their writing abilities, but strengthens their communication skills.

Wikimania is fun, it brings wikipedians across the globe speaking diverse languages under one roof where they meet each other and share their ideas and collaborate.

Over 600 wikipedians from various countries participated in this year’s Wikimania including 16 from India. In the open world of Wikipedia collaboration always happen beyond borders; one Nepali and four Bangla Wikipedians from Bangladesh also joined the Indian Wikipedians to rejoice the triumph of the effort of all the volunteers from the subcontinent.

The fun was not just limited in creating a wall of their dreams, ambitions and action plans to take their own language Wikipedia to more people or discuss how they could write articles that are important to each others languages. It went upto helping each other to fix problems in typing Indian languages and discussing success stories of successful workshops that resulted bring more student contributors. Ganesh Paudel, a Wikipedian from Nepal says, "My hometown is very close to India and we share the same script with Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit and Konkani. India and Nepal both have sizable population speaking Nepali, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Sanskrit, Bangla and Hindi. I’m personally interested to collaborate with Indians speaking these languages." I could see the glow in his eyes when he wrote and explained the beautiful curvature of Ranjana script to me. Tinu Cherian, another long term Wikipedian who was attending Wikimania for the third time was excitedly live-tweeting the happening at Hong Kong. When I asked how he is feeling after a short break he unfolded his hands and proudly said, "Wikipedia is like religion to me, once a Wikipedian, you are always a Wikipedian!". Netha, a medical college student from Kerala spoke about bringing more women to contribute to Wikipedia. She calls Kavya, a college lecturer and Malayalam wikipedian who spoke about Women and non-conventional education as one of the gems she has discovered in her personal journey.

Wikimania also has Sengai Podhuvan, one of the oldest Indian Wikipedians. His appeal for Wikipedia fundraising brought a lot of donations to Wikimedia Foundation. Dr. Podhuvan shared his story of learning using computer, Tamil typing and writing articles about Wikimania this year brought many academicians, education researchers, policy change makers and open source and open knowledge activists across the world to share their ideas, activities going across the world even while enjoying dinner in the 100th floor.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikimania2013

Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants

subha — 2013-07-17T06:33:20Z

On May 13, 2013, the Access to Knowledge team led by Subhashish Panigrahi conducted a Wikipedia Introductory Session at the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi for the consultants working for Data and India portal. This session was aimed to emphasize how these portals and their useful data could be used on Wikipedia to create good quality articles.

Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge team was invited to demonstrate the usefulness of Wikipedia for the consultants of National Informatics Centre (NIC) working for the Data.gov.in and the National Portal of India at NIC's New Delhi office. Data portal being one of the very important open data portal of the Government of India has worked immensely to populate over 2400 datasets from 32 departments participating in it.¹

Many of the data need to be transcribed in popular medias especially on web. Wikipedia being world's largest online encyclopedia could be one such primary platform to use these useful data. Subhashish from A2K team explained the usefulness of Wikipedia for the people associated with this project. The session went with discussing about policies, Manual of style and Five pillars of Wikipedia followed by a demonstration of editing articles on English Wikipedia. Post editing session there was a discussion session about the notability and how to check accuracy of articles by using valid references.

1 http://bit.ly/11DMH5w

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

subha — 2013-07-17T06:35:15Z

This blog encompasses the status of Odia Wikipedia and assessment of the needs for growth of the community.

This blog is part of the annual work plan for Odia Wikipedia which was updated on Odia Wikipedia and Meta Wiki.

Odia is one of the official languages of India. It is the official language of Odisha and the second official language of Jharkhand. Odia is also spoken in parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. By 2011 census there are 3.6 crore Odia speakers across the world. Literacy rate of Odisha is 73.45 per cent (82.4 per cent male, 64.36 per cent female).

Majority of the computer users in Odisha were on Microsoft Windows platforms. Windows did not have a stable Odia language support until the release of Windows Vista. This would have forced majority of the computer users prefer English on Odia for internet communication. As per the 2011 census only 5.1 per cent of the 9,661,085 households of Odisha had computers and 1.4 per cent (357,460 households) of the households had access to internet. Odia Wikipedia has only 13 active contributors[1] who are based both in and out of Odisha and contributed to 3715 articles.[2]

Low computer/internet penetration, lack of promotion/outreach of Odia Wikipedia are some of the major factors which resulted in low Wikipedia participation. Odia Wikipedia celebrated its 9th anniversary on January 29, 2013 which is marked to be the date of its first edit in 2004.[3] The project was inactive for about 8 years until February 2011.[4]

Community building process slowly started by February-March 2011 by some of the active wikipedians in Bengaluru and gradually in six other cities in and out of Odisha.[5]The community so far has organized 18 meet-ups, 10 workshops and worked on a major media donation project on Wikimedia Commons.[6] Six on-wiki projects on various subjects[7] and rolled a Wikipedia education program.[8]

Fact Sheet

Wikimedia projects	No. of Editors/Contributors (2011-12)	No. of Editors (2012-13)	No. of Active editors (2011-12)	No. of Active editors (2012-13)	No. of Articles/ entries (2011-12)	No. of Articles/ entries (2012-13)	No. of Page views per months
Wikipedia	29	64	19	14	1951	3209	330161
Wiktionary	6	14	1	2	98	155	30618

Identified Needs

This section gives a broad idea of the challenges for community/wikipedia growth for which there is a need of programatic and technical intervention.

Lack of awareness

Lack of media presence: Mainstream Odia language media is still unaware of the presence and importance of Odia Wikipedia. There is a need for wider media coverage about Odia Wikipedia.
Lack of focussed meetups/outreach events due to dispersed community: Outreach events and meetups have not been customized for the target audience and have been done in a low scale because of the small community dispersed in six different cities. Physical meetups often have been more on technical issues and not much focus on designing strategies for growing content and community. Experienced wikipedians conducting outreach need to be trained properly to conduct productive outreach events.
More city centric communities: Majority of community members are located in three major cities; Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Nalconagar. This has resulted in outreach events being more delimited to these three cities only. There is a need for taking Odia Wikipedia to more cities.
Target age group for outreach: Till date the targeted audience for outreach are mostly engineering/other students based in cities where English is predominantly the language of communication in terms of written/computer communication and partly verbal communication. Many of the elderly masses are unaware of even the existence of Odia Wikipedia. More of young professionals, elderly and retired professionals need to be involved in the outreach.

Accessibility issues

Technical hindrance

Lack of Unicode usage: Printing industry professionals still use non-Unicode fonts for typing. There are at least three major different typing schemes and font categories used across the industry (includes book/magazine/newspaper publishers, print/digital media). Font converter tools of high accuracy are needed for easy conversion of such available content and using them as primary resources.
Lack of support in typing schemes: Those who are experienced in typing schemes other than the ones used on Odia Wikipedia (InScript, Transliteration, Phonetic) often fail to adapt the typing schemes of Odia Wikipedia. There is a need of new typing schema for simplifying typing in Odia.

Content

Lack of Open-Source culture: There is very little presence of the open source methodology across academia, media industry and public and private sector organization. A lot of resources produced are either not digitized and distributed or copyrighted. This has been a road block to the Wikipedia community to make use of any kind of archived and digitized resource. Wikipedians need to be connected to more open source communities, exchange ideas/information and spreading words across other communities.
Lack of resource dissemination because of support: Some of the digitized resources are not being distributed because of shortage of manpower and resource. A book digitization project initiated by Srujanika faced many hindrances during distribution including copyright issues, hosting and manpower for support. Such resources need to be gathered and distributed for community use.

Community

Role of experienced wikipedians: There is a need of more experienced wikipedians coming forward to take the lead of projects along with their primary contribution for articles. Wikipedia could be a platform for them to reach out to more people who are in the domain of knowledge dissemination and language resource building.

[1]. Wikimedia stats. January 2013

[2].https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

[3].http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriya_Wikipedia

[4].http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Tinucherian_and_Shijualex/Wiki_Community_development_in_India_and_newsletter/Report#Bhubaneshwar

[5].http://shijualex.in/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/

[6].https://or.wikipedia.org/s/ay

[7].https://or.wikipedia.org/s/jf

[8]. https://or.wikipedia.org/s/cgj

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-needs-assessment

Kolkata Wiki Community Meetup

subha — 2013-10-30T10:51:57Z

Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme members T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi met wikipedians in Kolkata. The event was co-organized by the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikipedian community of Kolkata.

The Wikimedia community in the city of joy gathered near Salt lake during Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme team's visit. Four Wikipedians from Kolkata, Wikimedia Foundation's mobile Developer Yuvaraj Pandian and OPW intern Sucheta Ghoshal joined A2K's Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi for this meetup. Vishnu addressed the wikipedians and gave a brief introduction about the programme's objectives and plans. Bengali Wikipedians Jayanta Nath and Kalyan Sarkar shared the success stories and activities in Bengali Wikipedia community. They also discussed about the challenges Indian Bengali wikipedians are facing. Wikipedians discussed few of the technical aspects of Bengali Wikipedia over lunch. Vishnu and Subhashish discussed about the opportunities that could be explored to bring more good quality content relevant to West Bengal and Bengali language over lunch.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wiki-meet-up-kolkata

Odia Wikipedia - Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (March 17, 2013)

subha — 2013-04-30T03:52:05Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society and the Odia Wikipedia community held a meetup in Bhubaneswar on March 17, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this meet-up.


A picture of Wikipedians from the Bhubaneswar meetup held on March 17, 2013

The aim of this meetup was to discuss the current state of Odia Wikipedia and understand the community building strategies for this year. Wikipedians shared their motivation and experience for editing Wikipedia. Challenges, plans and new project ideas were discussed. A new project on articles about the Villages, Pachayats, Blocks of Odisha was decided to be rolled as a key project by the community. This would be useful to generate large volume of useful content on places of Odisha and involve new wikipedians from various places to contribute to articles of the their places.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-meet-up-bhubaneswar-march-17-2013

Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs

Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians

Train the Trainer Program

Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language

Video

WikipediansSpeak: Piotr Konieczny

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Introduce Yourself

Editing time

More Editing Post Lunch

Rat and frog game

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong

Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

Fact Sheet

Identified Needs

Kolkata Wiki Community Meetup

Odia Wikipedia - Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (March 17, 2013)

Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs

Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians

Train the Trainer Program

Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language

Video

WikipediansSpeak: Piotr Konieczny

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Introduce Yourself

Editing time

More Editing Post Lunch

Rat and frog game

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong

Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

Fact Sheet

﻿Identified Needs

Kolkata Wiki Community Meetup

Odia Wikipedia - Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (March 17, 2013)

Identified Needs