Centre for Internet and Society

Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation

subha — 2016-06-18T18:15:05Z

Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Here is a blog highlighting three Konkani Wikimedians and an advocate of the Wikipedia movement whose efforts finally paid off.

Read the original blog entry published on Wikimedia Blog on July 15, 2015 here.

The Goan Konkani Wikipedia (available at gom.wikipedia.org) has gone live after spending nine long years in incubation.

An Indo-Aryan language, of the Indo-European family of languages, Konkani is the official language of Goa. It is a minority language in other Indian states, such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, northern Kerala, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu. It is spoken by about 7.4 million people.

Konkani can be written in five different scripts: Devanagari—officially used by the Government of Goa—as well as Latin (locally known as Romi Konkani), Kannada, Malayalam, and Persian. Of these, the Goan Antruz dialect of the language, in the Devanagari script, is considered standard by the Indian constitution.

The Konkani Wikipedia has many heroes, as we see them. Melissa Simoes and Darshan Kandolkar are two of the many long-term contributors who joined during the Konkani Wikipedia @ Goa University program and are still active even after the program formally concluded. Darshan is an assistant professor at the Government College Pernem in Goa. His professor at Goa University, Dr. Madhavi Sardesai—who passed away last year—played a vital role in inspiring him to go for higher studies in Konkani. Darshan realized that there is a lot to be written in Konkani when he was introduced to Wikipedia, and after that, he became dedicated to contributing to the project.

“I would like to bring more students as contributors to our Konkani Wikipedia,” Darshan says. “My aim is to start with my students at Government College Pernem. Being an alumnus of Goa University, I also want my juniors there to join our community and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.”

“I have a dream to start a project for the freedom fighters of Goa and involve a diverse set of people, from students to journalists and columnists. I also want to build partnership with educational institutions so we could engage with the students for a longer run and the existing Konkani community could mentor them,” he continues.

“Being a new Wikipedia project, Konkani Wikipedia needs more quality measures and the articles have to grow to good quality articles with more images and templates, I want to take it to the level of English Wikipedia with both quantitative and qualitative growth in articles!”

The Konkani Wikimedia community has been using social media actively to promote the Konkani Wikipedia project, and to celebrate the successes of its contributors. After Melissa became the top contributor to the project, her fellow editor Luis Gomes congratulated her. That brought Melissa into the spotlight, gaining the attention of editors from the global Wikimedia community. The community is continuing a tradition to rewarding the most prolific contributor of each month as the “Wikipedian of the Month”.

Melissa was introduced to the Wikipedia program at her university where the target for each participating student was to write one article each about a village in Goa. “I wrote my article just for the sake of the marks, but never bothered to think about why I am writing it. After the program was over, I became inactive on Wikipedia.

“After some time, I met Father [Luis Gomes] in parish and then Darshan and Father inspired me to resume editing. Then, it became an addiction and I never stopped even for a day. I would come back from work and sit in front of my computer.

“Now, I am a teacher, and my fellow teachers are mostly women. I would like to introduce the Goan Konkani Wikipedia to them so they could also contribute to Wikipedia,” Melissa says.

As Konkani Wikipedia went live, long term Wikimedian Fredrick Noronha, an early advocate of Konkani Wikipedia, said, “It is a wonderful feeling to see the Goan Konkani Wikipedia live. I would like to congratulate all who have been involved in some or the other way with the making of Konkani Wikipedia live from the days of its inception and incubation.

“I am not a great contributor or even a language expert. I come from a content background and found my interest in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons long ago. But this helped me to associate myself in some way with the Konkani Wikipedia incubator. I am happy that CIS-A2K chipped in to help build a community and help it grow in collaboration with the Goa University.

“Students of the Konkani department in the university are the real heroes to take this effort forward by filling the Wikipedia incubator with more editing activity to which the institutional backing acted as catalyst,” he added.

Fredrick feels there are major challenges that the community now has to start taking measures for: “The macrolanguage is written in multiple scripts. Out of five of the scripts three—Devanagari, Romi/Latin and Kannada—are actively used in printing and publication currently. People using all the scripts should be equally participating in a movement like Wikipedia to take their languages to other native speakers using Wikipedia as a digital tool.

“The second challenge is with the contributors. Goa, being home to majority of the Konkani language speakers, has English education from the primary level. This means many have a great level of technical ability. The technical contributor community here would be of great use to Konkani Wikipedia if tapped,” he adds.

“The technical contributors are eager to contribute but have not been approached in a manner that would interest them. Similarly the Konkani authors who are helping propagate the language to masses have sadly no or very little clue about Wikipedia’s existence in Konkani. This disparity is stopping a massive flow of local encyclopedic content to the Konkani Wikipedia. Unless we tap into the technological and the linguistic groups it will be only a tip of the iceberg.”

Fredrick explains that the the current Konkani Wikipedia community is primarily made up of students of Goa University. “This is both good and bad,” he says. “Having young and enthusiastic students as Wikipedia editors is helping the project to leap forward, which might not have happened if the faculty were targeted instead. There is, however, a great need for diversification.

“The approach to bring in authors in the 60–70 years age group will vary from the approach to bring in, for example, technical people. Our outreach strategies should ultimately fulfill both the literary and technological contributors, so that their work can help us to both grow content and to solve the problem of the multiple scripts, respectively,” Fredrick adds.

The Konkani Wikipedia community is organizing a public seminar on July 18 at Goa University to celebrate the launch of the Konkani Wikipedia and to pay tribute to Dr. Madhavi Sardesai, who always dreamed of the Konkani Wikipedia getting out of incubation.

Video


Wikimedian Darshan Kandolkar shares his experience of contributing to Konkani Wikipedia. Video in Konkani. Video by Wikimedia India, freely licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live

Magic words in Wikipedia

tanvir — 2015-09-14T08:37:56Z

The struggle of finding solutions for replacing and retrieving content /words/facts and figures, in this day and age of machines that seem to know everything should ideally be a non-issue. Yet, for many of us who write reports based on the data available at that moment, it is nothing less than a nightmare to come to know that there has been a significant change in the data with which our reports have been written.

How does one mediate between the ever changing nature of data in general and more specifically understand the way a publicly curated knowledge ecology operates (Wikipedia can be taken as an example). It is made clear to us by the various earlier reports¹ that the amount of data exchange and content generation can be astonishingly high when one takes into acount Open Knowledge repositiries such as Wikipedia in the major languages of the world, commons.wikimedia project and other Wikimedia projects.

Our understanding of the available data can often lead us to erroneous conclusions, if one does not account for the constant updating nature of such data. The bigger risk is for a reader/researcher/user to assume that the data quoted in news reports/research or reports as static data (as against the dynamic data discussed here) and form conclusions based on the same. Another catastrophic possibility is to use the data procured in such fashion for planning and evaluation purposes. If one does not acknowledge the possibilty of change of data and plans only with the available data and does not account for the changes under contingency measures the entire planning might be off the mark and might not be successful when executed. Even for the purpose of evaluation, the constant change in data has to be tracked and monitored to appreciate the work/critical evaluation of the nature of the work.

How do we bell the Cat (read as the changing data) if not on the traditional print and digital platforms atleast in the Wikimedia universe? To do this manually is a task that is supremely tasking and prone to high error possibilities. If there is one thing researchers accross subject domains agree it is that no data is always better than wrong data. One must also think of the precious resources that would be spent on this data mining activity, the human hours, the time resources, the physical and infrastructural resources that are consumed in this process of keeping the data feed accurate and updated. I do notdeny the efficacy of systems where data mining is done manually. It is the digital researcher in me who would like to introduce to the readers a tool called 'Magic Words' https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words used in the Wikimedia universe to plug this problem and offer researchers fewer nightmares regarding the validity of the data.

Magic words offer a one stop solution towards resolving the issues of sourcing, securing and updating our data fields. With this one can be sure that the data fields do not become obsolete and might yield to erronoeus and in worse case contradictory interpretations. If there is a research report which seeks to compare page numbers of Kannada Wikipedia with another Wikimedia project. The traditional way to do this would be to aggregate the number of articles/redirects and publish the same. The reader ends up with a number that is static in nature. Does this mean that this number is permanent, the answer is an easy no because Kannada Wikipedia is by nature and definition a live project that will be changed and added to constantly.

An ordinary reader who does not have the bandwidth to follow the researcher's footsteps in finding out the total number of articles on Kannada Wikipedia will have to be content with the same static number provided even when he knows that the number is no longer accurate. By using the magic word {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} in a report that is written on Meta, the researcher allows the data to update automatically and changes the nature of data from static to dynamic. A classic example for the static data and the dynamic nature of the data using Magic words can be seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias (dynamic data represented) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias (static data that needs to be updated manually). The change in the nature of presentation of data also implies that the facts and figures available are not just numbers but indicate factors that have driven the nature of data and influenced the formation of number of pages. Dynamic data allows us to ask interesting questions such as 'what factors contributed to the spike/decline in the number of articles' and learn from these numbers.

It becomes an essential responsibility for the researchers working with digital resources and in digital domains to broaden the scope of their research and also extend its validity to a longer course that would be difficult for quantitative research done with traditional resources and hosted on traditional platforms. Given below is a table of key magic words and its function.

Si. No	Magic Word	Used for	Used in Wikimedia Projects and Local Wiki Projects
1	{{NUMBEROFFILES}}	Number of uploaded files.	Metrics and Government Databases
2	{{NUMBEROFEDITS}}	Number of wiki edits.	Metrics and Student Evaluation
3	{{REVISIONDAY}}	Day edit was made	Metrics and Student Evaluation
4	{{REVISIONSIZE}}	The size (bytes of wikitext) of the current revision of this page	Metrics and Data inflow
5	{{NUMBEROFVIEWS}}	Number of page views.	Metrics and Website Traffic
6	{{REVISIONUSER}}	The username of the user who made the most recent edit to the page, or the current user when previewing an edit.	Metrics and Collaboratively written documents
7	{{NUMBEROFADMINS}}	Number of users in the sysop group.	Metrics and Focus group
8	{{PAGENAME}}	Full page title (including all subpage levels) without the namespace.	Metrics and Info websites

Magic words facility can be employed in many and diverse ways (as of now these are fully operational in the Wikimedia universe) if the Mediawiki software is used to build applications. For eg: Websites, evaluation programmes, databases and other applications.

Reference:

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Indic_Languages#State_of_Indic_Language_Projects
2. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Magic_words

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

Train the Trainer: Running effective outreach activities in India

tanvir — 2015-07-30T15:20:46Z

It is heartening to report that many Wikimedia projects in Indian languages have sustained, and even experienced an upward trend in, editor engagement. However, in terms of content creation, the majority of these projects are still facing grave challenges that put their very existence at risk.


February’s Train the Trainer program—which aims to increase the number of new editors and ‘ambassadors’ for the movement at large—proved a rewarding experience for attendees. Photo by U.B. Pavanaja, freely licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Pageview statistics for Indian-language Wikipedias are pleasantly surprising. Almost all exceed one million unique views every month—but despite these positive readership figures, very few of these readers become actively involved in the project’s communities. There is almost no increase in the number of active and very active editors on a month-to-month basis.

These statistics are alarming. They suggest a very real possibility of volunteer burnout, a dearth of second-generation editors who might continue established work, and, perhaps most importantly, the projects losing their reputation as frequently-updated and reliable encyclopedias.

The most realistic way of dealing with this problem is to bring in new volunteers who will be guided by more experienced users. They would, eventually, fill the shoes of senior Wikimedians and continue to fight for free and open knowledge.

The Centre for Internet and Society – Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K)—a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development—realised as part of its needs-assessment program that although outreach activities are being conducted to attract more volunteers to Wikipedia, they had not been as successful as expected.

To address this problem, CIS-A2K came up with the ‘Train the Trainer’ program (TTT). The program is designed to teach volunteers essential skills and abilities to, in turn, train the general public on all things Wikipedia.

These volunteers, or “trainers,” develop key competencies that will allow them to conduct a successful outreach workshop, such as public speaking, presentation skills, peer-to-peer learning, effective communication, reporting, and followup strategies.

To take part in the TTT program, it is imperative that participants be active Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is angling TTT as both a skill-building initiative amongst Indian-language Wikimedians, as well as a platform where Indian-language Wikipedians can meet and greet each other in-person. This allows participants to interact with Wikimedians from many different communities, to understand their nature of engagement, and share the challenges they have faced and overcome.

The contextual learning and exchange of ideas at these events, similar to editathons, are very special. They help participants feel like they are a part of both their linguistic community and a greater Indian-language community, opening up new opportunities of collaboration, project development, and friendship.

TTT intends to train Indian-language Wikimedians into effective ambassadors of the movement—keen and able to spread the goals and mission of the open knowledge movement. The program also strives to combine best practices from all over the world, taking cues from various chapters, user groups, and thematic organisations. It builds bridges between communities in terms of communication, encouraging partnerships and collaborations that can result in long term rewards.

Link to the original entry on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-running-effective-outreach-activities-in-india

Odia Wikipedia Turning 13 this June 3

subha — 2016-06-18T18:19:22Z

The Odia Wikipedia is turning 13 this June 3. To celebrate this long time of the editor community's tireless effort to make it to the largest Odia-language online encyclopedia an event is being organised in Odisha' capital Bhubaneswar. Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) is proudly sponsoring for this event. Subhashish Panigrahi and Rahmanuddin Shaik are representing CIS at this event.

Over 20 Wikipedians from various corners of India are participating for a public gathering that is planned on June 3 at the Institute of Physics at 5 pm. A day-long internal meetup for the community in the presence of Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K has been planned that focuses on raising consensus for policy and guidelines for Odia Wikipedia, and planning for the activities ahead in the light of successes and learning from failures from the past.

Promotional Banner

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/odia-wikipedia-turning-thirteen

How to do GuerillaGLAM

subha — 2015-05-28T15:30:15Z

A proposal titled How to do GuerrillaGLAM" that I had submitted for the Wikimania 2015 has been accepted. I will be presenting this on July 18.

See the details on Wikipedia page. Click to view the programme schedule.

Submission no. 5008

Title of the submission: How to do GuerillaGLAM

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): Presentation

Author of the submission: Subhashish Panigrahi

E-mail address: psubhashishgmail.com

Username: psubhashish

Country of origin: India

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, India

Personal homepage or blog: psubhashish.com

Abstract

Building partnership with GLAM institutions is a great way of funneling the cultural content acquisition and bringing open access to such valuable data. But it is not that easy given the complications each country has in terms of formal agreement, organizational framework, etc. This presentation will detail about the learning curve of institutional partnership building, leveraging personal contacts in small scale GLAM projects and bringing in several indie-projects to cut implication cost, and execute low-cost models.

During this presentation I will present two case studies of contrasting nature: India's first GLAM project at the National Crafts Museum, New Delhi, and various small-scale collaborative projects. Where the first one would have learning from the six months long project, the second one will draw inspirations from many initiatives that have really no cost or low cost implication and less implementation time involved. At times, institutional collaborations become liabilities and labor intensive with low Return on Investment. Training staff and implementing GLAM projects are not always easy and retaining contributors is a challenge. Alternatively GuerrillaGLAM could be thought of when having a Wikimedian-in-Residence is not feasible. This presentation will be useful for those who can mobilize a small team of volunteers equipped with digital camera, access to local cultural institutions and some level of expertise of curating data. Making documentaries and building narratives based on acquired content to creating learning resources and promotional materials will be another aspect of this presentation. building partnerships with many federal or private institutions also needs sustained long-term engagement and volunteer time is not always enough to devote for a long term GLAM project. This presentation will detail about going the guerrilla way to acquire data from GLAM institutions. This will involve low cost models, leveraging various factors, and getting the most out from cultural institutions where collaboration and long term engagement has high cost and time implications.

Track: GLAM Outreach

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/how-to-do-guerilla-glam

Wikipedia Campus at Oxford College

subha — 2015-05-27T14:22:44Z

CIS-A2K collaborated with the Oxford College of Engineering, Bommanahalli, Bangalore on April 24, 2015 for introducing Wikimedia projects at their institution. Radhakrishna, a senior Wikimedian from Bangalore provided the crucial introduction and worked closely with the A2K team in conducting all the activities.

Team A2K learnt valuable lessons regarding committing resources and building short term partnerships with higher education institutions. It was noted that the students showed high level of interest but due to the extremely busy academic calendar, activities could not be conducted as per the original plan.

Selected students from Oxford College of Engineering were given hands on training for two weeks (April-May) on various Wikimedia projects and were initiated into Wikisource as an evaluative activity. The diverse group of students presented the A2K team an opportunity to discuss various language projects and prepare a plan for engaging the students after the intensive training comes to an end.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-campus-at-oxford-college

Patterns of Gender Aggression and Harassment in Open Tech and Open Culture Communities Online

rohini — 2015-06-01T02:13:14Z

Report on the talk delivered by me at Adacamp held in Montreal, Canada on April 13-14, 2015.

Link to the original blog post published on Wikimedia blog can be accessed here.

I received a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation to participate in Adacamp. While the talk was pegged on my experience of working on Wikipedia's Gender gap in India, the content is equally relevant for other, open online projects, especially those that value the anonymity of its users. The talk ended with a discussion on how to identify and combat these patterns. It was a collaborative talk delivered along with Gretchen McCulloch who spoke on Wikipedia's Gender gap and Fandom. Credits to session rapporteur and participant Maja Frydrychowicz.

Gender disparity among Wikipedia's editors is well-known and well-documented.[1] [2] A survey conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2011 pegged the number of female contributors to the English-language Wikipedia at 9%.[3] Several outreach, advocacy, and capacity-building efforts have been made to bridge Wikipedia's glaring gender imbalance. In the openness domain, other projects and initiatives have been making similar efforts to bring more women into the fold. To cite an example, the Outreach Program for Women endeavours to recruit more female coders in the world of open source software.

While the narrative of few women being online has changed, more in some parts of the world than in others, the next barriers of making them stay online and establishing an active presence, remain. Wikipedia, like many other open communities, has a high drop-out rate of female contributors. Many female contributors maintain identities that do not give away their gender or practise self-censorship in order to continue to be a part of the community. Several studies conducted in the past few years have attributed the gender gap to numerous reasons -- women have less time left after fulfilling their tasks at home and work; antagonistic exchanges are emotionally draining; in households where there is only one Internet-enabled device, women have access to it for a shorter time; and so on. A blog post by Sue Gardner former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, pithily lays out why women don't edit Wikipedia.

One of the ways that outreach and advocacy can work towards retaining more contributors and enabling them to participate more fruitfully is by identifying patterns of aggression and harassment that are directed, subtly or otherwise, at them owing to their gender or sexual orientation.

What are some of the significant patterns that cause a contributor to censor themselves or leave, even if they have just joined?

Hostile environment, antagonistic exchanges: These word clouds[4][5] display name-calling experienced by female users on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editorial model stands on building consensus and collaboration but the spirit of debate often gives way to slings and arrows, many of which would violate Wikipedia's policy of being civil to other contributors (WP:Civil) and one of the five pillars of the crowdsourced encyclopedia. Facing hostility can be emotionally draining, especially for a new contributor, and reason enough for them to avoid contributing to certain topics, to censor themselves, or to leave the platform. Verbal violence and use of language considered unacceptable as per the community rules, is one form of harassment/ violence that is relatively easy to spot and call out, and is not uncommon.
Mansplaining: is more insidious than outright hostile behaviour. The intent is not constructive criticism but to humiliate the recipient, make them feel that do not belong in the space, or drive them underground. It involves the use of what Wikipedia terms "weasel words", and dismissive and condescending speech. It is difficult to address because it is less perceptible, difficult to differentiate from advise or feedback given in good faith (WP: AssumeGoodFaith), and does not violate the guideline of not attacking newbies but explaining the matter to them (WP:DontBiteTheNewbies).
Deletionism: is the practice of reverting edits or deleting/ nominating for deletion entire pages, projects, or other content out of relatively strict adherence to policies. Deletionism is often difficult to tell apart from very strict adherence to standards. Policies are open to interpretation, and deletionists justify their position by applying certain policies and contexts that favour their stance. In the context of issues pertaining to gender or sexuality, a pattern to look out for is the same user, IP address, or an apparent sockpuppet reverting edits, making edits, and defending them in a way that makes the article less gender-sensitive and disproportionately skewed away or towards a certain gender or orientation.
Subtle Powerplay/ Microaggressions: find their way into discussion boards, mailing lists and other areas of debate and discussion. A study done by the Internet Democracy Project in India documents some of the remarks that leave women feeling they are unwelcome, that do not belong in the space, or that they are an 'imposter'. "People will not be outright abusive towards you, which is a lot I face in my job. When someone does not want you to be a part of their community, they will not abuse you because they get banned for it. They will goad and nudge you in ways to tell and make sure that you are not welcome. So they will ask you, 'Oh, so when did you learn JavaScript?' knowing that you don’t know JavaScript. Just to make you feel that only those who have learnt JavaScript have the right to be there [in the forum].”

One of the factors that inadvertently aids some of these patterns is the kind of sources that are considered reliable on Wikipedia (WP:RS). Newspapers, magazines, websites, books, and journals are considered acceptable references. These sources tend to reflect existing gender biases and structures of power. Studies conducted on the content published by newspapers, for example, have shown that news coverage about men is much higher than that about women.

As most of the attendees of the talk were not very well-acquainted with the intricacies of Wikipedia's Gender gap, I went on to explain some topics that were not explicitly related to the subject of the talk.

Initiatives to improve diversity and encourage new contributors on Wikipedia

Beginner-friendly groups such as The Tea House and the Welcoming Committee
Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
The Gender gap project
Edit-a-thons geared towards increasing gender-sensitive content on Wikipedia and correcting content with gender bias
Wikipedia tries to foster positive feedback through barnstars, Wikilove, and marking a good edit with a “thank you” or a heart icon.

How existing editors can work towards increasing diversity and encouraging new editors

Help get more women mentioned in references or citations in Wikipedia articles.
Add information about women in biographies (e.g. add the mother's name or female spouse's name in a biography article.)
One of the traits of communities that do have many women on them is that a lot of positive interaction happens in response to contributions.
Teachers can obtain support for getting students to edit Wikipedia as part of a class project.

Strategies to recruit more women editors (individuals who self-identify as women, transwomen, genderqueer, genderfluid)

Aim outreach efforts towards women who blog, or already have a presence online.
Persuade existing editors to encourage women in their family and social groups to start contributing. In the case of existing male editors, it works as the two-pronged strategy of sensitising men while empowering women.
Organise outreach events where the organisers and participants are all women/ individuals who largely self-identify as women.
Organise outreach events with gender-sensitive male editors.

Questions-Answers

What is needed to meet Wikipedia's notability criterion?

A: There are different requirements depending on the subject of the article: a book, a work of art, a public figure, an artist, a writer, and so on. There are stricter requirements for biography articles, especially those of living people. Being famous does not necessarily mean being notable in the Wikipedia context. Notability requirements end up being gendered; Wikipedia replicates the biases that are present in the offline world due to its reference structure (WP:RS)

There were several general questions from the attendees about editing Wikipedia, and about Wikipedia policies and best practices. These were answered by McCulloch and me in the last 15 to 20 minutes of the talk.

References

[1]. Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List, Naom Cohen, January 30, 2011.

[2]. WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance, Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, Anuradha Uduwage, Zhenhua Dong, Shilad Sen, David R.Musicant, Loren Terveen, John Riedl, 2011

[3]. Women and Wikimedia survey, 2011

[4]. Research: Communicating on Wikipedia while female

[5]. Women and Wikimedia survey, 2011, Name-calling on English Wikipedia

[6]. Women and Online Abuse, Internet Democracy Project, 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/patterns-of-gender-aggression-and-harassment-in-open-tech-and-open-culture-communities-online

Odia waits for Google Translate debut - Nine Indian languages available

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T01:27:21Z

Odia getting the "classical" status last year was certainly a proud moment for the people of the state, but, it is yet to feature among the languages available in Google's popular translation service.

The article by Anwesha Ambaly was published in the Telegraph on April 6, 2015. Subhashish Panigrahi was quoted.

Over 90 languages, including nine from India (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu) are part of the service.

Odia, which is spoken by over 45 million people globally, is yet to debut here.

Techies working in the field attribute the reason to the lack of web presence of the language.

"Google has set parameters on the basis of which translations are available. Only those languages that have a wide use on the Internet and have enough online content are included in the list. The online presence of Odia is quite insignificant," said Subhashish Panigrahi, programme officer at Centre for Internet and Society and a regular contributor to Odia Wikipedia.

Among the limited data in Odia available online, Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource have emerged as important reference sources for all kinds of information.

The Odia Wikipedia serves as an online encyclopaedia that was initiated in 2002 and hosts over 8,000 articles in Odia. The Odia Wikisource was launched in the state last year and is run by volunteers and communities. It is a sister concern of Odia Wikipedia that makes rare Odia books available on the Internet.

However, a Google spokesperson said: "We value all Indic languages and search and Gmail are available in 16 Indian languages with more languages to follow"

Recently, the entire Odia Bhagbata by Jagannath Das was made available on Wikisource. Also, Bhubaneswar-based organisation Srujanika, in collaboration with NIT, Rourkela, has digitized over 750 books. But these apart, there are no major online portals available in Odia.

Panigrahi and his contributor friends are presently working at promoting the Google Translate community, which is a platform for language enthusiasts and volunteers interested in improving translation quality for their language or help Google add it to translate.

"To ensure more availability of online content, people should be encouraged to share information on the web. More Odia content on the web will get a wider reach," said the techie.

"We are quite hopeful that the translator would be available in Odia soon."

The universal web-compatible Unicode font for Odia language was developed in 2000. Despite the Unicode standard having been made available over a decade ago, Odia language is not used actively on the Internet.

"We are still stuck to using outdated fonts such as Akruti and Sreelipi for typing text in Odia and most of these are not compatible for using on the Internet. There are thousands of book and articles available in these fonts. Most of the important content available on the government portals also uses the older fonts. Unless content is available in Unicode, it will not be searchable, sharable and reusable on the Internet," said Panigrahi.

One of the earliest websites in Odia was developed by Ganesh Mishra in 1999 for a popular Odia daily. But the website was shut down after six years when the concept of e-paper came into being.

"These days, most of the publishers of Odia newspapers and magazines have come up with e-papers which are nothing but the scanned images of the original pages. But an online search won't display them as results. Online content in Unicode is accessible through search engines," said the website developer.

He said that people have so many alternatives on the Internet that the absence of Odia language is not felt. "Customers often initiate commercial websites in Odia but soon request us to change it to English because it was inconvenient for users," said Mishra.

Some youngsters in the state are coming up with online portals to promote Odia literature. Jyoti Prasad Patnaik, a doctor by profession, has been running an online Odia literary magazine since 2006.

"The Internet is the most powerful medium of communication these days and there could be no better way to popularise our language other than this. When I started out, there were hardly any readers. Today my website has around 5,000 visitors every month. The number is growing slowly and I hope it will increase in the future," said Patnaik.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-telepgrah-april-6-2015-anwesha-ambaly-odia-waits-for-google-translate-debut-nine-indian-languages-available

Bangla Wiki turns 10

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T16:10:12Z

The 10th anniversary of Bengali Wikipedia was marked with a a gathering of Wikipedians of vernacular languages from across the country and beyond at Jadavpur University. Bengali is one of 20 Indian languages to have a Wikipedia presence. The event also celebrated 14 years of the mother edition in English of the open-access, crowd-sourced online encyclopaedia.

Contributed by Sudeshna Banerjee, Showli Chakraborty and Abhinanda Datta the story published in the Telegraph on March 29, 2015 quotes T. Vishnu Vardhan.

"We hear of digital divide all the time. Here it is about digital inclusiveness. The University Grants Commission talks of four factors to make a good university - access, equity, quality and employability. What a teacher cannot give in class, he can offer on the world wide web. The question of quality in Wikipedia can be addressed through workshops like this," said Calcutta University registrar Basab Chaudhuri.

Wikimedia Foundation trustee Bishakha Datta spoke of the uneasy relationship between Wikipedia and academia, especially over authenticity.

"Yes, we do not use original research. So our articles are not admissible as primary sources. At the same time, every piece of information in a Wikipedia article has to be cited and annotated. It is great that an institution like JU has come forward to host us," said Datta, thanking the university's School of Languages and Linguistics.

Joint registrar Sanjay Gopal Sarkar argued in favour of the existence of Wikipedia articles in the vernacular. "It is a part of the empowerment of my mother tongue."

Quantity was a problem, he said. "It is not enough to have 33,000 articles (the English version has 4.7 million). Workshops need to be held in Bengal and Assam on how to write articles. If Wikipedia and the universities join hands, a battalion of writers and editors can be created."

The Bangladeshi delegates revealed how Wikipedia's mission of making knowledge free was getting a technological boost back home. "Grameenphone and Bangla Link, two of our biggest mobile service providers, have made Facebook and Wikipedia free. Subscribers just have to log on to specific domains (0.facebook.com and zero.wikipedia.org) to see picture-less texts," said Ankan Ghosh Dastidar, a Class XI student from Dhaka.

Vishnu Vardhan from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, urged for more institutional tie-ups so that instead of stopping students from going to Wikipedia, teachers would integrate their contributions to Wikipedia in the course. "Andhra Loyola College is the largest contributor to Telegu Wikipedia," he said. Hindi, he added, has the maximum articles among Indian languages, followed by Tamil and Telugu. "But Malayalam has the most active Wikipedians - around 100."

A workshop was held to teach how to type in Bengali and edit the Bengali Wikipedia. Techno India student Ayan Chaudhury addressed queries on downloading the Avro font and typing tricky conjoined letters in Bengali, as also how to create cross references and highlight terms. "Ask yourself two questions when you want to add any information: Is it relevant? Can it be verified? Also do not blindly turn on Google Translate. The quality of its translation is such that a word like 'swipe' becomes ' dhum dhadakka'."

A group editing session took place on the second day with 15 volunteers translating articles from the English Wikipedia and adding new articles in Bengali. Some also worked on Wiktionary, an online dictionary, and others on Wikisource, typing out pages of seminal texts outside copyright.

Crafts for a cause

Artisans from Bengal and Bangladesh joined hands to participate in a handcrafted jewellery and handloom exhibition organised by WIIN (Women and Infants in Need) at Shree Art Gallery in Ballygunge on March 25 and 26.

"The proceeds will be donated to Paripurnata, a home for women with mental disabilities (off EM Bypass). We emphasise on mental health awareness programmes and try and create job opportunities for the residents at Paripurnata. This helps in building their confidence and creates a sense of social acceptance," said Nilanjana Mukherjee, the general secretary of WIIN and Paripurnata.

The exhibition was inaugurated by actress Sonali Gupta, who plays Satyabati to Dhritiman Chaterji's Byomkesh Bakshi in Sajarur Kanta. "This cause is close to my heart. We must come together to help women and infants in need," said Gupta.

The exhibition showcased a collection of saris and jewellery from the Rajshahi district in Bangladesh, quirky handbags, hand-painted mugs, kurtas and dupattas.

Trilingual road trip

An independent film - or indie - by two graduates of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) has hit theatres this Friday. Titled Yahan Sabki Lagi Hai (Everybody Gets Screwed Here), the 100-minute trilingual (English, Hindi and Bengali) black comedy is directed by Calcutta girl Tina A. Bose and Mumbai boy Cyrus R. Khambata.

Produced by Vibrant Works, the film revolves around Kesang and Bharat, who are on their way to a birthday party but their road trip soon turns into a disaster as they find themselves in the middle of a jungle, robbed of all their belongings.

Road trip gone wrong has been done before, but according to the young film-makers, "while most of them have been horror or slasher films, ours travels the philosophical path and focuses on the issues we face in life."

The lead actress is a Tibetan girl, Eden Shyodhi. "We wanted to cast a girl from a minority community. We needed someone who was weird and interesting as the character of Kesang is very unusual. And when we met Eden, she had flaming red hair, just like how we had envisioned Kesang!" said Tina, who has studied in Lady Brabourne College and Jadavpur University. The cast also includes stand-up comedian Varun Thakur and Bengali actor Heerok Das, previously seen in Egaro.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-telegraph-march-29-2015-bangla-wiki-turns-ten

GoI body National Mission for Manuscripts has digitised 3 million manuscripts

praskrishna — 2015-04-05T03:20:06Z

Twelve-year-old government body National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) has digitised over thirty lakh manuscripts and 185,88,390 pages in all as of 31 December 2014, Mahesh Sharma, Union Minister of State for Culture, Tourism & Civil Aviation said in the Rajya Sabha this week. He added that the National Archives of India (NAI) is set to digitise another 1,100,000 historic records. The government has spent over Rs 25 lakhs on digitisation as of January 2015 as compared to ~ Rs 36 lakhs in 2012-13.

The blog post by Sneha Johari was published by Medianama on March 13, 2015.

The NAI has digitised 41 non-priced NAI publications and 484 manuscripts which consist of 106,974 pages, 42 newspapers and printed books (10,346 pages) and 187,878 documents made of 613,413 pages of NAI’s oriental and public records collection.

Digital conservation over micro-film

Sharma said that the government is looking at strengthening the Public Records Act. He added that digitisation would be the preferred form of conservation since it had many advantages over micro-film processing and would provide better access to archives electronically which could be used by scholars, historians and academicians.

The NAI operates two schemes for funding the preservation of documentary heritage. These schemes include funding for preservation and conservation of rare books, old and rare documents, government libraries and museums among others.

The NMM is an organisation under GOI’s Ministry of Culture set up to create a national manuscript resource to enhance access, awareness and use for educational use. It offers courses, workshops and fellowships on Manuscriptology and Palaeography. Sharma said that the Ministry had some proposals to collaborate with foreign countries for digitisation of Indian documents but had not taken those up due to issues of national importance. Some of NMM’s challenges arise from the scale of manuscripts found in India (claimed at ~5 million), languages which cannot be read, in a poor and neglected condition and the lack of scholars who can study these manuscripts.

The NMM has 31 Manuscript Conservation Centres (MCCs) across the country under the NMM. The MCCs include organisations like Manuscript Library, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), Pune, Karnataka State Archives, Bangalore and INTACH Orissa Art Conservation Centre, Bhubaneswar.

The New Indian Express featured a report where Jayadhir Tirumalrao, Professor at the Centre for Dalit and Adivasi Studies and Translation, Hyderabad was among others who developed a script for the tribal language Gondi. The report claims that Gondi language was the only tribal language in India to have its own literature.

Previous digitisation initiatives:

In November 2014, around 55 books written by the Indian author and activist Niranjana in Kannada would be digitized and made available on Kannada Wikisource, allowing Kannada speakers to access these books easily.
In October 2014, the Ministry of Culture launched a national portal for museums. Collections in all museums under its control and those under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will be digitized and presented on this portal.

In July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the Ministry of Science and Technology released the draft of Open Access Policy. The objective of this policy is to provide unrestricted access to research work funded by the departments. The draft states that since all funds disbursed by DBT and DST are public funds, it is important that the information and knowledge generated through the use of these funds are made publicly available as soon as possible.
In September 2013, Goa University entered into a 3 year MoU with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building the Konkani Wikipedia.
In June 2013, Tata Communications Media Services planned to digitize documents of historical and cultural significance such as films and documentaries from the archives of Doordarshan and Films Division of India which go back to 1947 including speeches of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders.
In May 2013, Punjabi Sahitya Akademi Reference Lab scanned and saved around 1,000 manuscripts, stone-printed scripts, poetry books on computer hard discs, adding that the digitized editions will be available across the globe through the internet.

The Indian Government spent Rs 4.5 crores in 2010-11 for digitization and modernization of public libraries.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/medianama-march-13-2015-sneha-johari-goi-body-national-mission-for-manuscripts-has-digitised-3-million-manuscripts

Right to Education and the Future of Our Languages

praskrishna — 2015-05-27T14:00:44Z

The Department of Linguistics, University of Mumbai and Dr. Rakhmabai Educational Resource and Research Centre in association with ICSSR (WRC) organized a National Symposium on Right to Education and the Future of Our Languages at Pherozeshah Mehta Bhavan from March 9 to 11, 2015. Tanveer Hasan was a speaker.

Prof. Ganesh Devy gave the inaugural address and Prof. Anita Rampal gave the keynote address. Tanveer Hasan spoke about the importance of Free and Open Resources of Knowledge and how these resources could be harnessed in providing access to knowledge and subsequently claim the right to education. The event was organized as an effort to understand the effect of RTE act on the primary and high school education standards across India with special reference to Maharashtra. The workshop also provided an opportunity to meet several like minded institutions and individuals.

More information on the event here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/right-to-education-and-future-of-our-languages

Women's History Month, India-2015

praskrishna — 2015-03-08T09:18:19Z

CIS-A2K is supporting the Indian Wikimedia volunteers organize Wikipedia Women's History Month, India- 2015.

See the event meta page here

8th March is International Women's Day and to celebrate, women in India are organizing edit-a-thons and meetups to create and expand articles of importance to women in Wikipedia in English and various Indian languages. The goal of the month-long event is to encourage more women and transwomen to contribute to Wikipedia and increase the quality of articles related to women in Wikipedia. The event aims at creating new articles, expanding the existing stubs and translating English articles to various Indic languages. Everyone is welcome to join the event as enthusiasts, editors, translators, bloggers or event managers. Anyone who identify themselves as women are particularly encouraged to participate.

Events: Click here to see the list of online and offline events.
Participants: Sign up as a participant!
List of articles : Click here to see the list of languages and articles.
Resources: Organize an event!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/womens-history-month-india-2015

Train the Trainer — Report in Udayavani

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T16:20:49Z

As part of the Train The Trainer program, on Feb 28, all the participants (Wikipedians from all over India) were taken to Janapada Loka, near Ramanagara. There was a report in Udayavani, Ramanagara edition on March 2, 2015 about this event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/train-the-trainer-event-report-march-2-2015-udayavani-report

Train the Trainer Program

praskrishna — 2015-02-27T02:37:10Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) welcomes you to attend the "Train the Trainer Program" in Bangalore.

Train the Trainer (TTT) is a residential training workshop to groom leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. CIS-A2K is organizing the Wikipedia Train the Trainer Program 2015 (TTT 2015). This is the second iteration of this program. TTT 2015 will be conducted by CIS-A2K during 26 February to 1 March 2015 in Bangalore, India.

Note: All selected participants will be expected to reach the event venue the previous night (i.e. February 25) and leave by the evening of March 1, 2015. The selected participants are requested to kindly confirm their participation by writing to tanveercis-india.org. Registration for TTT 2015 is closed. Please do not register.. Please note that registration does not confirm participation. Selection by CIS-A2K will be final. Before registering here please go through the selection criterion.

Programme Schedule

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

7:30am - 8:30am	Breakfast
8:30am - 9:00am	Registration
9:00am - 10.30am	Welcome & Introduction	Introductions (activity based) Creating name tags for yourself and your friends Energiser/Activity. Meet and greet Wikimedians	T. Vishnu Vardhan (VV) and Tanveer Hasan (TH)
10:30am - 11 am	Why TTT?	Design and Objectives of the TTT	VV
11 am - 11.30 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
☼ 11.30 am - 1 pm	Participant presentations	Individual presentation based on pre-work	TTT Participant
1 pm - 2 pm	Lunch
2 pm - 3.30 pm	Participant presentations	Individual presentation based on pre work	TTT Participant
3.30 pm - 4 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
4 pm - 5 pm	Presenting with impact	Effective Communication Forceful Introduction Organizing your speech (Opening, Body Closing) Get to the point (General purpose and specific purpose) Communicate clearly, accurately and vividly Body Language (Stance, Movement, Gestures, Facial expression and eye contact) Vocal Variety (Volume, Pitch, Rate and Quality)	TH
5.30 pm - 6.30 pm	Break
6.30 pm - 8 pm	Parallel Sessions	Personal coaching on Presentation Skills using video recordings of Presentation or Multilingual Edit-a-thon (theme - Jnanpith_Award)	Sunil Abraham(SA) VV TH Rahmanuddin Shaik (RS) Subhashish Panigrahi (SP) U.B. Pavanaja (UBP)
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm	Dinner

Friday, February 26, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

☾ 8 pm - 9 pm	Dinner
☼ 10.30 am - 11 am	Internet research techniques (Session 2)	Information literacy and Internet research techniques for Wikipedia editors slides	LS
9.15 am - 10 am	Internet research techniques (Session 1)	Information literacy and Internet research techniques for Wikipedia editors	LS
8:30 am - 9.15 am	Copyright, CC and Wikimedia	Introduction to Copyright and Creative Commons slides Creative Commons Wikimedia Applications	L. Shyamal (LS)
7:30 am - 8:30 am	Breakfast
7 pm - 8 pm	Parallel sessions	Personal Coaching GLAM Projects Do's and Dont's FOSS Tools Support and Discussion	CIS-A2K Team RL RS
6.30 pm - 7 pm	GLAM Projects in Indic Wikipedia Context	Feasibility, Scalability and Scope	Rohini Lakshane(RL)
6 pm - 6.30 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
5 pm - 6 pm	Essential Foss Tools for Wikimedians	Hands on Session	Rahamanuddin
4.30 pm - 5 pm	Essential FOSS Tools	Demonstration	RS
4 pm - 4.30 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
3.30 pm - 4 pm	Panel Discussion	Importance of NPOV in Indian Languages	Participant Panel (TBD)
2.45 pm - 3.30 pm	Importance of NPOV	NPOV as an essential quality for Wikimedians with English Wikipedia as a case study	NVV Char and Tito Dutta
2 pm - 2.45 pm	Spectogram	Interactive activity to critically discuss the importance of NPOV	SA
11.45 am - 1 pm	DIY	Digitisation Techniques for Wikimedians-Hands on Session	Group Activity
11.30 am - 11.45 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
11 am - 11.30 am	DIY	Digitisation Techniques for Wikimedians	Viswa Prabha(VP)
10 am - 10.30 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
1 pm - 2 pm	Lunch

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

7 am - 7.30am	Breakfast
7:30am	Departure to Janapada Loka
9 am - 9.30am	Expectations from GLAM Activity	Design,scope and expected outcomes	TH
9.30am - 1 pm	* GLAM Activity	Interviewing Janapada Loka Staff Documentation of Janapada Loka exhibits Resource Collection for Wiki Commons Material collection for GLAM Edit-a-thon	VP RL CIS-A2K
1 pm - 2 pm	Lunch
2 pm - 3.30 pm	Group Activity	GLAM Editathon in Indian Languages	VP and VV
3.30 pm - 4 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
4 pm - 4.30 pm	Panel Discussion	Need and importance of GLAM Activities	TBD
4.30 pm - 5.30 pm	Focused Group Discussion	GLAM Activities to be pursued (Individual and Community)	Participant Groups
5.30 pm - 6.30 pm	Departure to CEO Centre
☾ 8 pm - 9 pm	Dinner at CEO Centre

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

07:30 am - 08:30 am	Breakfast
08:30am - 9.30 am	Media and Social Media Strategies for Wikimedians	Mobilizing mainstream media to cover Wikimedia success stories Best practices of Social Media	Tinu Cherian
9.30am - 10 am	Building Communities for Wikimedia Movement	Introduction to WMIN	Ravishankar Ayyakkannu (RA)and Yohann Thomas (YT)
10am - 10.30 am	Building Communities for Wikimedia Movement	CIS-A2K Trials and Success	VV
☼ 10.30 am - 11:00 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
11am - 11.30 am	Group Discussion	Challenges & Opportunities in building an Indian Language Community online	Participant Groups
11.30 pm - 12.30 pm	Participant Presentation	Participant Presentations
12.30 pm - 1 pm	Lunch
1.30 pm - 2 pm	Focused Group Discussion	Road Ahead for GLAM activities in India Languages	Participant Presentations
2.30 pm - 3.30 pm	Participant Presentation	Submission of Outreach and GLAM Draft Plans
3.30 pm - 3.45 pm	Feedback Session
3.45 pm - 4 pm	Closing Remarks
4:00 pm	Departures or Visit to CIS

For any further queries please email—

tanveercis-india.org 09844439247
ajoy cis-india.org 09845492122
vishnucis-india.org 09845207308

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/train-the-trainer-program