Centre for Internet and Society

Wiki Loves Mayabazaar

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-06-07T09:24:35Z

On the 60th anniversary of the movie Mayabazar, Telugu Wikimedians celebrated Wiki Loves Mayabazar, an event to commemorate the cult Telugu film Mayabazar. As part of the celebrations, an edit-a-thon of the same name was held at Ravindra Bharathi in Hyderabad. Interestingly, the Cultural Department of Telangana Government sponsored the entire event.

In the Telugu speaking regions, there is a well-known appreciation of the cinematic arts. Mayabazar, released in 1957 captured the imagination of fans like no other film had before. Telugu Wikipedians decided to pay tribute to the movie by improving articles and content related to it on Telugu Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

The edit-a-thon was held on 30 April, 2017 at the monthly Wikimitra Vedika meetup of Telugu Wikipedians. A screening of the film took place followed by discussions on references, citations, film studies and articles related to the film. From 1 May 2017, the edit-a-thon took place online.

There were 15 participants of which only one member was female. Telugu Wikipedian, Kasyap hoped for more participation as this "is an interesting event."

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

Media pieces on the event:

1. ‘మాయాబజార్‌’కు వినూత్న షష్టిపూర్తి

(Eenadu Newspaper; 1 May, 2017)

2.‘మాయాబజార్’కు 60 ఏళ్లు.. వినూత్న షష్టిపూర్తి వేడుకకు సిద్ధమవుతున్న వికీపీడియన్లు! (Ap7am.com; 1 May 2017)Wiki Loves Mayabazaar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wiki-loves-mayabazaar

Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:45:18Z

A strategic symposium on Marathi Wikipedia and its sister projects was conducted on 29 April, 2017

The Marathi Wikipedia community held a symposium at the Gokhale Instititute of Politics and Economics on 29 April, 2017. This was an attempt to bring together various stakeholders for developing a strategic plan for Marathi language wiki projects such as Wikipedia, and especially Marathi Wikisource and Wiktionary. Over 70 persons were involved in the strategic planning efforts to take Wikisource and Wiktionary to existing Marathi Wikipedians and the general public at large. Eminent ecologist, Prof. Madhav Gadgil served as a resource persons for this event.

Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics and Rawat's Nature Academy took lead in organising this symposium. CIS-A2K facilitated the process. A total of 50 eminent personalities from various fields such as literature, linguistics, journalism, science forums, publishers, librarians, State Language & Culture Department honchos, active citizen forums working on different issues etc. took active part in the proceedings. They aim to act as anchors in future. According to the needs of Wikimedia projects, 12 Action Groups have been formed. Planning further sessions for May and June has begun over a common email thread.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/marathi-wikipedia-symposium-at-gokhale-institute-of-politics-economics

Continuing community engagement: Communities of interest and Quarrying

Manasa Rao — 2017-05-19T15:23:28Z

In telling the stories of Indian Wikipedians, we bring to you the story of Dr. Diptanshu Das, a doctor and avid Wikipedian, working with WikiProject Medicine who recently approached CIS-A2K with a technical request.

CIS-A2K has always believed in continuing our engagement with the communities and individuals we work with. This year in particular has been special to us thanks to our Train The Trainer alumni steadily achieving the goals they set out to achieve and continuing their Wiki journeys with more vigour. It is especially significant to us when our alumni come back to our resource and idea exchange platform to help develop their pet projects. For the first time, one such alumnus, Dr. Diptanshu Das, a doctor by profession and avid Wikipedian approached us in April 2017 with a request to our technical team. He wanted to know the number of articles that were tagged in both Category:WikiProject Pharmacology and Category:All WikiProject Medicine.

To provide some context, WikiProjects are generally article development projects undertaken by groups of editors on Wikipedia whose aim it is to achieve goals on specific topics and subjects on Wikipedia. For example, WikiProject Medicine manages and helps curate medical articles on Wikipedia. Similarly, WikiProject Pharmacology states that it "coordinates the development of Wikipedia articles and lists relating to the pharmacology and science of medications and other pharmacology-related topics." Working to define clearer guidelines for WikiProject Medicine of which he is a member, Dr. Das intended to find out how many articles were listed under WikiProject Pharmacology that were also tagged under WikiProject Medicine. As these two are closely related topics, the former being a sub-specialty of the latter, he felt it could cause an overlap which would mean that most of the sub-specialty articles would get lost in the "parent" category i.e. WikiProject Medicine.

CIS-A2K ran Dr. Das' request on Quarry, a public querying interface that lets one raise queries regarding databases in addition to managing them as an SQL(Structured Query Language) software would. Dr. Das had begun discussions with fellow Wikipedians to get their thoughts on the matter and wanted to provide data-specific points but was unable to gather consensus on developing a guideline. However, when CIS-A2K reported back to him, he realized that the overlap was not as significant as he had feared. WikiProject Medicine had 34,475 articles, WikiProject Pharmacology had 10,721 articles; only 2002 of these were tagged in both. Dr. Das, while relieved, believes that sub-specialty tagging would go a long way in helping improve articles such as those of WikiProject Pharmacology, many of which are still in Start and Stub classes.

"While collaborating on wiki is always good, it is important that an organization like CIS contributes its expertize," he says. CIS-A2K's presence as an idea exchange platform hopes to generate debate and discussions in addition to the physical resources and support we provide to communities. Dr. Das is also of the opinion that domain knowledge experts could make a real difference to Wikipedia by engaging with or creating WikiProjects that are specific to their interests and collaborate with other free knowledge champions around the world. CIS-A2K has attempted to encourage such communities of interest in the past so as to find an easier way to engage members of the general public and educational institutions as they are more likely to edit Wikipedia articles based on their personal hobbies and interests.

If you have requests for us please post them here or email Tito Dutta at tito@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/continuing-community-engagement-communities-of-interest-and-quarrying

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, Aurangabad

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-19T11:44:41Z

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal in Aurangabad

Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, a social work organisation working with underprivileged sections of society in Aurangabad partnered with CIS-A2K to conduct a Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon on 13 April, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to introduce Wikipedia to the participants and enable them to contribute to Wiki projects. The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on topics related to rural development and women's empowerment. The four hour edit-a-thon was attended by 30 participants who made a total of 300 edits. 15 new articles were created and 60 images were uploaded to Commons.

The link to the event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-savitribai-phule-mahila-ekatma-samaj-mandal-aurangabad

Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:37:48Z

A digitization workshop was held at Vigyan Ashram, following the success of the introductory workshop in February.

On 5 February, an introductory Wikipedia orientation program was held in partnership with Vigyan Ashram, for 15 youths from Pabal and surrounding villages in Shirur, Maharashtra. Given the keen interest and enthusiasm of the participants, a follow up workshop was held on 3 April, 2017.

This workshop was attended by 30 participants who were trained on Wikimedia projects such as Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. They were given an orientation on digitization and OCR tools as well. The workshop aims to enable the training of resource persons who can go onto be employed at libraries and museums in order to help with their digitization efforts. The scanning of old encyclopedias in Marathi has also been proposed for the Wiktionary project.

Participants were taught how to upload books from the Internet Archive to Wikimedia Commons. Subsequently,there was also a demonstration of transferring books from Commons to Wikisource. There are two ways of doing this: the page by page OCR process or converting a complete book through OCR4Wikisource. As OCRS4Wikisource program runs only on Linux, limitation of machines at the event was a hurdle in providing all the participants a hands on experience. Therefore, the scanning activity could not be completed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-wikimedia-commons-and-wikisource-orientation-workshop-at-vigyan-ashram-pabal-pune-district

Wikisource:Internship Project at New Law College, Pune

subodh — 2017-03-28T15:37:09Z

This Wiki - internship project is being conducted for New Law College (Pune),under the guidance of Prof.Dr.Mukund Sarda, Dean and Principal of NLC by CIS A2K as part of this project at en wikisource; teams of students will acomplish proof reading, validation, compilation annotation etc. of Indian Laws and to begin with Copyright laws and Intellectual property laws at Portal:Copyright law/Copyright law of India.

Next /intermittant stages of a (internship) project, may be conducted on english wikipedia for case studies part, and for questions answers, research etc on english wikiversity.

WikiProject is dedicated to posting and organizing pages for Acts of the Indian Parliament and other Indian legislation. Present collaboration :Intellectual Property Acts:

More information on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikisource-internship-project-at-new-law-college-pune

Sambad 100 Women Edit-a-thon

Ting Yi Chang and Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-18T10:05:52Z

A two-day 100 Women Edit-a-thon was held on March 18 and 19, 2017 in collaboration with Odisha’s biggest newspaper publisher Sambad. The event was inspired by BBC’s 100 Women series and edit-a-thons with the same name in December 2016. More than 20 female journalists participated and registered as new Odia Wikipedians. The event served as a highlight of the Women’s History Month in Indian language Wikipedias as well as in the global movement.

The name 100 Women was coined for BBC’s annual series featuring inspirational women from around the globe. In December 2016, in coordination with the broadcast of the program, an edit-a-thon of the same name was conducted at the headquarters of BBC, including at its Delhi office in India. The edit-a-thons aimed to create and edit biography articles of notable women on Wikipedia(s) to address the under-representation of women online and on Wikipedia - what we call the “Wikipedia gender gap.”

In March, Sambad became the first major news publisher after BBC to pick up the initiative and the first to hold a 100 Women edit-a-thon for Odia Wikipedia, commemorating International Women’s History Month. Sambad, an Odia daily, is among the most widely circulated papers in the state of Odisha. Ms. Tanaya Patnaik, Director of Eastern Media (Sambad’s parent company) had enthusiastically agreed to the collaboration in December 2016:

"This is the first 100 Women Editathon in India in collaboration with a media house. We are really proud to host it. A few days ago, I attended a fellowship event on ending gender violence against women, where I spoke about this editathon, and people were excited to know about this event and how we are taking such initiatives to make information about women accessible on the Internet. We will organise such events regularly and will follow up with the journalists to achieve the target of writing 100 articles about Odia Women."

The edit-a-thon was held at the Sambad headquarters in Bhubaneswar with over 20 female journalists attending the event. The event commenced on March 18, Saturday, with a half-day workshop and introduction session to Wikipedia and the topic of bridging the gender gap. Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, founder of the Sambad group, said at the event:

"Technology is always considered an enemy of language. Now is the time for language and technology to collaborate. New technologies have been developed over the last couple of years. If we can implement these technologies in our own language and accept it as a friend, we can take our language ahead. With the help of Odia Wikipedia, people using smartphones and other smart devices can access the information in their own language."

After a round of participants’ self-introduction, Sailesh Patnaik, Community Advocate, CIS-A2K introduced Odia Wikipedia, Odia input tools and how to edit. Some participants were able to create their Wikipedia accounts on the first day. CIS-A2K Research Intern, Ting-Yi Chang, highlighted in her presentation, the reasons for and significance of the Wikipedia gender gap. The event is an important effort to help Odia Wikipedia and its readers combat the gender bias in knowledge creation.

On March 19, Sunday, participants began hands on editing with the help of local Wikimedians from the Bhubaneswar Tungi community. Each participant had chosen a female achiever in advance and had prepared citable sources from the Sambad publications. The chosen figures are influential and important women in Odisha history and society, such as Kalpana Dash, the first Odia mountaineer to scale Mt. Everest, Parbati Ghosh, an accomplished Odia film-maker, Shyamamani Patnaik, a famous Odishi singer,among others. In total, 23 female biography articles were created and improved during the edit-a-thon. In an anonymous survey conducted during the event, over three-quarters of the participants said that they do not find editing difficult and over 80 percent of the participants express interest in writing about women or women-related subjects on Wikipedia.

However, since all the participants were first-time Wikipedians, the edit-a-thon was not without its challenges. Some participants had trouble getting used to the Unicode input method for the Odia script. Many of them are familiar with Shree lipi, an older input method that is not supported by Unicode interfaces such as Wikipedia. Luckily, a Shree lipi-to-Unicode conversion application was available on the computers at the venue; however, the conversion is not always perfect and the process can make editing more time consuming. A handout was given to the participants to help familiarize themselves with the new input method. Additionally, the organizers discovered the need to elaborate on what is considered a reliable source for reference. Participants were reminded during the event that in addition to the sources available at the Sambad office, they can also use other news articles on the Internet as long as they are published by credible news publishers.

Despite its challenges, the Sambad 100 Edit-a-thon was able to stand out and succeed because of a combination of the global initiative and a localized focus, the abundance of reliable resources available for editing, support from the Odia Wikipedia community, and the post-event media exposure. For example, the event was inspired by the BBC 100 Women global edit-a-thon series but was planned and carried out in the Odisha context - using Odia script, Odisha figures, and sources in Odisha’s most prominent newspaper. That being said, the existence of verifiable citation is often more crucial than one’s editing skills or writing style in determining the fate of a new article on Wikipedia. Holding the event in the Sambad office in Bhubaneswar not only ensured the availability of necessary facilities but also equipped us with abundant sources that can be cited in the articles.

The event also served as an example of regional community collaboration. Thanks to the strong support team from the Bhubaneswar WikiTungi community, participants were able to consult (both male and female) tutors throughout the event when questions emerged. The new Wikipedians were invited to join future monthly WikiTungi meetups in the city.

Finally, it is worth noting that a significant part of event was its reach. Sambad helped the event and the movement tremendously not only with their support in event planning and execution, but also with media exposure. Although the event could only accommodate around 20 participants, raising public awareness through mass media could help more people know about the existence of Odia Wikipedia and the issue of gender gap within.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sambad-100-women-edit-a-thon

Women’s History Month: Sambad collaborates with Odia Wikipedia for a Two Day Edit-a-thon

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-03-17T05:36:25Z

Sambad's 100 Women Edit-a-thon: Two day edit-a-thon to increase quantity and quality of women-related articles on Odia Wikipedia

Sambad, in collaboration with Odia Wikipedians, is organising a two day ‘edit-a-thon’ on March 18 and 19, 2017 to increase and improve articles on women in Odia Wikipedia. Sambad, a regional language daily newspaper in Odisha, is among the most widely circulated and published newspapers as it is from eight key cities in the state, including the capital city of Bhubaneswar. The event will be organised in Sambad Bhawan Bhubaneswar with around 15-20 participants from different walks of life.

In 2011, a survey carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation found that only 8.5 percent of Wikipedia editors were female. Since then, awareness has risen and many have found the editor demographic imbalance to be a strong reflection of what the encyclopaedia does or does not cover, including how written language and discourse were constructed on the pages and how discussion flows on article talk pages.

The aim of this 100 Women Edit-a-thon is to create articles on 100 Women from Odisha, hailing from different fields of work. Mrutyunjaya Kar, Admin, Odia Wikipedia hopes that “through this edit-a-thon, Odia Wiki will get a new batch of female Wikimedians. I hope all the other Indic Wikipedias will replicate this to create and improve articles in their respective languages.” The Women’s Studies department of Utkal University and the archives of the Sambad newspaper are major resources for this edit-a-thon.

The program will run for two days with a batch of journalists from Sambad and Eastern Media along with local Wikipedians from the city. Tanaya Patnaik, Director of Eastern Media says, “Odisha and Odias have such rich history and accomplishments, but information regarding the same is limited on the Internet. Wikipedia has emerged as the most popular go-to information site and it is essential that we Odias as a community get together to make our presence felt on the web. We loved the idea of collaborating with Odia Wikipedia for an edit-a-thon aiming at creating 100 Wikipedia articles on Odia women achievers. This would be an incredible learning experience for us.”

WikiTungi Bhubaneswar, the city based community of Odia Wikipedians is taking the lead in organising the event. The first day of this edit-a-thon is dedicated to introducing Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects to the participants. Participants will also be taught how to create user accounts. The second day of this edit-a-thon is to create or improve articles from the 100 Women list. Tanveer Hasan, Program Manager, CIS-A2K added, “It is vital that Wikimedians take the lead in contributing to a gender sensitive Wikipedia. Edit-a-thons such as these are instrumental in doing so. These events must be carefully nurtured and an effort to follow-up should be made. According to Wikidata, Odia Wikipedia is among the gender balanced Wikipedias in terms of content. 20.6% of articles on Odia Wikipedia are related to women. In collaboration with Sambad for this initiative, Odia Wikipedians strive to bridge the gender gap and create an example in this movement.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/women2019s-history-month-sambad-collaborates-with-odia-wikipedia-for-a-two-day-edit-a-thon

Train The Trainer 2017

Manasa Rao — 2017-06-07T08:43:19Z

The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program conducted its annual flagship event, Train The Trainer(TTT), between 19 to 22 February, 2017 at Jayamahal Palace, Bengaluru. The three day residential workshop focussed on training participants to develop the skills and attributes required for conducting events and outreach activities while also, eventually, taking on leadership roles within their respective language communities. The aim of the program is to groom such leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. 19 participants from nine different language communities from the Indian subcontinent attended the workshop.

The pre-event session on the evening of the 19th consisted of fun games for participants to break the ice and get to know one another. As the evening wound down, the participants, who were invited to bring sweets and savouries from their cities and towns, set up a sweets table. This activity was inspired from Wikimedia Deutschland's candy table at Wikimedia Conference 2015. The idea is to hold an exciting sweet tasting session as the participants attend the workshop. Participants enthusiastically shared trivia about the delicacies they brought to the event and exchanged notes on the various recipes.

Sweets table at TTT 2017/ Image By Manasa Rao/ CC-BY-SA 4.0

Day 1: Introductory discussions, event planning & WikiConference India case study

The first day of the workshop started with a welcome address from the organisers and a formal introductory session for all those present. The participants introduced themselves and spoke about the one Wikipedian they are most inspired by. This was a platform for both participants and organisers to understand each other and their motivation to be a part of the free knowledge movement. Participants also shared the nature of their work on Wikimedia and their pet projects. Most importantly, they spoke about the challenges they have overcome in their journey as a Wikipedian. Pabitra Kumar Panda(User:pkp05) of Odia Wikipedia spoke about how he began editing Wikipedia on his phone using public hotspots in his city(Puri). “I love editing Wikipedia so much that I used to sit for hours together and edit on the street using the wi-fi available. I completely lost track of time,” he said. Another participant, Sumita Roy(User: Sumita Roy Dutta), spoke of how she learned to combine her love for trekking and Wikipedia. She uploads extensively categorised photos on Wikimedia Commons from every trek in order to help potential trekkers or travellers who may wander off the beaten path in the Himalayas.

The interaction gradually transitioned into an activity where participants were asked to present their expectations over the next few days and for the year ahead. Participants were divided into five groups with one CIS-A2K team member at each table to facilitate discussions or clarify doubts. Sanskrit Wikipedian Sidharth Dhodapkar(User:Siddharthdhodapkar) pointed out that while focussing on language communities is important, general outreach activities should also be conducted simultaneously so as to not miss out languages like Sanskrit that are rarely spoken today. Suyash Dwivedi(User:Suyash.dwivedi), an active contributor to Wikimedia Commons, stated that the need of the hour was localisation of global best practices that serve as a guideline for volunteers across Indic language Wikipedias.

Participants presenting their group projects/ Image By Indrajit Das/ CC-BY-SA 3.0

Notably, many participants brought up the need for a more concentrated Wikipedia effort in the domain of education in India. Paramjit Singh(User:param munde), a school teacher from Punjab explained how his students would stand to benefit from a reliable learning platform available online. “We need to explore ways by which we can convert Wikipedia articles into basic educational resources at the school level, keeping Indic languages in mind,” he said. Frederick Noronha(User:Fredericknoronha), a journalist from Panaji and English Wikipedia contributor, urged the participants to tap into digital resources already made available by the National Council of Educational Research and Training. Adding to that, Dr. Manavpreet Kaur, Punjabi Wikipedian and forensic scientist, said that students can be taught animal kingdoms, for example, with the help of “Categories” (of photos) on Wikimedia Commons. Reiterating the need for expert knowledge on subjects, Ramakrishna Reddy Palagiri(User: Palagiri) pointed out that these subject expert articles must be translated across the Indic language Wikipedias. These interactions helped the CIS-A2K team understand the various ways in which we can expand our support providing infrastructure to the Indic language communities.

The first master class session began with CIS-A2K team members, Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta, talking about Wikimedia Foundation grants. They elaborated on the two types of grants offered by WMF: individual grants and grants for groups and organisations. They answered questions about the practical nature of processing the grants and the expenses covered by these grants. Participants seemed most interested in the procedure of applying to and receiving the Rapid Project Grant that is commonly requested for edit-a-thons, contests, equipments and events, with a funding of USD 1500- 2000 approximately.

This was followed by a session on “Essentials of Conducting an Event” by long time Wikipedian (Retd.) Col. Ashwin Baindur. The session mapped the connect between the spirit of conducting an event and the logistical challenges trainers and volunteers must be prepared to face. He pointed out that professional administrative support and preparedness leads to Wikipedians feeling a sense of purpose. He related a quote from his personal experience and said, “the more you sweat in peace(i.e.planning and preparation), the less you bleed in war(i.e. the actual event). Participants were glad the presentation touched upon new topics such as generating enthusiasm through pre-work, dividing participants into groups so as to facilitate healthy exchanges and following up with sharing of the event’s documentary resources and feedback.

The day came to an end with Dr. Manavpreet Kaur’s presentation on WikiConference India. She put forth a case study on how they prepared for and conducted the pan India event in 2016. This presentation went through the administrative process and challenges as well as tips that helped conduct such a large scale conference.

Day 2: Excursion to Cubbon Park & the Wikipedian’s ethos

Participants at Cubbon Park/ Image By Manasa Rao/ CC-BY-SA 4.0

The second day involved an excursion for the participants who were geared up to go to Cubbon Park, Bangalore. This was a nature walk conducted by long time Wikipedian, Shyamal Lakshminarayan(User:Shyamal). The organic discussions that took place during the excursion surrounded conducting photo-thons and GLAM activities that drew on local heritage and biodiversity. The participants visited the Government Museum near the park and Shyamal explained the importance of knowing about the available resources of knowledge for every Wikipedian. “It’s cheaper to put wrong information on the web, so physically visiting libraries to find relevant information will help you judge the credibility of a source,” he said. At the late afternoon session back at the conference venue, participants were introduced to the Internet Archive while Col. Baindur helped the participants understand easy reference templates. Participants were even taught hacks that they could use to cultivate new editors. For example, while uploading Commons images with different categories is important, someone who doesn’t know how to do it may still upload the images with the basic categories so that other users may add detailed categories. A new Wikimedian may initially find this useful as he/she is learning the ropes. Reflecting on the morning’s excursion, the participants were encouraged to ponder on the more philosophical question: how does knowledge on Wikipedia reflect the reality around us?

Day 3: Global Initiatives, Gender Gap Bridging on Indic Wikipedias & Feedback

The final day of Train The Trainer 2017 began with a masterclass on global initiatives that the participants could learn from and adapt to their communities. Some of the methodologies for improving community consultation were discussed such as needs assessment, outreach activities and surveys. The participants (who would all ideally be prepared to take on the role of trainers) were introduced to Learning Patterns and how they could document the lessons they have learned regardless of the outcome of their event. Another global strategy, global engagement, was also discussed in detail. Participants were asked to make the fullest use of traditional and social media in promoting their events, whether online or offline. Participants were introduced to Share-A-Fact, an inbuilt option on the Wikipedia mobile application which allows the sharing of any sentence or phrase as per the reader’s choice from a Wikipedia article onto any social media or email application. This is imposed over a photo from the article along with a link to the article itself. Participants who were active on social media pointed out that the social media handle of CIS-A2K team had shared these quick facts during the excursion the previous day.

Ravi Ayakannu conducting a session on photo contests/ Image By Indrajit Das/ CC-BY-SA 3.0

Following this, Ravi Ayakannu, long time Tamil Wikipedia community member held a session on conducting photo contests such as Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Food. He explained that these are held online and help keep the volunteers motivated without requiring their physical presence. Mr. Ayakannu advised the participants to be inclusive in their approach to awarding best photos such as awards for diversity, creativity, etc. He suggested that organisers must give themselves ample time before adjudging the photos and the organisers could involve someone from Commons. "These contests would also get professional non-Wikimedian photographers involved and hence produce high quality images", he added. For promoting the photo contest, Mr. Ayakannu suggested site banners on Wikipedia.

The final session of the workshop was on Wikipedia and Women. Ting Yi Chang, CIS-A2K research intern, working on exploring ways to bridge the gender gap on Indian Wikipedias conducted the session. Participants were introduced to global initiatives for bridging both the women-related content and male to female editor ratio gap on Wikipedia. While speaking on her soon to be published gender gap bridging toolkit(inspired by User:Keilana's Systemic bias kit) for Indic Wikipedias, Ting Yi noted, "women are not periphery subjects and we must avoid treating it as such." Participants appeared interested to learn about projects such as Women in Red that makes an effort to add women-related content on Wikipedia. The session also reminded participants to organize community events during commemorative events such as Women's History Month in March. The following are a few global initiatives on Gender Gap Bridging:

1. Women's History Month

2. Art and Feminism

3. Wiki Women's User Group

The session was followed by activities that were aimed at sensitizing the participants and urging them to think critically on issues they could potentially face as organizers, both on and off wiki, regarding the participation of women or women-related content. The session came to an end with a free-wheeling discussion among participants about the various scenarios, biases and mindsets they need to be aware of while attempting to bridge the gender gap on Wikipedia and related projects.

As the three day event drew to a close, the participants shared some of their key takeaways and follow-up action points which included cross-community collaborations and mentorship at least at the regional level, encouraging informal/ semi-formal opportunities for community members to mingle and share their ideas with one another among others.

To watch videos of the event, please click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/train-the-trainer-2017

Women's Day Edit-a-thon at Jeewan Jyoti Women's Empowerment Centre, Pune

subodh — 2017-04-10T16:04:03Z

Sterlite Tech Foundation and Jnana Prabodhini joined hands with the Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team to hold a Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Jeewan Jyoti Women's Empowerment Centre, Ambawane in Pune on March 10, 2017. Subodh Kulkarni was one of the trainers. The edit-a-thon was attended by 28 students.

Background

Sterlite Tech Foundation and Jnana Prabodhini are the organisations working for Women's Empowerment in Velhe Block of Pune District Maharashtra. Jeewan Jyoti - Sterlite’s flagship initiative aims to address these issues by empowering the under privileged sections of society, especially rural women with equal learning opportunities and with professional training courses in their formative years; thereby providing them with sustainable income opportunities.

On the occasion of World Women's Day, Women's Wikipedia edit-a-thon week is arranged across the world. The organisers collaborated with The Centre for Internet & Society-Access to Knowledge Program to conduct this workshop for rural women.

Project Goal

The goal of this Wikipedia Workshop is to build resources in the field of rural development & women empowerment on Marathi Wikipedia and equip its participants with the process of contributing to Wikipedia, and to introduce it as a concept to them. Another focus of the workshop will be on village articles.

Primary Goals

To introduce Wikipedia as an encyclopedia for research and a concept to new editors.
To Promote Marathi Wikipedia Community & promote the use of regional languages in Wikipedia.
To have an open interaction within the editors, existing as well as new.
To spread the awareness of Wikipedia as a powerful tool.
To develop articles on gender & environment related issues

More info on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/womens-day-edit-a-thon-in-pune

Women's Day Edit-a-thon at Jnana Prabodhini

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-15T07:31:38Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Women's Day edit-a-thon was conducted in collaboration with Jnana Prabodhini to commemorate the celebration of International Women's Day.

A Marathi Wikipedia Women's Day edit-a-thon was conducted in collaboration with Jnana Prabodhini in Pune on 9 March, 2017 to commemorate the celebration of International Women's Day. Jnana Prabodhini is an organisation that is active in the field of social work. The organisation enabled the bringing together of women working in the culture and Indology sectors for this edit-a-thon.

The aim of the two-hour-long edit-a-thon was to help build resources in the field of Culture, Indology and women empowerment on Marathi Wikipedia. The edit-a-thon also introduced the participants to editing Wikipedia and contributing to Wiki projects. In addition to this, the workshop attempted to add references to existing articles in order to improve their credibility.

The all-women event was attended by seven women from different walks of life. The participants edited five articles on women related to culture and Indology. Dr. Aaryaa Joshi, research scholar at Jnana Prabodhini was one of the expert trainers at the event.

Link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/womens-day-edit-a-thon-at-jnana-prabodhini

"Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din" celebrations in Maharashtra

manasa@cis-india.org — 2017-03-10T05:36:48Z

Marathi Language Day was recently commemorated across the state of Maharashtra to celebrate the Marathi language, its literature and culture.

Last week, the state of Maharashtra commemorated Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din, a day to celebrate the Marathi language, its literature and culture. The celebrations mark the 105th birth anniversary of renowned Marathi poet and writer Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar who wrote under the pen name Kusumagraj. Most notably, the Maharashtra state government issued a circular, appealing to all educational institutions and government offices to edit one paragraph on Marathi Wikipedia on 27th February(Marathi Language Day). Asmita Pote, a Marathi Wikipedian, believes that this “small step of writing one paragraph on Marathi Wikipedia will give those learning about Wikipedia for the first time, an opportunity to explore further and contribute”.

There were Wikipedia awareness programs and cultural festivities organised across the state’s schools and colleges to mark the week long(27 February to 6 March) celebrations. The Gateway of India in Mumbai held a large-scale cultural program with performances from leading Marathi singers, dancers and poets portraying their cultural heritage through their art. The state government promoted the celebrations on television channels, radio stations and newspapers with interviews of eminent Marathi achievers from different walks of life. These interviews can be found here.

This year’s theme for Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din was ‘role of computer and internet in language’. The Minister for Education and Marathi Bhasha(among other portfolios), Mr. Vinod Tawde, encouraged citizens to edit on Wikipedia and urged the citizens to use unicode on their social media platforms to facilitate discussions in Marathi. Says Rahul Deshmukh, Marathi Wikipedia administrator, “this is the outcome of efforts channelled over two years. The government understood the need to take Wikipedia to the aam aadmi(common man) in Maharashtra in order to strengthen the language. The primary goal was to expose people to Wikipedia and raise awareness about Marathi Wikipedia.” In thanking the government officials who worked tirelessly for this initiative, he also appeals to other Indic language communities in India to see this as a role model. He believes that this initiative should be taken to other states and state governments as well.

The recent celebrations in Maharashtra have seen significant due to active government involvement. Priya Hiregange, a Marathi Wikipedian, says, “the government raised awareness not just in schools and colleges across the state but also in their own offices, giving training to government officials to write about their department or their organisation’s work on the free encyclopaedia.” The government circular appealing to citizens to edit on Wikipedia saw a great increase in the number of articles and editors. This goes to show that government involvement could immensely benefit the free knowledge movement in regional languages by creating awareness and exposure to these resources. It also sets a positive precedent for other state governments in India to emulate and promote their regional languages. Wikipedia is available in 23 Indic languages. A supportive government could go a long way to ensure the development of the free knowledge movement in India.

If you would like to contact Mr. Rahul Deshmukh for guidance on such initiatives for your language, please drop him a line here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-bhasha-gaurav-din-celebrations-in-maharashtra

MediaWiki Training 2017

Tito Dutta and Ananth Subray — 2017-06-07T08:43:57Z

MediaWiki Training 2017 conducted in Bangalore

The third iteration of the MediaWiki Training was conducted on 24-26 February at Bangalore, India (the first and second iterations of MWT was conducted in 2015 and 2016). 16 participants from 9 Indic Wikimedia communities attended the workshop. The following graph shows the participation from different Indic Wikimedia communities.

Malayalam Wikimedian User:Viswaprabha attended the workshop as a resource person. On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, User:Titodutta and User:Ananth_subray were the resource persons.

== Sessions ==

On the first day, the following topics were discussed

=== First day: technical audit ===

Introduction to MediaWiki Training: The first session of the day started with introducing the aims of objectives of MediaWiki Training 2017.

Introduction to MediaWiki software and platform: Following this User:Titodutta and User:Viswaprabha discused the MediaWiki software, different extensions, LocalSettings.php and some other important configurations related to MediaWiki.

Wikipedia technical audit: Wikipedia technical audit was the central theme of the day, and the phrase “Wikipedia technical audit” was coined by Rahul Desmukh of IIT Bombay. He suggested that once in a year a Wikimedia community should do its technical audit, when the community would solve issues like deadend pages, orphan pages, uncategorized pages, script errors, infobox errors, reference errors, and other errors and issues related to a Wikimedia project.

On the first day of the MWT workshop we discussed these issues and errors and how to solve these.

== Second day ==

On the second day of third iteration of MWT, we began with problems faced in different languages with respect to Templates and Imfoboxes. And continued with teaching how to create the basic info boxes. Each participant were thought how to add two digits in a single template and creation of LUA templates. Later we had thought them how to create a basic template by adding a label and data, and even localizing of some templates were also done.

After this use of Wikidata was thought and INfoboxes using wikidata.

Post lunch some of the tools and their uses and applications were thought Copyvio, Duplication detector, Google books citation, Citation generator and Hay's tool directory

== Third day ==

On the third day of MWT 2017, the first session started with a session where User:Viswaprabha discussed Wikimedia Labs Quarry (https://quarry.wmflabs.org/)

The major points of the session were:

Introduction to Quarry.
Importance of Quarry
Coding simple quarry.

User:Viswaprabha also showed how to integrate Google spreadsheet with Quarry. He showed a couple of examples where he had the most of it using the tricks.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mediawiki-training-2017

WikiTungi: Bhubaneswar City Wiki Community Turns 1

sailesh — 2017-02-27T01:42:11Z

The Odia Wikipedia’s WikiTungi is an attempt at building a community of Wikimedians at the city level.

The tungi, named after an ancient practice in Odia that involves passing on knowledge of the scriptures, is a city based Wikipedia community that helps Wikimedians around the city to meet and learn from their shared experiences. The Tungi meetups and events are organised with the help of the volunteers.

The Odia community's WikiTungi is based out of two cities, Puri and Bhubaneswar. While Wikimedians in Puri conduct meetups bi-monthly, Bhubaneswar Wikimedians meet once a month. In every meetup, Wikimedians exchange their resources with each other, helping address their doubts and queries regarding their problems and projects.

This February marks the first anniversary of the Bhubaneswar WikiTungi. The WikiTungi members from the city meet every second Sunday of the month. To commemorate the first anniversary of this novel effort, nine community members from the Bhubaneswar Tungi met for a celebratory dinner at a local restaurant on 9 February 2017 and toasted to the dedication of the volunteers.

The community discussed various ideas (listed below) and the ways in which they can be implemented in the regular WikiTungi meetups. Members of the community also showed their interest in organising the third edition of WikiConference India in Bhubaneswar to bring Wikipedia to more people across the state of Odisha. During the community meetup, Tungi members came up with few ideas to implement it as a best practice in the Wikipedia movement.

Some of them are listed here:

The Tungi members will invite one of the global community leaders for a Skype or hangout session.
Discuss the best practice from the global community and discuss them with the community.
Updating the minutes of the meeting and sharing them with the other community members.
Updating the Learning and Evaluation team about the new learning of the community every month.
The community will also send postcards as a souvenirs to the participants of the global community for the online sessions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikitungi-bhubaneswar-city-wiki-community-turns-1

Marathi Wikisource & Digitisation Workshop

subodh — 2017-03-05T02:34:58Z

A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS-A2K) team on February 17 and 18, 2017. Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited and Jnana Prabhodini were the co-organizers. The discussions were held at Jnana Prabodhini, Sadashiv Peth, Pune on February 17 and C Trade Tower, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune on February 18, 2017.

Objectives of the Workshop

To build awareness about the strengths of Marathi Wikisource as a knowledge reference resource
To connect active community in Marathi language area
Networking with organisations with manuscripts,old reference books and gazetteers
To develop liaison with libraries,museums,research institutes,social institutions and knowledge enterprises
To develop methodology for listing,selection and prioritisation of material
To acquire skills for digitisation, running OCR tools,uploading on archives and Wikisource

Madhav Gadgil speaking

Background

Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS),a pioneering organisation working for the preservation of Maharashtra’s linguistic and cultural heritage. It was founded in Pune, India in 1894. Being an important archive for the preservation of many hundreds of years old manuscripts and historical artifacts from the Peshwa era, the institution is open to public for study and research. In a noble initiative to celebrate 121st anniversary of MGS, Pune the board members have decided to re-license 1000 books to free license and to donate them to CIS-A2K in order to be digitised and uploaded on Marathi Wikisource project. These books are the single largest content donation made by an organisation in the history of Marathi Wikimedia projects. These books when digitised and uploaded will prove to valuable resources both for researchers and general readers. MKCL (Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited), a reputed organisation is extending manpower support for the scanning of the books. Till date 2700 books are digitised and 900 books are uploaded on Internet Archive. Further process of uploading on Wikisource is to be started. With this view, it was decided to organise this workshop and include other libraries also, who wish to take up such project.

Organizations

35 Representatives from following libraries and museums in Maharashtra attended session at Jnana Prabodhini.

The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,Pune
Pradnya Pathashala Mandal,Wai
Deccan College,Pune
Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS),Pune
Jnana Prabodhini,Pune
Karveer Nagar Wachan Mandir,Kolhapur
Shri Samarth Vagdevata Mandir,Dhule
Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir,Pune
Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal,Pune
Lokmanya Tilak Smarak Wachan Mandir, Chiplun
Vedshastra Vidya Sanwardhan Mandal,Karad
Rajwade Sanshodhan Mandal, Dhule
Sangli Nagar Wachanalay, Sangli
Vigyan Ashram,Pabal
Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth,Pune

For more info see the originally published piece on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikisource-digitisation-workshop