Centre for Internet and Society

Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong

subha — 2013-09-13T06:03:03Z

The 7th, 8th and 9th of August 2013 saw over 600 Wikipedians across the world participating Wikimania at Hong Kong. The three day annual international conference for users and contributors of Wikipedia brought many debates about open educational research, open source technologies, gender gap, documenting the history of mankind in a free and open platform like Wikipedia and its sister sites in collaboration with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums and all of these in 286 world languages. More and more volunteers are joining this movement and it is expanding the media of accessing and disseminating knowledge.

Here is a school teacher who lives in Salem, a small industrial town in Tamil Nadu. There lives a school teacher who was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Hong Kong long back. They have never met in real life but have been helping in correcting each others mistakes in Wikipedia articles. These two school teachers have taken their knowledge from the four walls of the classrooms to a larger audience of Tamil Wikipedia. I then realized how language brings people together. This is what I heard from my inner voice when I met S.Parvathi from Salem and H.K.Arun from Sri Lanka during Hong Kong Wikimania 2013, an annual gathering of Wikipedia contributors.

Many still are not aware the existence of Wikipedias in Indian languages. There are 20 South Asian language Wikipedias with more than 2 lakh articles contributed totally by about 1500 voluntary contributors in all these languages. There are hundred more contributors like Arun and Parvathi who create new articles in Tamil Wikipedia, and rectify mistakes by new contributors.

Wikipedians are all volunteers who devote their time for building the greatest repository of knowledge on the internet. Wikipedia articles are free from any copyright infringement so anyone can freely access, share, make modifications and redistribute them. Wikipedians have been able to create this ecosystem of nurturing new editors by teaching them the process of encyclopaedic content generation which not only polishes their writing abilities, but strengthens their communication skills.

Wikimania is fun, it brings wikipedians across the globe speaking diverse languages under one roof where they meet each other and share their ideas and collaborate.

Over 600 wikipedians from various countries participated in this year’s Wikimania including 16 from India. In the open world of Wikipedia collaboration always happen beyond borders; one Nepali and four Bangla Wikipedians from Bangladesh also joined the Indian Wikipedians to rejoice the triumph of the effort of all the volunteers from the subcontinent.

The fun was not just limited in creating a wall of their dreams, ambitions and action plans to take their own language Wikipedia to more people or discuss how they could write articles that are important to each others languages. It went upto helping each other to fix problems in typing Indian languages and discussing success stories of successful workshops that resulted bring more student contributors. Ganesh Paudel, a Wikipedian from Nepal says, "My hometown is very close to India and we share the same script with Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit and Konkani. India and Nepal both have sizable population speaking Nepali, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Sanskrit, Bangla and Hindi. I’m personally interested to collaborate with Indians speaking these languages." I could see the glow in his eyes when he wrote and explained the beautiful curvature of Ranjana script to me. Tinu Cherian, another long term Wikipedian who was attending Wikimania for the third time was excitedly live-tweeting the happening at Hong Kong. When I asked how he is feeling after a short break he unfolded his hands and proudly said, "Wikipedia is like religion to me, once a Wikipedian, you are always a Wikipedian!". Netha, a medical college student from Kerala spoke about bringing more women to contribute to Wikipedia. She calls Kavya, a college lecturer and Malayalam wikipedian who spoke about Women and non-conventional education as one of the gems she has discovered in her personal journey.

Wikimania also has Sengai Podhuvan, one of the oldest Indian Wikipedians. His appeal for Wikipedia fundraising brought a lot of donations to Wikimedia Foundation. Dr. Podhuvan shared his story of learning using computer, Tamil typing and writing articles about Wikimania this year brought many academicians, education researchers, policy change makers and open source and open knowledge activists across the world to share their ideas, activities going across the world even while enjoying dinner in the 100th floor.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikimania2013

Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share

praskrishna — 2013-08-19T04:50:15Z

from the now-there's-a-thought dept.

Glyn Moody of Techdirt covers Sunil's David Eaves interview.

Prefixing concepts with the epithet "open" has become something of a fashion over the last decade. Beginning with open source, we've had open content, open access, open data, open science, and open government to name but a few. Indeed, things have got to the point where "openwashing" -- the abuse of the term in order to jump on the openness bandwagon -- is a real problem. But a great post by David Eaves points out that the spectrum of openness actually extends well beyond the variants typically encountered in the West:

While sharing and copying technologies are disrupting some of the ways we understanding "content," when you visit a non-Western country like India, the spectrum of choices become broader. There is less timidity wrestling with questions like: should poor farmers pay inflated prices for patented genetically-engineered seeds? How long should patents be given for life-saving medicines that cost more than many make in a year? Should Indian universities spend millions on academic journals and articles? In the United States or other rich countries we may weigh both sides of these questions -- the rights of the owner vs. the moral rights of the user -- but there's no question people elsewhere, such as in India, weigh them different given the questions of life and death or of poverty and development.

Consequently, conversations about open knowledge outside the supposedly settled lands of the "rich" often stretch beyond permission-based "fair use" and "creative commons" approaches. There is a desire to explore potential moral rights to use "content" in addition to just property rights that may be granted under statutes.

He then goes on to write about the ideas of Sunil Abraham, founder and executive director of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) in India. Abraham has created an interesting representation showing the extended gamut of openness, which reaches from proprietary to counterfeiting and false attribution:

Eaves's post examines some of the details of Abraham's map:

Particularly interesting is Sunil's decision to include non-legal "permissions" such as ignoring the property holders rights in his spectrum of openness. He sees this as the position of the Pirate Party, which he suggests advocates that people should have the right to do what they want with intellectual property even if they don't have permission, with the exception, interestingly, of ignoring attribution.

This is something that several Techdirt posts have touched on before. One of the most telling facts about unauthorized sharing online is that people preserve attribution -- there's no attempt to hide who made the song or film. That's probably why survey after survey shows that sharing materials online increases their sales -- something that would be unlikely if attribution were stripped from files. Eaves notes that this aspect ties into a particularly hot topic at the moment -- surveillance:

To Sunil, the big dividing line is less about legal vs. illegal but around this issue of attribution. "This is the most exciting area because this (the non-attribution area) is where you escape surveillance," he declares.

"All the modern day regulation over IP is trying to pin an individual against their actions and then trying to attach responsibility so as to prosecute them," Sunil says. "All that is circumvented when you play with the attribution layer."

This matters a great deal for individuals and organizations trying to create counter power -- particularly against the state or large corporate interests. In this regard Sunil is actually linking the tools (or permissions) along the open spectrum to civil disobedience.

It's a fascinating piece that brings some fresh ideas to an area that has been steadily gaining in importance for some time. I hope that Abraham builds on these thoughts, and publishes some more extended and worked-out explorations of them -- ultimately, perhaps, as a book.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techdirt-august-14-2013-glyn-moody-extending-spectrum-openness-to-include-moral-right-to-share

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet

pavanaja — 2013-09-05T06:46:39Z

On Sunday, August 11, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Shyam Computers, Krishnarajapet, Karnataka. The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet. This report summarizes the proceedings of that workshop and subsequent research into relevant questions flowing from the discussions.

The CIS-A2K team has been getting requests to conduct Kannada Wikipedia workshops from various parts of Karnataka. One such request came from ISRO technician Akash B., who is originally from Krishnarajapet, popularly known as K R Pet, in Mandya Dist of Karnataka. . Shyamesh of Shyam Computers sponsored the venue by lending his cyber centre. The workshop was scheduled for 10.00 a.m. and began a little late at 10.45 a.m.

About 20 participants came together to learn Wikipedia editing. The inauguration was followed by the hands-on workshop. We had some discussions with Akash about the IP address restrictions for registering new users. Usually only 6 persons can register on a day from one IP address. Fortunately, the cyber centre had a dynamic IP. After 6 registrations, we reset the modem so that the remaining participants could register. Akash helped some participants to register the previous day itself.

The participants were quite enthusiastic. We gave a presentation about Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia and then gave a demonstration about editing the Wikipedia. After that the participants tried their hands on editing Kannada Wikipedia. Some of the participants who attended the workshop are now editing the Kannada Wikipedia on a daily basis. We hope that they sustain their interest and enhance the quality of Kannada Wikipedia.


A group picture of the participants from the Krishnarajapet workshop. (Picture by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

A special thanks to Kannada Sahitya Parishat, K R Pet, Akash B and Shyam Computers.

Media Coverage

Prajavani, (August 12, 2013)
Suvarna Times of Karnataka (August 12, 2013)
Vijaya Vani (August 12, 2013)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/a-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-at-krishnarajapet

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mysore

pavanaja — 2013-10-04T04:40:46Z

On Tuesday, August 6, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at the Centre for Proficiency Development and Placement Services (CPDPS), Manasa Gangotri campus, University of Mysore, Karnataka by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

The main objective of this workshop was to acquaint the participants about Wikipedia and get them a hands-on experience of editing Wikipedia and also encourage them to contribute to the Kannada Wikipedia. The participants were also asked to reflect upon their experiences and perceptions of editing and contributing to Wikipedia, and identify areas in which they could add more value to the existing initiatives.

Most of the previous Kannada Wikipedia workshops have been well covered well by the leading Kannada newspapers like Vijaya Karnataka, Prajavani, etc.

This generated quite some interest in many people and we began getting requests to conduct more Kannada Wikipedia workshops. One such request came from Prof. Niranjana Vanalli, Director of CPDPS, to conduct a Kannada Wikipedia workshop at his centre. The date was finalised for August 6, 2013. This was announced in the leading local newspapers. As a result, nearly 50 persons registered for the workshop.

Above: Dr. Pavanaja conducting the workshop in Mysore

The workshop was inaugurated by Dr. P. Nagabhushan, Chairman of Computer Studies, Dept. of Studies in Computer Science, University of Mysore. He said that Wikipedia could facilitate the growth of Kannada language in this digital era. Prof. Niranjana Vanalli welcomed everyone and also did the role of MC for the inaugural program. The workshop was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. started about half an hour late. Initially there were 22 people and as the day progressed we saw more people joining in for the workshop. In the end there were about 60 participants. Dr. Pavanaja spoke briefly and requested Mysore University to re-release their famous Kannada Encyclopaedia under the Creative Commons license so as to facilitate the growth of Kannada Wikipedia.

The inauguration programme was very well covered by media. The Hindu highlighted my request about releasing encyclopaedias under the Creative Commons license.

After the inauguration, all those who were interested in the hands-on session shifted to the computer lab in the same building. Dr. Pavanaja gave a presentation on Wikipedia, then Kannada Wikipedia, and then spoke about its importance. This was followed by some demos on using Wikipedia and editing Wikipedia. The participants created their usernames in Kannada Wikipedia. Very soon the limit of creating 6 new editors per IP address was reached and the remaining people could not create their usernames. Some participants registered using Dr. Pavanaja’s laptop. The rest of the participants watched the demos and promised to go home and register later. Many people did so and have e-mailed their usernames.

Kiran Ravikumar, a young active Wikipedian from Mysore gave a brief presentation about Creative Commons and how to use it with Wikipedia. He demonstrated uploading some image under Wikimedia Commons and linking it from Wikipedia.

Above: Wikipedian Kiran Ravikumar making his presentation

Some new editors have begun doing wiki editing. We may need to monitor, and nurture these new editors till the time they become well versed.

We would like to thank Prof. Niranjana Vanalli for all the local arrangements, publicity and and making the workshop to happen.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-wikipedia-university-of-mysore

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Prajavani)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T05:50:24Z

Prajavani covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-workshop

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Suvarna Times of Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T06:10:01Z

Suvarna Times of Karnataka covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/suvarna-times-of-karnataka-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-workshop

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Vijaya Vani)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T06:45:12Z

Prajavani covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/vijaya-vani-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-wikipedia-workshop

Wikimedia Asia Meeting

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T10:14:36Z

T.Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi from the Access to Knowledge team at CIS participated in the Wikimedia Asia meeting in Hong Kong on August 10, 2013.

Note: An unedited transcript of the entire conversation can be downloaded below.

Click to see the file (Plain Text, 7Kb)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikimedia-asia-meeting

India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth

praskrishna — 2013-08-09T09:58:05Z

Despite accommodating the world’s second largest English-speaking population behind the United States, it is India’s indigenous language speakers that are creating and consuming the content that is driving Wikipedia’s growth on the subcontinent.

Note: We have published only portions where CIS has been mentioned and T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge has been quoted. The complete post by Mahesh Sharma was published in TechCrunch on August 6, 2013, you can read it here.

The Wikimedia Foundation last year issued a ~~$40,000~~ $440,000 grant to the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which, along with the local Wikimedia chapter, has trained almost 2,500 Indians how to edit and create content in their local languages.

Last September, CIS targeted ten tongues — Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi and Telugu — and started working with India’s Wikimedia chapter, responsible for coordinating the local volunteer efforts, to boost the amount of local language content being created on a range of websites including, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and WikiCommons.

CIS said that between September 2012 and April 2013 the number of page views increased by almost four million.

While the program has had an impact, director T. Vishnu Vardhan admitted there were some ominous findings. After CIS stopped supporting the Assamese Wikipedia in January 2013, the 20 active editors all but left the site.

“The decline over the last three months also alerts us to the possibility of building dependencies on the program, which is a concern that we need to address going forward,” Vishnu said. ”We need to ensure this community and new people are sustained, that we engage them keep and them interested by showing them the excitement of being part of open knowledge building.”

Ultimately, Vardhan hopes this capacity building exercise will spark a self-fulfilling cycle of local Wikipedia content production and consumption. These reach of these tools is growing as last month, mobile operator Aircel and Wikimedia India announced that subscribers could freely access m.wikipedia.org, available in 19 Indian languages, from their mobile phones

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techcrunch-august-6-2013-mahesh-sharma-indias-indigenous-languages-drive-wikipedias-growth

e-DIRAP Google+ Hangout on Open Government

praskrishna — 2013-08-08T04:20:31Z

The e-DIRAP Hangout on Open Government was held on Thursday, July 25, 2013. The Hangout brought together nine professionals from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines to discuss open government initiatives in their respective countries, the challenges they face, and open source tools for open government.

Watch the Video below

The following panelists participated in the hangout. Sunil Abraham was one of them:

Danny Butt, Research Fellow in Participatory Public Space, University of Melbourne, Australia
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, India
Venkatesh Hariharan, Director, Knowledge Commons, India (previously, Head of Public Policy at Google India)
Maryati Abdullah, National Coordinator, Publish What You Pay, Indonesia (also Steering Committee Member of Open Government Partnership)
Yanuar Nugroho, Director and Expert Adviser to the Head of the President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight (UKP4), Indonesia -- to be confirmed
Tomoaki Watanabe, Executive Research Fellow, Centre for Global Communications, International University of Japan (also Executive Director of Common Sphere - the host of Creative Commons Japan, and Co-founder of Open Knowledge Foundation Japan)
Shita Laksmi, Program Manager, Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative, Hivos Regional Office Southeast Asia
Alvin B. Marcelo, Co-chair, Asia eHealth Information Network

Moderator: Khairil Yusof, Co-founder, Sinar Project, Malaysia (also e-DIRAP team member)
e-DIRAP Hangout Coordinator: Christine Apikul

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/e-dirap-google-hangout-on-open-government

Beyond Property Rights: Thinking About Moral Definitions of Openness

praskrishna — 2013-08-07T09:43:35Z

It is hard for Westerners to realize just how much we take for granted about intellectual property, and in particular, how much the property owner’s perspective--be it a corporation, government or creative artist--is embedded in our view of the world as the natural order of things.

This blog post by David Eaves was published in TECH President on August 6, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

While sharing and copying technologies are disrupting some of the ways we understanding “content,” when you visit a non-Western country like India, the spectrum of choices become broader. There is less timidity wrestling with questions like: should poor farmers pay inflated prices for patented genetically-engineered seeds? How long should patents be given for life-saving medicines that cost more than many make in a year? Should Indian universities spend millions on academic journals and articles? In the United States or other rich countries we may weigh both sides of these questions--the rights of the owner vs. the moral rights of the user--but there’s no question people elsewhere, such as in India, weigh them different given the questions of life and death or of poverty and development.

Consequently, conversations about open knowledge outside the supposedly settled lands of the “rich” often stretch beyond permission-based “fair use” and “creative commons” approaches. There is a desire to explore potential moral rights to use “content” in addition to just property rights that may be granted under statutes.

A couple of months ago I sat down in Bangalore with Sunil Abraham, the founder and executive director of the Center for Internet & Society (CIS) there, to talk about the center, and his views on the role of technology and openness in politics and society. One part of our conversation led to this WeGov column on “I Paid a Bribe” and the challenge of fighting corruption in India using technology. Here I want to reflect further on how Sunil and his counterparts may be radically challenging how we should think about open information more generally.

As we talked, Sunil outlined how people and organizations were using “open” methodologies to advance social movements or create counter power. To explain his view he sketched out the following “map” of IP rights and freedoms to show people use and view the different “permissions” (some legal, some illegal).

As a high-level overview this map offers a general list of the tools at the disposal of citizens interested in playing with intellectual property, particularly as they pursue social justice issues.

At the top of the chart are the various forms of “permissions” that a property owner may (or may not) grant you. Thus at the far left sits the most restrictive IP regime and, as you move right, the user gets more and more freedoms (or, if you take the perspective of property owners, property loses more and more of its formal legal protections and a different notion, of “moral rights,” arises).

The second row divides the permissions and the actors along what Sunil believes is one of the most important permissions - the requirement to attribute (or the freedom not to).

Finally, at the bottom, I’ve placed various actors along the spectrum to both show where they might be positioned in the access debate and/or how they use these tools to advance their aims. Thus someone like Lawrence Lessig, the intellectual father of Creative Commons, might support many uses of information as long as the owner gives permission; whereas groups like the Pirate Party or the Yes Men edge further out into uses that may not appear legitimate to a property owner.

Particularly interesting is Sunil’s decision to include non-legal “permissions” such as ignoring the property holders rights in his spectrum of openness. He sees this as the position of the Pirate Party, which he suggests advocates that people should have the right to do what they want with intellectual property even if they don’t have permission, with the exception, interestingly, of ignoring attribution.

He also includes two even more radical “permissions” – counterfeiting, that is claiming that you created the work – and false attribution – assigning your work to someone else! Sunil sees Anonymous as often using the former and the Yes Men as using the latter. “They (the Yes Men) are playing with the attribution layer,” he says, by conducting actions such as their fake DOW press release about the Bhopal disaster.

Pushing the identity envelope
To Sunil, the big dividing line is less about legal vs. illegal but around this issue of attribution. “This is the most exciting area because this (the non-attribution area) is where you escape surveillance,” he declares.

“All the modern day regulation over IP is trying to pin an individual against their actions and then trying to attach responsibility so as to prosecute them,” Sunil says. “All that is circumvented when you play with the attribution layer.”

This matters a great deal for individuals and organizations trying to create counter power – particularly against the state or large corporate interests. In this regard Sunil is actually linking the tools (or permissions) along the open spectrum to civil disobedience. Of course, such “permissions” are also used by states all the time, such as pretending that a covert action was the responsibility of someone else, or simply denying responsibility for some action.

This, in turn, has some interesting implications.

The first is, that it allows Sunil to weave together a number of groups that might not normally be seen as connected because he can map their strategies or tools against a common axis. Thus Lawrence Lessig, the Yes Man, companies and journalists can all be organized based on what “permissions” they believe are legitimate. For example, journalists and new publishers are often seen as fairly pro-copyright (it protects their work) but they are quite happy to ignore the proprietary rights of a government or corporate document and publish its contents, if they believe that action is in the public interest. Hence their position on the spectrum as “willing to ignore proprietary rights.” (Leave aside government arguments that publishing such documents is “stealing” when, at least in the US, they are technically already not subject to copyright.) However, a credible newspaper or journalist would never knowingly attribute a quote or document to a different person. Attribution remains sacred, even when legal proprietary rights are not.

It also tests the notions of who is actually an IP radical. As Sunil notes: “The more you move to the right the more radical you are. Because everywhere on the left you actually have to educate people about the law, which is currently unfair to the user, before you even introduce them to the alternatives. You aren’t even challenging the injustice in the law! On the right you are operating at a level that is liberated from identity and accountability. You are hacking identity.”

Sunil is thus justifying how the use of “illegal” permissions may actually be a form of civil disobedience that can be recognized as legitimate. This is something journalists confront regularly as well. Many are willing to publish “illegally” obtained leaked documents when they believe that may serve the public good. What is ethical is not always legal and so there position on this chart is more nuanced than one might initially suspect.

This is not to say that Sunil doesn’t believe in the effectiveness of legal approaches. For him this map represents a more complete range of choices an activist can choose from as they try to develop their strategy.

“So what you do, and the specific change you are trying to precipitate, you’ll have to determine what strategy you need. Sometimes working within the left hand group is sufficient. Having a non-derivative, non-commercial license to enable students to access academic works, in India, is good enough… But then, to do what the Yes Men did to DOW Chemicals? You have to be over on the right side.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tech-president-august-6-2013-david-eaves-beyond-property-rights-thinking-about-moral-definitions-openness

A Telegu Wiki Meetup @ CIS

SJ Veera (Telugu Wikipedian) — 2013-09-01T11:30:18Z

Telugu Wikipedians had their monthly meetup at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore on Saturday, July 13, 2013, 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Telugu Wikipedians Arjuna, Ravichandra, Sasi and Rahmanuddin participated in the meetup. Telugu lecturer Gudipati Narayana and Haribabu on behalf of Bengaluru Telugu Tejam also attended the event. Dr. T. Ramakrishna, who translated Aurobindo Ghosh's "Savitri" to Telugu was the chief guest for this meetup. This is the second monthly Telugu Wikipedia workshop in Bangalore.

An Introduction to Telugu Wiki

The workshop began with the mutual introduction and thereafter the participants were briefed about content creation and editing of articles. A practical demonstration was given by creating an article on Bengaluru Telugu Tejam. Arjuna, Ravichandra, Rahmanuddin and Sasi responded to the queries from the participants and clarified their doubts.

Introduction to Savitri

Dr. T. Ramakrishna thereafter gave a presentation of Aurobindo's book "Savitri". He spoke in length about Aurobindo Ghosh, his contributions to the freedom movement of India, and a brief background about Savitri, an epic poem in blank verse based upon a theology from the Mahabharata. Dr. Ramakrishna said that Sri Aurobindo who was a great spiritual leader and a yogi conveyed the message that religion and culture in India are not interlinked or interrelated. He also said that the characters in the present story tells to mankind how to increase spiritual energy.

Telugu Wikipedia Issues and Projects

The following were some of the observations and decisions taken at this meetup:

It was decided to complete the "Telugu Famous Personalities" as soon as possible so that new projects could be taken up.
Narayana has promised to make a plan to train Telugu lecturers and students on Telugu Wikipedia and to release it very soon to TE-Wikipedia
Rahmanuddin proposed to increase participation in Telugu Writers Meetings and Internet Meetings which are held across the globe so that the awareness on TE-Wiki can be increased
Arjuna requested to look into the plans which would answer the issues raised in Telugu Wikipedian Meet
Dr. Ramakrishna felt that more pressure should be brought on the Government of India to increase the usage of Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam.
After completing the current priorities, projects related to Bangalore should be taken up.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/telegu-wiki-meet-up-july-13-2013

Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-08-02T06:27:52Z

A workshop to be held on CPDPS premises on August 6.

This article by R Krishna Kumar was published in the Hindu on August 2, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is quoted.

For those with knowledge of Kannada and basic computer skills, here is an opportunity for posting articles in Kannada on the collaborative and free Wikipedia and facilitate the growth of Kannada online.

To help interested people learn the process of posting their articles on Wikipedia, the Centre for Proficiency Development Placement Service (CPDPS) of the University of Mysore will conduct a one-day workshop on August 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The workshop will be conducted on the CPDPS premises, Manasagangotri, and is being conducted by U.B. Pavanaja of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Niranjana Vanalli, Director, CPDPS, told The Hindu that though Kannada has got the classical language tag and several Kannada writers have got the Jnanpith, Kannada is among the least represented language on Wikipedia in terms of articles in Indian languages, and this workshop is a small step towards correcting these lacunae.

According to Mr. Pavanaja of CIS, Bangalore, though Kannada Wikipedia was launched in June 2003 and this year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the website, there are only 14,500 articles in Kannada.

This is in contrast to nearly 1,00,000 Hindi articles, 52,000 Telugu articles about 52,000 articles in Tamil, 25,000 in Bengali and 30,000 articles in Malayalam in the Wikipedia. There are over 4.6 million articles in English. German and French are close to English and so it is not merely Kannada but all Indian languages that are lagging behind, said Mr. Pavanaja.

However, there is scope for improvement as 13 lakh people visit the Kannada Wikipedia website every month. It definitely means that many people are interested in reading articles in Kannada online, so there is scope for posting more articles for their benefit.

Interestingly Wikipedia, which was launched in January 2001, has articles in 22 Indian languages and 256 languages around the world. There are over 3 crore articles and the number is growing by the day.

There are other significant aspects to the contribution of Indians to the development of Wikipedia. While Kannadigas have taken to the enrichment of Wikipedia in English their contribution to the enrichment of the Kannada section has been abysmal. Incidentally, there are nearly 16 lakh editors of Wikipedia all over the world of which about 5,500 are Indians and of them 3,300 edit and contribute regularly in English. The remaining 2,200 contribute in Indian languages.

According to Mr. Pavanaja, roughly 2 crore Indians regularly visit the Wikipedia site but very few are either contributing or editing.

“Indians were definitely taking advantage of Wikipedia as it gets more than 2 crore hits every year. But the number of Indians contributing to enrich the content is less, more so for Kannada”, he added. Mr. Vanalli, who is a professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Mysore, pointed out that it was ironical that the Kannada was the only Indian language to have an encyclopaedia of its own – Kannada Vishwakosha – published by the University of Mysore. But when it comes to the online collaborative project of Wikipedia, Kannada is lagging behind and this should be reversed.

The workshop will introduce to the participants the features of Wikipedia, and give hands-on demonstration on how to edit and contribute articles. Participants can bring articles of their choice for editing and posting on Wikipedia. For details, contact Director of CPDPS on 0821-2419337/405 or email omegauom@gmail.com for registration.

The workshop will introduce participants to features of Wikipedia, and give demonstration on how to edit and contribute articles

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindu-r-krishna-kumar-august-2-2013-stress-on-posting-articles-on-kannada-wikipedia

Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages

praskrishna — 2013-08-12T04:29:28Z

The number of Wikipedia entries in vernacular languages has grown substantially in the last eight months

This article by Divya Saboo was published in DNA on August 1, 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.

In the last eight months, the number of Wikipedia entries in vernacular languages has grown substantially, says a Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia, where anyone can write and publish, was mainly written in the English language until a few years ago. There is a sudden boom of interest in regional languages on the internet because browsers now support Indian language scripts. Thus, people are now more interested in typing in their mother-tongues. Interestingly, this initiative is fueled by diaspora.

Mahit Gar, who has been working with the Marathi Language Wikipedia, said, “Since the last one year, we have concentrated on improving the quality of the content more. We are ranked #20. There are also some new editing facilities that are being introduced by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMS). We can now write in Marathi as well. 40 per cent of the people can type Marathi well but the rest still find it difficult to do so. The rural people interact mostly with Marathi."

He adds, "We have had this sudden boom because in 2011, we had some conferences with the English Wikipedia team and we talked about how people are not able to communicate without their mother tongues in place. Also, we don't spam. Most people love their mother tongue so they don't touch the content inappropriately (this is not the case with the English Wikipedia).”

Tinu Cherian Abraham who was on the Wikimedia India Chapter talks about how an NRI's love for Malyalam kick-started the project. There are people from all walks of life involved in this project. The collective passion for knowledge of a visually challenged editor of Hindi Wikipedia along with an elderly contributor from Kerala, has aided him in forgetting his ailments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-august-1-2013-divya-saboo-wikipedia-boom-in-vernacular-languages

Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages

praskrishna — 2013-08-01T05:28:28Z

A vibrant vernacular Wikipedia seems to be taking root in India. In the last eight months, the number of Wikipedia entries has grown substantially in 20 Indian languages, says a study by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Times of India on August 1, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

Wiki, the world's largest online encyclopaedia where anyone can write and edit articles, didn't have much content in vernacular till a few years ago. According to the study, Wikis in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi have added thousands of new articles on various subjects from September 2012 to April 2013. A few of these pages were viewed more during this period. Marathi, which had 30 lakh page views per month previously, had another 10 lakh visitors, while Bengali Wikipedia had 14 lakh page views.

While Malayalam Wiki took the top position with an enviable team of 100 plus editors, the number Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit editors came down. "Marathi has 40,000 articles. But most editors in Mumbai prefer to work on English. Pune has more Marathi editors,' says T Vishnu Vardhan, programme director, Access to Knowledge project at CIS.

"In the last two years, the demand for knowledge in Indian languages has grown as we have moved to the motto of 'roti, kapda and internet'," says Vardhan.

One of the reasons for growth is that many browsers now support Indian language scripts. But this was not the case in early 2000. Though many wanted to read and type in their own language, there was no browser support, says Shiju Alex, blogger and Malayalam Wiki editor. Moreover, many didn't know how to type in their mother tongues.

But once Indian languages were encoded in Unicode, the fonts became accessible. "There was no need to write Malayalam in English and people started blogging in their mother tongues," says Alex. According to Vardhan, communities with better literacy rates seem to have taken the lead online.

"Telugu Wiki is stronger as internet penetration in Andhra Pradesh is higher than in places where Bhojpuri or Assamese is spoken."

As with most online language initiatives, the Wiki movement was also fuelled by the diaspora. Tinu Cherian Abraham, a former board member of the Wikimedia India chapter, talks about how an NRI's love for Malayalam kick-started the project.

But now there are many Wiki foot soldiers in India, including a blind editor of Hindi Wikipedia and an elderly contributor from Kerala whose passion for free knowledge has helped him forget his ailments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-august-1-2013-sandhya-soman-wikipedia-boom-in-marathi-malayalam-other-desi-languages