Centre for Internet and Society

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, Aurangabad

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-19T11:44:41Z

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal in Aurangabad

Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, a social work organisation working with underprivileged sections of society in Aurangabad partnered with CIS-A2K to conduct a Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon on 13 April, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to introduce Wikipedia to the participants and enable them to contribute to Wiki projects. The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on topics related to rural development and women's empowerment. The four hour edit-a-thon was attended by 30 participants who made a total of 300 edits. 15 new articles were created and 60 images were uploaded to Commons.

The link to the event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-savitribai-phule-mahila-ekatma-samaj-mandal-aurangabad

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Sangli, Maharashtra

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T13:22:39Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was conducted at Willingdon College, Sangli on 18 January, 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted in collaboration with Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha at Willingdon College on 18 January, 2017. The goal of the workshop was to begin the building of resources in the field of linguistics on Marathi Wikipedia. To begin with, the edit-a-thon introduced the participants to editing Wikipedia and contributing to Wiki projects. With about 50 participants(of which around 6 were female), the three-hour-long edit-a-thon involved the post-graduate and research students of the Willingdon College.

The edit-a-thon conducted at the Marathi Language Computer Lab of the College also focused on creating/editing Wikipedia pages related to Marathi literature and language. Extensive discussion on these issues was also conducted to develop the concept and theme of the edit-a-thon. While participants were taught basic Wikipedia editing, they were also trained in searching for relevant articles, categorisation and translation from other language Wikipedias.

The workshop received local media coverage by Sakal, a Marathi daily. You can read the article here.

Link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-sangli-maharashtra

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T14:15:43Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was conducted at Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur on 23 January, 2017.

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Shivaji's University's affiliate Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College in Kolhapur on 23 January, 2017. The edit-a-thon aimed to introduce Wikipedia to the students of the College and teach them basic editing skills. The students were trained in categorisation and translation from other language Wikipedias. In addition, the students were taught smart editing on their mobile phones using the Wikipedia app.

The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on Marathi Wikipedia in the field of commerce, so as to keep it relevant to the students who study related subjects at the college. The three-hour-long edit-a-thon conducted at the Computer Lab of the college, involved 50 participants, a mix of male and female students.

The link to the event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-rajarshi-chhatrapati-shahu-college-kolhapur

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, Pune

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T14:31:46Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held at 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, Pune on 7th February 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon conducted by CIS-A2K in partnership with 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, an organisation working in the field of education and social work was held on 7 February, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to train participants from 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee on the basics of Wikipedia editing. The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on education and community development on Marathi Wikipedia. Six participants took part in the three hour workshop conducted at the 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee premises.

This edit-a-thon is part of CIS-A2K's ongoing effort to engage communities of interest to partner and collaborate on contributing to Wikipedia so as to utilize their domain knowledge on the free encyclopaedia. Five articles were created and edited by participants.

The link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-swa-roopwardhinee-pune

Marathi Wikipedia - Vishwakosh Workshop for Science writers in IUCAA, Pune

manasarao — 2017-12-20T02:42:39Z

A day-long workshop was organised for science writers at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-University_Centre_for_Astronomy_and_Astrophysics Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics], Pune on 7 October, 2017. Eminent astrophysicist-mathematician couple en:Jayant Narlikar|Jayant^[+] and en:Mangala Narlikar|Mangala Narlikar^[+] , and renowned ecologist en:Madhav Gadgil|Madhav Gadgil^[+] were among the dignitaries present at the event.

The workshop was planned in three sessions. Presentations and discussions were conducted in first session, while second session was focused on actual editing demonstrations on Wikipedia. In the same session the new websites based on different subjects developed by Marathi Vishwakosh were presented. The process of content contribution in text, images, audio and video forms was explained in this session. The third session was to explore networking with Dyanmandals formed by :en:Marathi Vishwakosh|Marathi Vishwakosh Nirmiti Mandal^[+] . Insisting the expertise of invited authors to contribute the articles in their own chosen fields in a well-structured format, this session will not only train the authors in content generation but also make them understand the expectations of laymen and common readers.

The mete page of the event is here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune

Marathi Wiki Workshop at Tata Institute of Social Sciences

nitika — 2013-02-04T04:55:56Z

The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is taking up a number of activities and conducting workshops focusing on Indian languages across cities. A series of workshops in Marathi, Kannada and Bangla have been planned with Wikipedia sessions in each of these events.

The Marathi workshop was organised on December 8, 2012 at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). It was a three-hour workshop.

Following preparations were made before the session:

Yogesh Khandke and Kartik Nadar from Mumbai community visited the venue three days prior to check technical requirements.
Programme participants were suggested to select a subject of their choice and find sufficient resources to add information during the course of the event. This proved to be extremely helpful and an efficient way. Participants didn't spend any time looking for resources during the event; they were already ready with the content they wanted to add.
Programme participants were requested to create usernames before they came for the session.
A tailored presentation was made ready.
A ticket was raised to release the IP address of TISS computer labs. Despite the ticket being resolved the IP address got blocked after creation of seven accounts. We will be looking deeper into this problem to make sure that we do not face such issue again.
Multiple conference calls were organised between the conductors — Yogesh, Nikita and Nitika.

Details of the event

The morning session of this workshop focused on digital humanities and social sciences research, and exposed students to different kinds of resources. The afternoon session focused on Wikipedia literacy and Marathi-language computing. There were be about 25 participants (MA and PhD level) and 5 conductors - Yogesh, Nikita, Moksh, Kartik and Nitika.

Nikita gave a brief 40 minutes introduction about Wikipedia using a presentation followed by a hands on session which was led by Yogesh and supported by rest of the conductors. Many of the participants were comfortable with Marathi computing while some were struggling. There were a few participants who were editing in other languages including Hindi and Malayalam. Kartik & Moksh jointly led the session with educating participants about Wikimark ups, page view stats, article and user talk pages. Rest of the conductors pitched in with insightful examples, comments and answers. The participants raised some really interesting questions and were completely involved the workshop. Several participants showed interest to organise similar workshops at other institutes they are connected with.

—

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss

Marathi Language Fortnight Workshops 2019

subodh — 2019-03-01T00:39:33Z

Maharashtra is a state which is rich in diversity in terms of language and culture seen in its various regions such as Konkan, Marathwada, Western Maharashtra, Northern Maharashtra and Vidarbha. Awareness needs to be created to make Wikimedia movement inclusive and diverse in these geographical regions as well as in their social strata.

Collaboration for organizing events

The Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge wing (CIS-A2K) launched the concept of organizing state-wide workshops to spread awareness and train editors in the nitty-gritties of Wikipedia editing and creating digital content. The campaign is now regularly conducted by Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha (RMVS), the language department of Maharashtra government with support from CIS-A2K and various institutions.

These events were conducted during the Marathi language fortnight (1 – 15 January 2019) upto Marathi Language Day on 27 February 2019. The objectives of the event such as creating awareness about digital knowledge in Marathi, open knowledge resources and Wikimedia projects; explaining the history of Wiki movement; training participants in basic editing skills in Wikipedia; exploring ways to find reliable references; presenting article structure, were broadly covered in the sessions. Trainers also explained participants on copyright, community guidelines, uploading images, and so on.

CIS-A2K had collaborated with the state language department from 2017 onwards. In the first series of workshops, three events were conducted. In the second series in 2018 six workshops out of a total 17 workshops were conducted across the state. In the year 2019, the awareness spread to more educational institutions located in different regions of the state. In the third series, CIS-A2K conducted five workshops out of total 21 workshops conducted. CIS facilitated the process and supported some workshops remotely.

The Workshops

The first workshop was conducted at Chintamanrao College of Commerce at Sangli. The awareness session about open knowledge sources and Wikimedia projects was organized for students and faculty in the beginning of workshop. After this one hour session, actual skill training in Wikipedia editing was done for three hours for 24 participants. They created the account and learnt the editing and image upload on Commons. The practice was done in sandboxes before working in main namespace. The students of pre-university course and graduate course attended the workshop. The commerce and management related articles were edited.

The second workshop was conducted at Shivaji University, Kolhapur. The Marathi language department took the initiative to organize this workshop for the second consecutive year. The participants were selected from 4 colleges affiliated to university. The faculty was also actively involved. The introductory session was attended by 50 students. The editing training of three hours was conducted in computer lab, in which 24 new users participated. The editors practiced the manual of style, providing links and references, etc. on their sandboxes before working on the main namespace articles. The editors mostly worked on locally relevant topics.

The third workshop was conducted in Dayanand College at Solapur. This institution organized this event for the second consecutive year. The thematic discussion on history of Solapur was facilitated by a senior editor of Sakal newspaper. The plan for documentation of local festival - Gadda Yatra and history of Solapur was discussed. It is proposed to start this activity with thematic workshop. Total 15 new and old users participated in the workshop.

The fourth workshop was conducted at Mass Communication & Journalism department of Solapur University. The faculty of this department took the initiative to organize this event for the second time. Total 25 new and old users participated in the workshop. The participants edited the articles related to journalism and also uploaded the images on Commons. Some editors completed the task of adding references to articles. After the meeting with the faculty, group of post graduate students were assigned 50 articles about reputed Marathi newspapers. They will complete this task as part of their online academic submissions.

The fifth wokshop was conducted at SSSKR Innani College at Karanja Lad in district Washim. This was the first Wikipedia programme in this region of the state. As it was the first Wiki event, we decided to organise a two day workshop. The management and faculty participated actively in this workshop. In the workshop, references and images were added to existing articles about local heritage, tourist places and personalities. The images were uploaded to newly created categories - Karanja Lad and SSSKR Innani College on Commons. Over 100 members participated in this two day event, while 45 users edited actively on Wikimedia projects.

Follow-up

After the workshop, quarterly refresher sessions are planned in these institutions. The active students' WhatsApp groups will be formed for support and online training sessions. This cadre of Wiki Guides would facilitate the programs for other students. The meeting with faculty and board of studies would be held for integration of Wikimedia activities with the academic assignments.

More info check out the Meta report.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-language-fortnight-workshops-2019

Manglore: State-level 'Wiki Academy' Daylong Seminar at St Aloysius

radha — 2011-04-02T14:58:06Z

Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (RS/SB)

Mangalore, Aug 22: For the first time in India, Wiki Academy, a workshop based on usage of Indian languages, editing and its applications in academics of Wikipedia- the free online encyclopedia was held at Eric Mathias hall in St Aloysius College here on Saturday, August 22.
The daylong seminar based on talks and presentation was inaugurated by representatives from Wikipedia, Dr Prashanth and Hariprasad Nadig. Speaking after the inaugural, Dr Prashanth said that main feature of the Wikipedia is that the control is in the ends of end user and not seller. It is popular among the users for its style presenting information and accessibility that is user-friendly, he said.
The Wikipedia that started with a few hundred articles, now has over 13 million articles in over 100 languages including three million articles in English written voluntarily by college students, doctors and various professionals, he said. The Wikipedia also includes articles in Indian regional languages such Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu among others, he added.
Fr Swebert D Silva, principal, St Aloysius College said that Wikipedia plays a role that is very similar to the library which is that giving detailed information on the topic required. Students’ involvement with the Wikipedia helps improve their writing skills. The era of internet and blogging has helped students and youth express themselves more clearly, he said and called on students to improve their writing skill contributing to Wikipedia.
Fr Richard Rego, head, Journalism department, St Aloysius College said that it is a golden opportunity for students, professionals, teachers, scholars and librarians to be able to participate in the academy and also contribute and get information from Wikipedia.
Department of Mass Communication, Al-Madhyam, the media forum of St Aloysius College in association with Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore organized the workshop.

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=64564&n_tit=Manglore%

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/manglore-state-level-wiki-academy-daylong-seminar-at-st-aloysius

Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference

praskrishna — 2013-10-14T01:36:04Z

Jagotik Konknni Songhotton (JKS) organized an All-India Konkani Writers’ Conference on Sunday, September 29 at Kalaangann.

This was published in Daijiworld on October 1, 2013. Nitika Tandon is quoted.

As many as 78 Konkani writers from Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra and various regions of Karnataka, attended the conference.

The conference was organized with the intention of bringing together writers of all the five scripts of Konkani and also to probe the possibilities of forming an All-India Konkani Writers’ Forum.

Roy Castelino, treasurer, JKS, welcomed the gathering. The secretary general of JKS, Eric Ozario, explained the purpose of the conference and the need for forming an All-India Konkani Writers’ Forum. Tomazinho Cardozo, ex-speaker of the Goa Assembly and president, JKS, spoke about the injustices done to writers in the Roman script.

Dr Pratap Naik, Konkani activist, spoke of the progress in the writ petition filed in the Goa bench of the Mumbai high court, seeking rectification of the Official Language Act of Goa, to include the Roman script.

Valerian D’Souza, Marcel D’souza and Eric Ozario explained the progress in the writ petition filed in the high court of Karnataka against the Sahitya Akademi, seeking equal treatment to all scripts of Konkani.

Nitika Tandon, programme manager, The Centre for Internet & Society, spoke about Konkani Wikipedia and the need for the participation of the Roman and the Kannada script writers.

The conference resolved to form an All-India Konkani Writers’ Forum, which would protect the interest of Konkani literature and Konkani writers of all scripts. An ad-hoc committee was formed to discuss and decide upon the immediate steps to be taken towards the formation of the Forum.

A book compiling short stories written by Kevin D’Mello, Karkala, titled ‘Chondda ani Gorbh’, was also released on the occasion.

Victor Mathias conducted the proceedings of the conference.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/daijiworld-october-14-2013-mangalore-konkani-writers-resolve-to-form-all-india-forum-at-jks-conference

Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates

shiju — 2012-11-09T18:18:20Z

Three months back, I wrote a blog post (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/) about the inauguration of the Wikipedia education program in Malayalam Wikipedia. This program is the first of its kind in an Indic language, and Malayalam community is doing the program in collaboration with the IT@School, a project of the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, setup in 2001, to foster the IT education in schools.

Three months have passed since the last report in English (regular updates in Malayalam) about the program have been shared with the Malayalam wiki community during this period. Here is a brief update about this ongoing program. The July report was mainly about the inauguration of the project in the Government Higher Secondary School, Anchal West, Kollam, and a few details about the plans of the community regarding this project.

The Wikipedia education program was inaugurated by the IT@School director, Abdul Nasar Kaipanchery on July 14, 2012. After two weeks, we conducted a Malayalam Wikipedia introduction workshop for the students and teachers of Anchal West School. Almost 150 participants including students and teachers attended this workshop. After the workshop students were asked to write an article (on paper in Malayalam) about any topic related to Anchal and submit it to the education program coordinator, Sateesh R. Veliyam, a teacher in that school. Satheesh is also a Malayalam wikipedian. Students were given three weeks to submit the article on paper. Nearly 100 students submitted the articles and the project coordinator (with inputs from other Malayalam Wikipedia community members) shortlisted 34 students for the Wikipedia education program. The selection of the students for this program was based on their writing skills in Malayalam, the interest in this voluntary project, and other skills needed for this time bound Wikipedia education project.

A meeting was conducted with the selected students on August 9 in the school computer lab. As Malayalam Wikipedians knew that the major roadblock for students to start wiki editing in Malayalam would be Malayalam typing (in fact this is the case with all Indic languages) we decided to teach Malayalam typing to students on a priority basis. A printout of the Malayalam Inscript layout was given to the students. The Inscript layout was selected because that is part of the syllabus in Kerala. Students were asked to practice Malayalam typing and learn it within the next two months. From that day onwards students were practising Malayalam typing at school and making a steady progress.

Some recent developments are listed below:

September 8

Students are back to school after the Onam vacation. The progress on their Malayalam typing is evaluated. Malayalam Wikipedians, Kannan Shanmugham and Sugeesh visited students and addressed them. They discussed the potential articles that could be created as part of this project. They also helped few students to create their user names in Malayalam Wikipedia. After addressing the students they also visited some famous people in Anchal, other places, and some organizations to collect reference books and other information related to this project. The collection of reference materials from library, personal collections, and from panchayat office is vital for this project as these are the only places from where we can get any reliable information regarding the different topics that students plan to write.

October 1

As Malayalam typing and the collection of information and reference materials were in progress we received an important book authored by Dr. P. Vinayachandran which had a lot of information about Anchal. Students who achieved a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing and those who had created user accounts started editing in Wikipedia. On October 1, four new articles were created by the students who had learned Malayalam typing.

October 12

Shiju Alex visited the school students to see the progress of the project, interacted with them, and welcomed them to Malayalam Wikipedia. Since all of them had acquired a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing, we decided to create usernames for all of them. So on that day we created accounts and user pages for all the 34 students who were included in the project.

October 13

All the students who were part of the project reached Kollam to participate in a one-day Malayalam Wikipedia editing workshop. The program started at 10 a.m. Malayalam wikipedians Binu, Sugeesh, Kannan Shanmugham, Ajay Balachandran, Akhil, and Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. It was organized to assist students in getting started with Malayalam Wikipedia, introduce them to basic wiki editing and other related stuff. Apart from providing support for all basic needs, students were also introduced to "talk pages" and the basic policies of Wikipedia which would help them to get started with the project. We finished this one-day workshop at 3.30 p.m. by taking a group photo. A detailed report (in Malayalam) regarding this one day workshop can be read from here.

Students doing Malayalam wiki editing

October 14

Malayalam Wikipedians Sateesh, Sugeesh, Shiju, and our new wikipedian Anathu P. Sankar visited the Rehabilitation Plantation Limited [RPL] which is an important institution near Anchal and is one of the article being developed as part of this project. We met a few key people who provided some references about RPL. It was decided that students who were working on the articles related to RPL will visit again to collect more information about the project.

As of today some of the important progress the main progress made on the project are is listed below:

All students have created their accounts.
All students have created their user pages.
Most students created or edited articles that they were planning to contribute.
Students with the help of their teacher, Satheesh continue collecting reference materials on topics they plan to write.
Students continue editing in Malayalam whenever they get access to computer and internet.

Some of the things that need to be kept in mind regarding this project are:

The project is done entirely on a voluntary basis. No separate time is allocated for students to participate in this project.
Thirty-four students are part of this and most of them are from ninth standard.
Out of the 34 students, 7 are girl students.
Out of 34 students only 10 students have got computers at home.

Kerala schools are using free software for computers. They use a customized version of Ubuntu in computer labs. It is easy to configure Malayalam typing in that. Technically all 34 students need to depend on the five computers available (computers with internet facility) in the school computer lab to practice Malayalam typing, wiki editing, and do the other tasks related to the project. And the lack of regular access to computer and internet is affecting the smooth progress of the project.

As separate time is not allocated for this project, students who are part of this project are working on it either during intervals, lunch time, during early hours before the start of the school, or by staying late after the school working hours. Since we have only around five computers with internet in the school lab, students need to divide and share the timing among themselves. Many of them come to the school on Saturdays and Sundays to participate in the project.

Few important links related to this project:

The master project page of this program is available here.

The list of students participating in this program is available here
The list of articles that students started or enhancing as past of this project is available here
The progress report of the project in Malayalam is regularly updated here

We will keep you posted about the updates from this project as and when it happens. Malayalam community is planning to complete this project (student editing) by the third or fourth week of November.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update

Making Wikipedia Better

Pooja Saxena and Nirbheek Chauhan — 2013-10-25T07:30:44Z

It wasn’t something that we set out to do when we started working on The Ballot, but one of the most satisfying unintentional side-effects of the project has been the chance to correct facts and figures, and remove inappropriate content from entries related to India and its politics on Wikipedia.

The first oddity we spotted was way back in August, the day we announced The Ballot to the world. The Hindi word “bewajah” (which means “without reason”) was cropping up all over the wiki entry on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Nirbheek restored this entry. When we were putting together our post about the representation of women in the Lok Sabha, we noticed errors in the census figures on Wikipedia. Once we had extracted the right numbers from the data available on the census portal, not only did we use them in our post, but we also corrected them in the wiki entry. More recently, some missing information in the info-boxes in the entries on a handful of Indian states gave Pooja the opportunity to make her first ever edits!

These, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg. We have a longer list of issues to fix, and an even longer one for potential improvements. If only we could spare more time and involve more collaborators, a real difference could be made to the quality of Wikipedia entries on Indian politics.

We met Subhashish of the Access to Knowledge programme at CIS yesterday and have some great things planned with him for the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

About The Ballot
The Ballot is a visual compendium of information about the world’s largest democracy. Every week till the general elections in 2014, it will publish easily digestible yet relevant nuggets of information about India, its government and its workings, presented as richly illustrated graphs and charts.

About Pareidolic
Pareidolic is a collection of collaborative projects by Nirbheek Chauhan, a software developer, and Pooja Saxena, a typeface designer. Besides their weekly efforts towards The Ballot, Pareidolic also released a free and open source Devanagari to Bharati Braille Converter this year, which is on its way to supporting several other Indian languages.

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

Making the Powerful Accountable

chinmayi — 2014-01-30T06:43:41Z

If powerful figures are not subjected to transparent court proceedings, the opacity in the face of a critical issue is likely to undermine public faith in the judiciary.

Chinmayi Arun's Op-ed was published in the Hindu on January 29, 2014.

It is odd indeed that the Delhi High Court seems to believe that sensational media coverage can sway the Supreme Court into prejudice against one of its own retired judges. Justice Manmohan Singh of the Delhi High Court has said in Swatanter Kumar v. Indian Express and others that the pervasive sensational media coverage of the sexual harassment allegations against the retired Supreme Court judge 'may also result in creating an atmosphere in the form of public opinion wherein a person may not be able to put forward his defence properly and his likelihood of getting fair trial would be seriously impaired.' This Delhi High court judgment has drawn upon the controversial 2011 Supreme Court judgment in Sahara India Real Estate Corp. Ltd v. SEBI (referred to as the Gag Order case here) to prohibit the media from publishing headlines connecting retired Justice Swatanter Kumar with the intern's allegations, and from publishing his photograph in connection with the allegations.

Although the Gag Order judgment was criticised at the time that it was delivered Swatanter Kumar v. Indian Express illustrates its detractors' argument more vividly that anyone could have imagined.

Sukumar Muralidharan wrote of Gag Order case that the postponement (of media coverage) order remedy that it created, could become an "instrument in the hands of wealthy and influential litigants, to subvert the course of open justice".

Here we find that although a former Supreme Court judge is pitted against a very young former intern within a system over which he once presided, Justice Manmohan Singh seems to think that it is the judge who is danger of being victimised.

The Swatanter Kumar judgment was enabled by both the Gag Order case as well as the 1966 Supreme Court judgment in Naresh Sridhar Mirajkar v. State of Maharashtra, which in combination created a process for veiling court proceedings. Naresh Mirajkar stated that courts' inherent powers extend to barring media reports and comments on ongoing trials in the interests of justice, and that such powers do not violate the right to freedom of speech; and the Gag Order case created an instrument - the 'postponement order' - for litigants, such that they can have media reports of a pending case restricted. The manner in which this is used in the Swatanter Kumar judgment raises very worrying questions about how the judiciary views the boundaries of the right to freedom of expression, particularly in the context of reporting court proceedings.

Broad power to restrict reporting

The Gag Order case was problematic: it used arguments for legitimate restraints on media reporting in exceptional circumstances, to permit restrictions on media reporting of court proceedings under circumstances 'where there is a real and substantial risk of prejudice to fairness of the trial or to proper administration of justice'. The Supreme Court refused to narrow this or clarify what publications would fall within this category. It merely stated that this would depend on the content and context of the offending publication, and that no 'straightjacket formula' could be created to enumerate these categories. This leaves higher judiciary with a broad discretionary power to decide what amounts to
legitimate restraints on media reporting, using an ambiguous standard. Exercise of this power to veil proceedings involving powerful public figures whose actions have public implications, imperils openness and transparency when they are most critical.

Court proceedings are usually open to the public. This openness serves as a check on the judiciary, and ensures public faith in the judiciary. In countries as large as ours, media coverage of important cases ensures actual openness of court proceedings - we are able to follow the arguments made by petitioners who ask that homosexuality be decriminalised, the trial of suspected terrorists and alleged murderers, and the manner in which our legal system handles sexual harassment complaints filed by young women.

When court proceedings are closed to the public (known as 'in-camera' trials) or when media dissemination of information about them is restricted, the openness and transparency of court proceedings is compromised. Such compromise of transparency does take place in many countries, to protect the rights of the parties involved, or prevent miscarriage of justice. For example, child-participants are protected by holding trials in-camera; names of parties to court proceedings are withheld to protect their privacy sometimes; and in countries where juries determine guilt, news coverage that may prejudice the jury is also restricted.

The damage done

Although the Supreme Court stated in principle that the openness of court proceedings should only be restricted where strictly necessary, this appears to lend itself to very varied interpretation. For example, it is very difficult for some of us to understand why it was strictly necessary to restrict media coverage of sexual harassment proceedings in the Swatanter Kumar case. J. Manmohan Singh on the other hand seems to believe that the adverse public opinion will affect the retired judge's chance of getting a fair trial. His judgment also seems to indicate his concern that the sensational headlines will impact the public confidence in the Supreme Court.

The Delhi High Court's apprehension about the effects of the newspaper coverage on the reputation of the judge did not need to translate into a prior restraint on media coverage. They may better have been addressed later, by evaluating a defamation claim pertaining to published material. The larger concerns about the reputation of the judiciary are better addressed by openness: if powerful public figures, especially those with as much influence as a former Supreme Court judge are not subjected to transparent court proceedings, the opacity in the face of such a critical issue is likely to undermine public faith in the judiciary as an institution.Such opacity undermines the purpose of open courts. It is much worse for the reputation of the judiciary than publicised complaints about individual judges.

Since the Delhi High Court ruling, there has been little media coverage of the sexual harassment case. Suppression of media coverage leaves the young woman comparatively isolated. Wide coverage of the harassment complaint involving Justice Ganguly, helped the intern in that case find support. The circulation of information enabled other former interns as well as a larger network of lawyers and activists, reach out to her. This is apart from the general pressure to be fair that arises when a case is being followed closely by the public. Media coverage is often critical to whether someone relatively powerless is able to assert her rights against a very powerful person. This is why media freedom is sacred to democracies.

If the Supreme Court was confident that the high courts in India would use their broad discretionary power under the Gag Order case sparingly and only in the interests of justice, the Swatanter Kumar case should offer it grounds to reconsider. Openness and freedom of expression are not meant to be diluted to protect the powerful - they exist precisely to ensure that even the powerful are held accountable by state systems that they might otherwise be able to sway.

(Chinmayi Arun is research director, Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi, and fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-january-29-2014-chinmayi-arun-making-the-powerful-accountable

Magic words in Wikipedia

tanvir — 2015-09-14T08:37:56Z

The struggle of finding solutions for replacing and retrieving content /words/facts and figures, in this day and age of machines that seem to know everything should ideally be a non-issue. Yet, for many of us who write reports based on the data available at that moment, it is nothing less than a nightmare to come to know that there has been a significant change in the data with which our reports have been written.

How does one mediate between the ever changing nature of data in general and more specifically understand the way a publicly curated knowledge ecology operates (Wikipedia can be taken as an example). It is made clear to us by the various earlier reports¹ that the amount of data exchange and content generation can be astonishingly high when one takes into acount Open Knowledge repositiries such as Wikipedia in the major languages of the world, commons.wikimedia project and other Wikimedia projects.

Our understanding of the available data can often lead us to erroneous conclusions, if one does not account for the constant updating nature of such data. The bigger risk is for a reader/researcher/user to assume that the data quoted in news reports/research or reports as static data (as against the dynamic data discussed here) and form conclusions based on the same. Another catastrophic possibility is to use the data procured in such fashion for planning and evaluation purposes. If one does not acknowledge the possibilty of change of data and plans only with the available data and does not account for the changes under contingency measures the entire planning might be off the mark and might not be successful when executed. Even for the purpose of evaluation, the constant change in data has to be tracked and monitored to appreciate the work/critical evaluation of the nature of the work.

How do we bell the Cat (read as the changing data) if not on the traditional print and digital platforms atleast in the Wikimedia universe? To do this manually is a task that is supremely tasking and prone to high error possibilities. If there is one thing researchers accross subject domains agree it is that no data is always better than wrong data. One must also think of the precious resources that would be spent on this data mining activity, the human hours, the time resources, the physical and infrastructural resources that are consumed in this process of keeping the data feed accurate and updated. I do notdeny the efficacy of systems where data mining is done manually. It is the digital researcher in me who would like to introduce to the readers a tool called 'Magic Words' https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words used in the Wikimedia universe to plug this problem and offer researchers fewer nightmares regarding the validity of the data.

Magic words offer a one stop solution towards resolving the issues of sourcing, securing and updating our data fields. With this one can be sure that the data fields do not become obsolete and might yield to erronoeus and in worse case contradictory interpretations. If there is a research report which seeks to compare page numbers of Kannada Wikipedia with another Wikimedia project. The traditional way to do this would be to aggregate the number of articles/redirects and publish the same. The reader ends up with a number that is static in nature. Does this mean that this number is permanent, the answer is an easy no because Kannada Wikipedia is by nature and definition a live project that will be changed and added to constantly.

An ordinary reader who does not have the bandwidth to follow the researcher's footsteps in finding out the total number of articles on Kannada Wikipedia will have to be content with the same static number provided even when he knows that the number is no longer accurate. By using the magic word {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} in a report that is written on Meta, the researcher allows the data to update automatically and changes the nature of data from static to dynamic. A classic example for the static data and the dynamic nature of the data using Magic words can be seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias (dynamic data represented) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias (static data that needs to be updated manually). The change in the nature of presentation of data also implies that the facts and figures available are not just numbers but indicate factors that have driven the nature of data and influenced the formation of number of pages. Dynamic data allows us to ask interesting questions such as 'what factors contributed to the spike/decline in the number of articles' and learn from these numbers.

It becomes an essential responsibility for the researchers working with digital resources and in digital domains to broaden the scope of their research and also extend its validity to a longer course that would be difficult for quantitative research done with traditional resources and hosted on traditional platforms. Given below is a table of key magic words and its function.

Si. No	Magic Word	Used for	Used in Wikimedia Projects and Local Wiki Projects
1	{{NUMBEROFFILES}}	Number of uploaded files.	Metrics and Government Databases
2	{{NUMBEROFEDITS}}	Number of wiki edits.	Metrics and Student Evaluation
3	{{REVISIONDAY}}	Day edit was made	Metrics and Student Evaluation
4	{{REVISIONSIZE}}	The size (bytes of wikitext) of the current revision of this page	Metrics and Data inflow
5	{{NUMBEROFVIEWS}}	Number of page views.	Metrics and Website Traffic
6	{{REVISIONUSER}}	The username of the user who made the most recent edit to the page, or the current user when previewing an edit.	Metrics and Collaboratively written documents
7	{{NUMBEROFADMINS}}	Number of users in the sysop group.	Metrics and Focus group
8	{{PAGENAME}}	Full page title (including all subpage levels) without the namespace.	Metrics and Info websites

Magic words facility can be employed in many and diverse ways (as of now these are fully operational in the Wikimedia universe) if the Mediawiki software is used to build applications. For eg: Websites, evaluation programmes, databases and other applications.

Reference:

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Indic_Languages#State_of_Indic_Language_Projects
2. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Magic_words

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

Loyola Faculty Enlightened About Open Edn Resources

praskrishna — 2014-07-02T04:50:48Z

“The tremendous changes in the digital technology have introduced the newage faculty to certain open and collaborative tools like Wiki, termed as open educational resources (OER),” Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) progarmme director T Vishnu Vardhan has said.

The article published in the New Indian Express on June 25, 2014 can be read here. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Adressing a two-day national workshop on ‘“Openness of Knowledge in Digital Era’ at Andhra Loyola College here Tuesday, Vishnu Vardhan stressed that within this context of digital era, openness and transparency gained newer significance, which creates a pre-condition for the transformation of society into knowledge society.

Pointing out that many of the websites were offering opportunity to access the information in almost all Indian languages and with everyone making use of Wikipedia as an OER tool, he explained the changes in the digital technology and also introduced the faculty to certain open and collaborative tools like Wikipedia.

Besides to giving a historical overview of the free and open source software movement, mass collaboration on the internet, details about Wikipedia authors and users, the participants were educated about using the simple technological tools like QR code to create increased and seamless access to knowledge using pervasive technologies like mobile phones.

Graduate and postgraduate teaching faculty from various streams partcipated in the workshop meant to discuss and learn new development in the fields of knowledge sharing and access in digital era.

CIS programme officer Rahimanuddin Shaik, jounalist Malladi Kameswara Rao, ALC principal Fr Kishore, college vice-principal Fr Anil kumaralso participated.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-new-indian-express-june-25-2014-loyola-faculty-enlightened-about-open-edn-resources

Letter to Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, Advocating Adoption of FOSS in State IT Academies

sachia — 2011-08-23T02:55:16Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is a signatory to a letter being sent to the Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of FOSS at state IT academies.

The state of Karnataka has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft under which three IT academies have been established in the state, in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga, in 2004-05. Government school teachers are being trained at these academies. As per the MOU, only Microsoft decides the curriculum at these academies, and only Microsoft software applications are being taught to the teachers. This MOU will expire in the coming academic year. Therefore, Gurumurthy Kasinathan and members of the FOSS community in India are sending a letter to the Education Secretary for the state of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of a FOSS-based curriculum in these IT academies, and explaining why this would be a useful move.

The Centre for Internet and Society is one of the signatories to this letter, which is reproduced below.

-----

The Education Secretary

Government of Karnataka

MS Building

Bangalore, Karnataka.

Sub – Microsoft IT Academies in Karnataka

Dear Sri Nadadur,

Karnataka has a MOU with Microsoft under which three 'IT Academies' have been established in the State, in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga during 2004-05. Government school teachers are being trained in these academies. As per the MOU, only Microsoft decides the curriculum in these academies, and only Microsoft software applications are being taught to the teachers.

There are a couple of issues with this program.

Firstly Microsoft does not allow the teaching of software other than their own proprietary products. This deprives the teachers from learning alternative Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platforms. There are compelling pedagogical, economic, social and political reasons why the education system needs to adopt and promote FOSS. Free software is software which gives the users the freedom to use, study, modify and share, while in the case of proprietary software, the vendor prevents the study, modification and distribution of the software. The freedoms of FOSS provide users and the rest of society with several important advantages, which are briefly listed below:

a. With proprietary software, the teachers only learn be superficial 'users'. This is because, proprietary software companies prevent access to the “source code” that goes into the creation of software. With FOSS, students can learn not only how to use software, but also how create and modify the software applications. Hence with FOSS, students will not just be passive users but will actually construct knowledge. As we know, 'Constructivism' is a key feature of the National Curriculum Framework 2005.

b. FOSS supports the creation of local language versions of the software. For example, Kerala has locally created software in Malayalam for its IT@School program. Similarly the Kannada community Sampada has created a complete Kannada distribution by customising existing FOSS software.

Though Microsoft has provided Windows and Microsoft Office gratis at these academies, it does not provide the same software to the teachers who are trained at the centre. Hence the teachers who intend to purchase computers would need to shell out considerable amounts for the software which they have become used to in the schools. However, if the teachers are trained on FOSS alternatives to Windows and Office, at at negligible price (the cost of a CD which is around Rupees ten), each teacher can be a given a copy of the software. The training can also cover the installation of the software, if required. In this way, the teacher training can lead to the actual use of computers in the schools and teachers homes and make the training meaningful and lead to the greater dispersion of ICTs. Currently, most teachers learn to use these products but have no continuity of learning which makes the training futile.

Of course, the issue of FOSS is not only one of cost. Even if proprietary software were offered free of cost, our nation will eventually have economic losses, due to permanent dependency on software monopoly.

These are some of the reasons why Karnataka has chosen FOSS in its own ICT@Schools program. The computers in Karnataka schools run on GNU/Linux platform under this program. We would like to submit that the teacher training in the IT Academies at Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga also need to be aligned to the IT@School program, and hence teachers should be taught on the same FOSS software platforms as well.

We had a meeting with Ms Vandita Sharma last November, along with Dr Richard Stallman, the founder of the global Free Software movement, and explained these issues. She was sympathetic to these arguments on the public benefits from FOSS and mentioned that the department would take appropriate action in this regard as is consistent with the public interest and those of the teachers and children in our government schools. She mentioned that the MOU with Microsoft is expiring in the coming academic year and and requested us to formally write to her in this regard, hence this letter.

We request that the Government take a firm stance in favor of adopting and promoting FOSS and chose FOSS in its software procurement to align the department to the government schools.

A few months back, organisations that are working to promote FOSS came together to establish a 'Coalition of the FOSS Community in India' whose goal is to collaborate with governments and other organisations to promote the adoption of FOSS, specially in the public sector. Several of the member of this coalition are based in Bangalore, including the Centre for Internet and Society, Sampada, Swatantra Malayalam Computing, Deeproot Linux, IT for Change etc. Faculty from IIM-B, Bangalore University as well as other academic institutions are also members of this coalition. Members of this coalition are willing to provide any technical support or guidance that the government may require in this regard. For eg, FOSS curriculum for both schools and for teacher training is available in Kerala and can be adapted to Karnataka schools. It should be noted that FOSS is already being used in many institutions in Karnataka, including IISC, IIIT-B, IIIT-H, IITK and many engineering colleges.

We hope our submission will be considered by the education department as well as by the government and we look forward to working with you to help bring these ideals into reality. If you think it would be useful, we could plan a small workshop / interaction, or even a series of workshops for different stakeholders, to discuss the issue in more detail and look at the implications of the choice of the software platforms for the ICT programs in the department.

We look forward to your response.

Yours truly

Gurumurthy Kasinathan and members of the FOSS community in India (list of signatories is provided overleaf)

May 9^th 2009.

Copy - Commissioner for Public Instruction, Sri Kumar Naik

Copy - State Project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, Sri Selva Kumar

Copy - Principal Secretary, DPAR (Dept of Personnel and Administrative Reforms) e-Governance

Copy - Principal Secretary, Department of IT

enclosed:

Why Government of Karnataka should adopt and promote FOSS

Kerala IT@Schools project

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/letter-to-education-secretary-may-2009