Centre for Internet and Society

Adikavi Nannaya University Telugu Wikipedia Workshop

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-16T08:57:21Z

A Telugu Wikipedia introductory workshop was conducted for the students of Adikavi Nannaya University, Rajahmundry between 6- 7 January, 2017.

A two-day Telugu Wikipedia workshop was conducted for the students of Adikavi Nannaya University in Rajahmundry between 6- 7 January, 2017. The participants were post-graduate students of the Telugu Department of the University with a notable gender ratio of 13 male and 21 female participants.

The aim of the workshop was to introduce students to Wikipedia and contributing to Wikipedia projects. They were taught basic Wikipedia editing and the usage of Google's advanced tools. This would also help them create tertiary sources using primary and secondary sources. The students improved articles about their villages using references available on the Internet. The workshop, conducted jointly by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia community members, was key to increasing the base of Telugu Wikipedia across the Telugu-speaking region, to cities like Rajahmundry. Says User:విశ్వనాధ్.బి.కె., "from initial days, Wikipedia offline activities development is Hyderabad-centric and Wikipedia activities should be done in all areas (of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh). As this event in Adikavi Nannaya University helps in that aspect, I would like to offer all of my effort to these kind of events."

Overall, the event saw the creation 32 new pages on Telugu Wikipedia by 33 newly registered users with 99118 bytes being deleted/ added.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/adikavi-nannaya-university-telugu-wikipedia-workshop-1

Orientation & Training session of Jalbiradari Activists

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T11:30:24Z

An Orientation & Training session of Jalbiradari Activists was held on 4 January, 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia orientation and training session was conducted for Jalbirdari activists on 4 January, 2017 at the Kokale District, Sangli, Cooperative Society Hall. The event was keeping in line with CIS-A2K's attempts at engaging with communities of interest. The Jalbiradari water conservationists were introduced to Wikipedia and its projects. They were given an orientation on Marathi Wikipedia as a knowledge resource and encouraged to write about their village, water and environmental issues on Marathi Wikipedia.

The participants were involved in an open interaction with the community on local issues and cultivation and preservation of local knowledge. With 30 members taking part in the three-hour-long event, four articles were created and edited on Marathi Wikipedia.

The meta page for the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/orientation-training-session-of-jalbiradari-activists

Ongoing Proof-reading Effort by ALC Student Wikimedians in Telugu Wikisource

Pavan Santosh & Ting-Yi Chang — 2016-12-30T11:00:09Z

Student Wikimedians at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada formatted and proof-read more than 1,900 folios in Telugu Wikisource during the last few weeks of November (2016). Each day, a group of twenty students uses the lab facility provided by the college after regular classes to make necessary formatting changes and fix spelling mistakes in the folios of books available in Telugu Wikisource. Till date, the student Wikipedians have proofread eight books.

The work was initiated and supported by CIS-A2K members who organized a proofreading workshop of the Bible Bhashya Samputavali Volume 06 on Telugu Wikisource in Andhra Loyola College during 18 to 20 November 2016. During the workshop, Telugu Wikimedian Gullapalli Nageswara Rao (User:Nrgullapalli), along with CIS-A2K community advocate Pavan Santhosh helped students to learn about the process of digitizing book in Telugu Wikisource and other formatting aspects involved. In this event, nearly twenty students picked up the skills required to proof-read a book as well as the formatting techniques in Telugu Wikisource. Some students had also started to proof-read three other books that are currently available in Telugu Wikisource.

This event also marked great effort and accomplishment of promoting gender balance and diversity in local community events — as the organizers and institution successfully assured a minimum 50% female participation rate throughout the three days. CIS-A2K member Ting-Yi Chang also gave a short introduction to the participants about the issue in Wikipedia (media) Gender Gap. Students who had previous Wikipedia editing experience at the ALC were also invited to the session, rendering around thirty female audience. The presentation included small brainstorm activities for students to discuss reasons behind the gender asymmetry online and on Wikipedia/media projects, as well as how we as community members can make a difference to help women feel more welcomed.

A follow-up Wikisource session was conducted on 25 and 26 November 2016 for students to learn about the remaining steps in digitization and the OCR tool. Thanks to encouragement and motivation given by Principal Rev. Fr., Dr. Peter Kishore, staff members Prof. Siva Kumari, and Dr. K. Sekhar, the student Wikipedians had started to contribute to Wikisource after class for at least a couple of hours every day. These events and accomplishments show remarkable efforts and dedication from both student Wikimedians and the institutional partner.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ongoing-proof-reading-effort-by-alc-student-wikimedians-in-telugu-wikisource

విజ్ఞాన నిధి వికీపీడియా..

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:38:48Z

The article about Telugu Wikipedia appeared in Namaste Telangana on December 11, 2016.

సిటీబ్యూరో:ప్రాపంచిక విషయాలను, చారిత్రక ఘట్టాలను, శాస్త్రీయ విషయాలను ప్రపంచానికి చేరువ చేస్తున్న విజ్ఞాన నిధి వికీపీడియా. ఆధునిక సాంకేతిక పద్ధతుల ఆధారంగా ఆన్‌లైన్‌తో ప్రపంచంలోని పలు ఆసక్తికరమైన విషయాలన్నింటనీ ప్రజలందరికీ చేరువ చేసే నేస్తం ఇది. అందరికీ ప్రవేశం, అందరికీ ఉచితంగా అందుబాటులో ఉండే ఈ ఎన్‌సైక్లోపెడియాలో మన చరిత్ర, మన సంస్కృతి మరెన్నో విషయాలను జోడించేందుకు సమాచార సైనికులతో వికీపీడియా డేను పురస్కరించుకొని గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్‌లో శనివారం ఓ కార్యశాలను నిర్వహించింది. విజ్ఞాన సమాచారం,భౌగోళిక, చారిత్రక అంశాలు, సాంస్కృతిక విషయాలను వికీపీడియాలో చొప్పించేందుకు చేపట్టాల్సిన కార్యక్రమాలను ఈ కార్యశాలలో చర్చించారు. వికీపీడియాలో అందరూ తమకు తెలిసిన ఆసక్తికరమైన అంశాలపై వ్యాసాలు రాయవచ్చని, ప్రపంచానికి కొత్త విషయాలను పరిచయం చేయవచ్చని ఆంగ్ల వికీపీడియన్ టిటో దత్తా అన్నారు. వికీ ట్రైనర్, ట్రైనర్ ద ట్రైనర్ కార్యక్రమంలో వికీపీడీయన్లు కశ్యప్, ప్రణయ్ పలు సాంకేతిక అంశాలను తెలుగు వికిపీడియన్లకు వివరించారు. చరిత్రకారుడు, కవి కట్టా శ్రీనివాస్ మాట్లాడుతూ గోల్కొండ వంటి పలు చారిత్రక ప్రదేశాల్లో ప్రజలకు తెలియని చారిత్రక, సాంకేతిక ప్రదేశాలు, ఆసక్తికరమైన అంశాలు ఉన్నాయని వాటన్నింటినీ సేకరించి, ప్రపంచానికి చేరవేయాల్సిన అవసరం ఉందన్నారు. ఈ కార్యక్రమాన్ని వికీపీడియన్లు చేపట్టి విజయవంతం చేయాలన్నారు. సీనియర్ జర్నలిస్ట్ బీవీ ప్రసాద్, మౌర్య, మీనా గాయత్రి పాల్గొన్నారు.

Link to the original in Namaste Telangana

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/namaste-telangana-december-11-2016-article-on-wikipedia

Changing the typographic landscape of a country: one letter at a time

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:06:51Z

My interest in designing typefaces in Indian scripts grew out of years of disappointment with the way most Hindi books I came across looked. Apart from a few exceptions, they looked like poor cousins of English books. Whether it was a children’s story book or a novel or magazine, there was usually the same drab typeface.

The blog post by Pooja Saxena was published in Storyweaver on December 1, 2016.

Some letters didn’t look like what we were taught in school, on others the matras (vowel marks) didn’t arch at the right places. Overall, the books and the letters inside them had an air of neglect. They looked old and completely unexciting. When I first learned that designing typefaces was a real job, I thought here was the opportunity to change all that.

Cambay, Devanagari typeface designed by Pooja Saxena for Google Fonts

Changing the typographic landscape of a country as diverse as India is not a one-woman job, but every now and then a project comes by that has the potential to make a small difference. Two years ago, as a result of a conversation with Subhashish Panigrahi, the Access to Knowledge programme at the Centre for Internet and Society commissioned a Ol Chiki typeface family. The Ol Chiki script, about which I knew precious little at the time, is used to write the language Santali, which is spoken by over six million people in India and its neighbouring countries. At the time that we started working on this project, there was no Unicode compliant typeface available in the script, making it impossible for it to be used on computers and cellphones, and online in a consistent and future-proof way. We hoped to change that by designing a small, but useful typeface family (it comes in regular, bold and italics) along with input methods and keyboard layouts that would allow a person to type Ol Chiki text easily.

Guru Gomke, Ol Chiki typeface designed by Pooja Saxena with research inputs from Shubhashish Panigrahi,for the A2K Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society.

This project was especially challenging because not only was Ol Chiki a completely unfamiliar script to me and Subhashish, but there was limited material available for us to consult. While designing a typeface in a script one reads and/or writes, or is at least familiar with, one’s experience with those letters can act as a guide. By writing them and seeing them printed in different fonts, in many people’s handwriting — some good, some bad — and on hand painted signs, one develops an instinct for identifying which parts of a letter make it recognisable. That way we know what parts of the letter can be exaggerated, and what others can be played down without compromising legibility. For an unfamiliar script, this visual vocabulary and the traditionally correct way of writing letters must be learned. Manuscripts, printed documents, handwriting manuals and samples, metal type, linguistic information about the script, feedback from native readers — all form parts of a puzzle that needs to be put together to design a competent typeface.

The story of Ol Chiki script is fascinating. The script is less than a century old, and was devised by Pandit Raghunath Murmu, who wanted to create a script that could accommodate all the features of the Santali language — something that the scripts used to write Santali so far had failed to do. Legend has it that he based the design of the letters on objects commonly found in the everyday environment of the Santals. Even though the script was created between 1920 – 1940, the Santal community has many myths about how it was created. One says that the script came to be at the time when the Earth itself was created, another says that the script was given as a divine gift to a learned man, Pandit Raghunath Murmu. It is after Pandit Raghunath Murmu, who is reverentially called Guru Gomke, that the Ol Chiki typeface that I designed was named. You can find out more about the Ol Chiki typeface and input methods project here.

Custom lettering for the Tamil branding of the Coovum Art Festival, designed by Pooja Saxena

If you’re interested in Indian type design and le ering, consider following the work of these exceptional designers — Noopur Datye, one of the co-founders of type design collective, Ek Type, who has designed custom typefaces TV channels like LifeOK; Kimya Gandhi, who is partner at Mota Italic, and recently designed an inventive Devanagari handwriting font; or Lipi Raval, whose flamboyant Gujarati typeface Mogra is a complete head-turner.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/story-weaver-december-1-2016-pooja-saxena-changing-the-typographic-landscape-of-a-country

Wikipedia workshop for Konkani students conducted in Mangaluru

tito — 2017-06-28T09:57:32Z

A two days Wikipedia workshop "introduction to Wikipedia" was conducted at Besant College, Mangaluru. 16 undergraduate and post-graduate students from 3 different colleges participated in the event. Here is a report.

A two day workshop was conducted for students who opted konkani at U.G.& P.G.courses of Mangalore University on 16 and 17 December at Besant Evening College, Mangaluru. This event was jointly organised by Mangalore University Konkani Adhyayana Peeta, and the Dept. of Konkani (M. A.). The Centre for Internet Society, India (CIS, India) and Besant Evening College, Mangaluru were the collaborators. Dr. Devadasa Pai of Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Academy was the primary co-ordinator. A representative from CIS, India participated in the workshop as a resource person. Harriet Vidyasagar, a Konkani Wikipedia enthusiast and supporter, and Sabrina Hougaard attended the event to groom the participant and share their expertise.

16 undergraduate and post-graduate colleges from 3 different colleges of Mangalore participated in this workshop. The table below shows participation from each college and gender ratio.

College	Participants	Female	Male
Mangalore University College	2	1	1
St. Aloysius College	9	4	5
Milagress Degree College	5	3	2
Total	16	8	8

The first day's (16 December) event was started with general introduction to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. The following topics were discussed:

Wikipedia and Wikimedia movement
Importance of Wikipedia as a source of knowledge and information in the World Wide Web (WWW)
Free knowledge movement
Indic language Wikipedias

This was followed by account creation where the participants were asked to create accounts on Wikipedia. After that they were taught about Wikipedia user page, and sandbox page. They were also taught about basic editing (general formatting) on sandbox using Visual Editor.

On the second day (17 December) the participants wrote articles on their Konkani Wikipedia user sandbox page in Kannada script. 16 students wrote more than 25 short articles on their sandbox.

They were also introduced to Wikipedia content translation tool and Wikidata. During the Wikidata session, following a general introduction to Wikidata, the participants were asked to add labels and descriptions in Indian languages such as Kannada, Konkani etc. More than 150 edits were made during this exercise.

This workshop should be followed up by another iteration where the participants will be taught about the next level of editing.

Image credit

Source: Wikimedia Commons, author: User:Outofindia, CC-BY-SA-4.0

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-students-conducted-in-mangalore

Pranay Raj record in 100 days-100 articles

pavan — 2016-12-19T18:16:03Z

Telugu Theatre scholar Pranay Raj Vangari from Motkur of Yadadri District, Telangana created record by completing a challenge that is famous worldwide in Wikimedia community - "100 Days-100 Articles". Pranay Raj is a theatre scholar and artist who used to travel length and breadth of Telangana & Andhra Pradesh for research and performances.

Even in that situations, he started first article in challenge on September 8th and completed 100 articles in December 16th. Telangana State Language & Cultural department director Mamidi Harikrishna felicitated Pranay Raj after completion on completing 100 Wikidays challenge. Pranay said that two other Telugu Wikipedians completed this challenge successfully before him and he told they inspired him to take this up and complete. Pranay agreed that he faced some difficulties in writing articles in places where network is low. He said that he wouldn't stop with 100 wikidays but would continue challenge for whole day by creating 365 days and also said he would create more Telangana related articles.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pranay-raj-record-in-100-days-100-articles

వంద రోజులు.. వంద వ్యాసాలు - తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో మోత్కూరు యువకుని రికార్డు (100 Days...100 Articles: Wikipedian from Motkur created record in Telugu Wikipedia)

pavan — 2016-12-18T15:09:54Z

Pranay Raj Vangari of Motkur Padmashali colony created record in Telugu Wikipedia. "100 Days- 100 Articles" is already going on in many languages worldwide and Pranay Raj took challenge in Telugu Wikipedia, completed it successfully. Pranay is theatre scholor. He started first article in this challenge on september 8 and continued to write articles on every day till December 16 to complete 100 articles. Pranay said that two other Telugu Wikipedians (Pavan and Meena) successfully completed the challenge and explained that he inspired from them to complete it. Telangana state language & cultural department director Mamidi Harikrishna felicitated Pranay in His chamber on this occasion and appreciated for his work.

Clipping of the article in Andhra Jyoti:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/100-days-100-articles-wikipedian-from-motkur-created-record-in-telugu-wikipedia

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Kolhapur

subodh — 2016-12-16T23:34:10Z

On behalf of CIS-A2K team Subodh Kulkarni conducted a Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Shivaji University in Kolhapur on 15 December 2016. The goal of the Wikipedia edit-a-thon was to build resources in the field of Political Science on Marathi Wikipedia and equip its participants with the process of contributing to Wikipedia, and to introduce it as a concept to them.

The workshop was conducted at the Political Science Department of Shivaji University for post graduate and research students and professors. The Head of the Political Science Department, Dr. Prakash Pawar actively took part in all the process. In all 22 new editors began their contribution on Wikipedia. The effort is the first step towards building long term institutional partnership with Shivaji University where many courses are run in Marathi language.

The Department of Mass Communication and the Department of Environment and Science have also evinced interest for conducting edit-a-thons for their students.

Overall the primary goals of the project include:

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

For more info, read the meta page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-kolhapur

Mini TTT and MWT conducted in Hyderabad, India

dutta — 2016-12-15T05:28:44Z

Mini Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki Trainer program was conducted on 10 and 11 December 2016 in Hyderabad. 15 Wikipedians from 4 cities of Andhra pradesh and Telangana 2 Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the event. Here is a report.

The 2016 iteration of mini Train-the-Trainer (TTT) and MediaWiki training (MWT) was conducted on 10 and 11 December 2016 at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad. Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki training are two of the biggest annual national events conducted by CIS-A2K. The first program attempts to groom leadership skills among Indian Wikimedians, and in the second event Indian Wikimedians are taught about MediaWiki, Wikipedia tools, scripts, gadgets and technical things. Following the national-level annual event state-level or city level iterations of the program are conducted.

In this year’s Hyderabad mini TTT and MWT, 15 Wikimedians from 4 cities of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana - Hyderabad, Vijayawada, West Godavari, and Visakhapatnam participated. It is unfortunate that only 1 among the 15 participants was female. 14 of the participants were Telugu Wikimedians, and 1 was from Bengali Wikimedia community. CIS-A2K representative Tito Dutta, from Bangalore, participated in the event as a resource person. Rahmanuddin Shaik, a Telugu Wikimedia administrator Rahmanuddin Shaik attended as a technical resource person. Another CIS-A2K representative Pavan Santhosh was the co-ordinator and also a trainer during the event. 3 student Wikipedians from Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada participated in the training.

On 10 December, the first day of the event, these topics were discussed:

Editing Wikipedia with Visual editor (mainly for new editors)
Enablings different options in the Wikipedia preference page, including Wikipedia skins, gadgets such as HotCat, Navigation pop up; (mainly for new editors)
Conducting a program: group discussion: pre-event activities, conducting an event, post-event activities, preparing report, reimbursement process, Global Metrics;
General discussion and knowledge sharing on topics like Wikimeetup, education program.

On 11 December, the second day of the event, these topics were discussed:

Wikipedia articles structure, and different Manual of Style topics
Wikipedia tools, gadgets;
Wikimedia Foundation new grant structure and different grant options
Introduction to Wikidata and Wikidata tools such as Wikidata game
Discussion on Telugu Wikipedia’s workplan

At the end of the event two Telugu Wikipedians a) User:Pranayraj1985 and b) User:Meena_gayathri.s, who completed 100wikidays challenge recently, were congratulated and felicitated.

Image source

Source: Wikimedia Commons. author: User:Pranayraj1985, license: CC SA 4.0 International

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mini-ttt-and-mwt-conducted-in-hyderabad-india

Writing skills improve with Wikipedia editing

praskrishna — 2016-12-15T02:21:23Z

Pavan Santhosh said that contributing to Wikipedia and working in Wikimedia community improves our leadership qualities and writing skills. In an awareness session conducted about "You can edit Wikipedia" in JKC college, Guntur, Santhosh explained how to create and improve articles about Wikipedia in this program. Principal I.Nageswara Rao presided over this meeting.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eenadu-december-3-2016-writing-skills-improve-with-wikipedia-editing

Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers

praskrishna — 2016-12-01T14:56:41Z

The blog post was published by AIGA.org on November 29, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was consulted.

Back story: Ever met a teenaged girl yearning to be a typeface designer? Yes? Then perhaps you know Pooja Saxena, who recognized her life’s calling when she was still in high school. Saxena went on to study with type historian and designer Fiona Ross at the University of Reading in the UK.

The idea for Guru Gomke came from a chat she had with Panigrahi, whose work with the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Program at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore underscored the lack of tools and resources available for India’s minority languages online. For example, Ol Chiki is the alphabet needed to write the language Santali, used by over 5 million people in India and its neighboring countries. “At the time of our conversation, we couldn’t find a single Unicode-compliant font in the script—forget a typeface family with a bold or an italic. [Noto Sans Ol Chiki, in regular and bold, has since been released]. Subhashish mentioned all these minority scripts in India that people can’t use because fonts and keyboards for them don’t exist,” Saxena says. “I was enthusiastic to help create a free open-source typeface family and input methods in Ol Chiki, and thanks to Subhashish’s work with A2K, he was able to make it happen.”

Why’s it called Guru Gomke? Guru Gomke is a title of respect for Pandit Raghunath Murmu, creator of the Ol Chiki script in the early 20th century. The name translates to “great teacher.” It was recommended to Panigrahi by one of the language experts consulted by the designers, and they found it a wonderful nod to the history of the script.

What are its distinguishing characteristics? Its very existence, frankly. It’s now one of just two Unicode-compliant fonts with both bold and italic character sets.

What should I use it for? Next time you need to set absolutely anything in Ol Chiki.

What other typefaces do you like to pair it with? Matched to Source Sans Pro visually and proportionally, these two fonts are visually harmonic used anywhere Ol Chiki and Latin texts have to work together. In fact, the Latin glyphs included in Guru Gomke are derived from Source Sans Pro.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eye-on-design-aiga-guru-gomke-is-stylish

Odia Wikipedia: Sambalpur University Workshop

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-17T06:44:47Z

An Odia Wikipedia orientation-cum-workshop program was organised for the students of Sambalpur University on 27 November, 2016.

Over the last couple of years, the Odia Wikipedia community has been successful in organising workshops and outreach programs in different parts of coastal and central Odisha. With over 38 active Wikipedians (as of 2016), the Odia community is growing everyday and expanding across different parts of Odisha. The recent increase in the number of Wikipedians in western Odisha inspired the community members to conduct an introductory Wikipedia workshop in Sambalpur University.

On 27th November 2016, an orientation-cum-workshop program for Odia Wikipedia was organised for the students of Computer Science and Application Department and the Odia Department in Sambalpur University. 57 participants, comprising 30 male and 27 female participants attended the event. 5 faculty members were also present. Dr. Chitta Ranjan Dash, the Vice Chancellor of the University was the Guest of Honour for the workshop. Three Odia Wikipedians- Mrutyunjay Kar, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Nistha Ranjan Dash facilitated the workshop as mentors.

The workshop began with an introduction to Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource digitisation efforts by Dr. Sarada Baboo, a professor from the Computer Science and Application department. The first session introduced the various Wikimedia projects to the participants. The participants were given an introduction on how to contribute to the different Wiki projects. They were also given an orientation on Wikipedia policies and guidelines. After this, the participants were introduced to Odia Wikipedia and its development over the years. The post lunch session trained participants on creating user accounts, articles, and other basic dos and don’ts on Wikipedia. During the training session, over 20 Wikipedians were able to create accounts.

The Wikipedia workshop in Sambalpur University was an important step to raise awareness about the Wikipedia movement in western Odisha, This was the first workshop in Sambalpur University and the second workshop in western Odisha after three years. Over 196 colleges are affiliated to Sambalpur University, in seven different districts in western Odisha. A regular follow up with the University, the faculty and the students will help in furthering the free knowledge movement in western Odisha.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/odia-wikipedia-sambalpur-university-workshop

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

tito — 2017-06-28T10:02:00Z

Indian Government works are not available under free and open licenses. On the other hand a large number countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela etc. have adopted the Creative Commons and other free licenses. The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain. This article promotes the idea that the Government works should be freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable.

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Free knowledge movement is a worldwide movement that creates and tries to get works under free and open licenses. It claims that knowledge is a common human property, and must be easily, freely accessible.

While discussing the topic "Access to knowledge: a basic human right", American scientist and researcher Jack Andraka feels:

Access to knowledge is, you know, a basic human right. Knowledge should not be commoditized; it wants to be free.

The Open Definition defines the term “Open Knowledge” in Open Definition 2.0 as:

"Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness."

All open content must be a) available under free licenses, b) accessible as a whole, and c) should be in open format (see more details)

A big name in the world of free content is (of course) Wikipedia, where you can use, share, remix content from the site under the Creative Commons licenses. There are many organizations, networks and groups working to get more and more content under free and open licenses such as Creative Commons (text, audio, video, image), Free and Open Source Software or FOSS (software), Open design principle (machine, engineering), Open Access (academic works) etc.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that education should be free. Right to information is also a human right and Article 27 of the declaration states:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

These are just not possible unless knowledge /information is easily and preferably freely accessible to everyone without restrictions. If the first barrier is accessibility, i.e, not having enough digital content or information or content behind paywall, then the second barrier is its openness. Just having access to some web pages is not enough, it also requires rights like free using, sharing, remixing, Unrestricted content can be utilized in the best way.

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Government websites are not freely licensed. In section 2(k) of Indian Copyright Act, 1957 the meaning of “Government work” is explained:

"Government work" means a work which is made or published by or under the direction or control of—
(i) the Government or any department of the Government;
(ii) any Legislature in India;
. . .

Read Indian Copyright Act, section 2(c) here.

Indian Copyright Act section 17(d) informs about the “First owner of copyright” of a Government work:

in the case of a Government work, Government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein;

Read section 17(d) here.

Section 28 is about “Term of copyright in Government works”. It states:

In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published.—In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published."

Read section 28 here

Section 52 of the act allows some “fair use” and informs how content can be used for research, education, review, criticism and some other purpose. The lengthy copyright section may be read here. However, it does not make the content free. You are not allowed to remix the work or use for commercial purpose. You can not freely use, modify, distribute it.

Now let’s have a look at a few Government websites and their license details pages.

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

(http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/website-policies)

In this website the copyright policy page informs:

Material featured on this website may be reproduced free of charge. However, the material has to be reproduced accurately and not to be used in a derogatory manner or in a misleading context. Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged. However, the permission to reproduce this material shall not extend to any material which is identified as being copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the department/copyright holder concerned.

A screenshot may be seen below:

Here-

“Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged.” -- this part of the policy is similar to the Creative Commons licenses, where the owner or author of a work must be given attribution.

but,

“has to be reproduced accurately” -- it prohibits remix or modification works,
“not to be used in a derogatory manner” -- it is unclear that what is “derogatory manner”! Can it be used for criticism?

Indian Vice President’s official website
(http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/website-policies)

This is similar to the Prime Minister’s website policy and does not allow remix, commercial use etc. See screenshot:

Indian President’s official website
(http://presidentofindia.gov.in/copyright-policy.htm)

Although the Vice President’s website allows some fair use, the Indian President’s official web portal’s license is different and does not allow to reproduce the work “partially or fully”. The copyright policy states:

This contents of this website may not be reproduced partially or fully, without due permission from The President of India, If referred to as a part of another publication, the source must be appropriately acknowledged. The contents of this website can not be used in any misleading or objectionable context.

We have shown 3 example above, but it is more or less similar in all government web portals.

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

It might be interesting to note that unlike India, a large number of countries publish their Government works under open licenses or public domain. We’ll discuss only a few here:

United States

The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain.
The White House website and third party content such as text or speeches by the first lady are licensed under CC SA 3.0 US license. U.S.
On 18 June, 2013, Barack Obama and other G7 leaders endorsed the Open Data Charter. Open Data Action plan is licensed under CC0.
Several other works such as works created by New York State Senate, works created by the State of Virginia are also under different creative commons licenses. Details may be seen here.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Open Government License (OGL) is used for Crown Copyright works published by the UK government. Since 2001, some works by the UK government were available under the Click-Use license. This license was replaced by OGL in 2010. The first version of OGL was released on 30 September 2010. OGL is compatible with the CC licenses. OGL allows to:

copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information,
adapt the Information,
exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

However,

Attribution must be given to with source link, which is similar to the creative commons licenses.
Some documents such as the British passport, military insignia, property rights, including patents, trademarks, and design rights, personal information in data don’t come under OGL.

More about the Open Government License may be seen here.

France

France government’s website http://www.gouvernement.fr/ is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 FR license. The English version of the policy page may be seen here.
France government’s cultural department’s website http://www.culture.fr/ is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
The Culture Communication website http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/ is also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.

Russian Federation

Content of the website http://kremlin.ru are under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. License policy page may be seen here. Many other Russian government works are under different open licenses, details may be seen here.

Netherlands

The Dutch government official website http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ is licensed under CC 0. All content of this website is under public domain, unless any other license is specified.

Bulgaria

The President of Bulgaria’s official website https://www.president.bg/ is licensed under CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.

Croatia

Croatian Government website http://otvorenikod.nsk.hr/ is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 Croatia.

The Long list

More than 30 countries have adopted and publishing their works under the Creative Commons and other free licenses. Other the above mentioned countries, the list include countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela etc. Other than the counties, several international organizations such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) endorsed the free license concept and have adopted the same. See a long list of countries using free licenses here.

Last line

It is unfortunate that the Indian Government works are not under free licenses, however it would be great if the Government rethinks and relicense their general content under the free licenses. This will help not only the movement, but the content itself can be utilized in a much better and broader way.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-knowledge-and-indian-government-work

Improving Telugu Village Articles

Pavan Santhosh — 2016-11-26T02:27:39Z

Telugu wikipedians on 6 October 2016 held a discussion on improving the quality of Telugu articles. The event was organized by IIIT, Hyderabad, CIS-A2K and OpenGeo.

A possible collaboration between Wikipedia and free and open source enthusiasts and environmental groups was explored at the meeting. Subodh Kulkarni and Pavan Santhosh made a presentation about Wikipedia. The participants were from different groups such as SOUL (Save Our Urban Lakes), OpenGeo.org (organization that works for open source mapping) and Sweccha (organization working to expand free software movement in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh).

Prof. Madhav Gadgil moderated a discussion on how these organizations could collaborate for different Wikimedia projects. The discussion primarily revolved around improving ongoing Telugu village articles.

Prof. Gadgil stressed on compiling articles using reliable and verifiable sources. He also urged the participants to upload geo-tagged photos to Commons especially photos of lakes of which the authorities have denied existence. The discussion also focused on the synergy between OpenGeo and Wikipedia.

Post-lunch, Prof. Gadgil delivered a lecture on “Human Knowledge: An Evolutionary Perspective in IIT”. Prof. Gadgil explained that the next big leap in evolution of human knowledge is free knowledge in which everyone can contribute and utilize which was Wikipedia. He urged the scholars and students to contribute to Wikipedia which is the future for knowledge society.

Telugu and English wikipedians including Vinay, Lubna Sarwath, Undavalli Ravikumar, Raju and many more participated in the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/improving-telugu-village-articles