Centre for Internet and Society

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad

subha — 2013-01-22T03:09:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a Wikipedia workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology (RKGIT), Ghaziabad in collaboration with Metawings on January 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the happenings from the one-day workshop in this blog post.

As part of the soft skill development training program, RKGIT, an engineering college is working on a series of activities to empower the students with practical approach and competence for their professional life. We were invited to conduct a workshop for the students of mechanical engineering and help them understand the real reasons for contributions to Wikipedia as a volunteer.

Some of the focus areas we set for the workshop were:

Number of students not to exceed 60 to make sure that we get enough time and space to interact actively and pay individual attention.

Number of coordinators to support with logistics to conduct the workshop smoothly.
Active participation of teachers.
Arrangement of internet labs with multiple IP addresses for smooth user account creation.

Around 65 mechanical engineering students from second and third year participated in this workshop. We began the workshop with an interactive discussion about their practical relation with Wikipedia as students and the usability and difficulties that they face. I presented about some important facts about Wikipedia and voluntary contribution in different ways. During and after the presentation students asked a lot of questions about the notability and authenticity of articles, collaboration vs. fights among editors, references and its significance, etc.

There was a short break to make way for students to settle in the internet lab for a hands on training session. We faced problems with the LAN and 3G network for mobile broadband which made this session longer than expected. There were problems for creating accounts because of the Internet explorer and X based systems and the students couldn't create their user accounts. So, we had to manage with them contributing anonymously from IP addresses. Despite these unexpected technical problems all of them edited various articles. Some of them tried to vandalize and observe the quick reversal of the vandals.

Subhashish presenting about Wikipedia to the participants

I had a discussion with the director about conducting more such workshops, especially technical workshops where students can code and contribute to MediaWiki.

Quick links:

Presentation used for this workshop: www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia
English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org (Click here to create an account on Wikipedia)

Presentation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad

A Seminar on E-publishing of Odia Books

praskrishna — 2014-12-07T02:41:26Z

A seminar was organized by Molybtech Technology Solutions on November 30, 2014 for the betterment of Odia language and writers at Bhanja Kala Mandap.

Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the seminar as a speaker and shared his knowledge with the audience.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/seminar-e-publishing-odia-books

[OpenGLAM] Nominate an OpenGLAM project today for the 2015 Muse Awards

praskrishna — 2015-05-27T14:08:55Z

It's that time of the year again to nominate projects for the Muse Awards! This is like the Oscar of GLAM awards in the USA and welcomes international submissions.

Our esteemed jury comprises of:

Glen Barnes, Founder/CEO of MyTours and co-founder of Open New Zealand
Dominic McDevitt-Parks, Digital Content Specialist, National Archives and Records Administration
Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, Centre for Internet and Society
Jane Park, Project Manager, Creative Commons
Lieke Ploeger, Community Manager, Open Knowledge Foundation
Merete Sanderhoff, Curator, National Gallery of Denmark

Submissions are due Feb 23.

Please submit your OpenGLAM projects!!! This is a volunteer driven process, and we throw a big award ceremony with lots of champagne at the annual AAM conference.

More details here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-glam-nominate-open-glam-project-today-for-2015-muse-awards

‘Entrepreneurship will become a common, respectable profession’ – 25 quotes from Indian startup journeys

praskrishna — 2016-10-25T00:40:09Z

From success to status, witness the memorable journey of Indian entrepreneurship in these excerpts and stories! StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 25 gems and insights from the week of October 16-22 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights!

The article by Madanmohan Rao was published by Your Story on October 23, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was quoted.

When it comes to e-commerce, IoT will exceed overall expectations. – Avinash K Gautam, Silvan Innovation Labs

Chat will play an important role in the future of communication for customer service. – Girish Mathrubootham, Freshdesk

The customer experience is important, especially when things go wrong. – Radhika Aggarwal, ShopClues

Organisations will have to prepare for a digital future and they will have to use technology skills that offer artificial intelligence and design thinking. – Vishal Sikka, Infosys

Design isn’t only about ‘wow’ features. Learn about user preferences and behaviour. – Jay Dutta, SAIF Partners

Overall, there are 30–40 million sarkari naukri aspirants in the country. - Konark Singhal, Sarkari.Jobs

The growth of energetic startups is sure to translate into growth for the agriculture sector if channelised appropriately. - Varun Khurana, Crofarm

Awareness with respect to organic food is on the rise. - Likhita Bhanu, Terra Greens

Almost 100 percent of adhoc transport still happens through truck stands or ‘nakas’. - Kausalya Nandakumar, SmartShift

The opportunities to build connected mobility and electric vehicles in India are immense. - Chetan Maini, Reva

We foresee a paradigm shift in corporate outlook towards on-site childcare. - Chirag Shah, Little Big World

There is need for collective action towards bolstering growth for our cottage industry. - Parul Mehta, Ishanya Foundation

India has more than 250 million students enrolled in government and private schools. Unfortunately, more than 70 percent of children never complete their education. - Anil Bhansali, Microsoft India

Sales this festive season have probably not changed too much over last festive season. - K.Vaitheeswaran, retail entrepreneur

India has become our largest market outside of the Chinese mainland. - Lei Jun, Xiaomi

There is no better time for anyone who can read and write in their native Indian language. - Subhashish Panigrahi, Centre for Internet and Society

Both men and women have to balance work and life, however, a woman is at the receiving end of prejudiced approaches more than men. - Shweta Jain, William Grant & Sons

Mistreating and disrespecting women doesn’t make a man cool, it makes him a monster. - Sunny Leone

Social crowdfunding is here to change the face of social activism. - Piyush Jain, Impact Guru

It’s beneficial that angel investing is considered sexy. - Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Babygogo

Future growth depends on empowering people. Innovation and globalisation have created opportunity the likes of which has never before existed. – Alec Ross, ‘The Industries of the Future’

Live in the present and be grateful for what you have in life. - Anni Sharma, SelfV Survivor

Follow your dream and passion consistently. - Shyamala Ramanand, Akanksha

Life’s not an easy journey. We live only once and we are responsible for own happiness. - Haritha Khandabattu

If you solve a real problem, you will do well. And God knows we have a lot of problems to solve. – Suveen Sinha, ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

Entrepreneurship should be a happy and joyous journey and a journey filled with purpose to be called truly successful. - Ashok Soota, Happiest Minds

Entrepreneurship will become a common, respectable profession. - Sanjay Padode, DaRT

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/your-story-madan-mohan-rao-october-23-2016-startup-journeys-quotes-respectable-profession

‘Digitisation only way to preserve valuable literature for posterity’

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T12:40:33Z

Digitization is the only way to ensure preservation of valuable Odia books and old palm-leaf manuscripts for posterity, said eminent linguist Padmashri Dr Debiprasanna Pattanayak while inaugurating the two-day Odisha Day celebration organized by the Odia Wikimedia Community at Jayadev Bhawan here today.

The article was published in Odisha Sun Times on March 29, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

“Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories can help enrich our language and culture”, Dr. Pattanayak said while taking part in the deliberations. He lamented the fact that the majority of current Odia publications are not available on the net.

Among others, Prof Udayanath Sahu, the editor of Odisha Review Lenin Mohanty, editor, Odisha Bhaskar, Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher, Subrat Prusty from Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS) and principal Dr Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, chairman, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa along with the Trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik, senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash took part in the deliberations.

11 volumes of eminent Odia writer Dr Jagannath Mohanty were released in free Creative Commons licenses. Besides, a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font designed by www.OdiaLanguage.com a new Odia input tool, free software and offline Wikipedia were also released on the occasion.

KISS will digitize these books by training its students, the organisers said.

Odia Wikipedia admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech while Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read out the annual report and the vision of Odia Wikipedia.

It was announced that the Odia WikiSource project will be activated soon.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishasuntimes-march-29-2014-digitisation-only-way-to-preserve-valuable-literature-for-posterity

‘A Good Day for the Internet Everywhere': India Bans Differential Data Pricing

subha — 2016-02-25T01:21:27Z

India distinguished itself as a global leader on network neutrality on February 8, when regulators officially banned “differential pricing”, a process through which telecommunications service providers could or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services offered based on content.

The article was published by Global Voices on February 9, 2016

In short, this means that Internet access in India will remain an open field, where users should be guaranteed equal access to any website they want to visit, regardless of how they connect to the Internet.

In their ruling, Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) commented:

In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users’ internet experience.

#TRAIFreesInternet | Key take aways from TRAI’s ruling on Net Neutrality pic.twitter.com/xlFsLb3bZ6

— CNN-IBN News (@ibnlive) February 8, 2016

The decision of the Indian government has been welcomed largely in the country and outside. In support of the move, the World Wide Web Foundation's Renata Avila, also a Global Voices community member, wrote:

As the country with the second largest number of Internet users worldwide, this decision will resonate around the world. It follows a precedent set by Chile, the United States, and others which have adopted similar net neutrality safeguards. The message is clear: We can’t create a two-tier Internet – one for the haves, and one for the have-nots. We must connect everyone to the full potential of the open Web.

A blow for Facebook's “Free Basics”

While the new rules should long outlast this moment in India's Internet history, the ruling should immediately force Facebook to cancel the local deployment of “Free Basics”, a smart phone application that offers free access to Facebook, Facebook-owned products like WhatsApp, and a select suite of other websites for users who do not pay for mobile data plans.

Facebook's efforts to deploy and promote Free Basics as what they described as a remedy to India's lack of “digital equality” has encountered significant backlash. Last December, technology critic and Quartz writer Alice Truong reacted to Free Basics saying:

Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.”

When TRAI solicited public comments on the matter of differential pricing, Facebook responded with an aggressive advertising campaign on bill boards and in television commercials across the nation. It also embedded a campaign inside Facebook, asking users to write to TRAI in support of Free Basics.

TRAI criticized Facebook for what it seemed to regard as manipulation of the public. Facebook was also heavily challenged by many policy and open Internet advocates including non-profits like the Free Software Movement of India and the Savetheinternet.in campaign. The latter two collectives strongly discouraged Free Basics by bringing public opinion where Savetheinternet.in alone facilitated a campaign in which citizens sent over 2.4 million emails to TRAI urging the agency to put a stop to differential pricing.

Alongside these efforts, 500 Indian startups including major ones like Cleartrip, Zomato, Practo, Paytm and Cleartax also wrote to India's prime minister Narendra Modi requesting continued support for net neutrality—on the Indian Republic Day January 26.

Stand-up comedians like Abish Mathew and groups like All India Bakchod and East India Comedy created humorous and informative videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality which went viral.

Had differential pricing been officially legalized, it would have adversely affected startups and content-based smaller companies, who most likely could never manage to pay higher prices to partner with service providers to make their service available for free. This would have paved the way for tech-giants like Facebook to capture the entire market. And this would be no small gain for a company like Facebook: India represents the world's largest market of Internet users after the US and China, where Facebook remains blocked.

The Internet responds

There have been mixed responses on social media, both supporting and opposing. Among open Internet advocates both in India and the US, the response was celebratory:

This order shows the power of citizen involvement in policymaking. Policymakers are forced to listen if citizens engage. #NetNeutrality

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) February 8, 2016

I think this is not just a good day for the Internet in India. It's a good day for the Internet everywhere #TRAI #savetheinternet

— Anja Kovacs (@anjakovacs) February 8, 2016

India is now the global leader on #NetNeutrality. New rules are stronger than those in EU and US. https://t.co/D6g68k2xaI

— Josh Levy (@levjoy) February 8, 2016

There are also those like Panuganti Rajkiran who opposed the ruling:

A terrible decision.. The worst part here is the haves deciding for the have nots what they can have and what they cannot.

When you buy a car, it's fulfilment of aspiration. After that, the next guy who buys a car is just traffic. Let's regulate. #NetNeutrality

— Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) February 8, 2016

Soumya Manikkath says:

So all is not lost in the world, for the next two years at least. Do come back with a better plan, dear Facebook, and we'll rethink, of course.

The ruling leaves an open pathway for companies to offer consumers free access to the Internet, provided that this access is truly open and does not limit one's ability to browse any site of her choosing.

Bangalore-based Internet policy expert Pranesh Prakash noted that this work must continue until India is truly — and equally — connected:

The pro-#NetNeutrality campaign shouldn't rest until every poor family in India has full and free access to the Internet. #ZeroRating

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) February 8, 2016

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-subhashish-panigrahi-february-9-2016-a-good-day-for-the-internet-everywhere

14 Odia books re-released under Creative Commons license

subha — 2014-05-06T06:26:29Z

This blog entry by Subhashish Panigrahi (originally published in Wikimedia Foundation's Blog) was edited and re-published by Rohini Lakshane in DNA on April 26, 2014.

Read the article published in DNA on April 26, 2014.

Odisha became a separate state in British India on April 1, 1936. Odia, a 2,500 year old language recently gained the status of an Indian classical language. The Odia Wikimedia community celebrated these two occasions on March 29 in Bhubaneswar with a gathering of 70 people. Linguists, scholars and journalists discussed the state of the Odia language in the digital era, initiatives for its development and steps that can be taken to increase accessibility to books and other educational resources. 14 copyrighted books have been re-licensed under the Creative Commons license and the digitization project on Odia WikiSource was formally initiated by an indigenous educational institute, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS). Professor Udayanath Sahu from Utkal University, The Odisha Review’s editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar’s editor Pradosh Pattnaik, Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty, Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, Chairman Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa and trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik along with senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash spoke at the event.

Eleven books from Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa” trust, a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for the development of the Odia language. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia to release and digitize these books. The community will be training students and a group of six faculty members at KISS who will coordinate the digitization of these books.	Group photo of Odia wikimedians participating in the advanced Wikimedia workshop at KIIT University.

Eleven books from Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa” trust, a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for the development of the Odia language. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia to release and digitize these books.

The community will be training students and a group of six faculty members at KISS who will coordinate the digitization of these books.

Group photo of Odia wikimedians participating in the advanced Wikimedia workshop at KIIT University.

“Collaborative efforts and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language and culture,” said linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak as he inagurated the event. Dr. Pattanayak and Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty from the Institute of Odia Studies and Research also re-licensed three books (Two Odia books; “Bhasa O Jatiyata“, “Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” and an English book “Classical Odia”) based on their research on Odia language and cultural influence of the language on other societies under the same license. KISS is going to digitize some of these books and make them available on Odia Wikisource.

An OpenType Odia Unicode font, “Odia OT Jagannatha” designed by Sujata Patel from Odialanguage.com was released under the OFL license. This is the first Odia OpenType font that the community actively tested. A new Odia offline input tool called “TypeOdia” by Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar was also released for public distribution. DVDs containing the font, the input tool, Odia language dictionaries, offline Odia Wikipedia in Kiwix, Wikipedia editing guide, ISCII to Unicode font converter, various free and open source software packages and Ubuntu operating system.

Active Odia Wikipedian and Admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Center for Internet and Society read the annual report and vision of Odia Wikipedia. Chief guest Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak discussed about the efforts put forth that brought the Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. A large majority of Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easy accessibility. He further discussed the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm leaf manuscripts. Professor Udayanath Sahu presented on the process, progress and implementation of machine translation project in Utkal University.

Experienced Wikimedians conducted an advanced Wikipedia workshop on the second day of event at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. It was attended by a majority of the existing Wikimedians from the community including new Wikipedians who signed up for the Odia Wikipedia Education Program at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. Mrutyunjaya Kar presented on WikiData and various tools for linking and accessing information in multiple languages on various Wikimedia projects.

	Experienced Wikimedians conducted an advanced Wikipedia workshop on the second day of event at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. It was attended by a majority of the existing Wikimedians from the community including new Wikipedians who signed up for the Odia Wikipedia Education Program at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. Mrutyunjaya Kar presented on WikiData and various tools for linking and accessing information in multiple languages on various Wikimedia projects.

Ansuman Giri discussed advanced technical aspects such as the use of various gadgets, proper categorization, how to use subpages, how to auto-list archive pages, customizing WikiLove feature, user rights modification, including how important it is to cite biographies of living persons with secondary sources, etc. Shitikantha Dash discussed copyright and issues regarding uploading images and other media files on Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Subas Chandra Rout presented on “notability, referencing and creating citations for the notable topics.” Subhashish Panigrahi discussed the work plan for the year, failure of program projects, collective learning and the dos and don’ts of community building.


“	We hope that more authors will come forward and re-release their books under CC-BY-SA license. The Odia community is excited to see or.wikisource.org go live. A few Wikipedians are even interested in typing their favorite free licensed books to make them available on Wikisource. I believe it’ll be challenging to train the KISS students to type and proof-read the written texts. In the CISA2K’s draft plan, the goal to have the number of editors seems overestimated. The students need to have some knowledge about Wikimedia and how it works in general before they start working. We hope that the books will be digitized properly and in coming days more users will join us in the process as we will have more free books in Odia Wikisource. I appeal to the Odia people to be a part of the Odia Wikimedia community and make Odia Wikisource a successful project, we need all the time you can devote. :-)	”
Ansuman Giri, Odia Wikipedian

Copyright notes: "A group photo of Odia wikipedians at kiit conference hall on 30th march 2014.jpg", "Odia wikipedian mrutyunjaya kar and ansuman giri on 30the march 2014.jpg" by Jnanaranjan Sahu , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons, "Release of DVD containing Odia font, open source tools and Offline Odia Wikipedia.jpg" by Ahemadullah Shaikh , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-rohini-lakshane-april-26-2014-14-books-re-released-under-creative-commons-license

11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource

subha — 2014-04-06T05:01:14Z

This blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.

Click to read the post republished on DNA on March 30, 2014. The original posted on Wikimedia Blog can be seen here.

In Kannada poetry, Vachana Sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing that evolved in the eleventh century and flourished in the twelevth, as a part of the “Lingayatha” movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses, which were published in the 15-volume “Samagra Vachana Samputa” by the government of Karnataka have been digitised. Two Wikimedians, along with a Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy, are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called “Vachana Sanchaya” and ready to enrich Kannada Wikisource.

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O.L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had trouble using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII standard and searching the text was a huge problem. I (Pavithra Hanchagaiah) started to help gather information about vachanas and document it in Unicode by writing scripts for open source software. Further discussions were made to get thousands of vachanas in the form of a database, so that they could be made easily searchable with an index. This demanded that we build a platform supporting all these activities, which would help the linguistic researchers, students and members of the general public who have an interest in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model, and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime I was running various scripts to fix errors in conversion of ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to consume by the modules developed for concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home. With the constant feedback and guidance from Mr Swamy and Vasudendra, we learnt how concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to research on Vachana Sahitya. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements – free and open source software technologies were used to keep the platform active while managing the entire project. I provided critical hacks for digitization and gave feedback through suggestions.

Working System

Currently, the system has around 200,000 unique words in its repository. Vachana Sanchaya is meant for research rather than just a repository of text on the web. While you search the words on our system, you can see who has used the word in all Vachanas. To make the research more readable, we highlight the text searched in each Vachana that would be displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakara (poet) you just need to click on his name on the graph on the results page. We have used MediaWiki’s jquery-ime input tool architecture that helped us provide a feature to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for searches. So just type, and get results!

Public Response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ channels. There have been approximately 500,000 pageviews to our site in the first few months of our platform’s public launch. Interestingly, commonly searched Kannada words like “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en:Work/Deed) , “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya -en:Truthfulness ) and “ನದಿ” (River) have resulted in quick and easy results.

Plans for the Future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new feature – we have a review desk for researchers to help us with the review of content. Later we will also be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works that have been done around this literature. The content is available to the public through OpenData API and will be distributed as public domain through Wikisource once the review work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers and anyone interested in working around building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. This system is meant to evolves around other works rather than having to change and re-invent the wheel for more such projects. Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researchers get together to tag the words, glossary etc in the coming days. We can also fulfill the need of various language tools like spelling and grammar checker for users through crowd-sourcing the development. The next projects under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya which are in the pipeline with initial phases of work underway. Our idea is to extend this platform from Vyasa to Muddanna and possibly the contemporary literature work available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-march-30-2014-rohini-lakshane-11th-century-kannada-literature-now-on-wikisource

8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:11:05Z

While speaking at BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival, a day-long discourse at New Delhi on Indian languages and their state in new media, especially digital platforms, I touched upon Wikipedia in Indian languages. Most people, in fact, do not even know that Wikipedia exists in many Indian languages.

The article was first published in Huffington Post on March 19, 2016. This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016.

I personally did not know about the Odia Wikipedia until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, and the project grew to what it is today. The site now has more than 300,000 visitors every month and it is the most-visited Odia language site on the internet. Other languages, I believe, could follow a similar trajectory on Wikipedia, but there are several challenges along the way.

Many people do not even know how to search for information online in their own language, typed in its script.

1. Ignorance of language communities

Many people do not even know how to search for information online in their own language, typed in its script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script it means that their language does not exist on the internet. This ignorance perpetuates the gap.

2.Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia, as you all know, is written and edited by people like you and me who volunteer their efforts. Many people probably do not know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracies that exist in many Wikipedia articles and become editors. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful of editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.

3.Language input in computers

A vast majority of people in this country do not know how to type in their own language. There is also little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing more computers and internet, native language input is not widely. However, there is a lot of free software for language input and the challenges of typing in Indian language that existed a few years back have almost gone. You just have to look for the right tools.

4. Language input in mobile devices

With over 1 billion people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow. This in turn will help a lot many Indians to get access to the internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be unnecessarily constricted by the English-centric internet. Many Indians that have smartphones need inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

Many Indians that have smartphones need inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

Lack of native language content on the Internet bars many from accessing knowledge. As per the Internet and Mobile Association of India survey conducted in 2012, over 6% of the population is deterred from going online because of lack of content in their languages. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in Odia language today. Our languages are neglected in our own states.

6. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages for about 25 years now. But many of our traditional media have failed to adopt this. Many popular Indian-language newspapers are yet to become available in Unicode.

7. Lack of open access

Most of the information produced on the internet in general and by the government, in particular, is copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stops people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of it. The idea of opening up information for the masses in a free license could make the information reach millions of people.

Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard.

8. People with disabilities

Many people cannot read, speak and write. India has over 60 million people with hearing impairment. There is a need for a good quality text-to-speech and speech-to-text engine for people with physical disabilities. Also, these software products have to be free so that common people who cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is tough for common speakers to use them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-march-19-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-in-growing-indian-language-wikipedias

8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias

subha — 2016-03-29T17:05:15Z

After more than 10 years in existence, the Indian-language Wikipedias still are not known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in history as a result of thousands of volunteer editors.

The article was originally published in the Wire on March 17, 2016 and later mirrored on Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.

Whereas native-language Wikipedias are becoming game changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed. While speaking at the "BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival," a day-long discourse at New Delhi on Indian languages and their state in the new media (especially on the digital platforms), I shared challenges that Indian language Wikipedias are facing.

1. Language communities

Many native Indian language speakers do not know how to search online using language typed in their script. Because Google's home page does not display their language script as an option, people often think that their language does not exist on the Internet. Google now has nine Indian languages. But this does not stop a Santali or Manipuri speaker from searching in Unicode Ol chiki (script for Santali) or in Unicode Meithei (script for Manipuri). Google and other search engines will display content in any script on the Internet, but not knowing this keeps many people off the Internet, which also means off of Wikipedia.

2. Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia is created by people like you and me. From writing to editing, everything happens voluntarily. Many people do not understand that they can correct mistakes and help improve Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. Although these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful of editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages. As of January 2016, the Hindi Wikipedia had only 89 editors, whereas Hindi falls right behind English on the list of top languages by number of native speakers.

3. Language input in computer

A majority of people in India do not know how to type in their own language. Also, there is little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing more computers and have Internet access, native language input and several other basic computer training are not widely taught in schools in all states. Free software for language input is available, and the challenges of typing in Indian languages (PDF) that existed in the past are mostly resolved.

4. Language input in mobile devices

With more than 1 billion people in India (PDF) with mobile phones, the 15% Internet penetration rate will soon grow at a faster pace. This growth and tough competition is compelling telecom service providers to drop data charges, which will help more Indians get access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input, then they will be stuck inside an English-centric Internet rather than being able to navigate in their own languages. Many Indians who have smartphones need full Indian language support—and especially built-in input methods—to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

Lack of native language content on the Internet is a barrier to accessing knowledge. For example, let's look at my state Odisha. The Kerala (Indian state) government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, but the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in the Odia language today. Our languages are largely neglected in our own states.

6. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. As a global standard, Unicode can help unify the world and has been available for Indian languages for almost 25 years. But many of our print media have failed to adopt this, and many popular Indian-language newspapers still aren't available in Unicode.

7. Lack of open access

Much information online, including content created by the government, is under copyright licensing. The pay-wall gardens and copyright restrictions keep information closed and prevents people from sharing content. Wikipedia content, on the other hand, is available under Creative Commons Share-Alike licensing, which allows anyone to use the content (and even distribute commercial copies of it). The idea of opening up content under free licenses can help information reach countless additional people.

8. Accessibility

India has more than 60-million people with hearing impairments. Many people with physical disabilities need good text-to-speech and speech-to-text engines. And these software solutions must be free, so that anyone, regardless of their finances, can contribute to Wikipedia in their own languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-source-march-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-for-improving-indian-language-wikipedias

4 tips for DIY makers

subha — 2016-11-22T02:36:39Z

I started learning stencil printing and hand lettering this year, and became quite enthralled with it. These age old techniques really add something special to postcards, which I usually send to myself, my wife, and my friends while traveling.

The article was published in Opensource.com on November 18, 2016

Of course, I started considering how I could make the artwork from these postcards open to others.

First, I take a picture of the postcard and upload it to Wikimedia Commons under a free license, usually Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 International. These two licenses allow anyone to use the image of my artwork for both non-commercial and commercial purposes, modify and remix them. And uploading to Wikimedia Commons puts my artwork in a place where many people will see it.

Sometimes, I capture the postcard-making process as well, and upload those images to Wikimedia Commons.

If you're considering making your DIY project open, here are four main considerations:

1. To share or not to share?

Deciding whether to share your craft project or image might be an easy "sure, why not?" but you may be wondering "but, is it useful to others?"

My opinion is that yes, everything you make could be interesting to others, so why not make it open? There is certainly something in every maker activity that is worth sharing publicly. When I was making a stamp that was quite special and personal, and I did not want the whole world to see it because it was personal, but I did capture the stamp carving process for others to see. You might want to ask around friends and other people in any maker community you are part of. Also, try asking yourself what really would matter to other people so that you can share only useful outcomes and tips rather than sharing everything.

2. Choosing a license

I wrote about three tips for sharing your work online. And there are many other resources out there, including Creative Commons and GitHub.

A simple rule of thumb is: Except content that clearly indicates the work is released under a free license, or that the copyright has lapsed and the work is in the Public Domain, you can assume content is not freely/liberally licensed.

3. Where to share

There is almost a platform to share anything these days. Most popular multimedia platforms support Creative Commons-licensed works, like YouTube and Vimeo for video, Flickr for images, Medium for writing, Jamendo for music, and many more. Wikimedia Commons, mentioned above, is a sister project of Wikipedia and the world's largest multimedia repository; it allows original works to be uploaded and shared by Copyright holders and others of works like images (.jpg, .png, .gif), presentations (.pdf), videos (.webm and .ogv), and audio files (.ogg).

Know of more places to share works? Let us know in the comments.

4. Meet birds of feather and exchange ideas

There are tons of global and local events that bring people of all maker interests under a single roof.

An event that I love is Mozilla's Maker Party. I have been to one in my city of Bengaluru, India and can guarantee it is lots of fun!

Events like this help connect you with other makers who live nearby.

Tell us about your experience

I hope these tips have helped. Do you have other tips to share? Leave us a comment.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/opensource-november-18-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-4-tips-for-diy-makers

#NAMA: The Future of Indic Languages

praskrishna — 2014-07-24T07:40:36Z

Medianama is hosting an open house session on "The Digital Future of Indic Languages" at the Oberoi in Bangalore on Thursday, July 24, 2014. The event will begin at 4.30pm and be followed by cocktails and dinner. Subhashish Panigrahi will participate in the event.

The following will be discussed in the event:

Growth of consumption of content in Indic languages in India.
Impact of mobile on Indic languages consumption.
Challenges of discovery of Indic language content: role of social and search.
Defining standards and the role of tools and translation.
Driving user generated Indic language content creation.
Video versus Text in Indic languages.
The role of government policy in supporting Indic language content.
The role of mobile devices and touch screens.
Beyond content: service delivery in Indic languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/nama-the-future-of-indic-languages