Centre for Internet and Society

Kolkata Wiki Community Meetup

subha — 2013-10-30T10:51:57Z

Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme members T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi met wikipedians in Kolkata. The event was co-organized by the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikipedian community of Kolkata.

The Wikimedia community in the city of joy gathered near Salt lake during Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme team's visit. Four Wikipedians from Kolkata, Wikimedia Foundation's mobile Developer Yuvaraj Pandian and OPW intern Sucheta Ghoshal joined A2K's Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi for this meetup. Vishnu addressed the wikipedians and gave a brief introduction about the programme's objectives and plans. Bengali Wikipedians Jayanta Nath and Kalyan Sarkar shared the success stories and activities in Bengali Wikipedia community. They also discussed about the challenges Indian Bengali wikipedians are facing. Wikipedians discussed few of the technical aspects of Bengali Wikipedia over lunch. Vishnu and Subhashish discussed about the opportunities that could be explored to bring more good quality content relevant to West Bengal and Bengali language over lunch.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wiki-meet-up-kolkata

Wikipedia Workshop in Mangalore — Report in Kannada Prabha

praskrishna — 2013-04-16T04:11:11Z

A workshop was conducted for students of Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management, Mangalore by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja on April 9, 2013. Kannada Prabha published a report about this on the following day, April 10, 2013.

Below is a scanned version of the report published in Kannada Prabha on April 10, 2013:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-prabha-april-10-2013-mangalore-wikipedia-workshop-report

KP Rao feted

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T16:47:29Z

KP Rao who had designed fonts for Indian languages including Kannada and devised the first phonetic keyboard driver for Indian languages, was felicitated at a programme organised at Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management on Tuesday, reports DHNS from Mangalore.

This was published by Deccan Herald on April 10, 2013. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was quoted.

Speaking after the felicitation, he said the biggest challenge in those days was to display and print the characters of our languages.

The computers used and spoke only one language. The system of putting in Indic text phonetically was his invention and all keyboard softwares for Indian languages use this method.

Kannada wikipedia editor UB Pavanaja said Rao had created a mechanism for feeding Indic characters into computers. Later, he released a free software for Kannada called 'Sediyapu,' he said.

Below is a scanned version of the report published in the Deccan Herald:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-april-10-2013-kp-rao-feted

Report of Wiki Workshop in Mangalore

praskrishna — 2013-04-16T06:14:42Z

A wikipedia workshop was organized in Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management, Mangalore on April 9, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the workshop. Prajavani's Mangalore edition published a report about the felicitation to K.P. Rao and about the wikipedia workshop.

Below is the report published in Prajavani on April 10, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-mangalore-edition-april-10-2013-report-of-wikipedia-workshop

Need to develop vernacular languages stressed

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T08:47:29Z

University of Hyderabad (UoH) Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ramakrishna Rama Swamy said on Wednesday that everyone has a duty to contribute to the development of vernacular languages.

The article was published in Hans India on April 11, 2013.

He presided over the Telegu Wikipedia Mahotsavam 2013 being celebrated at the Golden Threshold in Abids. The two-day programme-cum-workshop is being organised in collaboration of the UoH, Theatre Outreach Unit (TOU), Indian wing of Wikipedia and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). While extending support to the Telegu Wikipedia (TW), the Vice-Chancellor said that he had been encouraging the university students to contribute to the site. He advised the organisers to explore opportunities to expose youth to TW.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hans-india-april-11-2014-need-to-develop-vernacular-languages-stressed

Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013

praskrishna — 2013-04-08T04:43:00Z

The Telugu Wikipedia Community is organizing the Telegu Wiki Mahotsavam from April 9 to 11, 2013 in Hyderabad. The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society is supporting and co-organizing the event.

A public event will be held on April 11 from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. at Golden Threshold (Sarojini Naidu's house) in Hyderabad. The main event page, which is in Telugu, is here.

The following activities are scheduled:

April 9, 2013: Wikipedia Academy at Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad (Vishnu Vardhan will be one of the trainers.
April 10, 2013: Wikimedia Meeting with Media Heads. (In one of the sessions Vishnu Vardhan will talk about CIS-A2K work).
April 11, 2013: Telugu Wikipedia General body meeting (Vishnu Vardhan has been asked by Telugu SIG to speak about A2K's plans for the growth of Telugu Wikipedia during 2013-14), Telugu Wikipedia Academy (Vishnu Vardhan will be one of the Trainers), and Wiki Chaitanya Vedika ((A public event), Vishnu has been asked by the Telugu Wiki Community to talk about 'Access to Knowledge' in the digital era).

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/తెలుగు వికీపీడియా మహోత్సవం 2013

మన తెలుగు వికీపీడియా గురించి మన తెలుగు వాళ్ళకి తెలుసా? ఎంతమందికి తెలుసు....?

తెలుగు వికీపీడియా

ఈ ప్రశ్నకి ‘చాలా తక్కువ మందికి’ అన్న జవాబు వెంటనే వస్తుంది. వికీపీడియా తెలుగులో ఒకటి ఉందన్న విషయమే తెలియనప్పుడు కొత్తవాళ్ళు ఎలా వస్తారు...? తెలుగు వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధి ఎలా సాధ్యమవుతుంది...? ఈ సమస్యను అధిగమించాలంటే – ఒక మంచి కార్యక్రమము నిర్వహించడంతోబాటు... దినపత్రిక, ఎలక్ట్రానిక్ మీడియాల లో ప్రముఖంగా ప్రచారం పొందగలిగి నప్పుడు మాత్రమే తెవికీ గురించి కొన్ని వేల మందికి ఏకకాలంలో తెలుస్తుంది. తద్వారా – మన రాష్ట్రంలో, మన దేశంలో, ఇతర దేశాలలో ఉన్న తెలుగు ప్రజలకు చేరువ కాగలుగుతాం...! ఇదే ‘తెలుగు వికీపీడియా సర్వ సభ్య సమావేశం’ ముఖ్య ఉద్దేశ్యం...!

ఈ ఉగాది 'తెలుగు వికీ ఉగాది'
తెలుగు వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధికి మనం అందరం కృషి చేస్తూనే ఉన్నాం. రేపటి తరానికి ఖచ్చితమైన సమాచారాన్ని అందివ్వాలన్న సదుద్దేశ్యంతో నిస్వార్ధంగా కృషి చేస్తున్న మనం అందరం ఒకసారి కలిస్తే ఎంత బాగుంటుందో కదా...! అదీ, తెలుగు ఉగాదినాడు కలిస్తే చెప్పలేనంత సంతోషంగా ఉంటుంది. అందుకే - ఈ ఉగాదిని 'తెలుగు వికీ ఉగాది'గా జరుపుకుందాం.

ఇది సర్వసభ్యసమావేశం, శిక్షణ కార్యక్రమము మరింకా..
వికీని తెలుగు ప్రజలకు పరిచయం చేయడం, తెవికీ విస్తృత అభివృద్ధికి కృషి చెయ్యడం - ఈ ' సర్వ సభ్య సమావేశం ’ ప్రధాన లక్ష్యం. అందరం కలిస్తే లక్ష్య సాధన మరింత సులభమవుతుంది. తెవికీ అక్షర సుసంపన్నమవుతుంది. దీనిలో భాగంగా వికీఅకాడమీ ద్వారా శిక్షణ చైతన్యవేదిక ద్వారా మరింతమందికి తెవికీ పరిచయం చేయటం జరుగుతుంది

33 సంవత్సరాలు జర్నలిస్టుగా అనుభవం ఉన్న మల్లాది కామేశ్వరరావు గారు ప్రతిపాదించగా ఇతర సభ్యులు మద్దతునివ్వగా ఈ ప్రతిపాదన రూపుదిద్దుకుంటున్నది.

ఈ సమావేశం ఉగాది రోజున మన రాజధాని నగరంలో జరపాలని భావిస్తున్నాం . ఈ సమావేశం తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు ప్రత్యేక గుర్తింపు కలిగిస్తుందని పలువురు సభ్యులు భావిస్తున్నారు. తెవికీ సభ్యులలో సరి కొత్త ఉత్సాహం కలిగించి ఒక అభివృద్ధికి దోహదం ఔతుంది. సమావేశంలో పాల్గొనడానికి సభ్యులు తమ అంగీకారం క్రింది విభాగాలలో తెలియచేయాలని కోరడమైనది.

విజయ నామ ఉగాది 'తెలుగు వికీపీడియా మహోత్సవం' ఆహ్వాన కమిటీ

తెలుగు వికీపీడియా మహోత్సవం 2013

థియేటర్ ఔట్రీచ్ యూనిట్ లోగో

అధ్యక్షులు : రహ్మానుద్దీన్
కార్యదర్శి : Malladi kameswara rao
కోశాధికారి : Rajasekhar1961

సిద్ధతా కార్యక్రమ వివరాలు

వికీపీడియా ముందస్తు సమావేశాలు – 2013 కార్యక్రమ రూపం:

మార్చి 17 : మొదటగా హైదరాబాద్ వికీపీడియా సంపాదకుల కార్యవర్గ సమావేశం
మార్చి 24 : హైదరాబాద్ వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకుల సమావేశం
మార్చి 31 : కార్యనిర్వహణ పురోగతి గురించి పరిశీలించడం.
ఏప్రిల్ 7 : కార్యనిర్వహణ పురోగతి మరియు బాధ్యతల సమీక్ష

మహోత్సవం కార్యక్రమ ప్రణాళిక

వికీపీడియా తెలుగు మహోత్సవం, మహోత్సవ ముందస్తు వికీఅకాడెమీ

తేదీ ఏప్రిల్ 9
సమయం : మ. 2 గం॥ నుండి సాయంత్రం 5:30 గం॥ వరకు
వేదిక : సీజీజీ శిక్షణా నిలయం, జూబిలీ హిల్స్

వికీపీడియా - ప్రసార మాధ్యమాల(మీడియా) సదస్సు

తేది:ఏప్రిల్ 10
సమయం : 10 am to 1:00 pm
ప్రదేశం : :::గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాదు

గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, మహోత్సవానికి వేదిక

వికీ పరిచయం

కార్యక్రమ అంశాలు

ఉ. 10.00 - 10.30 --- మీడియా ప్రముఖులతో పరిచయాలు

ఉ. 10.30 - 11.30 --- వికీపీడియా పరిచయం

కార్యక్రమ నిర్వాహకులు : అభిజిత్, పెద్ది రామారావు

మల్లాది కామేశ్వర రావు : ముందుమాట ( సమావేశానికి ఆహ్వానం)
విష్ణువర్ధన్, ప్రాజెక్ట్ డైరెక్టర్ cis A2K: అంతర్జాలంలో సమాచార విప్లవం - వికీపీడియా పాత్ర
అర్జునరావు,వికీమీడియా ఇండియా చాప్టర్ మాజీ అద్యక్షులు : భారతదేశంలో వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధి
చంద్రకాంతరావు, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : తెలుగు వికీపీడియా ప్రస్థానం .........(నిర్ధారణ కావలసి ఉంది)
సుజాత,వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : వికీపీడియా - మహిళల పాత్ర
రహ్మానుద్దీన్, వికీమీడియా ఇండియా చాప్టర్ తెలుగుశాఖ అద్యక్షులు : వికీపీడియా - ఉన్నత సాంకేతికత
రామకృష్ణ రామస్వామి, హైదరాబాద్ విశ్వవిద్యాలయం వైస్ ఛాన్సిలర్ : వికీపీడియా ఆవశ్యకత .......... (నిర్ధారణ కావలసి ఉంది)
-----వీడియో ప్రదర్శన
-----వెన్న నాగార్జున సందేశం ..............(నిర్ధారణ కావలసి ఉంది)

ఉ. 11.30 - 11.45 టీ విరామం
వికీ -మీడియా చర్చాగోష్ఠి: ఉ. 11.30 - 1.00

చర్చాంశం : జ్ఞానసమాజఅభివృద్ధిలో మీడియా, వికీపీడియా పరస్పర సహకారం

సమన్వయకర్త : బండారు శ్రీనివాసరావు, పాత్రికేయులు, విమర్శకులు
సహకారం : పెద్ది రామారావు
వికీపీడియా నుంచి చర్చలో పాల్గొనేవారు

విష్ణువర్ధన్, ప్రాజెక్ట్ డైరెక్టర్ cis A2K
అర్జునరావు,వికీమీడియా ఇండియా చాప్టర్ మాజీ అద్యక్షులు
చంద్రకాంతరావు, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు (నిర్ధారణ కావలసి ఉంది)
సుజాత, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు
రహ్మానుద్దీన్, వికీమీడియా ఇండియా చాప్టర్ తెలుగుశాఖ అద్యక్షులు

మీడియా నుంచి చర్చలో పాల్గొనేవారు : మీడియా ప్రముఖులు
......(నిర్ధారించాలి)

వందన సమర్పణ : డా. రాజశేఖర్, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు
మీడియా సమావేశ విషయ సేకరణ, సమాచార నమోదు - గుళ్ళపల్లి నాగేశ్వరరావు

మ. 1.00 - 2:00 --- భోజనం

వికీపీడియన్ల క్షేత్ర దర్శనం

తేది:ఏప్రిల్ 10

మ. 3-00 -సా 6:00: ఒక ప్రింటు మీడియా (విశాలాంధ్ర దినపత్రిక) మరియు ఎలక్ట్రానిక్ మీడియా (హెచ్.ఎం.టీ.వి.) కార్యాలయం సందర్శన

వికీపీడియన్ల ఇష్టా గోష్టి

తేది:ఏప్రిల్ 10

సమయం : రాత్రి : 7-00 గంటల నుంచి 8-30

ప్రదేశం : :::గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాదు

కార్యక్రమ అంశాలు

తెలుగు వికీపీడియా చేపట్టే కొత్త ప్రాజెక్టులపై వికీ అధికారుల, నిర్వాహకుల చర్చ - ఇష్టా గోష్టి

కార్యక్రమ సమన్వయ కర్తలుగా చంద్రకాంతరావు, సుజాత గార్లు వ్యవహరించాలని సమావేశం ప్రతిపాదిస్తున్నది. ( నిర్ధారించవలసిందిగా విన్నపం.)

వికీపీడియన్ల సర్వ సభ్య సమావేశం

తేది:ఏప్రిల్ 11

సమయం : ఉదయం : 9-00 గంటల నుంచి మధ్యాహ్నం 02:00 వరకు

ప్రదేశం : :::గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాదు

సభనిర్వహణ:చావా కిరణ్, వీవెన్ ( నిర్ధారించవలసివుంది)

కార్యక్రమ అంశాలు

ఉ. 9.00 - 10.00 --- తెవికీ సభ్యుల పరిచయాలు, అల్పాహారం

ఉ. 10.00 - 10.15 --- సౌమ్యన్, వికీమీడియా భారతదేశం చాప్టర్ ఎగ్జిక్యూటివ్ మేనేజర్ : వికీమీడియా భారతదేశం కార్యకలాపాలు

ఉ. 10.15-10.30 --సిఐఎస్ ఎ2కె కార్యకలాపాలు. విష్ణు, ఎ2కె ప్రోగ్రామ్ డైరెక్టరు

ఉ. 10.30-11.00 --మహోత్సవ సందేశాలు

ఉ. 11.00-11.15 -- భారత ప్రగతి ద్వారం నిర్వహణ అనుభవాలు. కథిరేశన్, నార్నె శ్రీనివాసరావు, India Development Gateway

ఉ. 11.15-11.30 --టీ విరామం

ఉ 11.30-11.45 -- ఆర్కీవ్.ఆర్గ్ వికీపీడియా సహకారం... ఆనంద్ చిట్టిపోతు, ఆర్కీవ్.అర్గ్ ఉద్యోగి (స్కైప్ ద్వారా)

ఉ 11.45-12.15 వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధికి ఎ2కె ప్రణాళిక

ఉ 12.15-12.30 స్పందనలు,ప్రాధాన్యతల నిర్ణయం, సభ్యులు

ఉ 12.30 -13.00 మహోత్సవం సిఫారసులు

మ. 1.00 - 2.00 --- భోజనం

ప్రాథమిక వికీ అకాడమీ|ఉన్నత వికీ అకాడమీ

కార్యక్రమ అంశాలు

మ. 2.00 - 3.00 --- ఉన్నత వికీసంపాదకత్వ విషయాలు.

హాట్కేట్, ట్వింకిల్ ఉపకరణాలు, 10ని..... అర్జున
పై వికీపీడియాబాటు తో పని, 20ని ... రహ్మనుద్దీన్
<<అనువైనవి చేర్చండి>>

మ. 3.00-4:00 --సమిష్ఠికృషి

హాట్కేట్ తో వర్గీకరణ,... 20ని, సమన్వయకర్త ....
ఇంగ్లీషు అంతరవికీలింకులు చేర్చుట..20ని సమన్వయకర్త ...
<<అనువైనవి చేర్చండి>>
అనుభవాలు పంచుకొనుట.. 5 ని

ప్రాథమిక వికీపీడియా:తెవికీ అకాడమీ సమావేశ అధ్యక్షుడు:<చొరవ తీసుకొనే సభ్యుని పేరు చేర్చండి> సమావేశ ఉపాధ్యక్షుడు: <చొరవ తీసుకొనే సభ్యుని పేరు చేర్చండి>	ఉన్నత వికీ అకాడమీ సమావేశ అధ్యక్షుడు:<చొరవ తీసుకొనే సభ్యుని పేరు చేర్చండి> సమావేశ ఉపాధ్యక్షుడు: <చొరవ తీసుకొనే సభ్యుని పేరు చేర్చండి>
తేది:ఏప్రిల్ 11 సమయం : మధ్యాహ్నం : 1-30 గంటల నుంచి సాయంత్రం 04:00 వరకు
ప్రదేశం : ....గది,గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాదు	ప్రదేశం:....గది, గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాదు
కార్యక్రమ అంశాలు మ 1:30 -2:00 నమోదు మ. 2.00 - 4.00 పాఠం: 1గం॥ వికీపీడియా చరిత్ర మరియు సింహావలోకనం.10ని.. < వక్త పేరు> కంప్యూటర్ లో తెలుగు కీబోర్డులు ..15ని..< వక్త పేరు> వికీపీడియా విధానాలు-మార్గదర్శకాలు...30ని.. <వక్తపేరు> వికీపీడియా ప్రయోగశాల: 1గం॥ వికీపీడియా లో వెతుకుట వికీపీడియా దిద్దుబాటు వికీపీడియా ప్రయోగశాల (ఇసుకపెట్టె) ను ఉపయోగించడం కరపత్రాలు(నెట్ లో) Welcome to Wikipedia (వికీపీడియాకు స్వాగతం), Wikipedia Article quality (వికీపీడియా వ్యాస-నాణ్యత)

వికీ చైతన్య వేదిక

తేది:ఏప్రిల్ 11

సమయం : సాయంత్రం: 04-30 గంటల నుంచి రాత్రి 08:00 వరకు

ప్రదేశం : :::గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్, అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాదు

పాల్గొనే వారు:వికీపై ఆసక్తి గలవారందరు

కార్యక్రమ అంశాలు

సా. 04:30-05:00 పాల్గొనేవారి నమోదు

సా. 5.00 - 8.00 --కార్యక్రమం

మల్లాది కామేశ్వర రావు : స్వాగతం: సమావేశం నేపథ్యం
ముఖ్య అతిధి

మంగళగిరి ఆదిత్య ప్రసాద్, ఆకాశవాణి హైదరాబాద్ స్టేషన్ డైరెక్టర్ : అంతరించి పోతున్న తెలుగు అక్షరం

జ్యోతి ప్రజ్వలన ................. అతిధులు

అమరనాథ్ రెడ్డి, CEO, IEG- Govt of AP : (నిర్ధారణ కావలసి ఉంది)
పెద్ది రామారావు, ప్రాజెక్ట్ కో ఆర్డినేటర్, ధియేటర్ ఔట్రిచ్ యూనిట్ : వికీపీడియా - నాటకకళ
బండారు శ్రీనివాసరావు, పాత్రికేయులు, విమర్శకులు : అక్షరాన్ని కాపాడుకుందాం

వక్తలు

సౌమ్యన్, కార్యనిర్వాహక మేనేజర్ వికీమీడియా భారతదేశం, వికీమీడియా భారతదేశం అవలోకనం, (నిర్థారించాలి)
రహ్మానుద్దీన్, వికీమీడియా ఇండియా చాప్టర్ తెలుగు విశేష అభిరుచి జట్టు అధ్యక్షులు : తెలుగు వికీపీడియా పరిచయం.
చంద్రకాంతరావు, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : దిద్దుబాట్లు, సూచనలు - (నిర్ధారణ కావలసి ఉంది)
సుజాత, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : వికీపీడియా - దిద్దుబాట్లు ఎలా చేయాలి
వీవెన్, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : అంతర్జాలంలో తెలుగు
జె.వి.ఆర్.కె.ప్రసాద్, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : విక్షనరీ
పాలగిరి రామకృష్ణా రెడ్డి, వికీపీడియా సభ్యులు : వికీపీడియాలో సైన్స్ ప్రాముఖ్యత
విశ్వనాధ్ బి.కె, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : భారతీయ సంస్కృతి , పుణ్యక్షేత్రాలు
డా. రాజశేఖర్, వికీపీడియా నిర్వాహకులు : వికీపీడియా - నిన్న, నేడు, రేపు ... వైద్యం
విష్ణువర్ధన్, ప్రాజెక్ట్ డైరెక్టర్ cis A2K : విజ్ఞాన విషయాలను పంచుకుందాం.
అనంతరం ఆహ్వానితులకు మరియు వికీపీడియన్లకు ప్రశంసా పత్రాల, మెమెంటోల ప్రదానం
జాతీయ గీతంతో వందన సమర్పణ

దారిఖర్చులు మరియు విడిది

హైదరాబాదుకు బయటనుండి వచ్చు వికీపీడియన్లకు ప్రయాణ మరియు వసతి సౌకర్యం:

హైదరాబాదుకు బయటనుండి సమావేశానికి హాజరుకావాలనుకొంటున్న వికీపీడియా సభ్యులకు ప్రయాణ మరియు వసతి సౌకర్యము (ఇద్దరు లేక ఎక్కువ మంది రూము పంచుకొనే ప్రాతిపదికన) కల్పించటానికి (రైలు ఎసి టు టైర్ చార్జీలకు లోబడి అయిన ఖర్చులకు) Access to Knowledge-CIS, బెంగుళూరు వారు పరిమిత నిధులు కేటాయించారు. డిసెంబరు 31, 2012 నాటికి తెలుగు వికీప్రాజెక్టులు అన్నిటిలో కలిపి కనీసం 50 (ఏభై) మార్పులు చేసినవారు దీనికి అర్హులు. ఈ సౌకర్యం "మొదలు వచ్చినవారికి ముందు" ప్రాతిపదికన ఇవ్వబడుతుంది. ఆసక్తిగల సభ్యులు త్వరగా ఈ పేజీలోని ' తప్పక హాజరవుతున్న సభ్యుల ' విభాగంలో మీ పేరు(వికీ సంతకం ద్వారా) మరియు ఊరు నమోదు చేసుకొనమని కోరడమైనది. వికీ "సభ్యులు టికెట్టు మూలప్రతి (original) ఇస్తూ ఖర్చుధృవపత్రం (voucher) పై సంతకం చేయవలసి వుంటుంది. ఇది CIS-A2K ఆడిటర్ వారి నిభంధన కావున సభ్యులు మన్నించాలని అభ్యర్దన.

సమావేశం నిర్వాహకులు

Malladi kameswara rao (చర్చ) 06:49, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
Bhaskaranaidu (చర్చ) 10:42, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)]]
జె.వి.ఆర్.కె.ప్రసాద్ (చర్చ) 10:58, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC) (కొంతవరకు చేయగలను/కొన్ని పనులకు వాడుకొనగలరు)
Rajasekhar1961 (చర్చ) 05:21, 15 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
రహ్మానుద్దీన్ (చర్చ) 21:00, 16 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
<<పైన మీసంతకం చేర్చండి>>

సహాయం

వికీమీడియా భారతదేశం
సి.ఐఎస్. ఎ2కె
థియేటర్ ఔట్రీచ్ యూనిట్

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొనే సభ్యులు

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొనడానికి ఆసక్తి ఉన్న సభ్యులు ఈ జాబితాలో మీ పేరును(వికీసంతకంద్వారా), (ఊరునుహైద్రాబాదు బయటనుండి వస్తున్నట్లయితే) చేర్చండి.

తప్పక పాల్గొనేవారు

t.sujatha (చర్చ) 05:06, 13 మార్చి 2013 (UTC), చెన్నై
Rajasekhar1961 (చర్చ) 06:11, 13 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
జె.వి.ఆర్.కె.ప్రసాద్, విజయవాడ. (చర్చ) 06:11, 13 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)(అననుకూల స్థితి, పరిస్థితులలో తప్ప, హాజరులో మార్పు ఉండదు.)
Malladi kameswara rao (చర్చ) 06:49, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
Bhaskaranaidu (చర్చ) 10:39, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
విశ్వనాధ్ (చర్చ) 07:35, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
kbssarma
విష్ణు (చర్చ)04:15, 15 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
రహ్మానుద్దీన్ (చర్చ) 21:00, 16 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
సుమంత్
Pranayraj1985 (చర్చ)
పవి (చర్చ) 04:49, 25 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
అర్జున (చర్చ) 23:19, 27 మార్చి 2013 (UTC), బెంగుళూరు
rajachandra(చర్చ) 10:19, 30 మార్చి 2013 (UTC), చెన్నై
బండి. శ్రీనివాస్
పాలగిరి (చర్చ) 04:04, 1 ఏప్రిల్ 2013 (UTC)
విజయ్
cbrao (చర్చ) 06:55, 2 ఏప్రిల్ 2013 (UTC)]]
Maheshbandaru (చర్చ) 10:52, 2 ఏప్రిల్ 2013 (UTC)
YVSREDDY (చర్చ) 16:02, 5 ఏప్రిల్ 2013 (UTC)
Malkum (చర్చ) 20:06, 5 ఏప్రిల్ 2013 (UTC)
S.K.Pasalapudi,Rajahmundry,(తప్పక హాజరు)
ప్రసాదు (చర్చ) 15:13, 6 ఏప్రిల్ 2013 (UTC)

బహుశా పాల్గొనేవారు

పోటుగాడు అదేరోజు వేరొక ముఖ్యమైన పని ఉన్నది. వీలును బట్టి పాల్గొంటాను.
కూచిమంచిప్రసాద్ పాల్గొనడానికి ప్రయత్నిస్తానుకూచిమంచిప్రసాద్ (చర్చ) 17:38, 14 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
Mylaptops (నేను బంజారా హిల్స్ రోడ్డు నెం 1 లో, సాక్షి ఆఫీసు వెనుక ఉంటున్నాను. వాహన సౌకర్యం లేదు. అయినా ఆదివారం పాల్గొనటానికి ప్రయత్నిస్తాను.(భూపతిరాజు రమేష్ రాజు) (Mylaptops (చర్చ) 07:31, 15 మార్చి 2013 (UTC))
రాధాక్రిష్ణ (చర్చ) 14:17, 25 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)
వాడుకరి:డా.రామక పాండురంగశర్మ(తప్పక పాల్గొనే ప్రయత్నం చేస్తాను)

పాల్గొనటానికి వీలుకానివారు: గమనిక: సమావేశానికి వీలుకాని సభ్యులు/నిర్వాహకులు/అధికారులు తమ సందేశాన్ని వీడియో/ఆడియో/టెక్స్టు ఈ వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/2013 తెవికీసమావేశం/సభ్యుల అభినందనలు ఇంకా సూచనలు విభాగంలో చేర్చండి. వాటిని సమావేశం సమయంలో అందరికీ తెలియజేస్తాము.

ఖాదర్ - హైదరాబాదు వెలుపల ఉండటం వలన హాజరుకాలేక పోతున్నాను.
శశి (చర్చ) 20:53, 15 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)బెంగుళూరు లో ఉండటం వలన, ఉగాదికి సెలవు లేకపోవటం వలన హాజరు కాలేను.
కె. వి. రమణ. చర్చ 13:58, 16 మార్చి 2013 (UTC) (వ్యక్తిగత పనుల వల్ల హాజరు కాలేను)
వైజాసత్య (చర్చ) 21:40, 16 మార్చి 2013 (UTC) (నేను ఆంధ్రదేశంలో లేకపోవటం వలన)
Nrahamthulla (చర్చ) 07:12, 17 మార్చి 2013 (UTC)(వ్యక్తిగత పనుల వల్ల హాజరు కాలేను)
Tsnpadma (చర్చ) 11:19, 23 మార్చి 2013 (UTC) (వ్యక్తిగత పనుల వల్ల హాజరు కాలేను)
<<పైన మీసంతకం చేర్చండి>>

వర్గాలు: వికీపీడియా	వికీపీడియా సమావేశాలు

ఈ పేజీకి 03:58, 8 ఏప్రిల్ 2013న చివరి మార్పు జరిగినది.
పాఠ్యం క్రియేటివ్ కామన్స్ అట్రిబ్యూషన్/షేర్-అలైక్ లైసెన్సు క్రింద లభ్యం; అదనపు షరతులు వర్తించవచ్చు. మరిన్ని వివరాలకు వాడుక నియమాలను చూడండి.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/telegu-wiki-mahotsavam-2013

The Fifth Elephant 2013

praskrishna — 2013-04-08T04:11:25Z

HasGeek is organizing the Fifth Elephant from July 11 to 13, 2013 at the NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore. Workshops on open source technologies and enterprise solutions will be held on July 11, 2013. You can participate in workshops only, conference only or both.

Data is most sought after. Yet, much remains unknown, especially about how to extract intelligence from data, how to build products from data, and which are the latest fast, secure, efficient and inexpensive technologies available for storing data.

If these questions interest you, come to the The Fifth Elephant – an annual big data, cloud computing and analytics conference. The Fifth Elephant 2013 will feature engineering and business talks on storage, databases, processing, metrics, statistical modelling, mathematical analysis, visualization and cloud computing. We will host panel discussions and open houses to understand how to use and apply data in different domains – e-commerce, journalism and business processes.

For more details, visit fifthelephant.in/2013, funnel.hasgeek.com/fifthel2013, and hasgeek.tv/fifthelephant, or contact info@hasgeek.com, 080-67684422

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/fifth-elephant-2013

Odia Wikipedia - Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (March 17, 2013)

subha — 2013-04-30T03:52:05Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society and the Odia Wikipedia community held a meetup in Bhubaneswar on March 17, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this meet-up.


A picture of Wikipedians from the Bhubaneswar meetup held on March 17, 2013

The aim of this meetup was to discuss the current state of Odia Wikipedia and understand the community building strategies for this year. Wikipedians shared their motivation and experience for editing Wikipedia. Challenges, plans and new project ideas were discussed. A new project on articles about the Villages, Pachayats, Blocks of Odisha was decided to be rolled as a key project by the community. This would be useful to generate large volume of useful content on places of Odisha and involve new wikipedians from various places to contribute to articles of the their places.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-meet-up-bhubaneswar-march-17-2013

Odia Wikipedia - Cuttack Community Meetup (March 16, 2013)

subha — 2013-07-17T06:40:11Z

A meetup of Odia wikipedians was organised by the Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet and Society and the Odia wikipedia community on March 16, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meetup.


Participants from the Wikipedia meetup held on March 16, 2013

Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme members T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi met Odia Wikipedians in Cuttack to discuss about the current state of Odia Wikipedia and understand the community building strategies. Five active wikipedians from Cuttack and one from Bhubaneswar joined and discussed about various challenges the community is facing. New project ideas were discussed. Wikipedians also shared their stories and motivation. A new project on articles about the Villages, Pachayats, Blocks of Odisha was decided to be rolled as a key project on this day.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-cuttack-community-meetup-march-16-2013

2nd Odia Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

praskrishna — 2013-04-01T10:17:22Z

The event is being organized today, April 1, 2013 online by the Odia Wikipedia Community, from 10.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. The Centre for Internet and Society is supporting this event.

Click to read about the event on Facebook

"ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଦିବସ - ୨୦୧୩" ଉପଲକ୍ଷେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ମିଳିତ ଗଣ-ସମ୍ପାଦନା ତଥା ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ସହ "ଅନଲାଇନ ଓଡ଼ିଶା ଦିବସ ପାଳନ" . ଏହି ଦିନ ଆମେ କଣ କରିବୁ: ସକାଳ ୧୦ ଘଟିକାରୁ ନେଇ ସନ୍ଧ୍ୟା ୭ ଘଟିକା ଭିତରେ ଆମେମାନେ ନିଜ ନିଜର ଗାଁ, ପଞ୍ଚାୟତ, ସ‌ହର ଉପରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗମାନ ତିଆରି କରିବୁ । କେମିତି ତିଆରିକରିବେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ:

୧. http://or.wikipedia.org/s/ 8b -> ଏହି ଲିଙ୍କଙ୍କୁ ଯାଇ ଉପରେ ଥିବେ "Type in Odia" କୁ ଯାଇ "Enable (Ctrl-M)" ରେ କ୍ଲିକ କରନ୍ତୁ । ଖୋଜିବା ପାଇଁ ଥିବା ଘରେ ନିଜ ଗାଁର ନାମ ଟାଇପ କରନ୍ତୂ ।

This ia a mass article writing event or Edit-a-thon on the occasion of "Odisha Dibasa -2013". We are inviting you to join and take part in creating articles about your villages, Grama Pachayata, Block on Odia Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odia-wikipedia-editathon

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — March 2013

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T16:47:20Z

In the third issue of our newsletter for 2013, we are pleased to bring you updates from the Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project, reports of events organised in Goa, and press coverage of the Kannada Wikipedia Workshop held in Mysore.

The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval, and one member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who is working from Bangalore office.

Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

Visualising Basic Parameters (by Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, March 26, 2013): Sajjad and Sumandro bring you a visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedia in this first post on Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project.

Events Organised

Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa (organised by CIS, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Goa, March 7, 2013). The Access to Knowledge team was invited by Nikhil Dixit from BITS to organise a Wikipedia editing session. Nitika Tandon led the editing session.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organised by CIS, Institution of Engineers, JLB Road, Mysore, March 24, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led the event.

Events Co-organised

Wiki Women's Day in Goa (organised by the Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS, Nirmala Institute of Education, Panaji, Goa, March 8, 2013). Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop held on International Working Women's Day, and shares the developments in this report.
Wikipedia Workshop for Kannada Science Writers (organised by Wikimedia Chapter India, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath and CIS, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath Conference Hall, Banashankari 2nd Stage, Bangalore, March 17, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event.

Upcoming Event (Co-organised)

Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013 (co-organised with the Telegu Wikipedia community, Hyderabad, April 9 to 11, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan is participating in this event as a speaker. A public event will be held on April 11 from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. at Golden Threshold (Sarojini Naidu's house) in Hyderabad.

Events Participated In

Wikipedia Women's Workshop Bangalore 2013 (organised by Wikimedia India, Servelots Infotech, Jayanagar, Bangalore, March 8, 2013). The event was covered by Kannada Prabha on March 9, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event.
Wikipedia at Avenir (organised by the Wikipedia community, Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, West Bengal, March 11, 2013). CIS supported the event.

Event Report from Other Organisations

Wikipedia Community members helped the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications Programme (HEIRA) of CSCS Bangalore organize a day-long workshop on ‘Digital Literacy’ at Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, Maharasthra on January 17, 2013. Tanveer Hasan of HEIRA shares with us the developments in this report.

Media Coverage

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop, Mysore (Prajavani, March 25, 2013).

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We have conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.

CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

Support Us

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

Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-march-2013

March 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-04-14T11:45:29Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the third issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you an overview of our research programs, updates of events organised by us, events we participated in, news and media coverage, and videos of some of our recent events.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge and Openness), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One of this is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another is for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and many other organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Lakshadweep, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh:

The Lakshadweep Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, March 25, 2013): The union territory of Lakshadweep has not passed any legislation for persons with disabilities, but implements the provisions under the central laws. The benefits currently available to persons with disabilities in Lakshadweep include disability pension, unemployment allowance and grant for setting up kiosks.
The Meghalaya Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, March 25, 2013): Meghalaya is one of the few north-eastern states, which has appointed a Commissioner for Disabilities. Most of the schemes and benefits given to persons with disabilities in Meghalaya are under centrally sponsored schemes. Very few schemes are initiated by the state government.
The Uttar Pradesh Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, March 31, 2013): The Government of Uttar Pradesh has established shelter homes and vocational training centres in several parts of the states — most recently in Meerut, Bareilly and Gorakhpur. It has also undertaken to finance nearly 4340 corrective surgeries for polio across nine cities of Uttar Pradesh. It also intends to start several projects in 2013. These include the establishment of a Braille Press in order to produce Braille books, magazines and other study material.

Resources
We now have a new section on our website which contains all government notifications, RTI applications, and accessibility related resources: cases, statutes, etc. The following were published earlier this month:

Information about Schemes for Disabled Persons in Haryana We received this notification on schemes and policies for persons with disabilities from the Government of Haryana.
Haryana Government Notification (Hindi version): The notification that we received from the state government was in Hindi. We will put up the English translation soon.
West Bengal (Govt) Notifications: We received a series of notifications from the West Bengal Government from its various departments such as finance, higher education, transport, health and family welfare, labour, land and land reforms, panchayats and rural development, etc. OCR versions of the same have been published.
Lakshadweep (Govt) Notifications: Notifications received from the Lakshadweep Government including guidelines for functioning of KIOSKS, grant of unemployment allowance and special jobs to persons with disabilities, issuing identity card to persons with disabilities for availing government benefits, etc., are published. OCR versions have also been put up.

Event Participated In

A Discussion on Intercept between UNCRPD & CEDAW (organized by the Shanta Memorial Institute of Rehabilitation – Odisha, CBR Network and Mitra Jyoti, Bangalore, Karnataka, February 4, 2013): Anandhi Viswanathan participated in this event.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval, and one team member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who is working from Bangalore office.

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

Visualising Basic Parameters (by Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, March 26, 2013): Sajjad and Sumandro bring you a visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedia in this first post on Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project. They look into the different aspects of the past and present activities of Indic Wikipedias, and divide the visualisation into three different focus areas: (1) basic parameters, (2) geographic patterns of edits, and (3) exploring the topics that receives the greatest number of edits.

Events Organised

Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa (organised by CIS, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Goa, March 7, 2013). The Access to Knowledge team was invited by Nikhil Dixit from BITS to organise a Wikipedia editing session. Nitika Tandon led the session on IP editing.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organised by CIS, Institution of Engineers, JLB Road, Mysore, March 24, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led this workshop.

Events Co-organised

Wiki Women's Day in Goa (organised by the Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS, Nirmala Institute of Education, Panaji, Goa, March 8, 2013). Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop held on International Working Women's Day, and shares the developments in this report.
Wikipedia Workshop for Kannada Science Writers (organised by Wikimedia India Chapter, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath and CIS, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath Conference Hall, Banashankari 2nd Stage, Bangalore, March 17, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013 (co-organised with the Telegu Wikipedia community, Hyderabad, April 9 to 11, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan is participating in this event as a speaker. A public event will be held on April 11 from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. at Golden Threshold (Sarojini Naidu's house) in Hyderabad.

Events Participated

Wikipedia Women's Workshop Bangalore 2013 (organised by Wikimedia India, Servelots Infotech, Jayanagar, Bangalore, March 8, 2013). The event was covered by Kannada Prabha on March 9, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event.
Wikipedia at Avenir (organised by the Wikipedia community, Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, West Bengal, March 11, 2013). CIS supported this event.

Event Report from Other Organisations
Wikipedia Community members helped the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications Programme (HEIRA) of CSCS Bangalore to organize a day-long workshop on ‘Digital Literacy’ at Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, Maharasthra on January 17, 2013. Tanveer Hasan of HEIRA shares with us the developments in this report.

Other Openness Updates

Event Report

Iraqi Public Data Scenario Workshop: A Summary (by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, March 26, 2013): A workshop on public data was conducted by Sunil Abraham and Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the officials of the Government of Iraq. It was organized by UNDP Iraq in Amman, Jordan from October 18 to 23, 2012. Sumandro Chattapadhyay shares with us the developments from the workshop held over five days.

Event Participated

Open DataCamp - 2013 (organized by Open Data Camp, Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram (inside Christ University Campus), Dairy Circle, Bangalore, March 2 and 3, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works from the CIS office in Bengaluru.

Upcoming Events

Pig Workshop (organized by HasGeek, Alchemy Solutions, Domlur, Bangalore, 9.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.): A workshop on how to use Pig for mining useful information from data. It is open to programmers who have a background in Java programming, some familiarity with Hadoop and MapReduce algorithms, and have worked with large chunks of data.
The Fifth Elephant 2013 (organized by HasGeek, July 11 to 13, 2013, NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore).

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes. Currently, CIS is doing a project with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression.

Privacy

Policy

Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill (April 2012): High Level Concerns (by Elonnai Hickok, March 12, 2013). The post examines the high level concerns that CIS has with the April 2012 draft of the Bill.
Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 Analysis (by Jeremy Gruber, Council for Responsible Genetics, US, March 19, 2013). Jeremy provides an analysis of the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012. He says that India’s updated 2012 Human DNA Profiling Bill offers largely superficial changes from its predecessor, the Draft DNA Profiling Bill, 2007.

The Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013: A Citizen's Draft (by Bhairav Acharya, March 26, 2013). Bhairav Acharya has drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013. It contains provisions that speak to data protection, interception, and surveillance and also establishes the powers and functions of the Privacy Commissioner, and lays out offenses and penalties for contravention of the Bill. The Bill represents a citizen's version of possible privacy legislation for India, and will be shared with key stakeholders including civil society, industry, and government.

Upcoming Events

A Privacy Round Table in Delhi (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, April 3, 2013).
A Privacy Round Table in Bangalore (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Jayamahal Palace, Jayamahal Road, Bangalore, April 20, 2013).

Event Organized

Analyzing the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 (organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, March 1, 2013): Maria Xynou shares a summary of the workshop in this report.

Events Participated In

Global Partners Meeting @ London (organized by Privacy International, London School of Economics and Political Science, March 22 – 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham and Malavika Jayaram participated in the event.
India’s Civil Liberties Crisis: Of Bans, Blocks, Bullying and Biometrics (organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, March 28, 2013). Malavika Jayaram participated as a speaker.
Future of Privacy in India (organized by DSCI and ICOMP, Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi, April 5, 2013). Sunil Abraham is a speaker at this event.

Blog Posts

Hacking without borders: The future of artificial intelligence and surveillance (by Maria Xynou, March 15, 2013). In this post, Maria looks at some of DARPA´s artificial intelligence surveillance technologies in regards to the right to privacy and their potential future use in India.
Driving in the Surveillance Society: Cameras, RFID tags and Black Boxes... (by Maria Xynou, March 26, 2013). Maria examines red light cameras, RFID tags and black boxes used to monitor vehicles in India.
Microsoft Releases its First Report on Data Requests by Law Enforcement Agencies around the World (by Maria Xynou, March 27, 2013). CIS presents Microsoft´s report on law enforcement requests, with a focus on data requested by Indian law enforcement agencies.
The Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2013 — Penalising 'Peeping Toms' and Other Privacy Issues (by Divij Joshi, March 31, 2013). The pending amendments to the Indian Penal Code, if passed in their current format, would be a huge boost for individual physical privacy by criminalising stalking and sexually-tinted voyeurism and removing the ambiguities in Indian law which threaten the privacy and dignity of individuals.

IT Act

Featured Blog Post

CIS Welcomes Standing Committee Report on IT Rules (by Pranesh Prakash, March 27, 2013). CIS welcomes the report by the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation, in which it has lambasted the government and has recommended that the government amend the Rules it passed in April 2011 under section 79 of the Information Technology Act. The post was quoted in: The Times of India (March 28, 2013), The Statesman (March 28, 2013), Economic Times (March 28, 2013), Data Quest (March 28, 2013), and The Hindu (April 1, 2013).

Submissions
Bhairav Acharya, on behalf of CIS submitted comments to the Committee on Subordinate Legislation of the 15^th Lok Sabha for the following rules:

Comments on the Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules, 2011. The Rules were notified by the Central Government in the Gazette of India vide Notification GSR 316(E) on April 11, 2011.
Comments on the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011. The Rules were notified by the Central Government in the Gazette of India vide Notification GSR 313(E) on April 11, 2011.
Comments on the Information Technology (Guidelines for Cyber Cafe) Rules, 2011. The Rules were notified by the Central Government in the Gazette of India vide Notification GSR 315(E) on April 11, 2011.

Note: The above rules were submitted earlier but published on our website only recently.

Unique ID Project

Event Organized

Unique Identity Number (UID), National Population Register (NPR), and Governance (organized by CIS and Say No to UID Campaign, TERI, Bangalore, March 2, 2013): CIS interviewed Usha Ramanathan and Anant Maringanti. Watch the videos uploaded in this blog post by Maria Xynou. This was covered in newzfirst on March 3, 2013 and in the Hindu on March 3, 2013.

Interview

Unique Identification Scheme (UID) & National Population Register (NPR), and Governance (by Elonnai Hickok, March 14, 2013). The post examines the UID, NPR and Governance as it exists in India. A video on the UID interview Questions and Answers is published.

News and Media

Indian ID crisis unveils Aadhaar doubts (ZDNet, March 14, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
New $1 Billion RIC Project Casts Doubts on Aadhaar (AEG India, March 16, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Blog Entry

India's Biometric Identification Programs and Privacy Concerns (by Divij Joshi, March 31, 2013).

Free Speech and Expression

News and Media

Foreign Funding of NGOs (by Prashant Reddy, Open Magazine, March 2, 2013).
Iceland’s proposed porn ban ‘like repression in Iran, N. Korea’ – activists (RT, March 1, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Chidambaram to Talk Budget on Google+ Hangout (by Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Responding to govt requests is a challenge for online firms: Colin Maclay (LiveMint, March 13, 2013). Colin M. Maclay, managing director of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard mentioned CIS.
Indian police set up lab to monitor social media (originally published by AFP, March 18, 2013, and also carried in Global Post on the same day). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Namaste, Mr. Eric Schmidt (by R. Jai Krishna, Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Parliament panel blasts govt over ambiguous internet laws (by Ishan Srivastava, The Times of India, March 28, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
What if the Net shut down for a few days (by Atul Sethi, The Times of India, March 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Press controls ‘send wrong message to rest of world’ (by Jerome Starkey from Johannesburg, Francis Elliott from Delhi and David Brown, The Times, UK).

Event Organized

Freedom Song: Film Screening and Discussion (IIHS Bangalore City Campus, March 21, 2013). Freedom Song, a documentary film produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust and directed by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Subi Chaturvedi was screened.

Events Participated In

Is Social Media Incredible? (organized by Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bangalore, March 2, 2013). Snehashish Ghosh participated in a panel discussion. The New Indian Express published a post-event report.
Rethinking the Internet: The Way Forward (organized by Telecom Italia and Financial iTimes, Telecom Italia Future Centre, Italy, March 21 – 22, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in this event.

Others

Events Organised

DML 2013: Fourth Annual Conference (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013). We had a special track that ran through the conference on "Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)". Noopur Raval was one of the 16 presenters that we had selected on the tracks. Nishant Shah was one of the members in the Conference Committee.

Blog Posts

WGIG+8: Stock-Taking, Mapping, and Going Forward (Fontenoy Building, conference room # 7, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, February 27, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was the moderator for the session. A summary of the discussion has been published.
What’s In a Name? — DNS Singularity of ICANN and the Gold Rush (by Sharath Chandra Ram, March 31, 2013). March 2013 being the 28th birthday of the first ever registered Internet domain as well as the exigent launch of the Trademark Clearing House disguised as a milestone in rights protection by ICANN for its new gTLD program, Sharath Chandra Ram, dissects the transitory role of ICANN from being a technical outfit to the Boardroom Big Brother of Internet Governance.
An Introduction to Bitfilm & Bitcoin in Bangalore, India (by Benson Samuel, March 12, 2013). Video of the event organized by CIS on January 23, 2013 is published in this blog post.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project on Internet Access. It covers the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access and will touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Upcoming Event
We are hosting an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registration and relevant details will be announced soon on our website.

The following units have been published:

Internet Protocols (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, March 18, 2013).
How email works, how do you get your email? Email Protocols (SMTP, POP, IMAP), SPAM/Phishing (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, March 19, 2013).
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (by Snehashish Ghosh, March 19, 2013).
ITU sectors — ITU-R, ITU-T, ITU-D, etc. (by Snehashish Ghosh, March 27, 2013).
World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (by Snehashish Ghosh, March 29, 2013).

Telecom

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

Newspaper Column

Are India's Glory Days Over? (by Shyam Ponappa, Organizing India Blogspot, March 8, 2013, originally published in the Business Standard, March 6, 2013).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Events Participated In

Video Vortex # 9 Re:assemblies of Video (organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, Post Media Lab, Moving Image Lab, Leuphana, et.al, February 28 – March 2, 2013). Nishant Shah gave the key note. Videos of the event are published.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers @ Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University

Event Co-organised

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (co-organised with Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah was a speaker at this event. He made a presentation on network ontologies.

Event Participated

Korean Trans Cine-Media in Global Contexts: Asia and the World (organized by Trans-Asia Screen Culture Institute, Cinema Studies, Korean National University of Arts, Korean Film Archive and Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University, Seoul, March 27 – 29, 2013). Nishant Shah was a speaker at this event. He spoke on "The Asian Intercourse: Reimagining the Inter-Asia moment through ‘net-porn’ in networks".

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

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Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

Support Us

Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2013-bulletin

Wikipedia Indian Languages Workshop at IIT, Bombay

noopur — 2013-03-28T11:44:04Z

This is a brief report on the Wikipedia Indian languages workshop held on March 9, 2013 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in partnership with Vaani, the Hindi bloggers' club at IIT, Bombay.

Vaani is a group of students at the institute who maintain personal blogs in Hindi language. They upload stories, poems and other original material in Hindi and hold regular meetings as a part of Vaani. Their motive is to conserve and promote the love for native languages, especially that of Hindi.

The A2K team had proposed a meeting and workshop to Vaani students earlier in February but it was eventually scheduled in March. The date also coincided with Women's day celebrations which gave us an opportunity to discuss questions of gender, access, knowledge bias on Wikipedia and more. It was attended by 17 participants and was coordinated by Apoorv Maheshwari from Vaani.

The participant group was diverse – it consisted of doctoral students from humanities as well as sciences and a few graduate students from different departments. Before talking about how to contribute to Wikipedia, we had a round of introductions and questions from participants about what they wanted to know. Most of the participants had seen the 'edit' button and had clicked on it but were clueless beyond that. They also wanted to know about the style guide to writing articles on Wikipedia. After initial discussions and a few edits on English Wikipedia, we moved to exploring Indian language Wikipedias. Surprisingly, only a few of them knew that Wikipedia exists in Indian languages. This led to questions of font support, readership and contribution – who contributes to Indian Wikipedias, why one should contribute and more.

Unfortunately, since the institute's IP address has been reported and blocked for vandalism, we could not make user accounts on the spot. However, they tried their hand at editing to understand the process itself. Another challenge while doing workshops with Indian language Wikipedias is font support for individual computers that participants bring. Perhaps there is a need to carry support documentation and tools (keyboard layouts and free fonts). Towards the end, they expressed an interest in a longer Wikipedia program for all the bloggers on campus in different languages.

We thank the members of Vaani for their support and participation and hope to build and sustain this relationship further.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-workshop-at-iit-bombay

Iraqi Public Data Scenario Workshop: A Summary

Sumandro Chattapadhyay — 2013-04-02T04:55:26Z

A workshop on public data was conducted by Sunil Abraham and Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the officials of the Government of Iraq. It was organized by UNDP Iraq in Amman, Jordan from October 18 to 23, 2012. Sumandro Chattapadhyay shares with us the developments from the workshop held over five days.

Introduction

Last year, Sunil Abraham and Sumandro Chattapadhyay were invited by UNDP Iraq to facilitate a series of two workshops for Iraqi government officials on the subject of government data policy and use cases. The workshops were coordinated and co-facilitated by Abeer Fawaeer of UNDP Iraq.

The first workshop involved an engaged discussion of international best practices in government data policies, followed by development of a draft public data policy for the Government of Iraq. The second workshop focused on building scenarios of inter-ministerial and inter-departmental data sharing and visualisation.

The purpose of the latter workshop was to discuss the data challenges faced by Iraqi government officials in collecting, archiving, sharing and using datasets for governmental activities. Responding to the challenges shared by the participants, the workshop explored various international best practices and FLOSS tools for working with data. Further, the workshop featured daily practical sessions where the participants created paper prototypes of inter-ministerial data sharing work-flows, visualisation strategies for governmental datasets, etc. Below is a summarised report from the second workshop.

Day 1

The first day of the workshop began with a round of introductions of the participants and the experts. The opening session introduced the idea of open data, the open data movement taking place across the world, the multilateral agreements regarding adoption of open data strategies as part of the Open Government Partnership, and the principles and methods of scenario building and paper prototyping.

	A human resource survey was conducted before the workshop among various Iraqi government officials to collect information on the following questions: (a) what data managed by Iraqi government ministries and departments can potentially be shared with the public, (b) what data cannot be shared with the public, (c) what are the major challenges Iraqi government officials face when working with or sharing governmental data, and (d) how such challenges can be addressed and resolved. This survey was conducted both before the initial workshop (on Iraqi public data policy) and at the initial workshop.

A human resource survey was conducted before the workshop among various Iraqi government officials to collect information on the following questions: (a) what data managed by Iraqi government ministries and departments can potentially be shared with the public, (b) what data cannot be shared with the public, (c) what are the major challenges Iraqi government officials face when working with or sharing governmental data, and (d) how such challenges can be addressed and resolved. This survey was conducted both before the initial workshop (on Iraqi public data policy) and at the initial workshop.

Summary of the responses from both these surveys were presented at this workshop (on data scenario building).

The participants briefly reflected on the findings of these surveys and pointed out that the actual reality of intra-governmental data collection and management in Iraq is not as bleak as indicated at in the survey responses. However, the participants noted that data sharing between various departments and between the central government and the provincial governorates is a great challenge, especially due to lack of common data collection and management protocols, centralised data storage, and legal and administrative framework governing such data sharing.

Building on the discussion, the participants took part in a group-based exercise to identify which datasets will be produced by various departments and ministries as part of the e-services mentioned in the Government Interoperability Framework (GIF) document, and which datasets among them are useful to combine together to gain insights. E-services of three types were considered: government-to-government, government-to-citizen, and government-to-business. The datasets identified in this exercise were used later in the workshop to build use scenarios for.

Dr. Rufus Pollock, Co-Founder, Open Knoweldge Foundation joined us at the end of the day to talk about the works of the Foundation, the important of open data in governance, and principles for implementing open data projects. Answering the questions from the participants, he mentioned that open data initiatives should be simultaneously top-down – where the government adopt certain strategies and procedures – and bottom-up – where the citizens are encouraged to participate, respond and use the shared resources.

Day 2


A screen shot of the Government of India website. The picture was taken from a presentation made on Day 2.

The second day began with a survey of international examples of open data projects, web-portals, visualisation projects and advocacy organisations. Pioneering open government data portals such as the data.gov portal of USA, data.gov.uk portal of UK, data.gov.bh portal of Bahrain, data.gov.in portal of India, and opendata.go.ke of Kenya were discussed, along with non-governmental open data initiatives such as data.undp.org of UNDP and data.worldbank.org of World Bank. The roles played by various organisations like Open Knowledge Foundation in either creating visualisations using open government data or developing sites that further track governmental activities (such as GovTrack.us and TheyWorkForYou.com) were discussed. Throughout the discussion there was a focus in understanding various technical strategies and softwares used by different open data portal, so that Iraqi officials can make an informed choice when it comes to technical concerns of setting up an open government data portal.

The next session focused upon four major softwares for mobile phone based data collection. These included Nokia Data Gathering, OpenDataKit, RapidSMS and FrontlineSMS. Various technical and operational advantages and disadvantages of these softwares were discussed at length. The following exercise built on the discussion of various kinds of datasets and forms required to collect them. In the exercise the participants, divided in groups, focused on various governmental scenarios (such as registration of a company) which involve data collection, management, storage and sharing between multiple ministries and departments. They designed, on paper, forms that can be used to collect all relevant data for each of the scenario, and the sharing of the collected information among various concerned ministries and departments. All the groups presented their forms and data sharing scenarios and each were discussed separately.

Day 3

The third day was about exploring the possibilities of different types and use cases of data visualisations that can be produced and used by different government agencies to inform their decisions, once there is greater sharing of open and standardised data by and within the Iraqi government bodies. The first session briefly introduced the history of visualising beginning from Florence Nightingale's Rose Diagram and went on to clarify and explain the various data visualisation types, their advantages and disadvantages. Different principles and strategies for data visualisation were discussed, along with a range of free and open source softwares and code libraries for producing various kinds of data visualisation. Softwares suitable for creating both offline (static) and web-based (dynamic) visualisation were considered, as well as few open source options for building data archives (such as CKAN and Open Government Platform).


Above is an image from 'Bio Mapping' project of Christian Nold. The picture was taken from a presentation made on Day 3.

The following exercise re-divided the participants and asked each group to focus on various combinations of datasets that can provide insight regarding existing conditions, policy implementation status etc., and choose appropriate visualisation type to represent them. The participants worked using both paper prototypes, familiar tools (such as Microsoft Excel) as well as tools introduced in the workshop (such as ManyEyes). All the produced data visualisations were presented by the groups and were discussed in detail, with a strong focus on comprehending the appropriateness of various visualisation types and suitable use of graphical elements (such as avoiding 3D charts), and addressing challenges of complex visualisations (such as those using more than three variables, or variables measured in different units) etc. The very useful visualisation type of Bubble Chart was discussed in depth, including both its static and dynamic versions.

Day 4

The fourth day focused on map-based or geographic visualisations. It began with a brief history of cartography, focusing on its military, administrative and maritime navigational usages. Considering the technical and operational transformation brought to the domain of cartography with the development of Geographic Information Systems, the discussion moved on to talk about the opening up of digital geographic data, its increased availability and easier usage possibilities in the post-Google Maps era. Open licensed crowdsourced spatial data projects like OpenStreetMap and Ushahidi were discussed in detail as potential tools for sourcing, gathering and using geo-data. There was an extended discussion of different free and open source tools for working with spatial data, including Quantum GIS and TileMill.


Picture of Open Street Map. This picture was taken from the slide presented on Day 4.

The exercise focused on developing scenarios representing open government data using map-based visualisation, so as to gain special insights regarding spatial effects and natures of various social conditions as well as to share government information with non-governmental agencies and individuals. Different groups worked on scenarios such as mapping the incidents of cancer patients and defective births among different governorates, along with locating the spread of radioactive elements across the regions concerned; mapping the number of disabled people, orphans and unemployed persons across the governorates; and locating the major foreign trade hubs of the country and showing the goods being traded through each hub with periodically updated values of each type of traded goods.

Both the data visualisation scenario building exercises, using statistical and geographic visualisations, were built on the assumption of intra-governmental sharing of non-sensitive, digital and standardised data, and highlighted the insights that can be gained by multilaterally using data collected by different government bodies. Some visualisations created in the exercises showed how the government can better inform the citizens and the business communities about the status of various economic and administrative processes, while most of the visualisations focused on using data from across government bodies to support and inform design and implementation of governmental activities.

Day 5

On the fifth day we had a visiting expert, Hazem Zureiqat, who spoke extensively on collection, management and use of data in urban planning. Mr. Zureiqat is a transportation consultant at Engicon, a multidisciplinary consulting engineering firm based in Amman. His talk included examples from various transportation infrastructure projects he has been part of. He showcased various sophisticated data gathering and simulating techniques. The fundamental point of his talk, however, was that data collection, visualisation and simulation are only tools for supporting administrative and political decisions, and not their substitute.

The early draft of the Iraqi public data policy, as produced in the earlier workshop (held during 12th to 17th October) was presented to the participants of the second workshop, and the linkage between the two workshops – in terms of creating scenarios for supporting the use cases of the data policy. This was followed by an intensve discussion of the way forward, including the possible strategies and learning events that can be adopted and organised by UNDP, Iraq to continue strengthening the e-Iraq initiatives.

Click to download Sunil's presentation on Day 1.Slides from different presentations done at the same workshop can be downloaded here. The author, Sumandro Chattapdhyay is a researcher based in Delhi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/iraqi-public-data-scenario-workshop

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #1: Visualising Basic Parameters

Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay — 2013-03-26T10:04:43Z

Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay bring you a visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedia in this first post on Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project. In doing so, the authors look into the different aspects of the past and present activities of Indic Wikipedias, and divide the visualisation into three different focus areas.

Introduction

Understanding how the Indic or the Indian language Wikipedia projects are growing is something that we have been interested in for quite sometime. We were delighted to come across this opportunity from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Wikimedia Foundation. We divided our analyses into three focus areas: (1) basic parameters, (2) geographic patterns of edits, and (3) exploring the topics that receives the greatest number of edits. The existing infographics and data visualisations that we found about Indic Wikipedias mostly engaged on the first area, and also emphasised on yearly aggregates. We thought a more granular, that is monthly, understanding and a focus on the geographic and thematic spread of the edits would be very helpful to further appreciate the activities.

We began by collecting data about the following basic parameters:

Number of Editors
Number of Articles
Page Views
Number of Active Editors
Number of New Articles
Number of New Editors
Edit Size

Acquiring the data

We explored the MediaWiki API, ToolServer and the Wikimedia Statistics Portal. These are several ways of obtaining data about Wikipedia in general. Depending on the use case, such as the quantity of data required or the need for customised/selective data scraping, any one or more of these methods of data gathering can be chosen. The API had limitations in terms of how much data you can access, and it is meant to be used to access actual Wikipedia entries. We, however, were looking for metadata about the entries/articles (such as when it was first created, when and how many times it was edited, etc.) and not the actual entries/articles, that is the actual contents of Indic Wikipedias. ToolServer is an excellent way of running custom scripts. Although, this takes for granted that user (of ToolServer) has substantial command over the back-end infrastructures and processes that Wikipedia runs on. We wrote a few scrapers to extract metadata about Indic Wikipedia projects from the ToolServer but not exactly being experts in the Wikipedia back-end systems, we found scraping from ToolServer rather time-and effort-intensive. The statistics portal is a well organised and an accessible place for collecting data for analyses. However, we came across several missing parameters and projects, that is the statistic portal did not have all the parameters and Wikipedia projects we were interested in. In our search for Indic Wikipedia datasets so far, we realised that the Wikimedia Analytics Team (WAT) puts a lot of effort in writing scripts and collecting various data at different levels. Wikimedia developer Yuvi Panda and the Access to Knowledge team at CIS, aware of our difficulty in obtaining the data, also pointed us towards the WAT. While we were already scraping data on some of the parameters, we approached the WAT whose prompt and very supportive response much accelerated our work process. The fantastic Wikimedia developers, especially Evan Rosen (a big ‘thank you’ for him) shared the needed data, which we cleaned up and archived at the Github repository for the project.

We obtained data for the period from January 2001 to December 2012. It appears that the Indic Wikipedia projects began their activities around 2005. A big part of cleaning the data involved identifying when each of the projects started and dropping data. There are 20 Indic Wikipedia projects with 4,98,964 articles, 5,689 editors and over 3,35,49,102 readers.

Deciding upon chart types

We spent quite some time discussing different methods of visualising the data. The major difficulty is that there are too many entities to be plotted. As each language must be plotted as a separate entity — point, line, circle, etc. — the chart has a tendency to become cluttered and illegible. Even if we take only one variable — say New Editors — there will still be 20 points or lines to be plotted. Hence, using any of the conventional charts becomes difficult. For example, if we chose a line chart with New Editors on the Y-axis and months on the X-axis, there will be 20 lines each of a different colour, representing different languages. Also, the five-six year monthly timeline translates into 60-72 temporal data points.

We have adopted two strategies, and related chart types, to address this difficulty.

Firstly, we used a monthly calendar-like heatmap chart that limits the temporal spread of data to one year for each section of the chart and uses a positionally uniform set of columns for each language so as to make reading the chart easier. Limiting each chart section to 12 months allow the user to focus on more granular movements of the variable concerned, say the number of New Editors per month. By representing each languages on an unique column, and not by an upwards-and-downwards moving line as in a line chart, makes it easier for the user to follow movements in each language (where movement is shown by the intensity of colour, as characteristic of heatmaps) without the need to have a separate coloured entity — point, line, circle — for each language.

Secondly, we used a motion chart, as made famous by Dr. Hans Rosling, that removes the temporal axis from X- and Y-axes of the chart and uses animated transition to represent temporal change. Motion chart has the unique ability to handle as many as five variables in an organised manner, using the following visual elements: X-axis, Y-axis, Z-axis (animated temporal transitions), size of bubbles, and colour of bubbles. It is, however, recommended that represented variables be limited to a maximum of four for easier legibility. In our case, we have used the X- and Y-axes to plot various related variables (which can be selected by the user) such as New Editors and New Articles, the Z-axis to represent time, and the colour of the bubbles to represent a third optional variable (also can be selected by the user). Since different Indian language Wikipedia projects often take a wide range of values for most variables, using the size of the bubble to represent any of those variables is avoidable. Further, the motion chart gives the user a lot of controls to explore the various projects and variables according to their interest and especially to compare particular projects and variables to each other.

Discussing the chart types with the Access to Knowledge team, we decided to use simpler line charts — emphasising upon single Indic Wikipedia projects — on the language-specific pages that we will be creating next.

Calendar charts


Calendar heatmap chart of New Editors across Indic Wikipedia projects, 2008-2011. Source: http://bit.ly/XDb3fa

We visualised three parameters using the calendar heatmap strategy: (1) New Articles, (2) New Editors, (3) Active Editors.

The New Articles Calendar shows new articles posted on every Indic Wikipedias for every month since 2004. It was interesting to note the few number of articles in 2012 for all the languages. The first language to have the most number of new articles is Bengali. Hindi picks up around same time with fewer number of articles. Except Urdu and Nepali, every other language dropped in the number of new articles. However, we should remember that a lower number of new articles does not necessarily indicate at low overall activity in the project concerned.

Like the new articles, we wanted to explore the patterns in the number of new editors across all of the Indic Wikipedia projects. As you run through the new editors calendar chart, it is evident that there is consistent growth in the editor base for few projects like Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. If one takes a step back and compares this with the number of new articles chart, something is not very clear -- in some of the projects, there is a growth in the number of editors but not many new articles are posted. We are very keen to understand why this has happened.

If we look at the active editors calendar, Tamil started with 2 active editors in January 2004 and with few ups and downs grew to about 115 active editors in December 2012. Malayalam started slow in late 2004 with 2 editors and grew to 155 active editors in December 2012. We are sure the viewers should be able to find out more patterns by studying the charts closely and comparatively.

Motion chart

We developed a motion chart comparing five variables: (1) Active Editors (> 5 edits per month), (2) New Editors, (3) Total Editors, (4) New Articles, and (5) Total Articles. When the visualisation is opened, Total Editors is plotted on the X-axis, Total Articles is plotted on the Y-axis, the colour of the bubbles indicate the Active Editors (Blue is low and Red is high) and the sizes of the bubbles are kept the same for easier comparison.

The user can click on the drop down menus at the X- and Y-axes, and next to the size and colour variables, and make them represent different variables.

We chose to configure the X- and Y-axes to show the data in logarithmic scales and not in linear scales. Since most projects experience small increments over time and there exists a wide difference between the most and the least popular/active projects, the logarithmic scale is better suited to represent the changes in the given data. The user has the option to select linear scale at the end of both X- and Y-axes (click on "Log").

As evident in the visualisation, the Newari project and the Hindi-Malayalam project cluster show very interesting contrasting dynamics — while both achieve similar Total Articles numbers, the latter is much more editor-heavy. This suggests a smaller but more active editor community for the Newari project.

Please click on the image of the motion chart below to open the interactive version in a separate window. The code can be accessed at the project repository on Github.


Motion chart comparing multiple variables across Indic Wikipedia projects, 2001-2011. Source: http://bit.ly/Yw4Wzq

Sajjad Anwar is a programmer based in Bangalore. Sumandro Chattapdhyay is a researcher based in Delhi. They often work together.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-basic-parameters