Centre for Internet & Society
Indic Wikisource speak: Info-farmer

Info-farmer in WCI2011 Mumbai

Indic Wikisource movement needs more simplification of interface and also unification of existing interfaces. Let us develop new tools for wikisource. Give fund to developers like Shrinivasan. Understand the results of OCR4wikisource which is by self funded. - Info-farmer, Tamil Wiki-librarian share his experience and journey to Tamil wikisource.

CIS:Tell us about yourself, When did you join Wikimedia movement? And What are the projects you are involved in?

Info-farmer:i have join 2007 wiktionary; wikipedia; wikisource; wikibooks; Commons; wikidata

CIS: What are the methods or workflow you follow to contribute on your language Wikisource?

Info-farmer:  Manual edit after few answers from senior editors. Then learning about existing tool experiences.. finally chatting with few developers for the new development of a new tool

CIS:How is the awareness about Wikisource in your language Wikimedia community?

Info-farmer:  Like any other Indic community, ta.wikisource community is small. As i said earlier, we trying to automate many things. If we get wiki fund, we will  plan to outreach in colleges. Most of the Tamil books are written by awarded writers. So it will help the reach students and post graduate students.

CIS:We see there’s a growth in Indic Wikisource movement (showing Amir’s stats), what kind of help does the community need to grow?

Info-farmer: Indic Wikisource movement needs more simplification of interface and also unification of existing interfaces. Let us develop new tools for wikisource. Give fund to developers like Shrinivasan. Understand the results of OCR4wikisource which is by self funded.
 

CIS:What are the challenges do you face while contributing to the project? Or social challenges while reaching out to aurtors or publishers.

Info-farmer:  No problem from our authors or publishers, The problem is from wiki side esp. commons side. Still no guidelines from wikiside about our Nationalized books of Tamil Nadu. if no quick response from our side, we are missing most valuable opportunity from A government side. Simply saying ''WMF should adapt local government state law. WMF admins follows the general copyright law(60 years the death of a author= public domain). Why they are not understanding the law exemptions(Nationalized books of Tamil Nadu.) from a sovereign state. If WMF rigid, no results. OTRS is for a individual authors works what about the bulk of authors. What is role of WMF law advocate team? You are expecting results without any conversations and help steps. Every year Tamil Nadu government releasing many books under public domain. Every time we have to wait for OTRS token. WMF law enforce team think to adapt local law. If you help we will reach few lakhs proofread completed WS pages. We do not need claps. From 1950's, our Tamil scholars working for public domain books.

CIS: How would you describe the future of Wikisource? What are your personal goals for it?

Info-farmer: Outreach for graduate students. Technical improvement to simplify contributions. Getting help from computational linguistics. #1licence1million
 
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