Centre for Internet and Society

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

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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

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
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

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop, Mysore — Coverage in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2013-03-25T08:49:20Z

A Kannada Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society in Mysore on March 24, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event. Prajavani has published a report of the event on March 25, 2013.


Prajavani published a report of the Kannada Wikipedia workshop held at Mysore on March 25, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-report-in-prajavani

Strategic Issues Emerging from Open Access Dialogues - Final Report

sumandro — 2015-10-11T04:39:10Z

A series of discussions - on the Chat Literacy forum of ELDIS and on Twitter - was organised during November 2012 to March 2013 to identify the global challenges in 'Navigating the Complexities of Open Access'. The discussions were facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), through support from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. On behalf of CIS, Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-coordinated and contributed to these discussions.

The final report of the Open Access Dialogues was published by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and can be accessed here.

A sub-report summarising the experiences and arguments expressed by the Indian participants in the Dialogues was prepared by Sumandro, which can be read below or downloaded here.

Strategic issues emerging from the comments of Indian participants

1. Lacking OA awareness, even among scholarly communities

Many, if not all, commentators emphasised the unfortunate lack of awareness about the notion and possibilities of Open Access across India, including among the scholarly and/or higher education related communities. Often the notion of Open Access is quite familiar, especially among scholars, but without a clear understanding of its benefits and how to make one's scholarly works openly accessible.

2. Uneven geography of OA success stories

The above point must be read along with strong success stories emerging from Indian OA journals, mostly from science disciplines. A recent study reveals that 970 Indian OA journals are included in the 'Journals Citation Report 2011' (science), and the Impact Factors of these journals are on the rise. This indicates towards a very uneven geography of OA awareness and adoption in India, with the OA agenda being pursued successfully by specific scholarly communities but not translating into widespread support across the higher academia landscape.

3. Global businesses of scholarly works and complicity of Indian researchers

The role of global businesses of scholarly works in impending the Open Access agenda in the India was mentioned by most of the commentators. The publication, and especially distribution, of publicly funded research is dominated by global publication houses. Additionally, the complicity of Indian researchers in reinforcing the culture of exclusive and 'prestigious' journals published by global publishers is also well understood and criticised.

4. Citation Indexes as necessary evil

While the discussants argued against an over-emphasis on Impact Factors in judging a quality and success of journals, especially for IF being biased against new journals, and thus against newly started OA journals. At the same time, measurement of citations remains a crucial way of understanding readership and impact of scholarly works. There was a strong recommendation of article-level metrics as opposed to journal-level ones. Studies were suggested to argue that article-level impact increases with OA journals. Another concern is bibliographic malpractices, including biases against citing works from Indian (or, developing world) scholars and against citing works published in non-'prestigious' journals.

5. Open Access must not only be about access to journals

A strongly expressed opinion was that the OA agenda must move beyond journal publications. The journal-centric approach emphasises the supply side of knowledge but fails to appreciate the demand of knowledge, especially in a country like India where primary and secondary education remain vital challenges. Further, even within higher academic circles, OA agenda must expand into other forms of scholarly works beyond journal essays, such as primary data and other research materials, especially since all such forms are also produced by public funds. Open Access to 'gray literature' (produced by private and non-profit research organisations) is also crucial, as much policy-making tends to be shaped by such works.

6. Open Access and the consumers of knowledge

The commentators emphasised the nature of OA to knowledge as a public good. The OA agenda must address the consumers of knowledge outside the university system, and especially across socio-economic classes. While open university education and participation in MOOC-models of learning are on the rise in India, there is a threat that this digital-centric approach reinforced existing digital divides in access to knowledge.

Policy Suggestions

1.'Mainstreaming' the OA agenda: Instead of locating OA as a separate agenda, it will be useful to 'mainstream' it within larger development/research related funding initiatives by making OA publications of research outcomes a necessary grants condition.

2.OA as the entry point to a broader 'open' agenda: The OA agenda can build upon its existing institutional and governmental acceptance and implementation to promote a broader 'open' agenda, including open sharing of research data, open formats for and sharing of bibliographic data etc.

3.Moving the OA discussion and knowledge organisation beyond higher education communities: Addressing non-university circuits of learning, of both institutional (primary and secondary education) and non-institutional (informal learning groups around MOOC courses) varieties, is a crucial challenge for the OA agenda in the developing world. Another crucial community of potential OA supporters would be the non-governmental and non-profit organisations working in the field of education in particular, and development in general.

4.Removing policy biases against Open Access journals in academic administration: Combined global and local efforts remains important to reshape national academic administration policies to stop discrimination against OA publication of scholarly works, such as higher academic benefit for publication in closed 'prestigious' journals.

5.Encouraging and supporting scholarly communities (often with a disciplinary and/or thematic common ground) to undertake OA knowledge production: Promoting the OA agenda must also adopt a bottom-up strategy in the developing world, and this would require capacity and community building exercises involving local and global scholarly colleagues and enthusiasts gathered around thematic and/or disciplinary focii, as well as institutional and governmental recognition and support.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/strategic-issues-emerging-from-open-access-dialogues-final-report

Wiki Women's Day in Goa

nitika — 2013-03-19T06:32:25Z

International Women's Day (IWD), also called International Working Women's Day, is celebrated on March 8, every year. There were a series of Wikipedia events organised this year with the aim of increasing participation of women contributing to Wikipedia. One such event was organised by the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikimedia India Chapter at the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College in Panaji, Goa on March 8, 2013.

NIE is a respected institution providing pre- and in-service teacher education to thousands of teachers and about a 100 of them (99 per cent of the participants being women) joined in to learn Wikipedia editing and increase women related content on Wikipedia.

Rohini Lakshane from the Wikimedia India Chapter and Nitika Tandon from Access to Knowledge, CIS lead the session jointly. The session began with the introduction of Wikipedia, Wikipedia volunteers, the five pillars, motivation of volunteers to contribute to Wikipedia tirelessly and a brief of different activities that are being organised to strengthen the Wikimedia movement in India. Most of the students and faculty members were curious about two main things:

How to integrate the new community of editors in Goa with the larger Indian and global community?
How can teachers and students use Wikipedia to advance students' knowledge and add useful content to Wikipedia?

Participants watching Netha's video	To answer the first part, participants were informed about regular Wiki meet ups in different cities, several city based and language based Wikipedia mailing lists where one can find volunteer friends, active use of user talk pages and village pumps, Wikimedia India Facebook page amongst many others. To address the second part there was also a brief discussion about wiki project classroom coordination with specific examples from universities around the world. The teachers and faculty members will be sent a detailed outline of the program, list of universities with on-going projects, list of teachers who have used Wikipedia as a teaching tool and are willing to serve as a contact to help others set up a similar teaching courses.

The session was planned to go on until late evening with hands on editing in the computer lab. But unfortunately, we (Rohini and Nitika) were informed that the session will have to close before the scheduled closing time as participants had to leave. Except for two or three participants coming on stage and making their user accounts and another 3-4 article edits, we couldn't include more editing as a part of the outreach session, primarily due to time constraint. We're hoping that at a small percentage of participants would try actual editing at home and contribute to women related articles and some of them will be successful in using Wikipedia as a teacher's tool. We have their contact details and we'll try and monitor their on Wiki activities and provide them support whenever needed.


A picture of participants doing Wiki editing at the NIE workshop in Goa

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-womens-day-in-goa

Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:40:41Z

The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society was invited by Nikhil Dixit, Public Relations Officer at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani – Goa (BITS Goa) to organise Wikipedia session on March 7, 2013. Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop and shares with us the developments.

Despite the fact that students were busy with their exams and lab tests nearly 30 of them turned up for the event. Many of the students had already tried a bit of IP editing but had not bothered to create accounts. When asked why they hadn't created user accounts many of them said they didn't feel that it is important to create accounts till they are able to correct or add information that they want to share using IPs. The participants were then told about the importance of creating user accounts: using it as an identity with the Wikipedia community, each edit being added to their edit count, helping them build trust, friends and connections with other editors, being able to become Wikipedia administrators or system operators, etc.

As most of the participants had some knowledge of Wikipedia editing, having made sporadic edits in the past, they wanted to know more about advanced editing. About an hour was therefore spent on actual hands on editing where students tried — adding references, wiki markups, info boxes, etc. Students were also taught on how to use user talk pages to interact with other editors. During the course of the workshop we figured that one of the participants had worked on live.wikimedia.in search in 2011 and we invited him to talk a little about his project, experience and involvement. A lot of students were surprised that one amongst their fellow students had worked with the Wikimedia movement in India and achieved so much success. His story really inspired several in the room and many participants made promises to get more involved as editors. Many participants were also curious to know more about Hackathons.

Our next step is to connect participants from all the workshops organised in Goa at BITS Goa, Goa University, Central State Library and Nirmala Institute of Education, since December last year, to enable and support them to organise regular Wiki meet-ups and programs, etc., and strengthen the Wikimedia movement in Goa.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-session-at-bits-goa

Ahmednagar — Marathi Wikipedia Workshop

Tanveer Hasan — 2013-07-26T09:34:47Z

Wikipedia Community members helped the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications Programme (HEIRA), 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.

Ahmednagar College is one of the participant colleges in the ‘Pathways to Higher Education’ programme anchored by HEIRA, and run in collaboration with CIS. This programme works closely with undergraduate students in three states to address the problem of quality of access to higher education. The focus of the programme is on inculcating critical and analytical skills which play a very important role in gaining access to knowledge.

The Wikipedia workshop in Marathi held at the Ahmednagar College intended to introduce the students to the concepts of open and free sources of knowledge, and encourage active Marathi editors to edit and populate the Marathi Wikipedia domain.

Yogesh Khandke was representing the Wikipedia community. He started off by explaining the five pillars of Wikipedia, the copyright issues and the importance of references and citations. As most of the students were new to the concepts of both editing and knowledge production, we faced a few problems in the beginning. Since the IP addresses were already cleared for multiple registrations we did not face that particular problem.

The students were asked to come up with material and information that they would want to add to the Marathi Wikipedia domain. We conducted a group activity where the groups exchanged the information they were planning to use. These groups researched, proof read and added to the information collected by their friends. We had stressed that all the information needed to be cited from a reliable source and must have a clear reference. Hence, a lot of unnecessary and opinionated information was cleared at the first level itself.

The hands-on editing session proved to be challenging as most of the students did not know how to type in Marathi and ended up using phonetic keyboards. The session ended with all the students having been registered as Wikipedia editors and most of the groups were successful in editing. A couple of groups created new pages as well.

Yogesh Khandke was of immense help and he was ably supported by Nagesh Shelake, Dept. of Sociology, New Arts and Science College, Ahmednagar.

A special thanks to Dr. S.B Iyyer, Department of Physics, Ahmednagar College and Coordinator of Pathways Cell, and Raikwad, Department of Commerce and Assistant Coordinator of Pathways Cell.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ahmednagar-marathi-wikipedia-workshop-report

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop

praskrishna — 2013-03-15T09:52:18Z

A Kannada Wikipedia workshop is being organized by the Centre for Internet and Society in Mysore on March 24, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja will be participating in this workshop. The one day workshop will begin at 10 a.m. in the morning and shall end at 5.00 p.m. in the evening.

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ/೯

ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಇನ್ನಷ್ಟು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಸಲುವಾಗಿ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಮುದಾಯ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೪ರಂದು ಮೈಸೂರಿನ ಇನ್ಸ್ಟಿಟ್ಯೂಶನ್ ಆಫ್ ಇಂಜಿನಿಯರ‍್ಸ್ ಸಭಾಂಗಣದಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದೆಡೆ ಸೇರುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಕನ್ನಡದ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಸಂಪಾದನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಉಳ್ಳವರು, ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಗರು, ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತರು, ಲೇಖಕರು ಎಲ್ಲ ಈ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು.

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನದ ಉದ್ದೇಶ

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಪರಿಚಯ
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಪಾದಕ ಆಗುವ ವಿಧಾನ
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಪ್ರಾತ್ಯಕ್ಷಿಕೆ
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಚಿತ್ರಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಪ್ರಾತ್ಯಕ್ಷಿಕೆ
ಕನ್ನಡದ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದಲ್ಲಿ ಇರಲೇ ಬೇಕಾದ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಪಟ್ಟಿ ತಯಾರಿಸುವುದು
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಲೇಖನ ಮತ್ತು ಚಿತ್ರ ಸೇರಿಸುವುದು

ಯಾರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು

ಕನ್ನಡದ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಸಂಪಾದನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಉಳ್ಳವರು, ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಗರು, ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತರು, ಲೇಖಕರು, ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಗರು(ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಉಳ್ಳವರು)

ದಿನಾಂಕ ಮತ್ತು ಸ್ಥಳ

ಇನ್ಸ್ಟಿಟ್ಯೂಶನ್ ಆಫ್ ಇಂಜಿನಿಯರ‍್ಸ್

ಜೆ.ಎಲ್.ಬಿ. ರಸ್ತೆ
ಮೈಸೂರು - ೫೭೦೦೦೫

ದಿನಾಂಕ: ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೪, ೨೦೧೩, ಭಾನುವಾರ (ಇಡೀ ದಿನ)

ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಪಟ್ಟಿ

ಸಮಯ	ಕಾರ್ಯಸೂಚಿ	ಮಾತನಾಡುವವರು	ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿ, ಉಪಯೋಗ
೯:೫೦ ಬೆಳಗ್ಗೆ	ನೊಂದಣಿ		ನಿಮ್ಮ ಹೆಸರು/ಇ-ಅಂಚೆ/ಮೊಬೈಲ್/ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಳಕೆದಾರರ ಹೆಸರು ಜೊತೆಗೆ, ಭಾಗಿಯಾಗುತ್ತಿರುವುದರ ಉದ್ದೇಶವನ್ನು ಸ್ವಾಗತಕಾರರ ಬಳಿ ತಿಳಿಸಿ
೧೦:೦೦	ಸ್ವಾಗತ	ಪವನಜ	ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ಉದ್ದೇಶ ಮತ್ತು ಅದರ ಪ್ರತಿಪಲಾಪೇಕ್ಷೆಗಳ ವಿವರಣೆ
೧೦:೧೫ - ೧೧:೧೫	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ	ಪವನಜ	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಎಂದರೆ ಏನು? ಇದನ್ನು ಸಂಪಾದಿಸುವವರು ಯಾರು ಮತ್ತು ಏಕೆ? ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದ ಇತರೆ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳು
೧೧:೧೫ - ೧೧:೩೦	ಚಾ
೧೧:೩೦ - ೧೨:೦೦	ಕ್ರಿಯೇಟಿವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್	ಕಿರಣ್ ರವಿಕುಮಾರ‍್	ಕ್ರಿಯೆಟೀವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್ (Creative Commons) ಬಗ್ಗೆ ವಿವರಣೆ.
೧೨:೦೦ - ೧೩:೦೦	ಪ್ರಾತ್ಯಕ್ಷಿಕೆ	ಪವನಜ	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಂಪಾದಕ ಆಗುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ, ಸಂಪಾದಿಸುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ, ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ
೧೩:೦೦ - ೧೪:೦೦	ಊಟ
೧೪:೦೦ - ೧೪:೧೫	ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ೧೦೦೦ ಯೋಜನೆ ಪರಿಚಯ	ಪವನಜ	ಕನ್ನಡ ಮತ್ತು ಕರ್ನಾಟಕಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಪಟ್ಟಿ ಮಾಡಿ, ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಆಯ್ಕೆಯ ಮೇರೆಗೆ ಲೇಖನಗಳ ಸಂಪಾದನೆ, ಪರಿಷ್ಕರಣೆ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿಗಳ ಅವಶ್ಯಕತೆ, ಭಾಗವಹಿಸುವಿಕೆ
೧೪:೧೫ - ಕೊನೆಯವರೆಗೆ	ಪ್ರಯೋಗ (hands-on)	ಎಲ್ಲರೂ	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ

ಸ್ವಯಂಸೇವಕರು

Pavanaja (talk) ೦೭:೩೭, ೧೧ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೦೧೩ (UTC)
ಕಿರಣ್ ರವಿಕುಮಾರ‍್
ನವೀನ್ ಜೋಯಿಸ್

ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲು ಇಚ್ಛಿಸುವವರು

ನೀವೂ ಭಾಗಿಯಾಗಲು ಇಚ್ಚಿಸುವುದಾದರೆ ನಿಮ್ಮ ಹೆಸರನ್ನು # ಮುಂದೆ ಸೇರಿಸಿ ಅಥವಾ ~ ಅನ್ನು ನಾಲ್ಕು ಭಾರಿ ಟೈಪಿಸಿ ಸಹಿ ಮಾಡಿ.

ಹಾಲತಿ ಸೋಮಶೇಖರ
ಮಾಲಿನಿ ಅಭ್ಯಂಕರ‍್

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಹಾಯ

ಬೆಂಬಲ

ಸೆಂಟರ‍್ ಫಾರ‍್ ಇಂಟರ‍್ ನೆಟ್ ಅಂಡ್ ಸೊಸೈಟಿ, ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು

ಉಪಯುಕ್ತ ಕೊಂಡಿಗಳು
ಸೂಚನೆ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸುವವರು ಲ್ಯಾಪ್‌ಟಾಪ್, ಪವರ್ ಸ್ಟ್ರಿಪ್ (extension switchboard) ಮತ್ತು ಅಂತರಜಾಲ ಸಂಪರ್ಕ ಡಾಂಗಲ್ ತಂದರೆ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯದು.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/kannada-wikipedia-workshop

Wikipedia Workshop for Kannada Science Writers

praskrishna — 2013-03-14T11:41:41Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with Wikimedia Chapter India and KRVP, Bangalore, is organizing a workshop for Kannada science writers at Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath Conference Hall in Banashankari, Bangalore on March 17, 2013. The one day workshop shall begin at 10 a.m. in the morning and will conclude at 5.00 p.m. in the evening. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja will be participating in the event.

The information was published in the Kannada wikipedia page here.

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ/೮

ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಸಲುವಾಗಿ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಮುದಾಯ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೧೭ರಂದು ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ರಾಜ್ಯ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಪರಿಷತ್ತಿನ ಸಭಾಂಗಣದಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದೆಡೆ ಸೇರುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಕನ್ನಡದ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಸಂಪಾದನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಉಳ್ಳವರು, ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಗರು ಕೂಡ ಈ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು.

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನದ ಉದ್ದೇಶ

ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಲೇಖಕರನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡಿಗರಿಗೆ ಪರಿಚಯಿಸುವುದು
ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ/ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಕ್ರೂಡೀಕರಣ
ಮೂಲ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಪುಟಗಳನ್ನು ಹುಡುಕಿ ತೆಗೆದು ಅವನ್ನು ಅಭಿವೃದ್ದಿ ಪಡಿಸುವುದು
ಕನ್ನಡದ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದಲ್ಲಿ ಇರಲೇ ಬೇಕಾದ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಸಂಬಂಧಿ ಪುಟಗಳ ಪಟ್ಟಿ ತಯಾರಿಸುವುದು
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡಕ್ಕೆ ಅನುವಾದ ವಿಧಾನದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಪ್ರದರ್ಶನ-ಸಹಿತ ವಿವರಣೆ

ಯಾರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು

ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ, ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಲೇಖಕರು, ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಗರು, ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತರು, ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಗರು(ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಉಳ್ಳವರು)

ದಿನಾಂಕ ಮತ್ತು ಸ್ಥಳ

ಸ್ಥಳ: ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ರಾಜ್ಯ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಪರಿಷತ್ತು
ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಭವನ,
ಕ.ರಾ.ವಿ.ಪ. ಸಭಾಂಗಣ
ನಂ.24/2 ಮತ್ತು 24/3, 21ನೇ ಮುಖ್ಯರಸ್ತೆ,
ಬನಶಂಕರಿ 2ನೇ ಹಂತಬೆಂಗಳೂರು - 560 ೦೭೦
ಟೆಲಿಫ್ಯಾಕ್ಸ್ : 080 - ೨೬೭೧೮೯೫೯
ದೂರವಾಣಿ : 080 - ೨೬೭೧೮೯೩೯
ದಿನಾಂಕ: ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೧೭, ೨೦೧೩, ಭಾನುವಾರ (ಇಡೀ ದಿನ)

ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಪಟ್ಟಿ

ಸಮಯ	ಕಾರ್ಯಸೂಚಿ	ಮಾತನಾಡುವವರು	ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿ, ಉಪಯೋಗ
೯:೫೦ ಬೆಳಗ್ಗೆ	ನೊಂದಣಿ		ನಿಮ್ಮ ಹೆಸರು/ಇ-ಅಂಚೆ/ಮೊಬೈಲ್/ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಳಕೆದಾರರ ಹೆಸರು ಜೊತೆಗೆ, ಭಾಗಿಯಾಗುತ್ತಿರುವುದರ ಉದ್ದೇಶವನ್ನು ಸ್ವಾಗತಕಾರರ ಬಳಿ ತಿಳಿಸಿ
೧೦:೦೦	ಸ್ವಾಗತ	ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್/ಪವನಜ	ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ಉದ್ದೇಶ ಮತ್ತು ಅದರ ಪ್ರತಿಪಲಾಪೇಕ್ಷೆಗಳ ವಿವರಣೆ
೧೦:೧೫ - ೧೧:೧೫	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ	ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಎಂದರೆ ಏನು? ಇದನ್ನು ಸಂಪಾದಿಸುವವರು ಯಾರು ಮತ್ತು ಏಕೆ? ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದ ಇತರೆ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳು
೧೧:೧೫ - ೧೧:೩೦	ಚಾ
೧೧:೩೦ - ೧೨:೦೦	ಕ್ರಿಯೇಟಿವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್	ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್	ಕ್ರಿಯೆಟೀವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್ (Creative Commons) ಬಗ್ಗೆ ವಿವರಣೆ.
೧೨:೦೦ - ೧೩:೦೦	ಪ್ರಾತ್ಯಕ್ಷಿಕೆ	ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್/ಪವನಜ	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಂಪಾದಕ ಆಗುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ, ಸಂಪಾದಿಸುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ, ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ
೧೩:೦೦ - ೧೪:೦೦	ಊಟ
೧೪:೦೦ - ೧೪:೧೫	ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ೧೦೦೦ ಯೋಜನೆ ಪರಿಚಯ	ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್	ಕನ್ನಡ ಮತ್ತು ಕರ್ನಾಟಕಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಪಟ್ಟಿ ಮಾಡಿ, ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಆಯ್ಕೆಯ ಮೇರೆಗೆ ಲೇಖನಗಳ ಸಂಪಾದನೆ, ಪರಿಷ್ಕರಣೆ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿಗಳ ಅವಶ್ಯಕತೆ, ಭಾಗವಹಿಸುವಿಕೆ
೧೪:೧೫ - ಕೊನೆಯವರೆಗೆ	ಪ್ರಯೋಗ (hands-on)	ಎಲ್ಲರೂ	ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ

ಸ್ವಯಂಸೇವಕರು

~ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್^{/ಚರ್ಚೆ/ಕಾಣಿಕೆಗಳು} ೦೬:೩೩, ೧೧ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೦೧೩ (UTC)
Pavanaja (talk) ೦೭:೩೭, ೧೧ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೦೧೩ (UTC)
ಅಭಿರಾಮ

ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲು ಇಚ್ಛಿಸುವವರು

ಟಿ. ಆರ್. ಅನಂತರಾಮು
ನಾಗೇಶ ಹೆಗಡೆ
ಹಾಲ್ದೊಡ್ಡೇರಿ ಸುಧೀಂದ್ರ
ಟಿ. ಜಿ. ಶ್ರೀನಿಧಿ (talk) ೦೮:೦೪, ೧೧ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೦೧೩ (UTC)
ಯಶಸ್ವಿನಿ
ಲಕ್ಷ್ಮಿ ಎಸ್.
ಕೆ. ಎಸ್. ನಟರಾಜ (ಕರಾವಿಪ)
ಎ.ಸತ್ಯನಾರಾಯಣ
ಕೊಳ್ಳೇಗಾಲ ಶರ್ಮ
ಜಿ. ವಿ. ನಿರ್ಮಲ
Akashbalakrishna (talk) ೦೯:೧೧, ೧೧ ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೦೧೩ (UTC)
ನಾರಾಯಣ್‌
ವೈ. ಸಿ. ಕಮಲ
ಟಿ ಎಸ್ ಗೋಪಾಲ್
ಶ್ರೀಧರ ಬಾಣಾವರ
ಸುಮನ ದಿನಕರ್
ಟಿ ಎಸ್ ಶ್ರೀಧರ
ಡಾ| ವಸುಂಧರಾ ಭೂಪತಿ
ಗೀತಾ ಕೃಷ್ಣಮೂರ್ತಿ
ಎನ್.ಎ.ಎಂ. ಇಸ್ಮಾಯಿಲ್

ವಾಸ್ತವೋಪಮ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸುವಿಕೆ (Virtual participation)

ನೀವು ದೂರದ ಪ್ರದೇಶಗಳಿಂದ ಯೂಟ್ಯೂಬ್ ಲೈವ್ ಸ್ಟ್ರೀಮಿಂಗ್ ಮೂಲಕ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು. ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನ ವಿವರಗಳನ್ನು ಈ ವಿಭಾಗದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನದ ದಿನ ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಲಾಗುವುದು. ನಿಮ್ಮ ಹೆಸರನ್ನು # ಮುಂದೆ ಸೇರಿಸಿ ಅಥವಾ ~ ಅನ್ನು ನಾಲ್ಕು ಭಾರಿ ಟೈಪಿಸಿ ಸಹಿ ಮಾಡಿ.

<ನಿಮ್ಮ ಹೆಸರು>

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಹಾಯ

ಬೆಂಬಲ

ಸೆಂಟರ‍್ ಫಾರ‍್ ಇಂಟರ‍್ ನೆಟ್ ಅಂಡ್ ಸೊಸೈಟಿ, ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು
ವಿಕಿಮೀಡಿಯ ಇಂಡಿಯ ಚಾಪ್ಟರ್
ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ರಾಜ್ಯ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಪರಿಷತ್ತು

ಉಪಯುಕ್ತ ಕೊಂಡಿಗಳು

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-workshop-for-kannada-science-writers

Wikipedia Women's Workshop Bangalore 2013

praskrishna — 2013-03-13T05:09:48Z

The Wikipedia Women's Workshop Bangalore 2013 was held on March 8, 2013 at Servelots Infotech, Jayanagar in Bangalore. It was organized by Wikimedia India. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event. The news was covered by Kannada Prabha on March 9, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-womens-workshop-bangalore-2013

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — February 2013

praskrishna — 2013-03-12T04:20:14Z

In the second issue of our newsletter for 2013, we are glad to introduce you to our new programme officer, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval, and one new team member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who works 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.

New Team Member

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja joined the A2K team as Programme Officer, India Language Initiatives on March 4, 2013. Dr. Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He is one of the earliest editors of Kannada Wikipedia. He has to his credit many firsts, viz., first Kannada website, first Kannada online magazine, first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for WinCE device (HP Jornado 720), first Indian language version (Kannada) of universally popular Logo (programming language for children) software, etc. His Kannada logo won the Manthan Award for the year 2006. He was a member of the technical advisory committee setup by the Govt. of Karnataka for Standardization of Kannada on Computers (2000). He is also a member of the Kannada Software Committee of Govt. of Karnataka (2008-current).

Events Participated In

GNUnify 2013 (organized by Pune Linux/Unix User Group and Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research, Pune, February 15 – 17, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Creative Commons comes to India (co-organized by Pune Linux/Unix User Group and Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research in Pune, February 15, 2013, and CIS the Wikimedia India Chapter, Chitrakala Parishad, Bangalore, February 25, 2013).The Access to Knowledge team participated in the CC meetings organized in Bangalore.

Fifty-fourth Bangalore Wikimedia Meet-up at IIM, Bangalore (organized by Radhakrishna Arvapally, SIG (Special Interest Group) Chair, Bangalore (a part of the Wikimedia India Chapter) with support from Solutions IQ, Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS, Indian Institute of Management, February 25, 2013). Sudhwana Jogalekar (President, Wikimedia India) spoke on Wikimedia Projects. T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director, A2K, CIS) gave a talk on 'Accessibility to Knowledge'. Joe Justice (Founder WikiSpeed) and Vibhu Srinivasan gave a presentation of WikiSpeed Car project. Chief Guest K.S. Viswanath (Vice President, Industry Initiatives, NASSCOM) gave the welcome address. Noopur Raval participated in the event.

Knowledge Sharing through GLAM at Bangalore (organized by Wikimedia India and Creative Commons, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore, February 25, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event. CIS supported the event.

Education Program

Odia Wikipedia Community Brings Wikipedia Education Program to IIMC, Dhenkanal (by Subhashish Panigrahi, February 28, 2013).

Event Reports

CIS organised one Wiki workshop in the month of February 2013, and also brings you the report from an event organised in the month of January:

Celebrating Odia Wikipedia's Ninth Anniversary (organized by the Odia Wiki Community with support from CIS and Academy for Media Learning, January 29, 2013, Bhubaneswar). Few glimpses of the event are available as an audio podcast.
Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University (by Nitika Tandon, February 5, 2013).

Media Coverage

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ନ‌ବମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ଅବସରରେ କର୍ମଶାଳା: ଇମିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ର‌ୟୋଗ (Odishan.com, February 4, 2013).
ସମ୍ବାଦ: ଲିପି ବ୍ୟାକରଣ ଓ ମାନକ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ରୟୋଗ ଜରୁରୀ. (Sambad, February, 2013).
Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media (e India Bureau, March 2, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia’s 9th anniversary (fullOrissa News, February 13, 2013).
Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media (India Education Diary.com, March 2, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.
Odia language workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia Wikipedia: Application of Odia language in e-media (Odishaviews.com, February 5, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

Ongoing Events

Wikipedia Workshop @ BITS Goa (BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, March 7, 2013, 5.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.).
A Wikipedia Editing Workshop in Goa (Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa, March 8, 2013, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.).

Announcement

Sanskrit Wikiquote — Now Available!: The Access to Knowledge team at CIS is happy to announce the availability of Sanskrit Wikiquote. Shiju Alex, an ex-team member played an active role in bringing this out. For more info see http://bit.ly/Y9OY9R.

About CIS

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

Wikipedia at Avenir

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T04:08:23Z

A 4 hours Wikipedia event at Avenir, 2013 is being held at Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, West Bengal on 11th March 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society is supporting this event.

Read the event page on Wikipedia

Basic Agenda

1 hour Wikpedia edit-a-thon Workshop with Kolkata based Wikipedians.
3 hours long MediaWiki Workshop on Wikipedia-Gadgets and UserScripts.

Edit-a-thon

A 2 hours long Wikipedia editing workshop with Kolkata based Wikipedians.

Why an Edit-a-thon

It helps build the encyclopedia
It builds relationships in the community
It can help new Wikipedians to contribute
It's fun :)

Pre-requisites

Bring your own laptops if possible, we will be creating things!

What will you have learnt at the end of it?

Along with the idea of how to create and edit articles in Wikipedia, you will get to know about Wikipedia, about setting knowledge free, about all those awesome things, that make us believe in this huge repository of knowledge.

Articles Planned

Lascar War Memorial, Calcutta (Kolkata)

Facilitators

MediaWiki Workshop

3 hours long MediaWiki Workshop on Wikipedia-Gadgets and UserScripts with Developers from Wikimedia.

Goal

The Wikipedia community needs small bits of web tech that make the site better for lots of users. We'll take people who know wiki stuff and also a little programming stuff, and have them be able to write code for Wikipedia.

Pre-requisites

Please bring your laptops! This is a hands on session, and you'll be creating things!

Basic grasp of Javascript, CSS
An account on Wikipedia
A modern browser (preferably Chrome, but Firefox with Firebug will also do)

What will you have learnt at the end of it?

Understanding how user scripts work
Be able to use the MediaWiki API appropriately
Improve your own wiki experience / experience for your language wikipedia by writing scripts

Lesson Plan

Environment (JS, Dev Toolbar, Common.js, importScript)

Facilitators

Yuvi Panda

Register Yourselves!

Folks who are interested to join us, are requested to fill up the form and register themselves for the event. We shall send you an invitation via email!

Harsh Kothari

Data (API, API Sandbox, actions)
Accessing Data from the Environment (AJAX concepts, mw.API, mw.loader.using)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-at-avenir

Centre for Internet and Society

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — March 2013

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

Events Organised

Events Co-organised

Upcoming Event (Co-organised)

Events Participated In

Event Report from Other Organisations

Media Coverage

Follow us elsewhere

Support Us

Request for Collaboration

March 2013 Bulletin

Access to Knowledge and Openness

Other Openness Updates

Privacy

IT Act

Unique ID Project

Free Speech and Expression

Others

Follow us elsewhere

Support Us

Request for Collaboration

Wikipedia Indian Languages Workshop at IIT, Bombay

Iraqi Public Data Scenario Workshop: A Summary

Introduction

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #1: Visualising Basic Parameters

Introduction

Acquiring the data

Deciding upon chart types

Calendar charts

Motion chart

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop, Mysore — Coverage in Prajavani

Strategic Issues Emerging from Open Access Dialogues - Final Report

Strategic issues emerging from the comments of Indian participants

1. Lacking OA awareness, even among scholarly communities

2. Uneven geography of OA success stories

3. Global businesses of scholarly works and complicity of Indian researchers

4. Citation Indexes as necessary evil

5. Open Access must not only be about access to journals

6. Open Access and the consumers of knowledge

Policy Suggestions

Wiki Women's Day in Goa

Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa

Ahmednagar — Marathi Wikipedia Workshop

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ/೯

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನದ ಉದ್ದೇಶ

ಯಾರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು

ದಿನಾಂಕ ಮತ್ತು ಸ್ಥಳ

ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಪಟ್ಟಿ

ಸ್ವಯಂಸೇವಕರು

ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲು ಇಚ್ಛಿಸುವವರು

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಹಾಯ

ಸೂಚನೆ

Wikipedia Workshop for Kannada Science Writers

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ/೮

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನದ ಉದ್ದೇಶ

ಯಾರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು

ದಿನಾಂಕ ಮತ್ತು ಸ್ಥಳ

ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಪಟ್ಟಿ

ಸ್ವಯಂಸೇವಕರು

ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲು ಇಚ್ಛಿಸುವವರು

ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಹಾಯ

Wikipedia Women's Workshop Bangalore 2013

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — February 2013

New Team Member

Events Participated In

Education Program

Event Reports

Media Coverage

Ongoing Events

Announcement

Follow us elsewhere

Support Us