Centre for Internet and Society

Konknni Wikipedia Workshop

praskrishna — 2013-11-15T08:19:50Z

Dalgado Konknni Akademi in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme is organsing a 2 day Wikipedia editing workshop at the Goa Central State Library on November 16 and 17, 2013 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

This workshop is free and open for anyone to attend. Please feel free to join hands in the campaign to promote free access to knowledge in one’s mother tongue – Konknni in Romi! This is a brilliant opportunity to showcase Konkani language in Roman script on a global platform such as Konknni Wikipedia!

Click to download the invite here. (PDF, 64 Kb)

Read more on Dalgado Konknni Akademi here
Read more on the Centre for Internet and Society here
Read more on Goa Central State Library here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/konknni-wikipedia-workshop-nov-16-17-2013

Konkani-language books from Konkani-language culture center Mannd Sobhaann to enrich Konkani Wikipedia

Rahmanuddin Shaik and Tanveer Hasan — 2015-11-12T13:08:07Z

Mangalore based cultural centre Maand Sobhaann has recently relicensed 3 of their publications under a free license so that the books could be digitised on Konkani Wikisource and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.

Mannd Sobhaann, a private organisation working for unification of Konkani people around the world, preservation and promotion of Konkani language and culture, has recently relicensed 3 of their published books under a CC-by-SA 4.0 license. Erik Ozario, founder of the organisation has kindly permitted to open these books under free license so they get digitised on Konkani Wikisource and contribute in enriching the Goan Konkani Wikiepdia. Thanks to Wikimedian Harriet Vidyasagar for her help in acquiring these books. The three books that are relicensed are Konkani pustakaam, a compilation of Konkani books published for last century; Prabhaav, compilation of Konkani stories and writers; and another book containing compilation of songs in praise of Jesus.

Mannd Sobhaann as an organisation has been quite instrumental in taking Konkani language to masses. They have opened up a space called Kalangan in Mangalore for Konkani speakers to gather and organise various language and cultural celebrations. They have published 13 books and 23 music albums on Konkani language and culture. Their publication and association of them will hopefully lead to better the Konkani Wikimedia projects and unite the Konkani speakers in Mangalore and Goa to grow the Wikimedia community.

CIS-A2K's work with the Konkani Wikipedia received a boost when two prominent organisations working for popularisation and conservation of Konkani culture, Maand Sobhaan and World Konkani Centre decided to join hands with us. They have agreed to not only host GLAM (unleashing cultural data by institutional partnership with galleries, libraries, archives and museums) activities at their premises and the proposed museum at Maand Sobhaan but by donating three invaluable books to be released under CC-BY-SA license have paved the way for introduction of new content and also provided sources for citation and reference.

These organisations have worked relentlessly in their own capacity to spread the Konkani language, culture, aspects of life and introduce prominent personalities that have worked to promote Konkani language. Their association with the Konkani Wikimedia projects is a sure way of not only addition of content but leads to the definite possibilities of increase in readers, increase in editors. A2K has proposed to digitise their archives which contains invaluable resources (audio, video and text) that shall be of immense help in growing Konkani Wikimedia projects.

By securing the help of these organisations, CIS-A2K has been able to spread the utility and functionality of Konkani Wikipedia from Goa to Mangalore. CIS-A2K is also considering to conduct and organise events that bring in institutions and organisations from different Konkani speaking parts of India together.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/konkani-language-books-from-konkani-language-culture-center-mannd-sobhaann-to-enrich-konkani-wikipedia

Konkani Wikipedia workshop at AIMIT, St Aloysius College

praskrishna — 2013-09-12T06:09:42Z

St. Aloysius College is organizing a Konkani Wikipedia workshop at AIMIT, St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Beeri, Mangalore on September 13, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja from the CIS-A2K team will participate in the event.

The workshop is aimed at people who want to edit Konkani Wikipedia using Kannada script. Konkani Wikipedia is in incubator at present. Konkani speaking people want to bring this out of incubator. Adding enough content to the Konkani Wikipedia will enable that. Those interested in adding content to Konkani Wikipedia will be trained in the workshop. This will be a full day event.

Click to read about St.Aloysius Institute of Management

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/konkani-wiki-workshop-aimit-september-13-2013

Konkani Wikipedia next?

praskrishna — 2013-08-01T08:32:37Z

A quarter of the world’s Konkani speakers live in Goa. Which is why it should cheer us up to know that a Konkani Wikipedia is being shaped up. But unless more and more of us contribute, the project might never go online.

This article by Diana Fernandes was published in OHeraldO, the largest circulated English daily in Goa, on July 27, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

Konkani has never had its own Wikipedia site like Hindi (hi.wikipedia.org) or Sanskrit (sn.wikipedia.org). So the good news is that efforts are underway since 2006, the bad news is it hasn’t made any progress in the last seven years.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is however hoping to change this. As part of the project being funded by the Wikipedia Foundation, San Francisco, CIS through their Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme plan to bring to life a full fledged Konkani Wikipedia site with the Devanagari script.

But Vishnu Vardhan, programme director, is quick to add, "This is no way trying to resolve the script issue. We are simply creating a place where people from the Konkani speaking community can contribute as well as read Konkani online."

Considering the complexity of the language, which is also written in Kannada, Malayalam and Perso Arabic, Konkani has many obstacles to over come before this project reaches fruition.

A balanced and practical approach of developing the content on the Konkani Wikipedia will be focused upon, say the organisers. For this, the A2K will look at generating content and build a community around the official Konkani script — Devanagari. Though they will also accept any other script, which will either be translated into the Devanagari script or remain as it is.

Speaking about the workshop, Vardhan says Goa was the perfect launch pad for the project. Among the 24 lakh Konkani speaking population around the world, Goa accounts for 6 lakh, the highest.

The CIS plans to have free lectures around the state to any interested group of people to spread the news of contributing articles related to famous personality, place, a cultural aspect, religion, history or sociology. But then comes the task of which script do people contribute in.

The current incubator has 52 Devanagari, 32 Romi and 2 Kannada articles. The project received its maximum number of edits in 2007 08 and has been reducing over the subsequent years.

The aim of the project is to get more articles. "Presently, we are telling people to simply contribute articles, whether in Devanagari or Romi. But since Devanagari is the state approved script, it is preferred in that script."

Vardhan believes that removing it from the incubation stage and having a live Wikipedia site will be a start. But for which he says, a community is necessary.

"Wikipedia is a community website and without one, there would be no exchange of information," he says. At present, the incubator has 86 articles but the aim is to increase this number with as many articles as possible.

Once armed with enough articles to go live, Vardhan says, the engineering department at Wikipedia can be approached about creating a multiple script converter that converts any of the scripts into any other desired one. The problem however is that there isn’t enough motivation and interest in the language itself.

"Only if the team at Wikipedia (US) sees the demand for different scripts in Konkani will they consider the multiple script converters," says Vardhan.

A similar challenge was faced by other wikis, like the Kashmiri Wikipedia, which used Pashto, Sharada and Devanagari scripts. Punjabi had the Gurmukhi script used in India and the Shahmukhi script that’s used in Pakistan. Solutions to them included an automatic converter, multiple writing system and creating separate wikis for each script.

CIS has also organised a Kannada workshop in Udupi for a Kannada Wikipedia. The other languages that the Wikipedia Foundation has asked them to work on are Telugu, Odia, and Bengali.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/oheraldo-july-27-2013-diana-fernandes-konkani-wikipedia-next

Konkani Wikipedia makes headway

praskrishna — 2013-09-17T06:07:54Z

The first floor of the Krishnadas Central Library has been bustling with activity for the last four days. A closer look reveals the concentration, thought and precision that is put into each letter of the Devnagri script Konkani they type. Still further and you realise it’s a Wikipedia site that final year MA Konkani students of Goa University are busy with.

This article by Diana Fernandes was published in OHeraldO on August 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon is quoted.

A follow up to the Konkani Wikipedia workshop that was held earlier last month at St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa and King’s school, Margao, the Centre for Internet and Society ( CIS) in its Access to Knowledge ( A2K) initiative were back to try and bring to life a seven year incubation Konkani Wikipedia page.

The final year MA Konkani students were busy typing away at their screen as I went to pay them a visit. Nitika Tandon, Goa in- charge from the CIS- A2K team says Goan students have shown the most interest so far. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar, Head of Department at Goa University says she’s thrilled for the project as it will not only help students update and reach out to other writers but also help in popularising Goa’s mother tongue.

“ So far there was nothing in Konkani on Wikipedia. There are so many articles about Goa in English but not in Konkani. Those who do not know only to read or develop their Konkani skills can probably use this.

Also for the students it’s an opportunity for them to discuss their thoughts with other editors,” says Tadkodkar.

The last time she was in the state, Tandon says people were more inclined to hear of the English Wikipedia rather than Konkani, but sees this workshop as a definite success story.

Students were visibly interested in not only writing about Goa but to change the way people look at Goa. “ Goa is only seen as beaches, parties and cheap liquor. There is so much more. Like Goa’s unique cuisine or its famous personalities like D D Kosambi,” says Supriya.

“ People say that Konkani will die in another 20 – 25 years. I see this as an opportunity to save it,” says another student John.

Articles written by the students will be assessed by Madhavi Sardesai, editor of Jaan, a Konkani literary journal, after which students will be asked to make the corrections online.

A total of 38 students attended over the span of two days. Each session comprised eight hours of training a day. Topics discussed during the workshop included basics of Wikipedia and the status of Konkani Wikipedia as well as typing in Devnagri script, the sort of articles that are required for the site and using references other than Facebook and how to site them in the article.

“ Forty- two pages of content were generated in two days and have already been put up on the site. The students love it. Students who came in the first batch wanted to join the second one simply because they want to write. Though they don’t get credit for this workshop as part of the syllabus students are indeed interested,” says Tandon.

Though a total of 140 articles on topics ranging from Goa’s heritage, culture, traditions and famous personalities have been uploaded, she says it requires at least five contributors to add to the existing database regularly.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/epaperoheraldo-august-24-2013-diana-fernandes-konkani-wikipedia-makes-headway

Konkani Wikipedia in the making

praskrishna — 2013-09-30T09:11:09Z

Process of uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopaedia will be completed in six months’ time.

This article by Prakash Kamat was published in the Hindu on September 29, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

The Goa University has re-launched a four-volume Konkani Vishwakosh (Konkani encyclopaedia) and announced its plan to upload the same on Wikipedia so as to build the Konkani Wikipedia.

The project is seen as a major stride in Konkani learning, research and production of books. The project, which will involve 42 students of the Konkani Department of Goa University including four designated as Ambassadors of Konkani, will turn students into producers of knowledge rather than mere consumers of knowledge. The University has signed a three-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building up the Konkani Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public,” said Satish Shetye, Vice-Chancellor of Goa University, speaking at the launch of the project.

Narrating how the project began, Registrar of Goa University V. P. Kamat explained that Mr. Satish Shetye, who took over as Vice-Chancellor over a year ago, happened to notice the huge piles of hardbound volumes of the Konkani encyclopaedia stacked in the Goa University library and wished to digitise the manuscripts and re-launch the encyclopaedia. The idea to upload the whole content on Wikipedia was thus born.

The work for the Konkani encyclopaedia project was commissioned during the tenure of the first Vice-Chancellor B. Sheik Ali. The project was seen as a historical step to document the identity of the State and its people and the history of Goa for posterity. University insiders, however, said that no serious efforts were made to take the invaluable research work undertaken beyond the University. Secondly, because of the lack of human resource and funds, no initiative was taken so far to update these volumes.

Initiative

Prof. Shetye took a proactive initiative and tied up with Access to Knowledge Programme of the CIS. The four volumes of the 3,632 page Konkani encyclopaedia are being released under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0 to support the movement of open knowledge and open access.

Programme Director at CIS’s Access to Knowledge Programme Vishnu Vardhan said that the process of uploading the four volumes of Konkani encyclopa edia on Wikipedia would be completed in six months’ time. He also stressed on the need to rewrite some of the articles in the encyclopaedia so as to make the content more relevant.

Students of the University involved in digitisation work and rewriting the content see this as an opportunity to learn about digitisation and to write Konkani of global standard, said Madhavi Sardesai, Professor, Department of Konkani at the University. Mr. Vardhan also disclosed plans for a relevant training programme specially co-designed by the CIS as well as the University to put up the content on Wikipedia.

He said that the Goa University is the first in the country to re-license copyright of its content and hailed the initiative towards open knowledge. Though the MoU signed last month would be initially valid for three years, Mr. Vardhan is optimistic that it would go beyond the launch of the Vishwakosh volumes.

Mr. Halarnkar, associated with the Konkani literary movement, who was present at the launch as the editor of the original volumes, welcomed the process of digitisation as relevant, historical and need of the hour. However, he stressed on supervision over the accuracy and accountability while digitising original data and regular updating of the content in the context of the Konkani language, its history and movement.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-september-29-2013-prakash-kamat-konkani-wikipedia-in-the-making

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

Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months

praskrishna — 2013-09-27T11:53:51Z

Piles of the thick four volumes of Konkani vishwakosh or encyclopedia waiting to be picked up by users at the Goa University (GU) will now attain a modern avatar.

The article was published in the Times of India on September 27, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

The volumes, work on which was first started by renowned Goan writer and academician late Manoharrai Sardessai at GU, will not only be available in digitized format, but will form the base for a Konkani Wikipedia.

Goa University has become the first varsity in the country to enter into a creative commons licence that will allow data produced and copyrighted by an Indian university available to internet users and open to modification, making GU a champion of sorts of free knowledge. The Konkani Wikipedia is expected to be ready for use within six months, officials said.

The university has signed a three-year memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme, which represents Wikipedia in India, for the Konkani Wikipedia project.

"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," Vishnu Vardhan of the centre said.

The Wikipedia is the fourth most used property on the internet after Google, Facebook and Yahoo, which acts as an internet based encyclopedia where any of the users can upload new information or update or modify an existing chapter. The Konkani Wikipedia too will offer similar privileges to users and GU's Konkani department and the centre will oversee the process from the university campus.

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Shetye said that GU is glad to associate with Wikipedia which has become a global phenomenon and broken the monopoly of publishers and converted distribution of knowledge into a democratic process.

"At present, it takes time for a page with information in a regional language to download because they are usually found in the form of scanned pages, which are accessible as images and not text. The Konkani Wikipedia will make the text accessible as is the case of any English text on the internet," GU registrar Vijayendra Kamat said. tnn

The Konkani vishwakosh was created over a period of 14 years.

Edited by late Manoharrai Sardessai and later Tanaji Halarnkar. GU staffers Ranjan Naik, Kalpana Naik, Kanchan Mordekar, Surekha Naik, Mukesh Thali and Shailendra Mehta contributed to the compilation process.

Contains four large volumes of 3,632 of total pages.

Konkani vishwakosh or encyclopedia encompasses world information in a nutshell with special emphasis on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc.

Wikipedia is available in 20 Indian languages including Telugu, Assamese, Marathi, but not in Konkani so far.

Students, professors and anyone interested in contributing to the project can do so by enrolling online at bit.ly/konkanivishwakosh before October 5.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-september-27-2013-konkani-wikipedia-from-goa-university-in-six-months

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

nitika — 2013-09-03T10:37:15Z

There has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.

The original details posted on the meta page can be viewed here.

Introduction

There are 30 lakh Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.

We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.

Highlights of the Workshop

A total of 38 students from the Konkani Department took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event.
During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia.
The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.
Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.


Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in Goa University. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

1	धालो	Varsha Kavlekar
2	केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग	Mona Rodrigues
3	देखणी	Fernandes Sandra
4	गोयच्यों परबो	Komal Dhuri
5	जागर्	Cliffa Fernandes
6	गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय	Abigail Dias
7	गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण	Effa Dias
8	चवथ	Shanta Gaundalkar
9	कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ	Dias Neves
10	राणेचे बंड	Fay Fernandes
11	रविंद्र केळेकार	Gaurisha Phal Desai
12	गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ	Safira Ferns
13	शणै गोयबाब	Pratima Fal Desai
14	मांडो	Anisha Gad
15	संगीत	Santoshi Kole
16	म्हणी,ओपारी	Pooja Kavlekar
17	मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर	Sukhada Daikar
18	कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां	Konknni mogi 24
19	कोंकणी लोककाणयो, कोंकणी सिनेमा	Supriya Kankumbikar
20	गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी, कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ	Vaishali Parab
21	कोंकणी नाटक	Darshan Kandolkar
22	विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र	John Noronha

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

1	गोंयचें लोक नाच	Pooja Tople
2	गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था, गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास	Priyanka Kudaskar
3	दिवाळी,शिरगांवची जात्रा	Pritam Barve
4	गोंयची लोकगितां	Rusita Paryekar
5	हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस	Gauri Prabhugaonkar
6	लोकवादय़ा	Suma Parab Gaonkarr
7	गाराणें	Darshana Mandrekar
8	तुळशीलग्न	Heefza
9	बारसो	Nikita Prabhu
10	कोंकणी कथा	Marizma Mascarenhas
11	गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां	Linette Saldanha
12	बेबींक	Frania Pereira
13	तियात्र	Rhakee Santos
14	गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त	Pereira Goreti
15	कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो	Rubiya Komarpant
16	कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप	Savidha Talekar

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Learnings

Pre-course work : Participants were asked to do pre-course work before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.

Limiting number of participants: We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.

Longer duration workshop: Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.

Bite size chunks: The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.

Energizers : Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.

Student co-ordinators: A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.

Varied sources of information: We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (Netha's, Poongothai's, Sriket and Noopur's, and Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheets for typing, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhavi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
- Browse through incubator.wikimedia.org to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
- Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
- Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.
During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?


Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.


				Konkani Wikipedia editor Frania Pereira speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia. (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

What's Next?

A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.

Additional Info:

Konkani Department, Goa University: http://bit.ly/14S87Ci
Central State Library, Goa: http://bit.ly/1dzHmao
Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

nitika — 2013-11-30T10:47:20Z

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era and will also feed into building of Konkani Wikipedia.

What is Konkani Vishwakosh?

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work of over 14 years. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. The encyclopaedia is written in Konkani language — a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighbouring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Konkan belt) — some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Vishwakosh serves as a primary source of information and is one of the most important documented texts for a community of 2,489,015 Konkani speakers spread across India and worldwide.

What does re-releasing under CC mean?

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era.

Goa University is the first varsity to enter into a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that will permit copyrighted produced data by an Indian university accessible to internet users and open to modification (wiki), making Goa University a victory of sorts of free information.

MoU: Goa University and the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)

Goa University has entered into a three year MoU with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University will be uploading four volumes of Konkani encyclopaedia under CC licence on Wikimedia projects and CIS will help with scanning and digitization of the Vishwakosh and using it as a foundation for creating articles on Konkani Wikipedia. CIS India has also called out for volunteers to help digitize Konkani Vishwakosh.

Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia), till now available only in hard copy, will now be available for free on the Internet.

Event: Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC

http://bit.ly/17nPMuV

To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access, Goa University in collaboration with CIS-A2K organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Goa University Conference Hall. The event had a huge attendance including Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice Chancellor of GU), V.P. Kamat (Registrar of GU), T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director CIS-A2K), close kin of Late. Manoharrai Sardesai (writer of the Encyclopaedia), Tanaji Halarnkar (editor of the Encyclopaedia), Goa University’s staff, faculty and students, members of Konkani speaking community and the press.

During the event, GU Vice-Chancellor Dr. Satish Shetye said, "the Konkani Vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopaedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," he was quoted as having said.

The event was covered by several local and national newspapers:

"Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months", Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013.
Chaudhary, Apurva. "Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia", Medianama, September 30, 2013.
Lobo,Joanna. "For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language", DNA, September 29, 2013.
Prakash, Kamat."Konkani Wikipedia in the Making", The Hindu, September 29, 2013.
"Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months", Times of India, September 27, 2013.
"Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani Encyclopaedia on Wikipedia", Navhind Times, September 27, 2013.
"Konkani Vishwakosh Relaunch Tomorrow". The Hindu, September 25, 2013.
Desouza, Vijay. "Goa University Re-releasing Konkani Encyclopaedia on Sept 26", Times of India, September 24, 2013.

More about the event here: http://bit.ly/1aSufAE

Project: Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

http://bit.ly/183USAg

Goa University in collaboration with CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a two month project where CIS-A2K will work with a group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopaedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized.

"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani Vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," said Vishnu Vardhan. Orientation, training, follow-up workshops will also be organised by CIS-A2K. More about the project here: http://bit.ly/HWEMh7

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Vishwakosh could serve as a ready made source of reference for articles on the Konkani Wikipedia, which is in incubation since its inception in 2006. Konkani Wikipedia editors could use content from the Vishwakosh to build articles on Konkani Wikipedia thereby growing Konkani articles not only in numbers but also in its quality.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa

Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow

praskrishna — 2013-09-25T05:53:33Z

The Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet and Societies Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) will relaunch its four-volume 3,632-page Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. to support the movement of open knowledge and open access on Thursday at 10 a.m. at a function at the conference hall of its administrative building at Taleigao plateau.

The re-release is an initiative by the Goa University to strengthen the Konkani community and language. Information from the Vishwakosh will be used to write the articles on Konkani Wikipedia.

This was originally published in the Hindu on September 25, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-september-25-2013-konkani-vishwakosh-relaunch-tomorrow

Konkani Vishwakosh Encyclopedia released under Free License

nitika — 2013-12-31T12:42:35Z

Upon Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)‘s explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.

Read the blog post originally published on the Wikipedia page.

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work that took over 14 years to develop. It encompasses the world’s information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. The encyclopedia is written in Konkani, a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighboring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Konkan belt) – some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Vishwakosh serves as a primary source of information and one of the most important documented texts for a community of nearly 2.5 million Konkani speakers spread across India and worldwide.

Goa University is the first ever Indian University to relicense its copyrighted content under CC-BY-SA 3.0 so that the knowledge that they have painstakingly put together is made available freely to all Konkani speakers across the world through Wikipedia and other digital platforms. By doing this Goa University has set a precedent for other public sector institutions in India — such as universities and government departments — to follow. Citing this instance, the Tamil Wikipedia community has begun a negotiation with the Tamil Nadu government to release the Tamil Encyclopedias under CC license. It should be noted that majority of the knowledge production through the 20th century in Indian languages was mostly funded by the State. This victory with Goa University can bring out much more knowledge in the Indian languages into the open and could significantly benefit the Indic Wikimedia projects. CIS-A2K is also leveraging this instance in getting other public institutions in India to re-release the content under appropriate CC licenses.

To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University (GU) in collaboration with CIS-A2K organized an event on 26th September 2013 at 10am at the Goa University Conference Hall. The event had significant attendance, including Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice Chancellor of GU), Mr. V.P. Kamat (Registrar of GU), Mr. T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director CIS-A2K), close kin of Late. Manoharrai Sardesai (writer of the encyclopedia), Tanaji Halarnkar (editor of the encyclopedia and a long time associate of Konkani Literary movement), Goa University’s staff, faculty and students, members of Konkani speaking community and press. About 250 people attended this event, which received major media attention.

During the event GU Vice-Chancellor Satish Shetye said, “the Konkani Vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia.”

Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director CIS-A2K, Satish Shetye, Goa University Vice Chancellor, V.P. Kamat, Registrar of Goa University during press conference of re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC license (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The event was covered by several local and national newspapers. Here are some links:

“Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months“. Jagran Josh. 30 September 2013.
Chaudhary, Apurva. “Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia” Medianama. 30th September 2013
Lobo,Joanna. “For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa’s official language“. DNA. 29 September 2013.
Prakash, Kamat.”Konkani Wikipedia in the making“. The Hindu. 29 September 2013.
“Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months“. Times of India. 27 September 2013.
“Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia“. Navhind Times. 27 September 2013.
“Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow“. The Hindu. 25 September 2013.
Desouza, Vijay. “Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26“. Times of India. 24 September 2013.

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

More details about the event can be found on the Meta Program Page

CIS-A2K’s Accomplishments

MoU between Goa University and Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)

Goa University has entered into a three year MoU with CIS for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University has re-launched four volumes of Konkani encyclopedia under CC licence and CIS will help scanning and digitizing Vishwakosh and using it as a foundation for creating articles on Konkani Wikipedia.

MoU between Goa University and Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)

Konkani Vishwakosh available on Wikimedia Commons

The 4 volumes of encyclopedia have already been scanned and made available by CIS on Wikimedia Commons. It can be found here:

Project Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

CIS-A2K is currently working with 37 volunteers to digitize Konkani Vishwakosh. Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopedia), till now available only in hard copy, will now be available for free on the Internet. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized.

“Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani Vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments,” said T. Vishnu Vardhan, Program Director of CIS-A2K. Orientation, training and follow-up workshops will also be organised by CIS-A2K.

More about the project can be found on the Meta Program Page

Konkani Wikipedia editors digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

CIS-A2K is encouraging Konkani editors to use Vishwakosh as a ready-made source of reference for articles on Konkani Wikipedia, thereby growing Konkani articles not only in numbers but also in quality.

The incubation for Konkani Wikipedia was initiated in 2006 (it could be one of the few projects in incubation for the longest period). During the past 7 years, little progress can be seen on this incubator project.

By way of initiating KVDP, CIS-A2K is hoping to revive the Konkani Wikipedia editing community and give birth to Konkani Wikipedia as a live Wikimedia project in the next couple of months. CIS-A2K has charted out a methodological work plan to achieve this and more.

Copyright notes: "Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC license", "Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0", "Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project 08" by Nitika Tandon, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-encyclopedia-released-under-free-license

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

nitika — 2013-10-01T12:23:33Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invite you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.

Click to download the event brochure here

Konkani Vishwakosh

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume encyclopedia published by Goa University. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc.

Goa University has generously approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.

Digitization Project

Goa University in collaboration with the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a 2 month project where we will work with group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner.

We’re calling out for students, professors, faculty, professionals or anyone who is interested to preserve Konkani language and culture!

Help preserve Konkani language
Help preserve Konkani culture
Enroll in the program today and make a difference!

What will you gain out of it?

Learn typing skills: CIS-A2K will organize typing workshops for those who are not comfortable typing in Devanagari. This will be a two-day workshop organized in Panjim, Goa. Brilliant opportunity for you to learn a new skill!
Learn about Konkani Wikipedia: The program will also introduce you to Konkani Wikipedia, how does it work, who edits it, how can you edit etc.
Improve your writing, critical thinking, and research skills: Yes, there is so much that you can learn in our workshop. These skills will help you in personal and professional development.
Help preserve your language and culture: Out of 780 spoken Indian languages, 250 died out in last 50 years. Take the first step to save your language.
Go global: Showcase your work, Konkani language and culture on a global platform. That’s the power of digital era!
Earn while you learn: 30 final selected candidates will be remunerated for their work.

Deliverables

Selected 30 candidates will be assigned 100 pages each of Konkani Vishwakosh that needs to be digitized over a span of 2 months (Oct & Nov 2013). Typing 50 pages a month is surely a cakewalk!

Enroll Today!

Please fill the Application Form latest by October 5, 2013.

Contact Us

If you have any further questions please
Mail us at: nitika@cis-india.org
Twitter: @CISA2K
Visit us at: bitly.com/cis-a2k

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-project

Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level

nitika — 2013-01-25T07:34:34Z

An introductory session on Konkani in Wikipedia was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, Delhi in the Konkani Department at Goa University on December 12, 2012. About 30 participants took part in the event.

The Konkani staff and students were exhilarated to learn about Konkani in the Wikipedia incubation. They showed a keen interest to kick-start the project and get the translations done from all the following scripts: Devanagari, Roman, Kannada, Malayalam and Perso-Arabic for Konkani Wikipedia.

We are in touch with Ms. Madhavi Sardesai, Director of Konkani Department and are also examining the possibility of organising a follow up meeting sometime in January or February, 2013.

Frederick Noronha, one of the Wikimedia incubator members contributing to Konkani Wikipedia, has been helpful in introducing us with more Konkani writers and in organizing a common meeting sometime in early 2013 to take this project to the next level.

Also see:

Konkani in Wikipedia incubator (http://bit.ly/14bTwAi)
Some pages contributed already - much work needs to be done to improve quality (http://bit.ly/Tv5iUh)
List of tasks as viewed by volunteers (http://bit.ly/10Vxwus)
An example of a well-translated article, on the "Pinto's Revolt" by Isidore Dantas (http://bit.ly/XAmliz)


Above is a picture of the faculty and students at the inaugural talk in Goa University.

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

Centre for Internet and Society

Konknni Wikipedia Workshop

Konkani-language books from Konkani-language culture center Mannd Sobhaann to enrich Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Wikipedia workshop at AIMIT, St Aloysius College

Konkani Wikipedia next?

Konkani Wikipedia makes headway

Konkani Wikipedia in the making

Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation

Video

Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

Introduction

Highlights of the Workshop

Articles and Participants

Media Coverage

Learnings

Challenges

Acknowledgements

What's Next?

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

What is Konkani Vishwakosh?

What does re-releasing under CC mean?

MoU: Goa University and the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)

Event: Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC

Project: Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow

Konkani Vishwakosh Encyclopedia released under Free License

CIS-A2K’s Accomplishments

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

Konkani Vishwakosh

Digitization Project

What will you gain out of it?

Deliverables

Enroll Today!

Contact Us

Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level