Centre for Internet and Society

Research Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21

sneha — 2022-10-21T12:59:55Z

This is a compilation of the final reports from a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2021, on an array of topics related to Indian language Wikimedia projects. The projects were undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, Ananth Subray, Satpal Dandiwal and Nitesh Gill, with research oversight and editorial support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and internal review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon.

See the full report on Wikimedia Commons here

Click to download the full report here

Wikipedia and its many sister projects have been rich sites of study for researchers across the world for many years now. The online encyclopedia presents a microcosm of the real world in terms of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, including content and infrastructure, and community interaction among many other things. Research about Wikimedia projects and platforms has been undertaken in various languages, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, as illustrated by the research index on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and several important publications over the last several years. Research on Indian languageWikimedia projects and platforms, and on topics related to the sub-continent have also emerged significantly over the last several years.However, as understood in the course of the studies in this compilation as well, awareness about such research within the communities itself remains limited. While there is a lot of important work being undertaken on topics relevant to Indian Wikimedia projects, often by researchers who are Wikimedians themselves, factors such as dissemination beyond academic spaces, and accessibility in terms of language and context seem to also affect their availability to the larger communities, and in terms of implementation of learnings and recommendations.

The six short-term research studies undertaken by the Access to Knowledge team over 2019–2021 were therefore initiated as a pilot, an initial foray into the space of research on Wikimedia projects in India. Based on the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation, this work was undertaken primarily to tap into new areas of work, while also drawing upon existing expertise at CIS, and in order to build the capacity of the team. With these broader motivations in mind, the research was structured with the following objectives to:

Identify knowledge gaps, challenges, and opportunities in different aspects of content creation and participation in Indian language Wikimedia projects.
Develop a better understanding of systemic issues such as gender bias in Indian language communities, access to and reuse of cultural content, open learning in multilingual classrooms, and specific experiences of content creation within Wikimedia communities in India and associated initiatives.
Develop recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.

The studies in this compilation therefore examine different aspects of Wikimedia platforms and projects in India, in close alignment with existing work in the programme. These include the gender gap in Indian Wikimedia communities, creating multilingual and open educational platforms and resources, focus on specific projects such as GLAM and Wikidata, and efforts and challenges with content creation, access and outreach in specific language communities.

Working on these studies has been a learning experience, especially given the diverse contexts in which the projects are located, and the capacities and interests of the researchers themselves. The design of the studies was also therefore developed and modified to build on existing capacities within the team, and its learnings from previous years of working with various language communities. Capacity-building for team members on research design, methods, fieldwork and documentation was mostly done through close individual supervision and collaborative work. The methods used were largely qualitative, and ranged from interviews, literature reviews, data visualisations, focused group discussions and comparative analyses. The effort was also to try and capture the scale and diversity of the nature of work being undertaken in different Indian language communities through these projects. There were several challenges as well, beginning with framing the research questions and project design in a way that they were accessible to a wider community of people who would be engaged in contributing their inputs towards the work. Process-related challenges, such as translation of interview questionnaires into Indian languages revealed several interesting gaps, such as the lack of technical terms related to digitization or open access in these languages. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to restrictions on field visits, thus effectively hampering in person conversations and easier access to community members.

There have been several learnings in the course of working on these studies, key among them being questions of awareness, relevance and impact. The lack of existing and easily accessible research (including those outside academic work) on several areas of Wikimedia in the Indian context has been a limitation in many ways, offering little in terms of available knowledge and best practices to work with. The limited awareness about, and imagined relevance of research in the regular work of communities has also been an impediment. As illustrated by learnings from a short research needs assessment carried out earlier this year, few community members were aware of research on Wikimedia projects being undertaken in India, and on a global scale. More importantly, there needs to be a conversation on its relevance to their own work, and to the larger movement. An effective communication strategy for research work, in different Indian languages, would perhaps address some of these gaps. A closely related question is also that of impact. The studies in this collection largely focus on short-term impact, through best practices and recommendations that may be developed through the research studies. While this is definitely a pragmatic approach, often the interest in a problem-solution design may look at research purely from an instrumental lens to identify quick solutions and their implementation, without a critical take on exploring and understanding larger, systemic or structural gaps that may be contributing to the problems itself. Going forward, it would be imperative therefore to identify areas of research, and build processes of research design that may address these challenges. Given the dynamic nature of Wikimedia, its platforms and communities, it is important to identify immediate gaps and possible solutions, but also to speak precisely to this aspect of long-term impact and relevance, to both current areas of work and the growth of the larger movement. We hope the studies in this compilation offer some insights towards these, and many more interesting questions related to research on Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects

Research Publishing: Is ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ Pragmatic Reform for India?

sinha — 2021-04-28T17:09:14Z

Anubha Sinha examines the feasibility of the proposed 'One Nation, One Subscription' approach in the draft national Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (2020) on access to scientific literature. This article was first published in The Wire Science on October 23, 2020.

The story of open access (OA) publishing in India has been a chequered one. While we have had some progress with institutional initiatives, the landscape remains fractured without a national OA mandate. And now some reports suggest that the Indian government is considering striking a ‘one nation, one subscription’ deal with scholarly publishers for access to paywalled research for all of India’s citizens. Only last year, India had decided against joining Plan S. K. VijayRaghavan has been at the helm of these decisions, as the principal scientific advisor to the Government of India.

OA refers to the level of access different people have to a published paper, like a scientific paper. Typically, a researcher submits their manuscript to a journal to consider for publication. If the paper passes peer-review, the journal publishes the paper in its pages, and online. In the ‘conventional’ research publishing model, a reader who wishes to read the paper pays a fee to the journal to do so. In the (gold) OA model, the journal makes its money by having the researcher – or their funder – pay to have their paper published.

While it is heartening to see the momentum towards settling on a suitable OA approach, the ‘one nation, one subscription’ scheme is a curious proposition for India. A consortium of Indian science academies had recommended it last year. The scheme entails the Government of India to negotiate for and purchase a single, unified subscription from a consortium of publishers of scientific books and journals, after which the books and papers will be available to all government-funded institutions as well as all tax-payers.

Around the world, this scheme has been implemented in Uruguay and Egypt, while some European countries have adopted versions of it. Experts around the world have suggested that the model could be a feasible interim solution for developing countries. Note that both Egypt and Uruguay obtained financial assistance from the World Bank to secure their deals.

In Uruguay, since 2009, citizens have enjoyed free access to (otherwise) paywalled scientific and technological journals and platforms via the online platform Portal Timbó. However, some content remains available only to scientific, academic, and educational institutions and researchers. The 2019 budget for Portal Timbó was $2.3 million (Rs 16.94 crore).

Egypt launched its Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) initiative in 2015. EKB provides a population of 92 million people access to journals, e-books and archives from multiple publishers across the sciences, humanities and cultural disciplines, and has certainly benefited society. However, the question remains whether incurring an annual expense of $64 million, in 2017 (Rs 416.47 crore), in subscription costs is justified. In both Egypt and Uruguay, it is not clear if all material is readable immediately upon publication or whether there is a delay.

So what could a ‘one nation, one subscription’ deal look like for India?

Currently, India spends Rs 1,500 crore a year to read research via journal subscriptions (about $205 million). So while a shift to nationwide subscription could yield a low per capita cost of access, our limited ICT infrastructure and digital divide remain barriers to unlocking the full potential of the deal. It is equally crucial to ensure that the deal covers key journals and databases – which may have to be negotiated with publishers with different types of collections across multiple disciplines.

Further, and perhaps more importantly, a nationwide subscription deal will not solve for an uneven OA publishing culture among Indian researchers. A rough calculation suggests India’s annual publishing spend is Rs 985 crore ($134.5 million), including article-processing charges (APCs) for both OA and hybrid-OA journals (which have a mix of OA and ‘conventional’ publishing policies). While a common national subscription could potentially lower the cost of reading research, we don’t know if authors will still have to pay APCs to publish their papers in publications covered by the deal.

Irrespective of how the deal plays out, the Indian research community is currently divided over the issue of paying to publish. Some researchers and disciplines argue that APCs should not be the basis for ruling out publication in a journal – the choice should rather be balanced against the journal’s disciplinary relevance and its ‘prestige’ factor (captured in a controversial metric known as the journal impact factor). In India, publishing charges are typically fronted by government grants and private funders, and it costs Rs 70,000 on average to publish in OA journals.

On the other hand, OA supporters and several institutional initiatives advocate ‘green’ OA – which requires posting the preprint version of papers in an open online repository, often immediately after publication. It remains to be seen whether India will unanimously decide to adopt green OA.

We also need to deliberate further as to what a nationwide subscription would mean for the country’s and the world’s OA movement. While a ‘one national, one subscription’ plan would appear to temporarily alleviate the financial problem of access, how far can it really go towards solving for legal and technical barriers of access? For example, the reader may still not have legal permissions to reuse the article, or reuse may be prevented technically by anti-copy measures. Or should we brush these concerns aside since the deal is somewhat of an incremental reform for India?

The OA movement was conceived to address global inequality in accessing scientific research. Would India’s position and contribution to the movement – as a large consumer and producer of scientific research – get sidelined? It appears that the nationwide subscription deal could feature in India’s upcoming ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Policy’ as well. Then, to address the gaps, it is necessary to add other policy solutions to complement the deal’s impact. The goal for a national science policy should be to create a sustainable, longer term environment that improves the quality of access and production of scientific research, and does so in alignment with the values of OA.

Access this article on The Wire Science here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-publishing-is-2018one-nation-one-subscription2019-pragmatic-reform-for-india

Bridging the Gender Gap: A Report on Indian Language Wikimedia Communities

bhuvana — 2021-05-15T12:26:52Z

This research study documents the gender gap and bias in Indian language Wikimedia projects and communities, with a focus on participation by and content related to women contributors across diverse Wikimedia platforms. The research was undertaken by Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and additional inputs from Ambika Tandon and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

The full report can be read here.

Also read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

This research project is a study of how various language communities in India perceive the gender gap in their own contexts, and how the understanding of this subject has varied over time. Wikimedia characterises ‘gender bias’ on its platforms as the fact “that Wikipedia contributors are mostly male, the fact that relatively few biographies on Wikipedia are about women, and the concept that topics of interest to women are less well-covered.”[1] Studies done over the last several years have shown that ‘this gender gap’ results in not only a lesser number of women participants in Wikimedia events or number of edits by women, but also a range of such disparities in the active participation of men and women on various aspects of Wikimedia projects.These gaps vary depending on socio-cultural factors within diverse language communities, such as access to internet and digital technologies and public spaces by women, skill-building and training, labour and time available for voluntary work and development of friendly and accessible working environments.

Context and Methods

Previous research by Ting-Yi Chang (2018) and Eva Jadine Lannon (2013) undertaken with CIS-A2K indicate the existence of these disparities and knowledge gaps in Indian language Wikimedia communities, and emphasise that it is imperative to focus on not only representation but also quality of contributions on Wikimedia by individuals across the spectrum of gender and sexual identities. The research also offers incentives, possible outcomes and sustainable strategies needed to address this issue. In the last few years a lot more work has emerged on this issue in various language communities globally, and in India. Several Indian language communities have started to explore the need for focusing on gender gap and community health initiatives in their own contexts. Observations from these initiatives further reiterate that this gap continues to exist and there is a need to study and better understand the reasons for its prevalence.

As part of this study, we interviewed 15 women respondents across 13 different Indian language Wikimedia communities (including English) who contribute to several Wikimedia projects, and conducted 2 Focus Group Discussions(FGDs). The FGDs were conducted with women students from two different arts and science colleges in Tamil Nadu. The interviews and FGDs primarily helped us understand their perceptions about gender gap, the challenges that they and/or their communities experience in terms of gender bias and also the interesting initiatives set up to address these problems, both in terms of content and participation.

Key Research Areas

The research focussed on three main thematic areas, namely:

Developing a better understanding of online participation - in terms of content created by women, content about women, and online engagement with communities.

As most of the engagement with Wikimedia projects is an online activity so an analysis of the accessibility of internet and other digital infrastructures, platforms and participation guidelines were discussed. Improvements on providing support and training to access platforms would help in furthering participation to contribute to Wikimedia projects and initiatives. Restrictions on offline meetings due to the COVID 19 pandemic has further spurred a lot of online meetings and engagement. Awareness and training on the use of virtual platforms along with friendly space policies could help in creating a structured online experience on Wikimedia for the women in the community.

Developing a better understanding of women’s offline community participation.

Offline participation by women contributors in Indian language Wikimedia communities is an ideal space for learning new skills, working on collaborative events like edit-a-thons or a general discussion among the members of the community. Preference for independent events, discussions such as women-only forums led by women leaders/mentors were suggested by the interviewees. The difficulty of managing voluntary work with professional and domestic responsibilities, and need for support with travel and participation in offline events are some of the challenges highlighted from the interviews.

Enhancing sustained participation of women contributors - identifying challenges with retention, infrastructural issues etc, and possibilities and strategies to address the same, and creating awareness on how women can be involved with all Wikimedia projects.

We tried to understand what are impediments to sustaining Wikimedia contributions by and about women, and possible strategies to address the same. These include the need to encourage more efforts in areas such as detailed documentation of metrics on gender and diversity, building more awareness within communities about gender gap/bias and building relevant technological and communication skills, and addressing community health and conflict management as an important area of work and engagement.

Learnings

The learnings from the study offered insights into several key aspects of the problem of gender gap on Wikimedia, such as the need to encourage sustainable contributions through multiple strategies addressing challenges faced by women and other marginalised groups engaging with Wikimedia projects. This includes efforts to build awareness about gender gap and bias in Indian language communities, undertaking training to address technological and communication gaps and skills, understanding and accommodating the different demands that women editors have on their time and labour with respect to professional, domestic and care work, and according more visibility and recognition towards their efforts on Wikimedia. In addition to this, recognising and actively working towards addressing systemic power asymmetries in online platforms, by creating friendly working environments and encouraging women participants to take ownership and lead initiatives would be imperative to foster long-term and productive engagement with Wikimedia. Based on these observations, the report also offers a set of recommendations, which may also inform existing and emerging efforts to address the problem of gender bias and gender gap on Wikimedia platforms.

References

[1] “Gender Bias on Wikipedia”, Wikipedia, accessed November 29, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia&oldid=991093125

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities

WIPO SCCR 41: Notes from Day 1

sinha — 2021-06-29T13:40:49Z

Member states delivered opening statements and deliberated on the progress, substantive provisions, and method of work on the draft broadcasting treaty text. This blog post summarises positions and contentions that supported: 1) transparency in SCCR work 2) limitations and exceptions 3) addressing the object of protection and overbroad scope of rights in the draft treaty text.

Agenda Item: Protection of Broadcasting Organisations

1. Opacity around informal work on the broadcasting treaty agenda

Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, South Africa and Chile shared their disappointment on the lack of transparency of informal meetings on the treaty text, and urged for greater openness. The informal meetings were conducted between WIPO and an ad hoc group of countries known as ‘Friends of the (SCCR) Chair’. This group currently includes Argentina, Colombia, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, and the United States of America. The group met in April and June 2021, but Indonesia questioned whether there was a mandate for it in the first place.

Indonesia and Pakistan requested for further updates on the status of the treaty text from the WIPO SCCR Chair and Vice-Chair, especially as an outcome of the informal work. The two delegations also noted the lack of diversity and imbalance in representation in the ‘Friends of the Chair’ group. Pakistan noted that this agenda item had always had a diversity of viewpoints, and that this new mechanism was reductive and not inclusive.

The WIPO SCCR Chair’s and Vice-Chair’s response was that the ‘Friends of the Chair’ mechanism was adopted to do inter-sessional work (work between two SCCRs), in a flexible and less-time consuming manner. The Chair added that the group was created in 2019 (i.e in the previous Chair's term). However, it should be noted that the group was created only for an “exceptional informal intersessional meeting” with the objective to “brainstorm on possible ways to make progress on the draft treaty on the protection of broadcasting organizations in view of the upcoming WIPO General Assembly and the 40th session of the SCCR which will be held in October.” Indonesia made a request to join this group, which was denied by the Chair. The Chair only assured that the concerns raised will be addressed.

2. Support for adding better limitations and exceptions to the treaty text

South Africa emphasised on the critical role of broadcasting organisations in transmitting information and knowledge, and cautioned that the treaty text should be balanced and not negatively impact access to information, culture and education. Iran (speaking on behalf of Asia-pacific group) highlighted the public interest stakes in the treaty and stated that the way forward was to ensure that no layer of rights is created which might affect the right to access information. Chile also was in favour of a more balanced approach that should include limitations and exceptions. Indonesia and Pakistan added that limitations and exceptions in the current text need to be addressed more properly, as they are essential provisions for digital preservation, online use and research.

3. Alternative legal solutions to address broadcast piracy

Canada highlighted how in its national law it provides signal protection and combats piracy without granting exclusive rights to broadcasters on transmission.

Agenda Item: Limitations and Exceptions

1. Support for Limitations and Exceptions agenda item

India noted the importance of the limitations and exceptions agenda for the benefit of the work of libraries, archives, museums, and educational and research institutions, and shared its support for the agenda item.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr-41-notes-from-day-1

Global Civil Society Coalition launches website to promote Access to Knowledge

sinha — 2022-10-12T12:05:03Z

CIS is a part of a global civil society coalition that is working to promote access to, and use of, knowledge - the Access to Knowledge or A2K coalition.

Earlier this week, the coalition launched a website articulating its mission and recommendations to reform copyright systems for the benefit of education, research, and cultural heritage.

Copyright systems pose serious obstacles to quality teaching and learning, researchers’ ability to receive and impart information and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits, and preservation and access of cultural and scientific heritage. The website presents evidence and legal solutions, with a focus on the digital and online dimension to the issues. Three global maps also show the (limited) extent to which copyright limitations and exceptions across the world support online education, text and data mining, and preservation, highlighting the need for global legal eform.

The members of the A2K coalition represent a diverse set of voices such as educators, researchers, students, libraries, archives, museums, other knowledge users and creative communities around the globe. In Asia-pacific, we have ourselves and Open Access India as members presently. We invite organizations who share a similar vision of a fair and balanced copyright system to join the coalition.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-civil-society-coalition-launches-website-to-promote-access-to-knowledge

Wiki Women for Women Well-Being: An Initiative to Bridge the Gender Gap in the Wikimedia Community

Nitesh Gill and Shruti Anandan — 2020-12-28T14:58:45Z

WWWW is a project which focused on bridging the female related content gap on Indic Wikimedia communities. The idea of WWWW was given by Dr. Manavpreet Kaur, who worked with other women leaders from different communities and made a plan to engage with the editors for this project. CIS-A2K has started a series of interviews to introduce women with brilliant ideas and who have done contributions for Wikimedia and this is the first interview under the “Series of Interviews.” This Interview was done by Nitesh Gill.

Image Source: Wiki Women for Women Wellbeing logo. 30 September 2018. Author: Satdeep Gill

“The Wiki Women for Women Well-Being (WWWW) event proved that women should be recognized as leaders, as they can plan, design, run, and report a project as large as WWWW. We haven’t seen any other volunteer lead event bring so many communities together. Women are growing as leaders and will continue doing so.” - Dr. Manavpreet Kaur

Dr. Manavpreet Kaur started her journey as a Wikimedian in 2015 by participating in the Wikipedia Asian Month. Since then, she has participated and organized events such as WikiConference India 2016, Wiki Women for Women Well-being (“WWWW”), Syberthon, and Women’s Train the Trainer workshop. Dr. Manavpreet is a free knowledge enthusiast and a believer of education for enlightenment. She focuses her efforts on designing and facilitating programs to include more women in leadership roles in the Wikimedia community. Through a Q&A session with Dr. Manavpreet, CIS-A2K attempted to capture her experience of designing the WWWW event.

Q&A:

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us Dr. Manavpreet.

We want to start off by asking you, when was the first time you thought of WWWW ?

The event was proposed during the Wiki Advanced Training at Ranchi in 2018. This was initially planned to be a month long edit-a-thon for women by women where different Indian Communities and Maithili Communities of Nepal come together for a joint cause of creating content related to women’s health issues and also to explore women’s leadership opportunities in Wikimedia projects. Through WWWW, we attempted to train some interested women Wkimedians of different communities for outreach activities by guiding and supporting them to organize the event in their respective communities. We aimed to explore and promote women’s leadership in different languages, thus helping to bridge the gender gap along with the accomplishment of content creation.

What was the motivation behind this initiative?

I had met many women Wikimedia editors at various events and training. I realised we never took initiatives to build women’s leadership and women centric projects. The team of WWWW realised that the most important thing was to raise awareness on women’s health concerns as we all had some shared experiences that made us realise the need.

What was the objective of facilitating WWWW?

We had the following objectives in mind when we designed the event:

To promote content creation relating to women’s physical and social well-being in different languages
To build women’s leadership and women centric projects
To guide new women editors to lead projects and take ownership while creating information about women’s well-being.
To train women Wikimedians of different communities to conduct outreach activities by supporting them to organize events in their respective communities.

How did you prepare for this event?

A group of interested women Wikimedians was created for online discussions, time to time updates and task management. The discussions started in the month of July 2018. Different language communities were contacted to join the program. A total of 11 languages participated. We had Netha Hussain from the Malayalam community in the team but we could not have Malayalam as a participating language community because of the Kerala floods that year.

In August, the representatives from every community were asked to fill a google form and a budget was planned on the basis of their submissions. The draft message was created in English and translated to Indic Languages. The same message was then floated in the mailing lists. It was also posted on village pump of different participating languages. The list of articles was finalised after discussion with Diptanshu from WikiMed and Dr Rajender Prabhune from Marathi Wiki Community. Dr James Heilman also suggested a list of 107 articles.

How did you communicate and share the plan with communities and co-organisers?

We created a Facebook page and group for internal discussions. We organized hangout calls and hundreds of individual calls to discuss the progress and next steps. We also prepared a meta page for transparent updates and information sharing. The language project pages were created and posted on the village pump and on our mailing lists multiple times. We posted on off-wiki channels as well and sent out individual messages. Finally, we also reached out to Wikimedia Medicine to identify the priority topics. As a part of the edit-a-thon, several offline events were also organised.

Please tell us a little about the co-organisers of the project. How did you choose and contact them?

I reached out to different affiliates (contacts I knew) to identify the new women Wikimedians who might benefit from the training and who will be willing to work on a cumulative project. As women kept on joining, we used their network to identify the language leads. Women who were a part of the team from the very beginning, who were involved in planning, discussions, decision making, organizing and reporting were identified as Organizers and the supporting community members as Co-Organizers. Considering the capacity building aspect, only women were Leads (Organizers) but there was no such condition imposed for co-organizers.

How was your overall experience conducting this event?

It was our first experience and it was amazing in so many ways. I believe everyone was a star performer but in different sections -- some rocked the awareness campaigns, getting expert speakers, awareness videos, scalable vector graphics, articles or partnership. The communities were also generally supportive. This event proved that women should be recognized as leaders, as they can plan, design, run, and report a project as large as WWWW. We haven’t seen any other volunteer lead event bring so many communities together. Women are growing as leaders and will continue doing so.

What were some of the challenges that you experienced while facilitating the event?

We experienced a few challenges as it was the first time that we facilitated this event. These challenges definitely served as learning experiences which we will reflect on moving forward.

Some of the challenges we experienced were related to:

Participation:

We tried working with medical students, but every institute that initially agreed to collaborate couldn't do it because of mid-term exams of the students.
Some of the leads were new Wikimedians who had relatively less knowledge of wiki and different projects. Also, they didn't know the fellow Wikimedians from their community much which acted as a hindrance in planning an offline event.
Participants sometimes did not check the messages posted to their social media accounts. An attempt will be made to engage people in on-wiki discussions rather than forming any other group.

Content:

Anticipating the challenges relating to the nature of the content, the team decided to expand the theme from women’s physical well-being to social well-being.
However, it was difficult to get participants for the program because the medical terms and topics were difficult for them to comprehend. Participants were facing issues to write about them since the nature of the subject was also sensitive. Many Wikimedians were not comfortable with the idea of working on the articles listed because of the complexity of the subject and the limited understanding of information provided.
The guidelines fixed for the article quality were not easy to work on but we do not regret the decision because the article should at least cover the basics of a concern.

Logistical :

It is sometimes difficult to keep individuals from different regions in loop and that's where they miss the pace with which other communities progress.
Timely record maintenance could have been better. There were delays in grant release that affected the way things were planned and the dashboard was faulty for some languages.
The clash of dates of the event with Hockey edit-a-thon by the Odia community affected the WWWW edit-a-thon. The second iteration of Project Tiger was also planned around WWWW which resulted in less participation and comparatively more effort investment to get participants for our event.

What is the future plan? Is there going to be a WWWW 2.0?

Not in October, but the conversations have started.

What is your vision for WWWW 2.0?

More editor participation, more engagement, new women editors, continuous future cycles.

Anything else you want to share with us?

I hope I soon have updates on next WWWW :)

For more information about WWWW, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wiki-women-for-women-well-being-an-initiative-to-bridge-the-gender-gap-in-the-wikimedia-community

Understanding the Data Gaps on Wikidata Concerning Heritage Structures of West Bengal

Bodhisattwa Mandal — 2021-05-15T12:31:40Z

This is a short study on identifying the data gaps related to heritage structures in West Bengal on Wikidata, and potential strategies to address the same. The report is authored by Bodhisattwa Mandal, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2020.

Wikidata is a free and open repository of structured and linked data, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, built collaboratively[1] by human volunteers and robots from all over the world[2]. This platform, with an initial intention to be used within Wikimedia projects as a high quality secondary database [3], first started by centrally linking Wikipedia articles about the same topics in different languages[4][5][6][7][8], but soon it started linking with external databases.

Introduction to Wikidata

Wikidata is designed to be structured as a Resource Description Framework or RDF model which describes statements in the form of triplets of subject–predicate–object. In Wikidata, subject–predicate–object is termed as item–property–value. Items on Wikidata can represent every possible object, concept or topic in human knowledge which passes a certain threshold of defined notability and are represented by unique Q numbers. The actual data of an item is called value, which is pre-defined by the data type, be it strings, numbers, dates, url links, coordinates, musical notations etc. or even other items. Properties, represented by unique P numbers, describe the data value of items. The items, properties and values are language independent and thus totally machine-readable, although for human comfort and understanding, one can describe items in their own languages by adding or translating labels, descriptions or aliases.

Due to the machine-readable triplet structure of Wikidata, the database can be easily queried to find answers, which might not be otherwise possible from a list of unstructured contents such as Wikipedia articles. To retrieve and manipulate RDF data formats in triplets, we require a semantic query language for RDF databases named SPARQL. Through Wikidata query service, one can use SPARQL and retrieve data and the prevailing gaps on Wikidata and visualize in different ways.

Wikidata in West Bengal, India

Massive imports of coordinates for places in West Bengal happened between October 2018 and May 2019 on Wikidata as reflected by the map generated using Resemble.js

Wikidata activities around India have been organized around India for almost 4 years under the WikiProject India umbrella. Targeted approaches to fill data gaps on different topics have been pursued through data-thons and campaigns in these years and community strength has been aimed to increase through workshops and skill sharing initiatives.

Being part of that initiative, the Indian state of West Bengal has seen a lot of activities around Wikidata in recent years. Under the WikiProject umbrella, Wikidata volunteers have been working together to build data on different topics related to the state, its demographics, culture, heritage, education, health, politics, language etc. As heritage has been the prime focus of the Wikimedia community members of West Bengal, in this essay, we will identify the data gaps related to the topic through SPARQL query and explore reasons for the same, if any, through interviews of active volunteers who have been working on this area for years.

Wikimedia community members have been working on documenting different forms of heritage since 2011, when they organized Wikipedia Takes Kolkata photo-walk for the first time. Since then, they have organized eight more Wikipedia Takes Kolkata photo-walks, 11 Wiki Exploration projects in 9 districts of the state, 2 editions of prestigious Wiki Loves Monuments in India 2018 and 2019 and several other documentation projects organized organically or single-handedly and by doing so they have uploaded several thousands of photographs related to heritage structures and GLAM collections on Wikimedia Commons.

In this essay, we will focus on the photo-walks and explorations which were conducted to document heritage structures of West Bengal. We will focus on two basic types of data which should be there in every dataset on heritage structures, i.e. a) location, and b) image, and we will find out if there is any significant gap there using SPARQL queries.

Photo-walks and Wiki Explorations in West Bengal

Map of KMC heritage buildings generated from Wikidata query https://w.wiki/Tir

Let’s start with the nine consecutive series of Wikipedia takes Kolkata photo-walks which aims to photo-document heritage buildings and structures of Kolkata. To understand the data gap related to the heritage buildings, we will examine the presence of graded heritage buildings and structures enlisted by Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Wikidata through different SPARQL queries. Wikidata now contains 923 heritage buildings and structures listed by KMC, but out of them 26.65% have images and only 18.53% have coordinates.

Although 81.47% of the items of the heritage structures were missing coordinates, but they gave fairly good idea about their location, all of the items had municipal wards and streets connected with them, utilizing which, photographers and travellers are expected to explore the sites easily. However, while testing the items of the wards, it was noticed that however all the 144 wards contain coordinates, but they all lack a crucial property which can denote their area of location i.e. the geoshape data. While coordinates can denote the exact location of certain parts of an area, it is misleading when it comes to a larger area, which requires geoshape to better describe the location. While testing the street data, it was found that both geoshape and coordinate data are lacking for the streets, which makes them extremely difficult to locate.

Map of temples in West Bengal generated from Wikidata query https://w.wiki/Tj7

For the last 3 years, Wikimedia volunteers from West Bengal have also been involved in Wiki Exploration projects to remote parts of the state documenting temples, mosques, sculptures etc., many of which have not been documented online before. Few hundreds of heritage structures in 9 districts of the state were documented and thousands of photographs under this project have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Now, if we test the Wikidata presence of the temples situated in West Bengal, it can be noticed that 435 temples have items, out of which only 196 items have images and only 79 have coordinates. however 302 of them have their location pin-pointed to the village, ward, town or city level. Similar to the previous case, although there are 40,359 items for villages located in West Bengal, only 0.017% have coordinates while none have geoshape data.

From the above two scenarios, it can be easily concluded from the SPARQL queries, that there has been a significant amount of data gap. Both the datasets contain significant lack of location data and images. The second scenario even lacks data on the temples itself.

Challenges of Contributing to Wikidata in/from West Bengal

Now, to understand why there are huge gaps in the data, we have interviewed four volunteers from West Bengal who are involved in these two kinds of projects, three of them are Wikimedia contributors for five-ten years and one of them is relatively new to the movement. They all upload heritage photographs to Wikimedia Commons and 2 of them contribute to Wikidata. All of them agreed that due to lack of suitable hardware, they could not document the exact coordinate data while photo-documenting heritage structures. GPS devices or full-frame cameras with built-in GPS are expensive and are not affordable to many. Interviewees have also pointed out that due to lack of proper training on how to document heritage structures properly, photographers and amaetur researchers miss out vital points of documentation and thus increase data gaps. Restricted access to private heritage structures like temples maintained by families or private heritage buildings and their documents, lack of proper existing documentation along with analogue and digital metadata, and rapid destruction of built heritage due to lack of maintenance or improper restoration procedures etc. are also the reasons for data gaps. While answering the question about why photographs are not converted fully into data, they point out that it might be a burden for photographers to learn about data entry in Wikidata, as this is out of their area of interest and workflow. As noted by an interviewee, ‘the nature of work for Wikidata does not match with photographers' workflow.’ However, they also stressed on the need to conduct training programmes on Wikidata for photographers and interested people involved in documentation to let them know the importance of structured data in the area of heritage documentation.

Recommendations

From the observations of this short study, it is recommended that volunteers working on heritage documentation in West Bengal should be supported with suitable hardware to document coordinates. Frequent training programs should be conducted, preferably by experts, for volunteers on how to document heritage structures in a professional way, so that data gaps remain minimal. Training on Wikidata should be conducted for photographers to let them understand the importance of structured data in the field of heritage documentation. It is also recommended to increase interaction among the Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons volunteers, to understand each other's work flow and strategically modify those to provide optimal results.

References

[1] Vrandečić, Denny (2012). "Wikidata: a new platform for collaborative data collection". Proceedings of the 21st international conference companion on World Wide Web - WWW '12 Companion. Lyon, France: ACM Press: 1063. doi:10.1145/2187980.2188242. ISBN 978-1-4503-1230-1.

[2] Vrandečić, Denny; Krötzsch, Markus (2014-09-23). "Wikidata: a free collaborative knowledgebase". Communications of the ACM. 57 (10): 78–85. doi:10.1145/2629489.

[3] Vrandečić, Denny (2012).

[4] Roth, Mathew (30 March 2012). "The Wikipedia data revolution". Wikimedia Foundation Blog.

[5] Pintscher, Lydia (14 January 2013). "First steps of Wikidata in the Hungarian Wikipedia". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

[6] Pintscher, Lydia (30 January 2013)."Wikidata coming to the next two Wikipedias". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

[7] Pintscher, Lydia (15 February 2013). "Wikidata live on the English Wikipedia". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

[8] Pintscher, Lydia (6 March 2013). "Wikidata now live on all Wikipedias". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

Notes

[1] The query results were generated during early 2020. The results may vary at the time of publication of this article.

[2] See Annexure I for the interview questionnaire.

[3] Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/understanding-the-data-gaps-on-wikidata-concerning-heritage-structures-of-west-bengal

Mapping GLAM in Maharashtra

Subodh Kulkarni — 2021-05-15T12:30:59Z

This is a short study on mapping the digital transition in selected Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) institutions in Maharashtra, India, and exploring possibilities and challenges for collaborations with Wikimedia projects. Research was undertaken by Aaryaa Joshi, Dnyanada Gadre-Phadke, Kalyani Kotkar and Subodh Kulkarni; the report has been authored by Subodh Kulkarni with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020.

Introduction

The digital turn has been an important development for the cultural heritage sector in India, especially in the last decade, where access to internet and multimedia technologies has led to several advancements in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) space. This has also encouraged a multiplicity of uses of cultural content in diverse contexts. Several efforts have been undertaken in this space over the last decade, including state initiatives like the National Museum Collections digital repository, archival efforts at universities such as Jadavpur University and private and individual initiatives such as the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) and Indiancine.ma. Apart from developments in preservation, curation and content sharing there remain continued concerns related to access, infrastructure and linguistic barriers in this sector. Intellectual property rights, open access and privacy issues have also emerged as important issues for cultural institutions looking to open up their collections to a wider public.

Collaboration with open knowledge production spaces like Wikimedia and OpenGLAM then offer important insights into possibilities now available with the digital turn for better public access to cultural content, but also in terms of the development of collaborative archival efforts. Efforts such as GLAM-Wiki have been crucial in bridging the gap between cultural institutions and initiatives in the free knowledge movement. There is still however lack of documentation and research on the various kinds of existing collections and archival efforts afoot in India, and how they may benefit from better access through platforms like Wikimedia. This study maps a few of such GLAM institutions in Maharashtra, India, and reviews their collections, challenges and limitations to explore possibilities for better collaboration between cultural and public memory institutions through GLAM-Wiki initiatives.

Research Questions and Method

The study was framed by the following questions:

How has the digital transition in the GLAM sector in Maharashtra, India, impacted the process of creation and access to cultural content?
What are possible collaborations with open knowledge efforts like GLAM-Wiki?

The mapping of GLAM institutions was undertaken through questionnaires/surveys conducted with six GLAM institutions working in Pune district and one in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra state. The institutions were identified through existing networks established by Subodh Kulkarni, CIS-A2K Programme Officer associated with Wikimedia projects working in this area and snowball sampling. The questionnaires were focused on the nature, objective and scope of the collections, funding, provenance, offline and online workflows (including acquiring, preservation, accessioning, digitisation and metadata standards), human resources, infrastructure, IPR policies and public outreach efforts. The questionnaires were administered with the help of the Programme Officer and volunteers working in this language community. The questionnaire with Marathi translation is given in Annexure I.

The mapping helped to produce a set of recommendations for possible GLAM-Wiki collaborations in the Indian context. This was done through field visits to these institutions, review of the material, and interviews with key resource persons (administrators, faculty and students, archivists, librarians, developers etc.) who manage the collections of cultural content.

The following seven GLAM institutions were visited during the period November 2019 to February 2020. Further visits were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Three Wikimedians — User:ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके, User:आर्या जोशी & User:कल्याणी कोतकर uploaded images of these collections on Wikimedia Commons, and added/expanded five related articles on Marathi Wikipedia — राजा दिनकर केळकर संग्रहालय, पुणे नगर वाचन मंदिर, सार्वजनिक वाचनालय, राजगुरुनगर, and आपटे वाचन मंदिर.

Observations about Research Method

The study was done with the help of three active Wikimedians, Aaryaa Joshi (Username:आर्या जोशी), Dnyanada Gadre-Phadke (Username:ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके) & Kalyani Kotkar (Username:कल्याणी कोतकर) interested in GLAM related activities. The questionnaire was developed with their participation. Orientation sessions were conducted to discuss the research design, process and outputs. The potential areas for bringing content into various Wikimedia projects were explained. While these Wikimedians conducted the visits for this mapping voluntarily, the actual expenses on travel, refreshments etc. were reimbursed. These volunteers had to carve out time slots from their regular jobs to complete the task. The timings at institutions and availability of key persons also needed to be considered while planning the visits. Sometimes the volunteers had to take leave from their regular work, which also led to some difficulties.

The first visit was to establish an association with the institution and the persons. The meeting with the authorities at the institution was essential to get the consent forms signed and complete other such formalities, including permissions to conduct interviews. This process delayed the work slightly, but is an important learning in terms of the need to establish a rapport with institutions for such research. The questionnaire was translated into Marathi (the local language) to facilitate the discussions. It was felt that to cover the basic aspects of the collections at an institution, at least 4–5 visits are required with a little gap between visits. This regular frequency will help to build relationships as well as maintain the work flow. The sample size for the present study was small due to some unforeseen constraints such as getting enough number of interested volunteer Wikimedians to undertake some of the research, multiple visits required for each institution which extended the duration of fieldwork, lack of positive responses from the GLAM institutions as well as eventual restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Survey of GLAM in Maharashtra

To identify the major institutions in Maharashtra and prepare the list of major GLAM institutions in the state, various government and private official websites as well as publications were studied. It was realised that no website or publication has created a comprehensive district or statewide list of institutions. Information about a few institutions is available online, but these are helpful largely from a tourism point of view. There is no proper selection or thematic categorisation which considers researchers, students, or other communities of interest. The popular tourist routes are given importance. Therefore, there is a need to document all the GLAMs category-wise on platforms freely accessible to the public. Some of the websites are listed in Annexure II .

Description of Surveyed Institutions

Apte Vachan Mandir, Ichalkaranji

Art Gallery at Apte Vachan Mandir, Ichalkaranji. By ज्ञानदा गद्रे-फडके, Art gallery at Apte vachan mandir, Ichalkaranji, CC BY-SA 4.0

Apte Vachan Mandir is a 150 year old library in a small city named Ichalkaranji in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra. The authorities are very cooperative and eager to start digitization of the old/rare books and art gallery. They also need help regarding digitisation and preservation of the century old paintings. The institute is ready to scan the books if equipment and training is provided to their staff. The officials have given the list of 400+ rare books which they are planning to digitise. The official communication has started with the secretary of the institution. The further process stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Iravati Karve Anthropological Museum, Pune

Iravati Karve Anthropological Museum is located in the Savitribai Phule Pune University campus, Pune. The initial visit was conducted and permission was sought for further documentation. The curator and authorities have extended all possible cooperation regarding open knowledge access to the museum collections urther visits could not be undertaken due to the restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joshi’s Museum of Miniature Railways

Joshi’s Museum of Miniature Railways was founded in 1998 by B. S. Joshi in Pune city. It houses different models of trains, railway stations, tracks with signals, bridges, streets in the cities, circus etc. Light and sound shows are also arranged here. This is a unique collection in India. One can get an experience of scientific concepts, handicraft, technology, history, amusement related artifacts at one place. The authorities of this museum do not feel the need of digitization as it is a live show which gives the best experience. However the documentation of the development process regarding railway models present in the museum is important. They wish to increase the outreach through publicity of the museum on free knowledge platforms to attract visitors to increase the footfall. As it is a privately owned museum, it is getting difficult to maintain it or add new things to it. So, there is scope for some kind of engagement with this museum.

Museum in College of Military Engineering, Pune

College of Military Engineering is a premier institute for army training in India established in 1943. The museum houses vintage engineering equipment from the pre-World War I era, which is displayed over a large landscape. The archives of the corps are also maintained in the library section. Permission for an initial visit was received late due to administrative procedures. Further visits for interviews with the key officials were planned but cancelled due to the lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is scope to document the rare machinery, engineering structures, military vehicles etc. as it is openly accessible to the public. The institute is also keen to spread this knowledge to young generations.

Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir

Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir Library. By दिपक कोतकर, पुणे नगर वाचन मंदिर ग्रंथालय 4, CC BY-SA 4.0

Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir is a historic library in Pune founded in 1848. The library houses a rich collection with rare books in various languages from the 17th century. It also possesses historical manuscripts and valuable diaries. The library management is very up to date on new developments in the field and has already adopted web technologies for catering to members. The catalogues are made available online in Koha. They have started digitisation efforts to some extent but need inputs and support. The authorities are eager to collaborate on larger projects to make their resources freely available. The authorities are ready to give the database of books for further integration with Wikimedia projects.

Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum

Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum was founded in 1920 by Dinkar Kelkar in Pune city. This museum houses 22,000 rare artifacts from different historical times. The thematic galleries have been developed thoughtfully. The museum has published 8 catalogues on these themes. More details of this museum can be seen on the official website.

Mastani Mahal restored at Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum,Pune. By आर्या जोशी, मस्तानी महाल, CC BY-SA 4.0

This museum is partially funded by the State Government for some regular maintenance. The funds for development, upgradation, conservation and promotion are to be raised by the institution. A digitisation project has been planned by the museum authorities, and it is progressing as the resources are being arranged. The museum officials are open to share information digitally in the public domain. They believe that they can reach interested masses through Wikimedia Projects. They have given permission to photograph the objects and the various conservation practices in their laboratory. They have expressed their readiness to give free access to libraries and museums for Wikimedians visiting the institution for purposes of research.

Rajgurunagar Public Library, Rajgurunagar

Rajgurunagar Public Library is a 150 plus year old Public access library with a competitive examination center. The special features are rare books from the 19th century and manuscripts. The management was not aware of Wikimedia projects, Open source cataloging, Unicode data entry systems etc. But after the visit, the officials responded very positively to start digitisation of 25 rare books in collaboration with the Access to Knowledge programme, Centre for Internet and Society and Vigyan Ashram, Pabal. The task was completed and these books were digitised and uploaded on Wikimedia Commons by creating a separate category. As the manuscripts and other material is getting degenerated, this collection needs to be digitised at the earliest.

Observations

Target audience

The GLAM institutions, especially museums and libraries are facing a decrease in footfall in recent times. The officials feel that uploading material on the web under free licenses will further aid this trend. At the same time they also express their interest and ideas to attract a new generation to engage with these collections through promotional mobile apps. There are however persistent anxieties about public access to these materials on the web. Some institutions possess unique or rare material such as antiquities, manuscripts, live models or books. The officials fear that the institutions will lose their points of attraction if they are projected on the web with descriptions. On the other hand, the researchers and interested communities are unaware of such treasures with these institutions.

Sustainability

Sustenance of the institutions is another important point and obstacle in digitisation of collections. The publications of the museums are a source of revenue for them. As the entry fees or subscription charges need to be kept minimal for the visitors, the priced material sold at the counters is the only income source for these institutions. Hence, there is a limitation of online availability and promotion of this material. Finding a sustainable model which also allows for open access to content is a difficult task for a large number of organisations. The financial support to these institutions is not a priority area for Government agencies or philanthropic organisations. Some institutions have successfully attempted for corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding. They need professional inputs for fundraising campaigns.

Technical challenges

There are also technical challenges with the digitisation process itself. Some of the libraries have not adopted a universal cataloging system. Therefore it is difficult to analyse the data of books according to copyright status and physical conditions. The authorities are eager to dispose of decaying material after digitisation. Some of them have approached State Government departments for funds but got no response. This may be because standard digitisation policies are not in place at a national level, and a lot of institutions are unaware of existing benchmarks and policies. Another hindrance is that the books will not be permitted to be taken outside the institution for scanning because of the physical condition. Awareness and training in archival and records management is a key requirement in these conditions.

Capacity building

The awareness and capacity building of the personnel at the institutions in the area of free knowledge and digitisation skills is to be enhanced before starting any project. The terminologies and case studies of some projects in local languages are necessary for better understanding of concepts as well as best practices. Some of the good archive projects in Marathi completed by various organisations include digitisation of the complete works of Vinoba Bhave, Prabodhankar Thakeray and Vinayak Savarkar. The language department of the State Government of Maharashtra has also digitised and uploaded 129 old books and 555 old magazines on their website. The other website of the literature & culture department has made available 434 books in PDF, epub and mobi format.

Recommendations

These recommendations are based on the interactions with the Wikimedians involved in the process, the interviews with key persons from seven GLAM institutions and previous experiences of working with such institutions. The important learnings from this research study are captured in the observations stated above. As the focus of the discussions remained limited to the access to cultural content and possible collaborations regarding Wikimedia Projects, the content creation aspect was not touched upon in detail. The recommendations emerging from this study provide some guidelines for action points for the near future. However, for designing broader strategies for the GLAM sector, a sizable number of institutions in different regions of the state need to be mapped to provide a more comprehensive picture of the sector and its possibilities

The recommendations regarding various stakeholders in the mapping process are stipulated below -

For Wikimedians

Orientation sessions for Wikimedians visiting the institute regarding GLAM related Wikimedia projects, copyright issues, Creative commons licenses and basics of library science should be conducted. The availability of resource material on these topics in local languages will be useful in the interview process.
For replicating this mapping activity across one state or several states, the selection of Wikimedia volunteers is crucial. The provision for reasonable honorarium per visit should be made for time bound as well as qualitative execution of tasks.

For GLAM institutions

It was observed that the GLAM institutions are not well aware about the free knowledge platforms like Wikimedia projects or Internet archive. They are aware about copyright and intellectual property rights, but not about Creative Commons or other licenses available. They wish to make their resources available across the world but are not clear about the methods. The collaboration regarding these aspects is highly appreciated.
Old libraries have a good collection of rare old books. They are finding difficulties in preservation of books as well as facing space constraints. Also for these books, readership is also negligible. Hence there is a need to digitise this valuable reference material before it degenerates.

For CIS (or other implementing agency)

A comprehensive list of GLAM institutions in the state, with further categorisation into geographical & thematic aspects is to be developed and be made freely accessible for the public at large.
Training in universal metadata structures and unicode systems like Koha is to be arranged for the staff and management members at these institutions. At least the cataloging in universal format should be done on priority to analyse the metadata for copyright free status. A central repository is needed to avoid duplication in scanning. CIS-A2K needs to design strategic plan for this activity.
For in-depth case studies of potential GLAM-Wiki institutions, Wikimedian in Residence (WiR) programme should be adopted.
Interactions with concerned State and Central Government departments would facilitate the research activity and further collaborations. The findings of the research could be shared with such agencies along with concrete project proposals designed in collaboration with concerned institutions.

As illustrated by the observations of this study, the digital turn has brought about significant changes in the cultural heritage sector, but a large part of these still pertain to concerns around access to cultural content. The role of digital technologies and free knowledge platforms like Wikipedia in addressing these issues of access and outreach, and importantly in content creation therefore remains to be explored, through a more comprehensive study of the sector. Further, the study has also been indicative of the potential of collaborative work, and efforts needed towards the same, which may be helpful in also contributing towards a broader strategy for GLAM work with Wikimedia projects in Indian languages.

Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mapping-glam-in-maharashtra

Access to Knowledge 2019–2020 Utilisation Certificate

tito — 2020-09-30T22:15:27Z

Access to Knowledge 2019–2020 WMF APG Utilisation Certificate

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/access-to-knowledge-201920132020-utilisation-certificate

Project Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate

A2K — 2020-09-23T23:40:44Z

Project Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-0-utilisation-certificate

CIS-A2K Utilisation Certificate financial year 2018-2019

tito — 2020-03-10T08:25:21Z

This is the utilisation certificate of the Centre for Internet and Society, for the year 1 July 2018 - 30 June 2019.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k-utilisation-certificate-financial-year-2018-2019

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

bhuvana — 2020-01-18T08:11:03Z

An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.

Hour of code event

The “Hour of Code” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of Grace Hopper, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 350 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were Wikimedia, Mozilla, Google Developers Groups, Facebook Devcircles, Women Tech Makers and School of AI where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.

Wiki Orientation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg

I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikipedia, Wikimedia commons and Wikimedia in Education program. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.

Bridging Gender Gap

After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg

The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.

Key observations/ learnings

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg

The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).
The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.
Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.
Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia.

Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai , The Covai mail news , Prime Time Tamil , Covai news and Updatenews360.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science-1

Project Tiger 2.0

Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill — 2019-11-24T09:17:42Z

If you think that Indian languages are as important as international languages, like English, then, you are on the same page with this article. If not, then, let me explain, why it is a significant and much bigger issue than you think.

The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.

భారతీయ భాషలు కూడా ఆంగ్లం వంటి అంతర్జాతీయ భాషలతో సమానంగా ముఖ్యమైనవి అని మీరు అనుకుంటే ఈ వ్యాసం మీరు తప్పకుండ చదవాలి. ఒక వేళా మీకు అలా అనిపించకపోతే, ఈ విషయం ఎంత ముఖ్యమైనది మరియు పెద్దది అని చెప్తాను చూడండి. ప్రతి రోజు లక్షల మంది వినియోగదారులు అంతర్జాలం నుండి సమాచారాన్ని పొందడానికి ప్రయత్నిస్తుంటారు. భారతదేశంలో, మాతృభాషలో సమాచారాన్ని పొందడానికి ప్రయత్నించే వినియోగదారుల సంఖ్య అధికంగా ఉంది. 2021వ సంవత్సరం నాటికీ, హిందీ వినియోగదారుల సంఖ్య ఆంగ్ల వినియోగదారుల సంఖ్యను అధిగమిస్తుందని మరియు మరికొన్ని భారతీయ భాషలు అంతర్జాలంలో 30% వినియోగదారులను కలిగి ఉంటాయని అధ్యయనం చెబుతుంది. 68% అంతర్జాల వినియోగదారులు ఆంగ్ల భాష సమాచారం కంటే స్థానిక భాషా సమాచారం నమ్మదగినదిగా భావిస్త్తున్నారని పరిశోధన పేర్కొనింది.

ఈ వాస్తవాలు అన్నీ ఉన్నప్పటికీ, భారతీయ భాషలలోని సమాచారాన్ని పొందకుండా వినియోగదారులను పరిమితం చేసే ఒక ప్రధాన కారణం, ఆన్‌లైన్‌లో కనిపించే భారీ జ్ఞాన అంతరం. గూగుల్ యొక్క పరిశోధనా బృందం భారతీయ భాషలలో అంతర్జాలంలో ఎక్కువగా శోధించిన మరియు తప్పిపోయిన అంశాల ఫలితాలను విశ్లేషించినప్పుడు, వారు వికీమీడియా ఫౌండేషన్‌తో భాగస్వామ్యం కావాలని నిర్ణయించుకున్నారు మరియు ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ అనే పైలట్ ప్రోగ్రామ్‌ను ప్రారంభించారు. దీనిని 2017లో, సెంటర్ ఫర్ ఇంటర్నెట్ అండ్ సొసైటీ - యాక్సిస్ టు నాలెడ్జ్ వారి సహకారంతో భారతీయ వికీమీడియన్లను తమ స్థానిక భాషలో నాణ్యత గల సమాచారమును అభివృద్ధి చేయటంలో ప్రోత్సహించడానికి ప్రారంభించారు.

ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ అనేది భారత దేశంలో పులులను రక్షించడం కోసం ప్రారంభించిన పర్యావరణ ప్రాజెక్ట్. దానిని స్ఫూర్తిగా తీసుకోని వికీపీడియా యొక్క ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ భారత దేశపు స్థానిక భాషలను సంరక్షించుకుంటూ స్థానిక భాషా వికీపీడియాలలో నాణ్యమైన సమాచారమును అభివృద్ధి చేయటమే లక్ష్యంగా పెట్టుకుంది. ఈ ప్రాజెక్ట్ రెండు దశల్లో జరుగుతుంది: ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ 2018 లో భాగంగా గూగుల్, వ్యాసాల రచనలను పెంచడానికి సాంకేతిక సహకారం అవసరమయ్యే అనుభవజ్ఞులైన వికీమీడియన్లకు మరియు ఆశాజనక వికీమీడియన్లకు 50 క్రోమ్‌బుక్‌లు మరియు 100 ఇంటర్నెట్ స్టైపెండ్‌లను అందచేయడం జరిగింది. పంపిణీ పూర్తయిన తర్వాత, కమ్యూనిటీలు గూగుల్ అందించిన జాబితా నుండి కథనాలను సృష్టించడం ప్రారంభించాయి.

2018 లో జరిగిన ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ యొక్క మొదటి పునరావృతంలో, 12 భారతీయ కమ్యూనిటీలు మార్చి నుండి మేల వరకు 3 నెలలు జరిగిన వ్యాస రచన పోటీలో పాల్గొని, మొత్తం 1,65,774 పేజీ వీక్షణలతో 4,466 వ్యాసాలను సృష్టించాయి! ప్రతి వ్యాసాన్ని సంబంధిత భాషా జ్యూరీ సభ్యుడు పారామితుల ప్రకారం సమీక్షిస్తారు. ఒక వ్యాసం అన్ని ప్రమాణాలకు అనుగుణంగా ఉంటేనే అది అంగీకరించబడుతుంది. ఈ పోటీలో పంజాబీ కమ్యూనిటీ 1320 వ్యాసాలతో విజయం సాధించింది, తమిళ కమ్యూనిటీ 1241 వ్యాసాలతో రెండవ స్థానంలో ఉంది.

ప్రతి కమ్యూనిటీ నుండి మొదటి మూడు స్థానాలలోవచ్చినవిజేతలకు ఇచ్చే నెలవారీ బహుమతులతో పాటు, గెలిచిన మరియు రన్నరప్ కమ్యూనిటీలు పంజాబ్‌లోని అమృత్సర్‌లో 3 రోజుల శిక్షణను పొందారు. ఈ ట్రైనింగ్సెషన్కు యూజర్: అసఫ్ (WMF) నాయకత్వం వహించారు, అక్కడ అతను ఎన్సైక్లోపెడిక్ విలువతో వ్యాసాలు రాయడం గురించి పాల్గొనేవారికి నేర్పించాడు మరియు వికీడేటా మరియు అందులో ఉపయోగించిన సాధనాలను కూడా పరిచయం చేశాడు.

2018 లో ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ యొక్క భారీ విజయాన్ని చూసిన తరువాత, రెండవ పునరుక్తిని ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ 2.0 లేదా గ్లో (వికీపీడియాలో పెరుగుతున్న స్థానిక భాషా కంటెంట్) అని ప్రారంభించారు. భారతదేశంతో పాటు మరో రెండు దేశాల్లో ఇది మొదటిసారి నడుస్తోంది. ఇంతకుముందు పాల్గొన్న 12 భాషా సంఘాలతో పాటు, సంతాలి మరియు సంస్కృతం కూడా ఈ సంవత్సరం పోటీలో పాల్గొనడానికి అంగీకరించాయి. కమ్యూనిటీలు వ్రాయడానికి వారి స్వంత కథనాల సమితితో పాటు గూగుల్ ఇచ్చిన జాబితాతో వస్తున్నాయి. ఈ సంవత్సరం, ఈ ప్రాజెక్ట్ అధిక నాణ్యత కలిగిన కథనాలను లక్ష్యంగా పెట్టుకుంది. మరియు అన్నీ కమ్యూనిటీల వారు కూడా అదే విధంగా చేయటానికి కట్టుబడి ఉన్నాయి.

మీరు పోటీలో చేరడానికి ఆసక్తి కలిగి ఉంటే, దయచేసి ఈ లింకును సందర్శించండి

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia_(Project_Tiger_2.0)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-telugu

Project Tiger 2.0

Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill — 2019-11-24T09:15:06Z

The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.

अगर आप सोचते हैं कि मूल भाषाएँ भी अंग्रेजी जैसी अंतरराष्ट्रीय भाषाओं जितनी ही महत्वपूर्ण है, तो इस पोस्ट को ज़रूर पढ़िए। यदि आपको ऐसा नही लगता, तो आइए आपको संक्षेप में बताएँ कि यह एक जरूरी और बड़ा मुद्दा है। हर दिन, लाखों उपभोगकर्ता इंटरनेट से जानकारी प्राप्त करने की कोशिश करते हैं। भारत में, बहु-गिनती अपनी मूल भाषा में जानकारी प्राप्त करने वालों की है। आंकड़े बताते हैं कि साल 2021 तक, हिन्दी उपभोगकर्ताओं की गिनती अंग्रेजी उपभोगकर्ताओं की गिनती को पार कर देगी और कुछ ओर भारती भाषाएँ मिलकर भारती भाषा के इंटरनेट उपभोग-कर्ता आधार का 30% बनती है। खोज अनुसार 68% इंटरनेट उपभोगकर्ता स्थानीय सामग्री को अंग्रेजी से ज्यादा भरोसेमंद मानता है।

इन सब तथ्यों के बावजूद, भारतीय भाषा के इंटरनेट उपभोगकर्ताओं के लिए जानकारी प्राप्त करने का दायरा बहुत सीमित है जिस का मुख्य कारण ऑनलाइन मौजूदा ज्ञान की कमी है। इस समस्या का समाधान करने के लिए, गूगल ने विकीमीडिया फ़ाउंडेशन के साथ मिलकर काम का फैसला लिया। गूगल और विकीमीडिया ने मिलकर एक पायलट प्रोजेक्ट शुरू किया जिस का नाम प्राजैकट टाइगर रखा रखा। इस प्रोजेक्ट को भारतीय भाषाओं के विकिपीडियाओं का समर्थन (Supporting Indian language Wikipedias) के नाम से भी जाना जाता है। 2017 में सैंटर फार इंटरनेट एंड सोसाइटी- एक्सिस टू नॉलेज के माध्यम से भारती विकीमिडीअनस के सहयोग के साथ स्थानीय भाषाओं के विकीपीडिया पर उच्च गुणवत्ता की सामग्री को तैयार करना शुरू किया गया।

प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का नाम भारत में शुरू किए गए 'Save Tiger' प्रोजेक्ट से प्रेरित है। Save Tiger परियोजना का उद्देश्य टाइगर की रक्षा करना था और प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का लक्ष्य भारतीय भाषाओं को संरक्षित करना और स्थानीय विकिपीडिया पर मूल भाषा में सामग्री तैयार करना है। इस परियोजना को दो चरणों में विभाजित किया गया है। पहले चरण में, गूगल ने 2018 में अनुभवी और सक्रिय विकीमीडिया को 50 क्रामबुक और 100 इंटरनेट सुविधाएँ प्रदान की थी। चयनित विकिमेडियनों को प्रौद्योगिकी सुविधाएँ प्रदान करने के बाद, प्रतियोगिता के लिए गूगल द्वारा उपलब्ध कराए गए लेखों की सूची से और समुदाय द्वारा उत्पादित स्थानीय लेखों की सूची से लेख बनाना शुरू किया।

प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर पहली बार 2018 में आयोजित किया गया था, जिसमें 12 भारतीय समुदाय शामिल थे। इन समुदायों ने मार्च से मई तक 3 महीने के लेख लेखन प्रतियोगिता में अपना योगदान दिया और 4,466 नए लेख बनाए। प्रत्येक समुदाय द्वारा अपनी स्वयं की जूरी चुनी गई थी, जिन्होंने मानदंडों के अनुसार बनाए गए लेखों की समीक्षा की थी। यदि कोई लेख सभी मापदंडों को पूरा करता है, तो उसे स्वीकार किया गया और एक अंक दिया गया। इस प्रतियोगिता में पंजाबी समुदाय ने कुल 1,320 लेखों के साथ प्रतियोगिता में जीत हासिल की, जबकि तमिल समुदाय 1,241 लेखों के साथ दूसरे स्थान पर रहा।

प्रत्येक समुदाय के प्रथम तीन प्रतिभागियों को मासिक पुरस्कार देने के अलावा, विजेता और उप-विजेता समुदायों को अमृतसर, पंजाब में तीन दिन का विकी प्रशिक्षण दिया गया था। इसका नेतृत्व User: Asaf (WMF) द्वारा किया गया जहां उन्होने प्रतिभागियों को लेख लिखने के लिए नियमों से परिचित कराया और विकीडाटा के बारे में बताने के साथ-साथ इसमें इस्तेमाल किए गए टूलों का उपयोग करना भी सिखाया गया।

2018 में प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर की उत्कृष्ट सफलता को देखने के बाद, दूसरी बार प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का आयोजन किया जा रहा है, जिसका नाम प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर 2.0 या GLOW (GLOW-Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia) है। यह भारत के अलावा पहली बार दो ओर देशों में आयोजित किया जा रहा है। पिछली बार 12 भाषाई समुदायों ने इसमें भाग लिया था। इसके अलावा, इस वर्ष संथाली और संस्कृत भी इस प्रतियोगिता में भाग लेने के लिए सहमत हो गए हैं। समुदाय, जल्द ही, गूगल द्वारा उपलब्ध कराए गए लेखों की सूची और उनके द्वारा बनाई गई स्थानीय सूचियों से लेख बनाना शुरू करेंगे। इस वर्ष, इस परियोजना का उद्देश्य उच्च गुणवत्ता वाले लेख हैं और समुदाय ऐसा करने के लिए प्रतिबद्ध हैं।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-hindi

Project Tiger 2.0

Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill — 2019-11-24T09:13:03Z

The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.

ਜੇਕਰ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਸੋਚਦੇ ਹੋ ਕਿ ਮੂਲ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਵੀ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਵਰਗੀਆਂ ਅੰਤਰਰਾਸ਼ਟਰੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਜਿੰਨੀਆਂ ਮਹੱਤਵਪੂਰਣ ਹਨ, ਤਾਂ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਇਸ ਪੋਸਟ ਨੂੰ ਜ਼ਰੂਰ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ। ਜੇ ਤੁਹਾਨੂੰ ਇਸ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ ਨਹੀਂ ਲੱਗਦਾ ਹੈ, ਤਾਂ ਤੁਹਾਨੂੰ ਸੰਖੇਪ ਵਿਚ ਦੱਸ ਦਈਏ ਕਿ ਇਹ ਇੱਕ ਮਹੱਤਵਪੂਰਣ ਅਤੇ ਵੱਡਾ ਮੁੱਦਾ ਕਿਉਂ ਹੈ। ਹਰ ਰੋਜ਼, ਲੱਖਾਂ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਤੋਂ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤ ਕਰਨ ਦੀ ਕੋਸ਼ਿਸ਼ ਕਰਦੇ ਹਨ। ਭਾਰਤ ਵਿੱਚ, ਆਪਣੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ (ਮੂਲ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ) ਵਿੱਚ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤ ਕਰਨ ਦੀ ਕੋਸ਼ਿਸ਼ ਕਰਨ ਵਾਲਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਬਹੁਤਾਤ ਹੈ। ਅੰਕੜੇ ਕਹਿੰਦੇ ਹਨ ਕਿ ਸਾਲ 2021 ਤੱਕ, ਹਿੰਦੀ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾਵਾਂ ਦੀ ਗਿਣਤੀ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾਵਾਂ ਦੀ ਗਿਣਤੀ ਨੂੰ ਪਾਰ ਕਰ ਦੇਵੇਗੀ ਅਤੇ ਕੁਝ ਹੋਰ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਮਿਲਕੇ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਦੇ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾ ਅਧਾਰ ਦਾ 30% ਬਣਦੀਆਂ ਹਨ। ਖੋਜ ਇਹ ਵੀ ਕਹਿੰਦੀ ਹੈ ਕਿ 68% ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨਾਲੋਂ ਵਧੇਰੇ ਭਰੋਸੇਮੰਦ ਮੰਨਦੇ ਹਨ।

ਇਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਸਾਰੇ ਤੱਥਾਂ ਦੇ ਬਾਵਜੂਦ, ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਦੇ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾਵਾਂ ਲਈ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਤੱਕ ਪਹੁੰਚ ਕਰਨ ਦਾ ਦਾਇਰਾ ਭੂਤ ਸੀਮਤ ਹੈ ਜਿਸ ਦਾ ਮੁੱਖ ਕਾਰਨ ਆਨਲਾਈਨ ਮੌਜੂਦਾ ਗਿਆਨ ਦਾ ਵੱਡਾ ਪਾੜਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਸਮੱਸਿਆ ਨੂੰ ਪਛਾਣਦਿਆਂ, ਗੂਗਲ ਨੇ ਪਾਇਆ ਕਿ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਵਿਚ ਸਮਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਉਪਲਬਧ ਕਰਵਾਉਣਾ ਜ਼ਰੂਰੀ ਹੈ ਤਾਂ ਗੂਗਲ ਨੇ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਆ ਨਾਲ ਮਿਲ ਕੇ ਕੰਮ ਕਰਨ ਦਾ ਫੈਸਲਾ ਕੀਤਾ। ਗੂਗਲ ਅਤੇ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਆ ਫਾਉਂਡੇਸ਼ਨ ਨੇ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਨਾਮਕ ਇੱਕ ਪਾਇਲਟ ਪ੍ਰੋਗਰਾਮ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕੀਤਾ। ਇਸ ਨੂੰ, ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਦੇ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ ਦਾ ਸਮਰਥਨ (Supporting Indian language Wikipedias) ਵਜੋਂ ਵੀ ਜਾਣਿਆ ਜਾਂਦਾ ਹੈ, 2017 ਵਿਚ ਸੈਂਟਰ ਫਾਰ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਐਂਡ ਸੁਸਾਇਟੀ - ਐਕਸੈਸ ਟੂ ਨੋਲਜ ਦੇ ਮਾਧਿਅਮ ਰਾਹੀਂ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਅਨਜ਼ ਦੇ ਸਹਿਯੋਗ ਨਾਲ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਦੇ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ 'ਤੇ ਉੱਚ ਪੱਧਰੀ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਤਿਆਰ ਕਰਨਾ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕੀਤਾ।https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program

ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਦਾ ਨਾਂ, ਭਾਰਤ ਦੇ ਵਿਚ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਹੋਏ 'Save Tiger' ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਤੋਂ ਪ੍ਰੇਰਿਤ ਹੋ ਕੇ ਰੱਖਿਆ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਦਾ ਮਕਸਦ ਚਿੱਤਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਬਚਾਉਣਾ ਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਦਾ ਉਦੇਸ਼ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਬਚਾਉਣਾ ਤੇ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ 'ਤੇ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ 'ਚ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਤਿਆਰ ਕਰਨਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ ਨੂੰ ਦੋ ਪੜਾਵਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਵਿਭਾਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ। ਪਹਿਲੇ ਪੜਾਅ ਵਿਚ 2018 ਵਿਚ ਗੂਗਲ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਅਨੁਭਵੀ ਅਤੇ ਸਰਗਰਮ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਅਨਾਂ ਨੂੰ 50 ਕ੍ਰਾਮਬੁੱਕ ਅਤੇ 100 ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਸੁਵਿਧਾਵਾਂ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕੀਤੀਆਂ ਜਾਂਦੀਆਂ ਹਨ। ਜਦੋਂ ਇੱਕ ਵਾਰ ਚੁਨਿੰਦਾ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਅਨਜ਼ ਨੂੰ ਤਕਨਾਲੋਜੀ ਸੰਬੰਧੀ ਸੁਵਿਧਾਵਾਂ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕਰ ਦਿੱਤੀਆਂ ਜਾਂਦੀਆਂ ਹਨ ਤਾਂ ਇਸ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਦੇ ਭਾਗੀਦਾਰ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਗੂਗਲ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕੀਤੀ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ ਅਤੇ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਬਣਾਈ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਲੇਖ ਬਣਾਉਣੇ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕੀਤੇ।

ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਨੂੰ ਪਹਿਲੀ ਵਾਰ 2018 ਵਿੱਚ ਆਯੋਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਸੀ ਜਿਸ ਵਿਚ 12 ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੇ ਭਾਗ ਲਿਆ ਸੀ। ਇਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੇ ਮਾਰਚ ਤੋਂ ਮਈ ਦੇ ਦੌਰਾਨ 3 ਮਹੀਨੇ ਦੇ ਲੇਖ ਲਿਖਣ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿੱਚ ਆਪਣਾ ਯੋਗਦਾਨ ਪਾਇਆ ਅਤੇ 4,466 ਨਵੇਂ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦਾ ਵਾਧਾ ਕੀਤਾ। ਹਰੇਕ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਦੀ ਆਪਣੀ ਜਿਊਰੀ ਚੁਣੀ ਗਈ ਸੀ ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੇ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਮਾਪਦੰਡਾਂ ਅਨੁਸਾਰ ਸਮੀਖਿਆ ਕੀਤੀ। ਜੇਕਰ ਕੋਈ ਲੇਖ ਸਾਰੇ ਮਾਪਦੰਡਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਪੂਰਾ ਕਰਦਾ ਸੀ, ਤਾਂ ਉਸ ਨੂੰ ਸਵੀਕਾਰ ਕਰ ਇੱਕ ਪੁਆਇੰਟ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਜਾਂਦਾ ਸੀ। ਇਸ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿਚ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਨੇ ਕੁਲ 1320 ਲੇਖਾਂ ਨਾਲ ਮੁਕਾਬਲਾ ਜਿੱਤਿਆ, ਜਦਕਿ ਤਾਮਿਲ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਨੇ 1241 ਲੇਖਾਂ ਨਾਲ ਦੂਜਾ ਸਥਾਨ ਹਾਸਿਲ ਕੀਤਾ।

ਹਰੇਕ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਚੋਟੀ ਦੇ ਤਿੰਨ ਭਾਗੀਦਾਰਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਮਾਸਿਕ ਇਨਾਮ ਦੇਣ ਤੋਂ ਇਲਾਵਾ, ਜੇਤੂ ਅਤੇ ਉਪ-ਜੇਤੂ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਇਨਾਮ ਵਜੋਂ 3 ਦਿਨਾਂ ਦੀ ਵਿਕੀ ਸੰਬੰਧੀ ਸਿਖਲਾਈ ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ, ਪੰਜਾਬ ਵਿਖੇ ਦਿੱਤੀ ਗਈ। ਇਸ ਦੀ ਅਗਵਾਈ User:Asaf (WMF) ਦੁਆਰਾ ਕੀਤੀ ਗਈ ਜਿੱਥੇ ਉਸਨੇ ਭਾਗੀਦਾਰਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਲੇਖ ਲਿਖਣ ਦੇ ਨਿਯਮਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਜਾਣੂ ਕਰਵਾਇਆ ਅਤੇ ਵਿਕੀਡਾਟਾ ਬਾਰੇ ਤੇ ਇਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਵਰਤੇ ਜਾਣ ਵਾਲੇ ਟੂਲਾਂ ਦੀ ਵਰਤੋਂ ਕਰਨੀ ਆਦਿ ਦੀ ਸਿਖਲਾਈ ਦਿੱਤੀ।

2018 ਵਿੱਚ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਦੀ ਬੇਮਿਸਾਲ ਸਫਲਤਾ ਵੇਖਣ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਅਦ, ਦੂਸਰੀ ਵਾਰ ਵੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਆਯੋਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ ਜਿਸ ਨੂੰ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ 2.0 ਜਾਂ ਗਲੋਅ (GLOW -Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia) ਦਾ ਨਾਂ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ। ਇਹ ਪਹਿਲੀ ਵਾਰ ਭਾਰਤ ਤੋਂ ਇਲਾਵਾ ਦੋ ਹੋਰ ਦੇਸ਼ਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਆਯੋਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਵਿਚ ਪਿਛਲੀ ਵਾਰ 12 ਭਾਸ਼ਾਈ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੇ ਭਾਗ ਲਿਆ ਸੀ, ਇਸ ਤੋਂ ਇਲਾਵਾ, ਇਸ ਸਾਲ ਸੰਥਾਲੀ ਅਤੇ ਸੰਸਕ੍ਰਿਤ ਵੀ ਇਸ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿਚ ਸ਼ਾਮਲ ਹੋਣ ਲਈ ਰਜ਼ਾਮੰਦ ਹੋਏ ਹਨ। ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਗੂਗਲ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕੀਤੀ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ ਅਤੇ ਆਪਣੇ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਬਣਾਈ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਸੂਚੀ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਲੇਖ ਬਣਾਉਣਾ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕਰਣਗੇ। ਇਸ ਸਾਲ, ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਦਾ ਉਦੇਸ਼ ਉੱਚ ਗੁਣਵੱਤਾ ਵਾਲੇ ਲੇਖ ਹਨ ਅਤੇ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਵੀ ਅਜਿਹਾ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ ਵਚਨਬੱਧ ਹਨ।

ਜੇ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿੱਚ ਸ਼ਾਮਲ ਹੋਣਾ ਚਾਹੁੰਦੇ ਹੋ, ਤਾਂ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਕਰਕੇ ਇੱਥੇ ਦੇਖੋ।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-punjabi

Centre for Internet and Society

Research Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21

Research Publishing: Is ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ Pragmatic Reform for India?

Bridging the Gender Gap: A Report on Indian Language Wikimedia Communities

The full report can be read here.

Also read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

Context and Methods

Key Research Areas

Learnings

References

WIPO SCCR 41: Notes from Day 1

Agenda Item: Protection of Broadcasting Organisations

1. Opacity around informal work on the broadcasting treaty agenda

2. Support for adding better limitations and exceptions to the treaty text

3. Alternative legal solutions to address broadcast piracy

Agenda Item: Limitations and Exceptions

1. Support for Limitations and Exceptions agenda item

Global Civil Society Coalition launches website to promote Access to Knowledge

Wiki Women for Women Well-Being: An Initiative to Bridge the Gender Gap in the Wikimedia Community

Understanding the Data Gaps on Wikidata Concerning Heritage Structures of West Bengal

Introduction to Wikidata

Wikidata in West Bengal, India

Photo-walks and Wiki Explorations in West Bengal

Challenges of Contributing to Wikidata in/from West Bengal

Recommendations

References

Notes

Mapping GLAM in Maharashtra

Introduction

Research Questions and Method

Observations about Research Method

Survey of GLAM in Maharashtra

Description of Surveyed Institutions

Observations

Recommendations

Access to Knowledge 2019–2020 Utilisation Certificate

Project Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate

CIS-A2K Utilisation Certificate financial year 2018-2019

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

Project Tiger 2.0

Project Tiger 2.0

Project Tiger 2.0