Centre for Internet & Society

Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni, Principal, Shri Ramakrishna P.U. College, Mangaluru shares with Dr. U.B. Pavanaja of the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) programme his insights on bringing more contributors of different corners of the society to grow Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator at present and there are a bunch of contributors who are expanding the project to bring it live.

When I caught up with Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni during an ongoing Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in his college, Shri Ramakrishna P.U. College, Mangaluru, he left me with his wonderful ideas of expanding the Tulu Wikipedia. Back in 2014, with a few sporadic contributors, the Tulu Wikipedia community probably did not exist. After several outreach programmes in and around Mangaluru, it has grown to about an eight-editor community. It could look really tiny today but has potential to grow to a bigger community provided the constant effort by these eight people continue. This edit-a-thon is one of the stepping stones to build this community. About 37 people who hardly know anything about Tulu Wikipedia are participating in this event where six of the experienced editors will support them. The project is all about creating a live encyclopedia on the internet. We have enough and many Tulu authors and teachers who otherwise contribute to the language and literature. The idea is to bring them aboard. In collaboration with three other institutions here; Ramakrishna PU College, Ramakrishna Degree College and Tulu Sahitya Academy, we're trying to bridge the gap of lack of Wikipedia in our language. So far, very little work has been done in documenting the rich Tulu culture in Tulu language. There is no encyclopaedia of any sort in Tulu at this moment. There is also a need to bring the entire world's knowledge to the Tulu speakers. I hope Tulu Wikipedia will be the future to take our language and culture to the world, and fill the gap of knowledge that exists today.

Tulu Wikipedia Incubator is available at https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/tcy.
The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of their individual authors. Unless the opposite is explicitly stated, or unless the opposite may be reasonably inferred, CIS does not subscribe to these views and opinions which belong to their individual authors. CIS does not accept any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the views and opinions of these individual authors. For an official statement from CIS on a particular issue, please contact us directly.