Centre for Internet and Society

Bargarh Manuscript Digitisation Project

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-16T20:08:04Z

The digitisation of temple manuscripts at the Dadhivamana Temple, Bargarh in Western Odisha followed by a workshop for the students of Imperial College took place between 11- 12 February, 2017.

Shri Dadhivamana Temple, also known as the Srikshetra(Puri) of Western Odisha is a 400-year-old temple in Bargarh, Odisha. The temple is among the most important religious sites in Western Odisha. The temple has a record room with 250 ancient palm leaf manuscripts in the Odia language, dating back to the 16th century. These palm leaf manuscripts tell the stories of the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Skanda Purana and the history of the temple itself.

Given the historical value of the temple, the temple administration and the Temple Trust have preserved the pothi(palm leaf manuscripts) with the help of various chemicals, including the indigenous usage of turmeric and camphor. The process of preservation of the manuscripts began a few years ago years with student volunteers from different colleges in Bhatli helping the temple administration by identifying and storing the manuscripts.

Minati Sahoo, a well known social activist in Bargarh and a few other journalists explained the importance of manuscript digitisation to the temple administration and took permission for digitising the manuscripts in the month of March. One of the pandas (temple priests), Pandit Shri Goura Chandra Ratha, released his book, Jay Shree Dadhibamana, under the Creative Commons 4.0 license. A three-day long digitisation camp will be organised in Bhatli for introducing the students to Wikipedia and the process of digitisation. The manuscripts will be digitised simultaneously during the workshop.

An orientation program was organised at Imperial College, Bargarh for introducing the students of the college to the digitisation process as well as to introduce the pothi digitisation which they would be partaking in. With over 60 participants, the workshop not only explained the idea of the global Wikimedia movement to them, but also taught them how they could use the digitisation skill for the preservation of language. This digitisation project will bring different manuscripts into Odia Wikipedia, while also helping to raise awareness about digitisation of language in western Odisha. After scanning the manuscripts, the Odia Wikipedia community will take help of the students for uploading, digitising and proofreading the same.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bargarh-manuscript-digitisation-project

Odia Wikipedia Workshop in IIMC, Dhenkanal

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-17T06:31:41Z

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop was conducted at IIMC, Dhenkanal on 31 January, 2017

Since 2013, the Odia Wikipedia community has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal for enabling students of the institution to partake in and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. An Odia Wikipedia workshop was conducted for the students of the institution on 31 January, 2017. The students were given an orientation on the basics of editing Wikipedia on the web and on their smart phones in addition to an explanation of Wikipedia policies, history of Wikipedia and Wiki News.

The 45 English and Odia language students with a male: female ratio of 60: 40, who took part were given a live demonstration of these topics. Along with the help of supportive faculty members, the students were exposed to Commons and Incubator as well. Overall, the event saw the creation of 20 new editors on Odia Wikipedia. A follow-up workshop is also being planned for the students in the coming months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iimc-dhenkanal

Odia Wikipedia and Orientation Training Programme

praskrishna — 2017-01-23T00:58:38Z

An Odia Wikipedia orientation and training programme is being organized by the Centre for Internet & Society's (CIS-A2K) team on 31 January 2017 at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal in Odisha.

Agenda

Bringing new editors on board.
Orientation programme for students of IIMC.
Finding possible partnership with the institute.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/odia-wikipedia-and-orientation-training-programme

Odia Wikipedia: Sambalpur University Workshop

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-17T06:44:47Z

An Odia Wikipedia orientation-cum-workshop program was organised for the students of Sambalpur University on 27 November, 2016.

Over the last couple of years, the Odia Wikipedia community has been successful in organising workshops and outreach programs in different parts of coastal and central Odisha. With over 38 active Wikipedians (as of 2016), the Odia community is growing everyday and expanding across different parts of Odisha. The recent increase in the number of Wikipedians in western Odisha inspired the community members to conduct an introductory Wikipedia workshop in Sambalpur University.

On 27th November 2016, an orientation-cum-workshop program for Odia Wikipedia was organised for the students of Computer Science and Application Department and the Odia Department in Sambalpur University. 57 participants, comprising 30 male and 27 female participants attended the event. 5 faculty members were also present. Dr. Chitta Ranjan Dash, the Vice Chancellor of the University was the Guest of Honour for the workshop. Three Odia Wikipedians- Mrutyunjay Kar, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Nistha Ranjan Dash facilitated the workshop as mentors.

The workshop began with an introduction to Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource digitisation efforts by Dr. Sarada Baboo, a professor from the Computer Science and Application department. The first session introduced the various Wikimedia projects to the participants. The participants were given an introduction on how to contribute to the different Wiki projects. They were also given an orientation on Wikipedia policies and guidelines. After this, the participants were introduced to Odia Wikipedia and its development over the years. The post lunch session trained participants on creating user accounts, articles, and other basic dos and don’ts on Wikipedia. During the training session, over 20 Wikipedians were able to create accounts.

The Wikipedia workshop in Sambalpur University was an important step to raise awareness about the Wikipedia movement in western Odisha, This was the first workshop in Sambalpur University and the second workshop in western Odisha after three years. Over 196 colleges are affiliated to Sambalpur University, in seven different districts in western Odisha. A regular follow up with the University, the faculty and the students will help in furthering the free knowledge movement in western Odisha.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/odia-wikipedia-sambalpur-university-workshop

Sambalpur University Workshop

Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-12-02T02:31:53Z

An Odia Wikipedia Orientation program cum workshop was organized by CIS-A2K team in Sambalpur University on November 27, 2016. Sailesh Patnaik attended the workshop.

The workshop agenda included:

Increasing the reach of Odia Wikipedia in western Odisha
Bringing new editors on board
Orientation of students from Sambalpur University
Exploring possibilities of CIS partnership with Sambalpur University
Getting in place an active community on WikiTungi in Sambalpur

More information on the event

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sambalpur-university-workshop

Community celebrates birthday of Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wiktionary

subha — 2016-07-09T03:25:02Z

This June, Odia Wikipedia turned 14 and Odia Wiktionary turned 11. Odia Wikimedia community member Chinmayee Mishra, CIS-A2K Programme Associate Sailesh Patnaik and I co-authored this blog in the Wikimedia Blog. The blog chronicles several major activities of the community and features quotes from many old and new community members.

This was published on Wikimedia Blog on June 23, 2016.

With the Odia Wikipedia and its sister projects, a handful of dedicated volunteer editors are taking the Odia language to the world outside. The editor community that has recently celebrated Odia Wikipedia’s 14th anniversary in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India is collectively growing two more projects; Odia Wikisource, an online library that already has over 300 volumes of text, and Odia Wiktionary, an online dictionary that has over 100,000 entries. With these live projects and more projects in the pipeline, this community is bringing a digital revolution in Odia by sharing valuable content online and creating many language tools inside and outside the Wikimedia projects.

The Odia Wikipedia community had gathered in the city for a two-day long event to celebrate the anniversary. These two days were spent in intensive capacity building activities as the community is quite dispersed in many places in Odisha and outside, and are all volunteers. Odia Wikipedia, the flagship project was started as one of the first four Indian language Wikipedias along with Assamese, Malayalam and Punjabi Wikipedia in 2002, a year after the English Wikipedia was made live. The project was quite dormant for more than nine years and got revived by a group of editors in Bangalore during 2011. Then the project became much of a household name when more Odia speakers living in Odisha and outside joined contributed in writing and editing articles of several different subject areas. Odia Wikipedia is part of the 292 language Wikipedia family and a larger global family of hundreds of other free knowledge projects that are collectively known as Wikimedia projects. “Odia Wikipedia is officially available online at https://or.wikipedia.org and is free for anyone to create articles on notable topics, and edit and enhance those articles”, says Mrutyunjaya Kar, one of the administrators of the project. Aliva Sahoo, one of the active editors, shares, “being a student of Odia-language I was seeking information on musical instruments and could not find much. So I started translating from English and now it is one of the longest articles on Odia Wikipedia.” As part of the WikipediansSpeak project, we have tried to capture the voice of the community of Aliva and a few other contributors.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): How did the two-day long capacity building activity go? What was the outcome of the different sessions?
Jnanaranjan Sahu: This event was useful in bringing most of the active contributors under one roof as we are working online. This event helped us learn from each other and impart knowledge so that everyone can go back and use them.

SP: What are the problems you faced before coming to this event and how these sessions are going to help you in future?
Abha Pradhan: I was not sure of the copyright part while uploading images on Wikimedia Commons. A lot many pictures got deleted because of my own ignorance. Similarly, I got to learn a lot about linking multiple language entries using Wikidata. These two are my biggest lessons of all that I learned from the sessions taken by other experienced Wikipedians.

SP: What did you learn from these sessions?
Rajalaxmi Mishra: I got to learn about basics of Wikipedia editing, rules and guidelines, several technical aspects like using templates, uploading and adding images to articles and dealing with copyright issues on Wikipedia.

Subas Chandra Rout, one of the long time active Wikimedians has been the single most contributor to grow the medical science-related articles on Odia Wikipedia. Subas is the only Wikimedian who has translated all the medical science-related article from Wikimedia Medical Project run by the Wiki Project Med.

“We have several subject areas covered on Odia Wikipedia – from the elaborate rituals of Jagannatha temple to medical science. Interestingly, almost all the articles on medical science are written by a retired assistant professor Dr. Subas Chandra Rout and needless to say those articles are of really high quality”, explains Pritiranjan Tripathy, an editor who is based in the Indian city of Kolkata.

It was like a “Catch me if you can” challenge when I started to translate medical topics into the Odia language as part of Wiki Project Med on March 5, 2015 with my first article on African trypanosomiasis. There were more than 150 articles in the project. Gradually the number of topics in the project increased and so did my translated article on Odia Wikipedia. After completion of the 345th article (Marfan syndrome, on May 6, 2016), I looked at the Wikipedia project dashboard, and I saw that I was the only person to complete all the articles in the project among all the world’s contributors.

“The next big goal is to enhance the quality of the existing articles by adding more images, references from external sources and expanding small articles by adding more information”, said long-time contributor Shitikantha Dash. Shitikantha, who is also an administrator of Odia Wiktionary, says, “it is important that more people contribute to the Odia Wiktionary so that words of all times and all genres, especially the technical and loan words make their way to this free multilingual dictionary. A 10 day-long campaign is going to be organised to celebrate the 11th anniversary of Odia Wiktionary so that every Wikipedia editor adds at least one word. And we are also using these words to create a spell check that will be freely available for anyone to use”.

The contributor community that is collaboratively building these projects has been also creating many tools and technical resources like editor manuals. The script encoding converters that the community has built is helping a lot of online users to be able to share their writings on blogs and social media. “Before the onset of these converters, a vast majority of the people working in press and media were stuck with outdated encoding systems like Shreelipi and Akruti. Mrutyunjaya Kar, a long time contributor and administrator of two projects; Odia Wikipedia and Wikisource explains, “Odia Wikipedia is available at https://or.wikipedia.org and we encourage more people to join us in this movement.”

“This is a way to bring digital freedom for everyone and share the world’s knowledge in our own language.”

Chinmayee Mishra, Odia Wikimedian
Subhashish Panigrahi, Odia Wikimedian, and Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K), Centre for Internet and Society
Sailesh Patnaik, Odia Wikimedian, and Programme Associate, Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K), Centre for Internet and Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-july-7-2016-community-celebrates-birthday-of-odia-wikipedia-and-odia-wiktionary

May 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2016-06-10T19:34:10Z

Welcome to the May 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Early last year, thanks to the fund raising efforts of a friend of CIS - Suhail Kazi, we received Rs. 1.9 lakhs as donations from 19 individuals. In January this year, we set up an online giving feature on our website which would ease the donation process, but we haven’t got a single donation so far! Today, we are unable to find a single donor who is interested in our Accessibility, Telecom, or RAW programmes. In other words, we need your support. Would you to consider making a small donation to CIS? Click here to donate.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS along with 20 other organisations petitioned the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Information Technology to bring in accessibility considerations within the draft Procurement Bill. Pavishka Mittal wrote a blog post on the legality and implications of the Reserve Bank of India's proposed classification of Peer-to-Peer lending companies as non-banking financial institutions. The sixth section of our extended survey of digital initiatives in the practice of arts and humanities in India is now online. The final report will be published serially, and will comprise seven sections in total. CIS invites abstracts for essays that explore how we study the Internet in India today. Please send the abstracts (no more than 200 words) to raw@cis-india.org by Sunday, June 12, 2016. CIS will select up to 10 abstracts and announce them on Monday, June 20, 2016. CIS filed RTI applications seeking information from institutes such as IIM Bangalore; NLU Jodhpur; NLSIU; IIT Kanpur; IIT Kharagpur; NALSAR; NUJS; Delhi University; and IIM Ahmedabad. Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg wrote an article for the Wire in which they analyzed the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. They argue that the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and hindering other opportunities offered by maps. CIS sent its comments on the Draft New ICANN By-Laws in which it observed that the draft by-laws are overwrought and that rather than producing a broad constitutional document for ICANN the by-laws read like the worst of governmental regulations and create more problems than they solve.

CIS in the News

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

Exercise to correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins (The Hindu; April 28, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website on May 1, 2016.

T’puram to host Wikipedia workshop on May 4, 5 (Mathrubhumi; May 1, 2016).
Spread awareness through Malayalam Wikipedia: Gadgil (The Times of India; May 5, 2016).
Promoting Online Content Through 'Wiki Malayalam' (New Indian Express; May 6, 2016).

Why India’s attempt to police digital maps and satellite images is a ‘dumb’ idea (News Minute; May 6, 2016).
Google, Apple and Microsoft may need licence for satellite mapping in India (Aman Sharma and Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; May 9, 2016).
Geospatial Info Regulation Bill will hurt start-ups, small firms (Varun Aggarwal; Hindu BusinessLine; May 10, 2016).
Why The New Government Policy Mandating Panic Buttons On Phones Isn’t Going To Protect Women (The Ladies Finger; May 14, 2016).
India's Proposed Map Law Prompts Outcry (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 17, 2016).
Suckfly Attacks National Stock Exchange Tech Vendor, Among Others (Rohit Pathak; The Quint; May 21, 2016).
India Seeks to Limit Use of Maps and Satellite Images (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 27, 2016).
How tech brings self-reliance to students with disabilities (The Times of India; May 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following pieces:

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; February 2016). The post was mirrored in Global Voices. The post was translated into Greek by Maria Souli. It was translated into Spanish by Daniela Diaz and into Russian by GV Russian.
A Large Byte of Your Life (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 3, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.

A four year, action-packed experience with Wikipedia (Sailesh Patnaik; Opensource.com; April 15, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website recently.
Online Censorship on the Rise: Why I Prefer to Save Things Offline (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 17, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.
Facebook: A Platform with Little Less Sharing of Personal Information (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 8, 2016).

Wikipedia’s 15th birthday inspires Bangla translators; Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons (Nahid Sultan and Shailesh Patnaik; Wikimedia Blog; May 9, 2016).

Identity of the Aadhaar Act: Supreme Court and the Money Bill Question (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; May 9, 2016).
Criminal Defamation and the Supreme Court’s Loss of Reputation (Bhairav Acharya; The Wire; May 14, 2016).
Before Geospatial Bill: A Long History of Killing the Map in Order to Protect the Territory (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg; The Wire; May 16, 2016).
Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; The Wire; May 17, 2016).
Women's Safety? There is an App for That (Rohini Lakshané; Gender IT.org; May 19, 2016).

ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଏନସାଇକ୍ଲୋପିଡ଼ିଆ "ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ" ବିକାଶ ପାଇଁ ଏକାଠି ହେଲେ ପୁରୀର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀ (Subhashish Panigrahi; YourStory Odia, May 20, 2016).

Celebrating 13 Years of the Kannada-language Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; DNA; May 22, 2016).
Modi’s New Intellectual Property Rights Policy Will Only Benefit Players with Deep Pockets (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2016).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

May 2016 Report

►Other

Accessible ICT Procurement (Pranesh Prakash; May 9, 2016).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

CIS gathered information from various educational institutions in response to several RTI applications. All of these have been published as different blog posts:

MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from JNU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kharagpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NALSAR (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NUJS (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Delhi University (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Ahmedabad (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 17, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Bangalore (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 21, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLU, Jodhpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 26, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLSIU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 27, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kanpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 31, 2016).

Nisha S. Kumar assisted in the preparation of all these documents.

Participation in Event

National Confererence on Competition & IPR in ICT, Telecom and Mobile Sets (Organized by CMAI; May 18, 2016; Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi). Rohini Lakshané and Anubha Sinha attended this conference.

Other Blog Entry

Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama; May 21, 2016).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Images and Links Matter Quality (Rahmanuddin Shaik; May 4, 2016).
Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles (Tito Dutta; May 9, 2016).
Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; May 19, 2016). Ananth Subray contributed to this blog.

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Freedom of Expression

Submission and Comment

Comments on Draft Electronic Health Records Standards (Amber Sinha; May 28, 2016).
Submission by the Centre for Internet and Society on Draft New ICANN By-laws (Pranesh Prakash, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Swati Muthukumar with inputs from Sunil Abraham; May 30, 2016).

Blog Entry

Criminal Defamation Remains and so does the Debate (Japreet Grewal; May 19, 2016).

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Privacy Issues with DRM (Jalaj Pandey; May 3, 2016).

Event Organized

Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges (Organized by Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU and CIS; May 26 - 27, 2016; New Delhi). The event was supported by the Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi, Free Software Movement of India, Knowledge Commons, PEACE, and Center for Advancement of Public Understanding of Science & Technology.

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Announcement

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; May 20, 2016).

Blog Entries

New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice (P.P. Sneha; May 19, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Summary (Pavishka Mittal; May 18, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Legality and Implications (Pavishka Mittal; May 23, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Data Security and Privacy Concerns (Vipul Kharbanda; May 31, 2016).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2016-newsletter

Wikipedia’s 15th birthday inspires Bangla translators; Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons

Nahid Sultan and Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-06-09T12:10:15Z

Bangla-language Wikipedians translated about 600 articles for their language’s Wikipedia; Odia-language Wikimedians hosted their second annual Women’s History Month edit-a-thon.

The article was published on Wikimedia Blog on May 9, 2016.

Bangla Wikipedians conduct multi-month edit-a-thon

On 15 January, Wikipedia turned fifteen years old . To celebrate this special day, a good article writing competition was organized on the Bangla Wikipedia by Wikimedia Bangladesh. Bangla Wikipedia has a total article count of over 42,000. Among these, only a handful of articles are rated as “good” articles (English equivalent). In an attempt to enhance the content quality in the Bangla Wikipedia, a competition was organized that aimed to increase the number of good articles. The competition lasted from 1 November 2015 to 10 January 2016. The events received press coverage from around the country, including newspapers like Prothom Alo and The Daily Star.

In this contest, Bangla Wikipedians fully translated about 600 good articles from English Wikipedia. A total of 550 Bengali-speaking registered users from Bangladesh, India, Italy and South Korea participated in this two-month long competition; 130 of them were awarded a Wikipedia Badge, wristband, USB flash drive, and T-shirts by Wikimedia Bangladesh. A reviewing panel of 35 experienced and regular users evaluated the translated articles. Among all the participants of the competition, 86% were new to Wikipedia and contributed for the first time, 14% were frequent editors, and 12% were female.

This contest increased the number of good quality articles in Bangla Wikipedia and, at the same time, engaged a huge number of new users in Wikipedia through this contest. S.M. Monir created the highest number of articles and was awarded the first prize, a bicycle, and a certificate in the 15th year celebration program.

Good article edit-a-thon day was another event in this series of programs. Five edit-a-thons were organized in three different cities in the Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong divisions. Like the contest, the aim of the edit-a-thons was to increase the number of good articles on the Bangla Wikipedia. As a result of these edit-a-thons, the number of good articles are increased from 14 to 60. Besides those events, Wikipedia Workshops were held in three different Universities of Bangladesh. On an average, about 50 students attended in each workshop. The main goal of the workshops was to create awareness about Wikimedia projects. Another goal was to introduce Wikipedia (especially Bangla Wikipedia) to the audience and show the attendees how to edit the articles and contribute photographs to Wikimedia Commons.

The series programs ended on 15th January 2016 at Bishwo Shahitto Kendro in Dhaka through the celebration of Wikipedia’s birthday. Noted filmmaker Mostofa Sarwar Farooki was present at the program as a special guest.

Nahid Sultan, Secretary
Wikimedia Bangladesh

Odia-language contributors and the women they are inspired by

Last month, the second Women’s History Month edit-a-thon began on Odia-language Wikimedia sites. With a theme of Women I am inspired by, the event aimed to improve articles on these notable individuals. Twenty articles were created and ten were improved, thanks to the dozens of participants—seven of which were women who went on to found an informal group for female editors on the Odia Wikipedia.

Among the participants, eight were brand-new. We reached out to Rajalaxmi Mishra to talk about their experience. Rajalaxmi is a MCA student who began editing the Odia Wikipedia after a Utkal University workshop. Annie Besant, an article she has been working on since the edit-a-thon (in part thanks to Content Translation), is now among the top ten longest articles on the site, and she has also put in time editing Sudha Chandran.

Rajalaxmi chose these articles because Besant “has always inspired me with her personality. Writing an article on her has helped me learn more from her life story. Chandran’s achievements have also inspired me, as she never let her problem [she lost a leg to gangrene in 1981] be a barrier—she is one of the most famous dancers in India.”

Sailesh Patnaik
Access To Knowledge, Centre for Internet and Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-may-9-2016-bangla-translations-odia-womens-history

Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri, Odisha sparks creation of informal Wikipedia group WikiTungi

Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-01-12T05:28:14Z

The first ever Odia Wikipedia workshop in Odisha's historic town of Puri finally shaped in on this December 20. With 25 participants contributing to Odia Wikipedia this day, more Wikipedia outreach in the city were planned.

Organised at the Premier Institute of Computer Studies (PICS), this workshop saw many students from technical background including four female participants. The Google Local Guides group of Bhubaneswar collaborated with us in organising this workshop. Thanks to long time Odia Wikimedian Dr Subas Chandra Rout to spare time and taking pain in coming all the way from Bhubaneswar to mentor the new editors. Only 10-12 participants could sign up on the spot because of IP address throttle that we could not fix beforehand. Otherwise the event went well and after a week, many of the participants have turned out to be active on Odia Wikipedia which is pretty exciting.

We planned to organise a meetup once in two month at Puri with the focus on improving at least 20-25 articles related to to the city and district during the meetup. There was a three-minute coverage of the workshop on Odisha Television (OTV) and a brief report of the workshop was published on Odisha Reporter.

As part our effort in chronicling the voice of the Wikipedia community in the WikipediansSpeak series, we reached out to Wikimedians Dr. Subas Chandra Rout and Snehasish Nayak after the workshop. Dr Rout shares his interactions and future plans to expand the Odia Wikimedia community:

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Thank you so much for mentoring these new Wikimedians! How was your overall experience working with them?
Subas Chandra Rout (SRR): The participants were, indeed, very enthusiastic. They not just were good listeners when we were presenting but contributed well after we demonstrated.

SP: How often do you think we should come back here and work with the same set of participants?
SRR: I think one more visit to ensure that they feel more integrated with the larger Odia Wikimedia community and help them contribute more. Face-to-face interaction will also help them feel more comfortable to share the kind of problems they might have been facing.

SP: What kind of problems did they face during the workshop? How did you help them with those problems?
There were certain technical/logistics problems which kind of made us keep the workshop limited to more demonstration by us and less practice by them. Sailesh seems be following up with them as some of them have already started editing Wikipedia actively.

Snehasish Nayak, organiser of the event and a new active Wikimedian of the Odia community—it is worth mentioning that Snehasish has 360 edits on Odia Wikipedia already—shares more about himself, his interests and ideas for future projects:

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): How and when you got introduced to Odia Wikipedia? Did you know about it before or heard from someone before you formally got an orientation?
Snehasish Nayak (SN): The first time I got to know about Odia Wikipedia was during the Google I/O 2015 event. It was Sailesh Pattnaik who introduced me to Odia Wikipedia. My Wikipedia journey started in December 2015, when Sailesh asked me for some help to conduct a Odia Wikipedia in my hometown Puri.

SP: You graduated as an engineer. Many engineers in India do not even contribute much to language related work, especially the ones that are not paid for. What drives you to contribute so much that you have crossed 360 edits in just three weeks?
SN: From my school days, Wikipedia has been good friend to me. I don’t remember in how many projects Wikipedia has come to my rescue. And in return Wikipedia never asked for anything. I felt it would be the best platform to share free knowledge across the globe.Odia being my native language and it being a very old language needs contribution from the youth like me. In the era of digital revolution Odia Wikipedia has the potential of empowering every single Odia with the sum of the world's knowledge any time of in any place. If anyone asks me about what I am getting in return because of my contribution, my first answer would be "knowledge". I have learnt quite a lot after I started contributing to Odia Wikipedia. And after each contribution, it gives me a great feeling that I have done something useful for the world”. It inspires me to contribute more and more...

SP: You have recently started working and promoting about WikiTungi Puri. Can you share little more about it? What it will do? How it will benefit the Odia language?
SN: With the coming of our group, WikiTungi Puri, we are going to organize more workshops, meetups and other outreach programs in and around Puri. But the work will never be limited only to the city. We are always ready to collaborate with the global community. At Puri, We have plans to design thematic outreach activities in some of the educational institutions of Puri and we would like to invite them to be part of WikiTungi Puri. We have plans to bring the "Odia Wikiquote" live out of the Incubator wiki. We have started working on designing of training materials for the new editors. I have a great feeling that we are going to have more and more active contributors joining us in the near future.

From the place where see it from, Odia Wikipedia is becoming a pioneer of bringing digital technology for taking our language to a whole new level!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-takes-puri

TTT 2015

hasan — 2015-12-15T07:36:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) conducted a four day training workshop for Wikimedians all over India in order to facilitate conducting and organising outreach activities for promotion of Wikimedia activities within Indian language communities. Wikimedians from 21 language communities had participated in this training workshop including Wikipedians working for Nepali and Maithili Wikipedia.

CIS-A2K was successful in providing an idea exchange platform during the TTT workshop. Wikipedians from all over India got a chance to discuss their respective Wikimedia projects and identify best practices that could be customised for their own Wikimedia projects.

CIS-A2K conducted TTT 2015 with a clear objecive of training Indian Wikimedians in conducting effective outreach activites, As a reflective exercise on the efficacy of our TTT camp held in Bangalore during February, 2015 we are now conducting follow-up with the participants and I have contacted three Wikipedians (for the month of November 2015) and following are the updates:

Sailesh Patnaik (Odia Wikimedian):

Activities till now:

Attended Google I/O Bhubaneswar to deliver a talk about Wikipedia movement.
Has organized a workshop at KIST Bhubaneswar with 50+ participants.
Was invited by GDG Bhubaneswar group to deliver a talk about Wikipedia project during Google Dev Fest.
Presented a seminar at CET Bhubaneswar after the invitation from the organizing committee of the Perception (The Annual tech fest of CET , Bhubaneswar).

Upcoming Activities

Planning to organize a Wiki Takes Bhubaneswar photowalk and am also planning a GLAM project with a Cooperative society powered by Central Government and spread Open Source movement in Odisha.

V.T. Narayanan and Sayant Mahato (Samskritam Wikipedians):

Activities till now:

In May 2015, Samskrita Bharati organized a camp in Kalladka.
In July 2015 : Rashtriya Sanskrit Samsthan, Sringeri (Now Sringa Giri) organized a symposium for their staff and students.
In August 2015, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidya Peeta, Tirupathi organized introductory classes on Wikipedia. Sayant Mahato attended the programme and expained in detail about Sanskrit Wikipedia.
Later in August 2015, at Aksharam, Bangalore, Samskrita Bharati conducted a " Medha Shibiram" exclusively oriented to youngsters and students who are based outside India like in USA. The Shibiram was well received both by the students and their parents. The participants were very interested to know about Sanskrit Wikipedia.
Samskrita Bharati is engaged in the work of editing the existing articles in Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ttt-2015

Odia Wikimedia community meetup at Cuttack

Sailesh Patnaik — 2015-12-29T12:07:56Z

Odia Wikimedians are planning to gather in Cuttack and discuss about future project ideas for the community.

Agenda:

Discussion about existing projects and planning for future
Implementing the community's plans
Responsibilities of CIS-A2K's new program Associate Sailesh Patnaik
Restarting monthly meetup plans in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar

As Odia Wikipedia turns 13, what happens next?

Subhashish Panigrahi and Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-06-18T17:08:41Z

Odia Wikipedia, one of several Indian-language Wikipedia projects, celebrated thirteen years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.

This was originally published on the Wikimedia Blog on August 21. The post was shared on Wikipedia's official Facebook page, and on Twitter handles [1 and 2]

Launched in 2002—just a year after the English Wikipedia was launched—Odia Wikipedia has grown to be the largest content repository in the Odia language available in Unicode on the Internet. With over 8,900 articles and about 17 active editors (also known as “uikiali”) spread across various parts of India and abroad, the project has become more than just an encyclopedia. The voluntary editor community has put its efforts into acquiring valuable content, re-licensing them under Creative Commons (CC) licenses, and building tools for acquiring more encyclopedic content from various sources.

The community has also engaged over 2,500 people through various outreach programs, such as the Wikipedia Education Program. For its thirteenth anniversary, the community released a character-encoding converter that promises to unlock massive amounts of content—from government portals to journals, newspapers and magazines that have their content in various legacy encoding systems other than Unicode. This has been a major roadblock in the search for and reuse of digital content in the Odia language. During our thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community spent a day assessing community needs, addressing issues, and identifying priority areas to focus on in the future. This was arguably the first time almost the entire community gathered in a physical space. This allowed Odia Wikipedia administrator, and the most active Odia Wikimedian, Mrutyunjaya Kar and I to design a needs assessment survey. Participating Wikimedians were asked to brainstorm various problems they face in two major areas: editing and outreach.

The community has also engaged over 2,500 people through various outreach programs, such as the Wikipedia Education Program. For its thirteenth anniversary, the community released a character-encoding converter that promises to unlock massive amounts of content—from government portals to journals, newspapers and magazines that have their content in various legacy encoding systems other than Unicode. This has been a major roadblock in the search for and reuse of digital content in the Odia language.

During our thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community spent a day assessing community needs, addressing issues, and identifying priority areas to focus on in the future. This was arguably the first time almost the entire community gathered in a physical space. This allowed Odia Wikipedia administrator, and the most active Odia Wikimedian, Mrutyunjaya Kar and I to design a needs assessment survey. Participating Wikimedians were asked to brainstorm various problems they face in two major areas: editing and outreach.

	Two-fifths of participants said that problems with the rendering of Odia characters in different operating systems, ignorance or lack of more documentation about enabling encoding for Odia, input methods and keyboard layouts, and other font- and keyboard-related issues as the major reason for low readership and contribution on Wikipedia. More than a third instead blamed the lack of good quality content on Wikipedia and the Internet as a whole in the Odia language, in English related to Odia language, and in Odisha on the Internet. A quarter blamed other technical issues, including the lack of mobile input in Odia, for low editorship, while low interest for contributing in Odia language by native language speakers was blamed by eight percent of survey participants.

Two-fifths of participants said that problems with the rendering of Odia characters in different operating systems, ignorance or lack of more documentation about enabling encoding for Odia, input methods and keyboard layouts, and other font- and keyboard-related issues as the major reason for low readership and contribution on Wikipedia.

More than a third instead blamed the lack of good quality content on Wikipedia and the Internet as a whole in the Odia language, in English related to Odia language, and in Odisha on the Internet. A quarter blamed other technical issues, including the lack of mobile input in Odia, for low editorship, while low interest for contributing in Odia language by native language speakers was blamed by eight percent of survey participants.

Aditya Mahar, the second-most active editor on the Odia Wikipedia, feels that the biggest setback for the Odia Wikipedia is a lack of interest in contributing in Odia language. He says many Odia speakers feel that Odia is not needed to acquire and share knowledge.

“Like many others, I have been very eager to learn and share more about my home state and culture,” he says. “That’s why I started to contribute to the Odia Wikipedia, to tell my people about our rich cultural heritage in my language.”

He adds that he is concerned by the way many have been alienating Odia with the excuse of learning English to connect to the rest of the world. “I want my future generation to find everything they want to learn in Odia—from the history of Odisha, our art, architecture, Odia language and people, and our cultural extravaganza,” he says.

Mrutyunjaya Kar, an administrator on the Odia Wikipedia and the most active contributor, feels that Wikipedia is like a marathon and there is a great need for fresh blood in the community. Asked if the community will ever die out, Mrutyunjaya feels that even with a small community, the Odia Wikipedia community is always going to thrive, even if, in the worst case, only one active Wikipedian remains. So, we badly need new users to pass the baton. For him, community support and bonding with the fellow editors is the most important thing to lead a community.

Mrutyunjaya adds that creating many short articles, known as “stubs”, is a necessary evil and essential for a project like the Odia Wikipedia, as they are drafted as a by-product of collaborative editing.

“It takes little longer for a small community like Odia to expand and enhance quality of stubs though,” he says. “Many-a-times, new editors learn about Wikipedia editing while creating stubs. However, all the active Wikipedians agreed during the thirteenth anniversary not to create or promote many stubs.”

Sailesh Patnaik, Odia Wikimedian
Subhashish Panigrahi, Odia Wikimedian and Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-foundation-blog-as-odia-wikipedia-turns-13-what-happens-next

June 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-09-13T16:10:19Z

Newsletter for the month of June.

We are happy to share with you the sixth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (June 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

-------------------------------
Highlights
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As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted a series of interviews with cyber security actors. The interviews were compiled and edited into one documentary . The film was produced by Purba Sarkar, edited by Aaron Joseph, and directed by Oxblood Ruffin features Malavika Jayaram, Nitin Pai, Namita Malhotra, Saikat Datta, Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang, Anja Kovacs, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and, Ravi Sharada Prasad.

CIS conducted a training on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA in Tirunelveli in the month of June. Sixteen delegates attended the event.
The 30th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's ("WIPO") Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights ("SCCR") was held from June 30 to July 3, 2015. CIS was unable to attend the meeting. However, CIS had a statement to make on negotiations on the Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organizations .
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India had called for comments on the technical background paper prepared by the WIPO Secretariat in relation to the Broadcast Treaty. CIS submitted its comments .
Rohini Lakshané in a blog post analysed the commonalities in big-ticket patent infringement lawsuits pertaining to mobile devices.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored a report on open data intermediaries in developing countries . The report concluded by saying that consideration needs to be given to the presence of multiple intermediaries in an open data ecosystem, each of whom may possess different forms of capital to enable the use and unlock the potential impact of open data.
Odia language Wikipedia has grown to 800k page views in a month. The Odia Wikipedia community gathered in Bhubaneswar on June 3 to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 13^th anniversary. Subhashish Panigrahi wrote about this.
Sunil Abraham in an article titled "The generation of e-Emergency" published by Livemint on June 22 argued that the next generation of censorship technology is expected to be 'real-time content manipulation' through ISPs and Internet companies.
In two separate blog entries, Jyoti Panday provided insights into IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability. The first part gives a background to the IANA transition and updates on the ensuing processes in an attempt to familiarise people with the issues at stake and the second part provides an overview of submitted proposals and highlights the areas of concern that will need attention moving forward .

Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-designed and co-facilitated a workshop for government officials from Bhutan, Maldives, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Tripura, on open data policy and implementation, organised by UNDP India.
Shyam Ponappa in his monthly column published in the Business Standard stated that government can't control market forces but can and must fix regulatory issues.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

# Monthly Updates

June 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; June 30, 2015).

# Language Testing Reports

Report on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop in Tirunelveli (Organized by NVDA team; Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 - 7, 2015).

►Other

# White Paper

Inclusive Financial Services - Global Trends in Accessibility Requirements (Nirmita Narasimhan; May 3, 2015).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

# Submission / Comments

Comments on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations: Technical Background Paper Prepared by the WIPO Secretariat (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 28, 2015).
Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30 (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 30, 2015).

# Blog Entries

Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone Patent Litigation (Rohini Lakshané; June 1, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: India's National IPR Policy - What Would WIPO Think? (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 20, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: Follow-up RTI to DIPP on the IPR Think Tank (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 25, 2015).
The US 301 Report - A Myopic View of IP Rights (Varun Baliga and Nehaa Chaudhari; June 24, 2015).

# Media Coverage

CIS gave inputs for the following:

One reason startups are moving out of India (Evelyn Fok and Varun Aggarwal; The Times of India; April 10, 2015). This was also mirrored in Economic Times .
Indian businesses crave IP certainty, but better patent values are tempting them overseas (IAM Magazine; April 28, 2015).

►Wikipedia

# Blog Entries

How the Odia Wikimedia community is enriching Wikipedia with character encoding technology (Subhashish Panigrahi; June 14, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group (Sailesh Patnaik; June 29, 2015).

# Event Organized

Odia Wikipedia Turning 13 this June 3 (Organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikipedia Community; Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School PO, Gajapati Nagar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha; June 3, 2015).

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following:

ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ୧୩ ତମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ପାଳନ, ୨୦୧୫ ଜୁନ ୩ ତାରିଖ (Odishan.com; June 2, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia celebrates 13 years of free knowledge contribution at Bhubaneswar (Orissadairy.com; June 2, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia Celebrates 13 Years of Free Knowledge Contribution at Bhubaneswar (FullOdisha.com; June 3, 2015).

►Openness

# Blog Entries

FOSS for Public Use:Free and Open Source Software for Digital India (Anubha Sinha; June 1, 2015).
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; June 2, 2015).
Open Data Intermediaries in Developing Countries - A Synthesis Report (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; June 16, 2015).

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Free Speech and Expression

# Article

The generation of e-Emergency (Sunil Abraham; May 20, 2015).

# Blog Entries

IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability (I) (Jyoti Panday; June 20, 2015).
IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability (II) (Jyoti Panday; June 21, 2015).

# Participation in Event

Panel Discussion on Internet Intermediaries, Law and Innovation (Organized by Confederation of Indian Industries, Google and Centre For Communications Governance, NLU Delhi; New Delhi; June 2, 2015). Jyoti Panday attended the panel discussion.

► Cyber Security

# Film

DesiSec: Cybersecurity and Civil Society in India (produced by Purba Sarkar, edited by Aaron Joseph, and directed by Oxblood Ruffin). The film features Malavika Jayaram, Nitin Pai, Namita Malhotra, Saikat Datta, Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang, Anja Kovacs, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and, Ravi Sharada Prasad.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

# Op-ed

Unfettering Stranded Capacity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; June 3, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; June 4, 2015).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

# Blog Entry

Indic Scripts and the Internet (Dibyajyoti Ghosh; June 30, 2015).

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News & Media Coverage
---------------------------------

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Can Uber, Ola apps be blocked? Govt fighting cyber odds (Siladitya Ray; Hindustan Times; June 4, 2015).
Government's stand on internet governance draws applause from civil society organisations (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; June 24, 2015).
Most emerging firms low on cyber security: Experts (Malavika Murali and Payal Ganguly; June 24, 2015).

---------------------------------
About CIS
---------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
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Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2015-bulletin

Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group

Sailesh Patnaik — 2015-07-16T13:17:07Z

This is a guest post by Wikimedian Sailesh Patnaik who has been a ardent contributor in Odia-language Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and has led outreach and partnership building initiatives to grow the Wikimedia projects in Odia and other Indian languages. In this post Sailesh shares his personal experience from his interaction at the Google Extended I/O organised by Google Developer Group in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. All the views are author’s personal views.

On this June 14 Google Developer Group Bhubaneswar organised an extended I/O at Bhubaneswar. To my surprise I found that there were more than 60 participants attending the conference. Basanta Kumar Maharana. TELL WHO HE IS, was the speaker in the event. Basanta shared his memories from Google I/O 2015, San Francisco and demonstrated about the new launch and updates of Google. It was quite interesting for me to learn about various Google apps (?) kike Google cardboard, Android M, etc.

In an informal interaction with the host Sanjib Parida, he proposed me to speak about Odia Wikipedia there who came to know about the project while attending Odia Wikipedia's 13th anniversary.

I started my talk by asking four questions to the audience:

How many of the audience know about Wikipedia? (Everyone raised hands.)
Who have copied content from Wikipedia for assignments? (People giggled about it, 50-60% of the participants nodded saying yes!)
Who knows that anyone can “edit” Wikipedia? (the count reduced to about 10-20%)
Who knows about Odia Wikipedia and contributes in creating and editing articles? (Only 4-5 people said yes, I found 2-3 of them being contributors to Odia Wikipedia)

I started my talk with a brief introduction to the history of Odia Wikipedia and how it was started in 2002 as one of the first four Indic language Wikipedia projects along with Assamese, Malayalam and Punjabi.

Odia Wikipedia was in dormant for the next eight years which was intervened when Wikimedians like Subhashish Panigrahi, Ashutosh Kar, Anshuman Giri, Mrutyunjaya Kar and others started building a community to improve and increase the content of Odia Wikipedia. Now we have grown as a community consisting about 17 active editors and the project has more than 8800 articles. The monthly page view of Odia Wikipedia has grown to more than 800,000 from merely 200,000 in 2011. We have three active Odia-language Wikimedia projects; Odia Wikipedia, the largest Odia online encyclopedia, online library Odia Wikisource, and multilingual online dictionary Odia Wiktionary. Odia Wikipedia community has not limited their work only in editing articles, rather has expanded into many other aspects of Odia computing. On the day of Odia Wikipedia’s 13th anniversary it has launched a converter that can convert many non-Unicode encodings into Unicode. We have been supported by CIS-A2K for many activities to grow our community and the Odia Wikimedia projects. Like Odia Wikipedia we have 20 more Wikipedia projects in other Indic languages and in over 288 languages globally. Hindi Wikipedia among all the Indic Wikipedia projects has the highest number of articles whereas Malayalam Wikipedia has the highest number of quality articles.


Pictured above: Participants at the conference organized by the Google Developer Group at Bhubaneswar

Some of the state governments have been quite open and positive in bringing Wikipedia into academics. The Government of Kerala has introduced Wikipedia contribution in its curriculum for BA and MA students and The Government of Tamilnadu has introduced Tamil Wikipedia to participants at the International Tamil Conference which helped the Tamil Wikimedia community in expanding the community. Awareness and community building are two major challenges for us at this moment. I invited the participants there to take part in the Wikimedia movement.

I touched upon the Odia input for the audience. While it was quite difficult a few years back for Odia input it is no longer a challenge. With the help of the Android app “Indic Keyboard” we can also edit Odia Wikipedia from mobile phones. I myself have used it for editing Wikipedia, for tweeting and posting Facebook status in Odia. After the talk I was asked a few questions. There are two important ones I would like to share here. To the question “how can I contribute in Odia Wikipedia? Do I have to install any keyboard for it?” I elaborated how anyone can edit and expand articles or create new Wikipedia articles in Odia just by creating a new account and logging in to https://or.wikipedia.org, and how the Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia have an input tool called Universal Language Selector (ULS) enabled in them and one does not need to install any additional input method. I was asked by one from the here is no support from the government at this moment but we are constant effort to collaborate audience about the Government of Odisha helping to grow Odia Wikipedia.

Many participants came and personally greeted me after the event was over. I was really excited to share the news about our (Odia Wikimedia community's plans for creating Bhubaneswar Wiki Group/WikiTungi with two active communities in engineering colleges like CET and KIIT. It was a wonderful experience at Google I/O and I hope to grow our Wikimedia community by collaborating with more like minded communities.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-meets-google-developer-group

Odia Wikipedia celebrates 13 years of free knowledge contribution at Bhubaneswar

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T18:18:05Z

Odia Wikipedia, one of the first of several Indian language Wikipedia projects is ready to celebrate 13 glorious years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.

This was published in Orissadiary.com on June 2, 2015. Also see http://odishan.com/14971 (In Odia)

Beginning in 2002 — a year after the world's largest online encyclopedia, the English Wikipedia, was launched — Odia Wikipedia has grown to be the largest content repository in the Odia language available in Unicode on the Internet at https://or.wikipedia.org.

With about 17 active editors (also known as “uikiali”) spread across various parts of India and abroad, and over 8,800 articles, the project has become more than just an encyclopedia. The voluntary editor community has put its efforts into acquiring valuable Creative Commons (CC) licensed content by lobbying copyright holders/authors to relicense copyrighted content under CC licenses.

Date and time: 3 June 2015, 5 pm
Venue: Institute of Physics, Near Apollo Hospital, Bhubaneswar, Odisha
Event details: https://or.wikipedia.org/s/sml

It has also engaged with over 2,000 people by organizing various outreach programs including the globally accredited pedagogic program the Wikipedia Education Program (WEP). For its 13th anniversary the community is planning to release a character-encoding converter that promises to unlock massive amounts of content from government portals as well as journals, newspapers and magazines that have their content in non-Unicode character encoding that prevents user searching and reuse of digital-based content.

May you have any further questions about the project or the event, please reach us in the contact details mentioned below:

Mrutyunjaya Kar, Administrator, Odia Wikipedia (9437112371)
Sailesh Patnaik, Editor, Odia Wikipedia (7537097770)
Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
subhashish@cis-india.org. 08050515339

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/orissa-dairy-june-2-2015-odia-wikipedia-celebrates-13-years-of-free-knowledge-contribution-at-bhubaneswar