Digital Natives Blog

The Centre for Internet and Society recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Telangana Government’s IT, Electronics & Communications Department with an aim to catalyse the development of the Wikimedia movement in Telangana and improve the state of free-licensed digital content in Telugu and Urdu.  The Principal Secretary for IT Department Mr. Jayesh Ranjan and renowned Telugu Wikimedian and Theatre Scholar Pranay Raj were present for the occasion. Mr. Konatham Dileep, Director (Digital Media), IT Department and CIS-A2K Telugu Community Advocate Pavan Santhosh were signatories to the memorandum.

This MoU is the result of successive meetings between the Digital Media wing and Telugu Wikipedians, CIS-A2K members and the Wikimedia Foundation. These discussions enabled all stakeholders to come up with a comprehensive plan to develop the free knowledge movement in Telugu and Urdu.

Katta Srinivas, a historian, teach and long time Telugu Wikipedian, says, “As one of the participants in earlier discussions with the government, I am happy to see progress in this respect. Especially, [the planned] photo archives of museums, photos of historical places and other events can be free-licensed as part of these initiatives. This decision can lead other government organizations to take up similar initiatives in India."

Apart from these, some of the planned activities include releasing encyclopedic photos and media content from government archives, increasing awareness about free licenses and Wikipedia among government officials, etc.

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.

I'm User: Krishna Chaitanya Velaga from English Wikipedia; fortunately and unfortunately my user name and my real name share the same text. I have been contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects since December 2014. I work primarily on Indian military history related topics and articles. Initially, I was focused on creating articles rather than assessing them. My wiki journey can be best described in two parts, before and after Train The Trainer 2017.

The latter part of 2016 proved to be a critical period of my Wiki journey. I was credited with my first good article, first featured A-class article and list, first featured list and, several Did You Know credits on English Wikipedia. Later on, I was awarded the “Military history newcomer of the year” for 2016. I was the first Indian to receive the award. Additionally, I was selected to be the “Featured Wikimedian of Month for January 2017” by Wikimedia India.

As of January 2017, I have been contributing for nearly two years, and as far as I have observed the military history topic area of India is one of the most neglected areas. With two well known military historians from India, Srikar Kashyap Pulipaka (User:StrikeEagle) and Colonel Ashwin Baindur [retd.] (User: AshLin) on a semi Wiki break, I was left to be the only regular contributor. In an attempt to encourage more Wikipedians to work on this area, Indian military history work group emerged as an initiative by the Military history project. The work group closing in on a year since its inception, has more than twenty-five members at present. As the founder of the group, I aspire to incubate the group into an independent task force under Military history project. One of the major problems I faced while working on the military history articles was regarding images. Though the images were accepted on Commons, they were rejected at advanced levels of assessment i.e. A-class review, FAC, FLC etc. One of the primary reasons for the problem is the unclear copyright statement presented on the official websites of the armed forces and various uniformed services. I had been thinking for a long while to resolve this issue and TTT provided me with the path to finds a solution for this. Train the Trainer (TTT) is one of the best initiatives by Centre of Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge. It is a three-day residential program to enhance the trainer in experienced and well established Wikipedians through the length and breadth of India. Prior to TTT 2017, I have only been involved in online activities of Wikipedia, predominantly contributing to Indian military history topics. I hardly knew about the offline community of Wikipedia i.e. the grant structure of Wikimedia Foundation, conduction of edit-a-thons, meet-ups, program affiliates etc. Not only this, but also the Wikipedian contacts I had were very sparse. Though I was selected to attend TTT 2016, I could not attend to academic constraints. During TTT, I had rich exposure to the wider Indian Wikimedia community and that of Indic language projects. TTT also cleared many of the misconceptions I had of Wikimedia, some them include the use of Harvard referencing style, importance of offline events, etc.

Owing to the experience I decided to act on the problem. There is a heavy need of images related to the uniformed services. So I discussed my idea with Ravi Shankar Ayyakannu (User:Ravidreams), coordinator of Wiki Loves Food and Manager for Strategic Partnerships in Asia under Global Reach Team. Initially, I thought of naming it Wiki Loves Armed Forces, Wiki Loves Security Services etc. But with an intention to widen the scope, it was named as Wiki Loves Uniformed services. Once finalized, I started creating necessary pages and templates on Commons. Simultaneously, I worked on forming the core team of coordinators and judges. I chose Suyash Dwivedi (User:Suyash.dwivedi) and Mourya Biswas (User:Mouryan) to be the Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator respectively, with myself as the Lead Coordinator. The jury included Col. Ashwin Baindur [retd.], Diego Delso (User:Poco a poco), Col. Ravi Shankar Vasireddy [retd.] (Off-community) and Sirkar Kashyap Pulipaka. After having done these tasks, I moved on to file a detailed rapid grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation. The grants team was very responsive and the grant was approved in a week. This initiative gained good global support including the foundation’s staff, who were happy to see a new Wiki Loves initiative budding. However, till now there aren't as many images as expected. To increase awareness about the program we’ve decided to implement a new strategy of conducting photo walks with government permission. Apart from that we’re also in contact with the Indian Navy to donate their images to the contest. The deadline may extend for about a month or so depending upon the stats. Personally, I see great potential for this project, but the problem is one of Wikipedians' response. I hope this initiative will be a great success and will be taken up by fellow Wikimedians from others countries. I conclude by thanking CIS-A2K for conducting innovative workshops and Wikimedia India for their support to the project since its inception. I also thank each and every unacknowledged finger behind this great initiative.

Krishna Chaitanya Velaga

Lead Coordinator

Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India) 2017

CIS-A2K’s Wikipedia Education Program with Christ University, Bangalore is coming to an end after another year of intense classes, certificate courses and an internship at The Centre for Internet and Society. The internship activity in particular has successfully managed to engage students beyond classroom hours. The selection of 12 students for the internship program was based on their penchant for the language as well as their interest in the wiki world.

The internship was structured into three stages. Firstly, the students were asked to develop stub articles. The aim of this activity was for students to learn searching skills. As a result, over 1500 articles were developed with qualitative work.

Secondly, the students were asked to create new articles from scratch. They searched for the topic on the Wikipedia, ascertained whether the article exists or not and later researched further on the content of the articles. As a result, the students were able to create 1400+ articles

Finally, the students were asked to draft policy pages for their respective language Wikipedia. They went through the policy pages in different languages including English and were asked to create similar policy pages for Kannada Wikipedia.

Unlike previous years, the activities during the internship program were tailored to suit the individual capabilities of the students, taking into consideration the suggestions from community members. The students were of the opinion that in addition to rekindling their love for the language, the internship program also enabled them to develop their overall knowledge of various subjects. The students felt that their vocabulary and typing skills also improved. However, the students were of the opinion that they could have been taken a level or two higher from article writing and introduced to other Wikimedia projects and topics related to the overall movement. The CIS-A2K WEP Program hopes to incorporate these suggestions for the upcoming year while also trying to increase the number of days of the internship in order not to tax the students.

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was held at Yashawantrao Chavan Institute of Science, Satara. The aim of the workshop was to edit and improve articles on Marathi Wikipedia under the theme "Environment and Local Biodiveristy". Participants were given an orientation on how to contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The Yashawantrao Chavan Institute of Science is housed under the Rayat Shikshan Sanstha, a century-old organization with the largest network of schools and colleges across Maharashtra. The management and local environmental group, Drongo, took the initiative to organize this thematic workshop in Satara, an area rich in terms of biodiversity in the Western Ghats. Noted ecologist and scientist Prof. Madhavrao Gadgil addressed the workshop as a resource person along with Prof. V.Y. Deshpande of the Institute. A total of 23 members from various like-minded organizations participated in the workshop.

Image by सुबोध कुलकर्णी/ CC-BY-SA 4.0

Tallapaka Pada Sahityam, a compilation of over fourteen thousand Telugu compositions is now available on Wikisource. Tallapaka Annamacharya was a 15th-century Hindu saint and composer who was renowned for singing in praise of Lord Venkateswara. The Tallapaka lineage began with him, giving rise to many bards in the Telugu language from the family. The Tallapaka Pada Sahityam is a compilation of three generations of Tallapaka poets: Tallapaka Annamacharya, Tallapaka Peda Tirumalacharya, and Tallapaka China Tirumalacharya. This compilation, published by Annamayya Library, Guntur has been uploaded by the library on Wikisource as part of their efforts to digitize the library archives. These lyrical works, dealing with a variety of themes, are of immense literary and cultural significance to Telugu speakers the world over.

Owing to the large size of the file donated by the library, the works need to be separated into 29 volumes. These separated files would be uploaded and indexed on Commons as well. A Unicode version of the work needs to be published and proofread in addition to their print version. Telugu Wikimedians are also exploring the possiblity of re-licensing recitations of the poems by literary connoisseurs. On 9 June, an orientation of these activities was conducted for long time Telugu Wikipedia, te:user:శ్రీరామమూర్తి, who has begun publishing Unicode text and proof-reading on Telugu Wikisource.

The link to the work is here:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Tallapaka_pada_sahityam.pdf

However, the event was made popular by the wide ranging media coverage in print and electronic media.

Media pieces on the event:

(Eenadu Newspaper; 1 May, 2017)