Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia now available in Tulu

praskrishna — 2016-08-09T03:05:28Z

In another boost to yet another Indian language, the Wikipedia in Tulu has gone live.

This was published by domain-b.com on August 8, 2016. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was quoted.

The news was announced by two key community organisers on Saturday who helped to make an eight-year-dream come true, IANS reported.

Dr Vishwanatha Badikana, a PhD in Kannada literature in Mangalore (Karnataka) and Bharathesha, a mechanical engineer based in Muscat announced at the Wikiconference India 2016, India's second national Wikipedia meet in half a decade which is being held in Chandigarh this weekend.

Tulu, which is spoken by around 2 million speakers mostly in southwest Karnataka and in Kasaragod district of Kerala belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. According to some scholars, Tulu is among the earliest Dravidian languages with its roots going back some 2,000 years.

Wikipedia itself is available in 22 Indian languages, with Tulu becoming the 23rd. There are another one-and-half dozen Indian language Wikipedias under development at present. However, not all languages have an active wiki community.

Located at tcy.wikipedia.org, the Tulu Wikipedia had been in "incubation" since 2008 and the term was used to describe such online collaborately-crafted encyclopedias which were still waiting to go "live" or active and come online.

It was reactivated around 2014, following some meetings and workshops and the concept was also showcased that year at a "World Tulu Conference" stall in December.

"There are about 200 registered users (editors), out of which around 100 have more than 10 edits. On an average, there are about 8 to 10 active editors," Dr UB Pavanaja from the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, and one of the mentors of Tulu Wikipedia, told The Hindu newspaper.

He further added that, "Vishwanatha Badikana, a Kannada professor, followed by Bharatesha Alasandemajalu, an engineer, are the highest contributors."

According to Pavanaja, the achievement would help create pressure on the government to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of Indian Constitution.

Wikipedia is available in 22 Indian languages including, Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Newari, Odia, Pali, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

The inclusion of Tulu takes the count to 23.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/domain-b-august-8-2016-wikipedia-now-available-in-tulu

India's 23rd Regional Language Wikipedia Goes Live in Tulu

praskrishna — 2016-08-09T03:02:16Z

The Tulu Wikipedia has just gone live, giving another boost to yet another ancient Indian language otherwise struggling to keep up with the times and speedily changing technology.

Originally published by Indo Asian News Service, the blog post was mirrored by NDTV on August 8, 2016.

The news was announced by two key community organisers on Saturday who helped to make an eight-year-dream come true. Dr Vishwanatha Badikana, a PhD in Kannada literature in Mangalore (Karnataka) and Bharathesha, a mechanical engineer based in Muscat, announced this while attending Wikiconference India 2016, India's second national Wikipedia meet in half a decade being held in Chandigarh this weekend.

Tulu is a language spoken by around two million native speakers mainly in southwest Karnataka and in Kasaragod district, Kerala. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. Some scholars suggest Tulu is among the earliest Dravidian languages with its roots going back some 2000 years.

Wikipedia itself is available in 22 Indian languages, with Tulu becoming the 23rd. There are another one-and-half dozen Indian language Wikipedias in the incubator stage at present. Not all languages have an active wiki community.

Located at tcy.wikipedia.org, the Tulu Wikipedia has been in "incubation" since 2008. This term is used to describe such online collaborately-crafted encyclopedias which are still waiting to to go "live" or active and come online.

Around 2014, it was reactivated. Following some meetings and workshops, the concept was also showcased that year at a "World Tulu Conference" stall in December of that year.

After much work, some 1,100 articles (or 1,050 if one could ignore those which are not redirects) went live. There are currently about 100 editors who have made over 10 edits each.

"Dr Vishwanatha and Bharathesha are the number one and number two contributors," said Dr UB Panavaja, a former scientist and techie and long-term supporter of Kannada computing. Pavanaja currently looks after the CMR (Creating Movement Resources) of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society which works with some language groups to promote their Wikipedia presence.

"After we became live, we will import articles from the 'incubator' site, build the 'village pump', set up policies, administration structure, info boxes and templates," said Pavanaja, describing the tools that any new Wikipedia needs to set up.

Scholars like the nineteenth missionary-linguist Bishop Robert Caldwell have called this language "peculiar and very interesting". According to him, "Tulu is one of the most highly developed languages of the Dravidian family. It looks as if it had been cultivated for its own sake."

The language has a lot of written literature and a rich oral literature such as the Epic of Siri, according to the Wikipedia itself.

In coastal Karnataka, both the Mangalore and Udupi areas today allow the language as an optional third-language in local schools.

This role in schooling makes it all the more mandatory to create encyclopaedic texts in the language, say its Wikipedia promoters. Mangalore University also has a Tulu language chair while St Aloysius's Radio Sarang community radio station broadcasts daily in this tiny language and the local All India Radio also broadcasts in the language.

Some five Kannada language representatives and one from Tulu are presently in Mohali-Chandigarh attending Wikiconference India 2016.

Indian Wikipedias include Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Newari, Odia, Pali, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, besides, now, Tulu.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/indo-asian-news-service-ndtv-august-8-india-23-regional-language-wikipedia-goes-live-in-tulu

ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಯಲ್ಲೂ ಬಂತು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ

praskrishna — 2016-09-23T00:22:53Z

ಪಂಚ ದ್ರಾವಿಡ ಭಾಷೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದಾದ `ತುಳು' ಸಹ ಇದೀಗ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಎಂಟ್ರಿಯಾಗಿದೆ. ಭಾರತದ 23ನೇ ಪ್ರಾದೇಶಿಕ ಭಾಷೆಯ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಆರಂಭವಾಗಿದೆ.

ಈ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಗೆ ಕಾರಕರ್ತರಾದ ಮಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಡಾ. ವಿಶ್ವನಾಥ ಬಡಿಕಾನ ಮತ್ತು ಮಸ್ಕತ್`ನ ಮೆಕಾನಿಕಲ್ ಇಂಜಿನಿಯರ್ ಭರತೇಶ ಈ ವಿಷಯವನ್ನ 2016ರ ವಿಕಿ ಕಾನ್ಫರೆನ್ಸ್`ನಲ್ಲಿ ಘೋಷಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ದಕ್ಷಿಣ ಕನ್ನಡ ಮತ್ತು ಕೇರಳದ ಕಾಸರಗೂಡಿನ ಸುಮಾರು 20 ಲಕ್ಷಕ್ಕೂ ಅಧಿಕ ಜನರಿಗೆ ತುಳು ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆಯಾಗಿದೆ. ಪಂಚದ್ರಾವಿಡ ಭಾಷೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದಾದ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಗೆ 2000 ವರ್ಷಗಳಷ್ಟು ಇತಿಹಾಸವಿದೆ.

The news was published by Asianet Suvarna News on August 7, 2016

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/asianet-suvarna-news-august-7-2016-tulu-wikipedia-goes-live

ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಮನ್ನಣೆ!

praskrishna — 2016-09-23T00:01:44Z

ಮಂಗಳೂರು: ಇಂದಲ್ಲ ನಾಳೆ ಸಂವಿಧಾನದ ಎಂಟನೇ ಪರಿಚ್ಛೇದಕ್ಕೆ ಸೇರ್ಪಡೆಯಾಗುತ್ತದೆ ಎಂಬ ಆಶಯದಲ್ಲೇ ಇರುವ ಕರಾವಳಿಯ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಮನ್ನಣೆ ನೀಡುವ ಮೂಲಕ ಜಾಗತಿಕ ಮಟ್ಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಗುರುತಿಸುವಂತಾಗಿದೆ.

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಫೌಂಡೇಷನ್‍ನ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥಾಪಕ ನಿರ್ದೇಶಕಿ ಕ್ಯಾಥರಿನ್ ಮಹೆರ್ ಶನಿವಾರ ಪಂಜಾಬಿನ ಚಂಡೀಗಡದಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದ ‘ವಿಕಿ ಕಾನ್ಫರೆನ್ಸ್ ಇಂಡಿಯಾ-2016’ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಅಧಿಕೃತವಾಗಿ ಘೋಷಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಇದುವರೆಗೆ ಇನ್‍ಕ್ಯುಬೇಟರ್‌‌ನಲ್ಲಿ ಇದ್ದ ತುಳು ಲಿಪಿಯನ್ನು ಈಗ ಲೈವ್ ಸ್ಥಾನಕ್ಕೆ ತರಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಅಂದರೆ ತುಳು ಜಾನಪದಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿ ಯಾವುದೇ ವಿಷಯ ಟೈಪ್ ಮಾಡಿದರೆ ಸಾಕು. ತಕ್ಷಣ ಸಮಗ್ರ ವಿವರ ಅನಾವರಣಗೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತದೆ.

ಈಗಾಗಲೇ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ 1,050 ಲೇಖನಗಳು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಡಕವಾಗಿವೆ. ಸುಮಾರು 200 ಮಂದಿ ಲೇಖನ ಬರೆದಿದ್ದು, 100ಕ್ಕೂ ಅಧಿಕ ಮಂದಿ ತುಳು ಲೇಖನದ ಸಂಪಾದಕರಾಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ. 10ಕ್ಕೂ ಅಧಿಕ ಮಂದಿ ನಿರಂತರ ಲೇಖನ ಅಪ್‍ಲೋಡ್ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಸೆಂಟರ್ ಫಾರ್ ಇಂಟರ್‌‌ನೆಟ್ ಅಂಡ್‌ ಭಾರತೀಯ ಭಾಷೆಗಳ ಯೋಜನಾ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥಾಪಕ ಡಾ. ಯು.ಬಿ.ಪವನಜ ಅವರ ಮಾರ್ಗದರ್ಶನದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಉಪನ್ಯಾಸಕ ಡಾ. ವಿಶ್ವನಾಥ ಬದಿಕಾನ ಮತ್ತು ಭರತೇಶ್ ಈ ಮನ್ನಣೆ ದೊರೆಯಲು ಶ್ರಮಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

2008ರಿಂದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಯನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಕಾರ್ಯ ಆರಂಭಗೊಂಡಿತ್ತು. ಇದರಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡ ಲಿಪಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಯನ್ನು ಬರೆಯಲಾಗಿದೆ. 2014 ಜನವರಿಯಿಂದ ತುಳು ಭಾಷೆಯ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ವೇಗ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿದೆ.

This was published by Mumbai News World on August 8, 2016.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/mumbai-news-august-8-2016-tulu-wikipedia-goes-live

South Asia's Largest Wikimedia Conference Kicks Off in India

subha — 2016-08-08T01:39:25Z

Wiki Conference India 2016, the largest gathering of the contributors of Wikipedia (the multilingual online encyclopaedia) and its sister projects called Wikimedia projects, begins August 5 in Landran, in the Indian state of Punjab.

The blog post was published by Global Voices on August 5, 2016.

The conference returns five years after its first iteration in 2011. This year's event is focused on bringing the contributor communities of South Asian and English-language Wikimedia projects from the Indian subcontinent under one roof.

A few hundred participants including 100 scholarship holders from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka will meet at the Chandigarh Group of College campus, where the conference is being held. Organizers have planned a series of presentations, talks and workshops—related to major topics like gender bias in Wikipedia, technology, global reach, education, volunteer leadership building and engagement and program design—to occupy participants for all three days.

For the separate technical sessions, a pre-event needs assessment survey was conducted widely to collect input about the technical challenges that volunteer contributors are facing. A hackathon is in the works to address some of the major technical challenges of different language communities.

The Wikimedia community in South Asia as a whole and the Wikipedia community, both of which rely on volunteers, are creating a massive repository of freely licensed content in the Indian languages on the Internet. Currently Wikipedia itself is available in about 293 languages. Other Wikimedia projects—Wikisource, a free library; Wiktionary, a multilingual online dictionary; and Wikimedia Commons, the world's largest media repository housing hundreds and thousands of images, audio, video and other media files—will add a few hundred more projects to this list.

Some of the noted guests who are addressing the gathering include Wikimedia Foundation's board member Nataliia Tymkiv, the organization's newly promoted Executive Director Katherine Maher, Punjabi-language poet Surjit Patar, and Internet freedom advocate and Centre for Internet and Society's Executive Director Sunil Abraham.

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon has been running for about a month prior to the conference in 12 Indian language Wikipedias and one European language Wikipedia (Ukrainian Wikipedia). The main languages in this edit-a-thon are Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. The focus of this sprint is to expand the content reach of Wikipedia on Punjab, Punjabi people, and their language and culture as a symbolic gesture to show gratitude to Punjab where the event is happening. Articles about Punjab or Punjab people in other local languages will help many local readers of Wikipedia learn about Punjab in their own language. So far, more than 1,900 article have been created by about 100 Wikipedians. The edit-a-thon will be also running during the conference so that the participants can also contribute to this activity.

Konkani language is the official language of the Indian state of Goa and is spoken along the western coast of India. In an interview, The Discoverer, an active contributor to the Konkani-language Wikipedia, explained how Wikipedia can unite native speakers who speak different variations of the same language and write in different scripts:

For Konkani Wikipedia to succeed, it is not just a ‘good idea’ for Konkani speakers writing in various scripts to work together on one Wikipedia, but it’s also a necessity and a challenge at the same time. It’s a necessity, because as things stand, no one script has a strong enough community to run a Wikipedia by themselves. It’s a challenge because not everyone can read every script, and it’s important for all the users of a Wikipedia to be able to understand all the content on that site.

The full interview is here.

A team of dedicated organizers who are primarily volunteers and represent several Wikimedia communities from India and three Wikimedia-affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success.

More details about the event could be found in the event page, and on Facebook and Twitter.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-voices-august-5-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-south-asia-largest-wikimedia-conference-kicks-off-in-india

In Tulu, India's 23rd Regional Wikipedia Goes Live

praskrishna — 2016-08-08T01:27:58Z

In a major boost to ancient Indian languages, Tulu wikipedia has finally gone live.

The article by Naina Chaturvedi was published in Huffington Post on August 7, 2016. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was quoted.

According to a report in The Hindu, eight years after its launch, Tulu Wikipedia has gone live with over 1,000 articles.

The announcement was made by Katherine Maher, executive director, Wikimedia Foundation, USA, at the Wikiconference India 2016, India's second national Wikipedia meet in half a decade, held in Chandigarh on Friday.

"There are about 200 registered users (editors), out of which around 100 have more than 10 edits. On an average, there are about 8 to 10 active editors," Dr. U.B. Pavanaja from the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, and one of the mentors of Tulu Wikipedia, told The Hindu.

He further added that, "Vishwanatha Badikana, a Kannada professor, followed by Bharatesha Alasandemajalu, an engineer, are the highest contributors."

The language is spoken by around two million native speakers, mainly in southwest Karnataka and in Kasaragod district, Kerala, The Indian Express reported.

Pavanaja, further explained how this achievement would help create pressure on the government to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of Indian Constitution.

"After we became live, we will import articles from the 'incubator' site, build the 'village pump', set up policies, administration structure, info boxes and templates,"IANS quoted Pavanaja saying.

Wikipedia which is available in 22 Indian languages include, Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Newari, Odia, Pali, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, now, including Tulu making the count 23.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/huffington-post-august-7-2016-naina-chaturvedi-in-tulu-indias-23-regional-wikipedia-goes-live

After eight years, Tulu Wikipedia goes live

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T10:34:21Z

Around eight years after its launch and in incubation, the Tulu Wikipedia has gone live with over 1,000 articles. It can be accessed at http://tcy.wikipedia.org

The article by Raviprasad Kamila was published in the Hindu on August 7, 2016

Katherine Maher, executive director, Wikimedia Foundation, USA, made the announcement at the three-day Wikiconference India 2016, which began at Chandigarh on Friday.

U.B. Pavanaja, program manager, Indian Languages, The Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, one of the mentors of the Tulu Wikipedia told The Hindu that the page has about 1,100 articles.

“There are about 200 registered users (editors), out of which around 100 have more than 10 edits. On an average, there are about 8 to 10 active editors,” he said, adding that Vishwanatha Badikana, a Kannada professor, followed by Bharatesha Alasandemajalu, an engineer, are the highest contributors.

Mr. Pavanaja said that a series of workshops and editathons in Mangaluru and Udupi helped its growth. “A live Tulu Wikipedia will help bring pressure on the government to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of Indian Constitution,” he said. If the page is to be active, between five and 10 articles would have to be uploaded and at least 15 editors will have to edit it on a monthly basis, he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindu-raviprasad-kamila-august-7-2016-after-eight-years-tulu-wikipedia-goes-live

India's 23rd regional Wikipedia, in Tulu, goes live

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T10:31:21Z

The Tulu Wikipedia has just gone live, giving another boost to yet another ancient Indian language otherwise struggling to keep up with the times and speedily changing technology.

Originally published by IANS, it was mirrored by Business Standard on August 6, 2016.

Located at tcy.wikipdia.org, the Tulu Wikipedia has been in "incubation" since 2008. This term is used to describe such online collaborately-crafted encyclopedias which are still waiting to to go "live" or active and come online.

Around 2014, it was reactivated. Following some meetings and workshops, the concept was also showcased that year at a "World Tulu Conference" stall in December of that year.

After much work, some 1,100 articles (or 1,050 if one could ignore those which are not redirects) went live. There are currently about 100 editors who have made over 10 edits each.

The language has a lot of written literature and a rich oral literature such as the Epic of Siri, according to the Wikipedia itself.

In coastal Karnataka, both the Mangalore and Udupi areas today allow the language as an optional third-language in local schools.

Some five Kannada language representatives and one from Tulu are presently in Mohali-Chandigarh attending Wikiconference India 2016.

(Frederick Noronha can be contacted at fredericknoronha1@gmail.com)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/business-standard-august-6-2016-india-23-regional-wikipedia-in-tulu-goes-live

Community digest: Konkani language speakers are separated by scripts but unite by Wikipedia; news in brief

subha — 2016-08-07T03:11:06Z

Konkani-language Wikipedians on what they think of Wikipedia as a binding factor for native speakers who speak in different variations of the same language and write in different scripts.

This was published on Wikimedia Blog on August 4, 2016

I reached out to a few Goan Konkani Wikipedians to learn about their experience with the project, especially after it went live in 2015. In the interview they share what they think of Wikipedia as a binding factor for native speakers that are currently dispersed in many states, speak in different variations of the same language, and write in different scripts.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Hi The Discoverer [a long time contributor to Wikipedia who is actively contributing to the Goan Konkani Wikipedia], you have been actively contributing to the Goan Konkani Wikipedia since 2006 even before it went live in 2014. What potential do you see in the Goan Konkani Wikipedia bringing Konkani speakers from the states of Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala?
User:The Discoverer (TD): Even though my first contributions were in 2006, I have been moderately active on Wikipedia all these years.

I do agree with you that Konkani Wikipedia has the potential to bind people across borders. As you have rightly pointed out, Konkani is remarkable in that, for the small geographical area where it is a native language, it has developed a large number of dialects, in addition to being used in multiple scripts. Unfortunately, in the offline world, we see that there are disagreements over certain Konkani scripts being favored or not favored in terms of official recognition. Konkani Wikipedia can not only be a platform in bringing together Konkani speakers from many regions but can also be the unifying factor among the Konkani people.

SP: How do think Wikipedia could be a good platform to help unifying the Konkani people?
TD: For Konkani Wikipedia to succeed, it is not just a ‘good idea’ for Konkani speakers writing in various scripts to work together on one Wikipedia, but it’s also a necessity and a challenge at the same time. It’s a necessity, because as things stand, no one script has a strong enough community to run a Wikipedia by themselves. It’s a challenge because not everyone can read every script, and it’s important for all the users of a Wikipedia to be able to understand all the content on that site.

SP: Very rightly spotted. And how do you think the Wikipedia community and the CIS-A2K program should work together to tackle this challenge?
TD: We need an automatic script converter (see the script converter resource page for Konkani on Meta and task on Phabricator) that could make the lives of the editors easier. Most people cannot read more than two scripts. Most users are currently depending on an external site for transliteration when the user cannot read the script used in a Wikipedia article. That’s painful and a user might also would not know about a third party converter. An automatic script converter on Wikipedia would enable people to read any page in the script of their choice in a single click. This is where CIS-A2K can really help Konkani Wikipedia, by helping to implement the script converter. In addition to the script converter, CIS-A2K could also study various multi-script Wikipedias in existence and prepare a list of such features that are used in these Wikipedias to deal with multiple scripts, so that Indian multi-script Wikipedias can consider implementing such a feature as well.

Konkani Wikipedia is facing another challenge right now in growing the community as there are only handful of active editors. And we need contributors from varied walks of life to add more diversity to the community. The boost that was needed initially to make Konkani Wikipedia live—thanks to institutions like Goa University (GU) and Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE) and CIS-A2K for bringing in many student-editors—needs more intensity now. Students from GU and NIE were mainly from the Konkani language and teaching disciplines. If you consider other larger Wikipedias, like the English Wikipedia, they owe their success to editing by people from a diverse backgrounds, and also to the fact that the people are comfortable with the basics of markup and coding and were able to build templates, etc. Today, there is almost no one who is working on templates and other similar technical stuff for Konkani Wikipedia. Here too, CIS-A2K can help by reaching out to Konkani speakers with a background in computing—for instance, students of Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA), Master in Computer Application, Computer Science and engineering. This will help build a community that is technically adept at creating templates and dealing with more advanced types of content for the Wikipedia.

The Konkani Wikipedia can also take advantage of software extensions like VisualEditor and Flow that the knowledge of markup and other technicalities that the user needs to have, so that users who are uncomfortable with editing markup can focus on just adding content with a much more simple and user-friendly interface.

In these ways, participation of people from different regional and vocational backgrounds can form a vibrant editing community leading to the growth of the Konkani Wikipedia.

In brief

WikiConference India 2016 to be held at Chandigarh during August 5–7: The second WikiConference India (WCI) will be held on August 5-7 in Chandigarh, India. After the first WCI in 2011, this will be the largest gathering of the Wikimedians from the Indian subcontinent. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success. Over 100 scholarships have been offered to noteworthy contributors from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Various talks, meetups and workshops are planned for the three-day event, and a needs assessment survey has been put in place for ensuring any hackathon needs are addressed.
Punjab edit-a-thon: A month-long edit-a-thon has been running in 12 Indic language Wikipedias and one European language Wikipedia (the Ukrainian) to enrich the content related to Punjab, the Punjabi people, and their language and culture. So far, more than 1000 articles have been created by about 100 Wikipedians. As we have already surpassed the dream target of 1000 articles, we are planning to extend the edit-a-thon through WikiConference India so many can participate during the event.
Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses: A campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several noted authors from “all rights reserved” to a Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) license. This campaign was started on June 19 and copyright migration process is complete for 17 books so far. Once the copyright migration is over the books—ranging from historical figures and popular personalities to regional history—are going to be digitized on Wikisource. “I don’t want these works to be in bookshelf and get wasted by termites. My wish as an author and researcher is to make these works available to future historians who can make use of it, so that our people get to know the local history” shares Kanuri Badarinadh, a historian, novelist and journalist who has donated some of his books.
Train-the-trainer and Mediawiki training program for capacity building of community leaders from Indian subcontinent: After two iterations of the Train the Trainer in 2013 and 2015, CIS-A2K organized the third program during June 15-17 at Bengaluru. The Mediawiki training was designed to help groom technical leadership skills of the technical contributors of the communities. A total of 45 participants, that were selected by a collaborative consultation with the community, took part in these events. The trainers for both the events consisted of subject experts from the Wikimedia community, the free knowledge movement, the free and open source software community and CIS-A2K program staff. A series of small Mediawiki trainings will follow soon that will be led by the trained participants.
Indian women in Science edit-a-thon: Organized by IndiaBioscience, a not-for-profit working for research and advocacy on the life sciences in India, this edit-a-thon began with an introduction to the series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that have been running to expand Wikipedia’s reach on Indian women with contribution to Science. There was a Q&A session Professor Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan followed by introduction to Wikipedia editing, its policies and guidelines, and brief on copyright, and Creative Commons licensing. 11 new articles were created and 11 existing articles were expanded in English, Hindi and Odia-language Wikipedias.
Indigenous South-Asian language gets a new open Unicode font: A new font for the Ol chiki script (used to write the Santali language) along with input tools are getting ready to be released soon. Santali is spoken by over 6 million people in South Asia over Bangladesh and Nepal and six states in India. This project, supported by the Centre for Internet of India, will help native language speakers type in Unicode across platforms, and also using Universal Language System in all Wikimedia projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-digest-konkani-language-speakers-are-separated-by-scripts-but-unite-by-wikipedia-news-in-brief

Tulu Wikipedia Goes 'Live'

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T01:41:56Z

Tulu Wikipedia became live on August 5, 2016. CIS-A2K took making of Tulu Wikipedia live as one of its activity in 2014. The efforts bore fruit and Tulu Wikipedia is live now.

CIS-A2K team is thankful to all the volunteers who contributed to Tulu Wikipedia and helping it see the light of the day. We would specifically thank Dr. Vishwanatha Badikana and Bharathesha Alasandemajalu who have contributed with the most edit counts and at present are participating in the WIkiconference India.

Tulu Wikipedia page here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/tulu-wikipedia-goes-live

WikiConference India 2016

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T01:35:50Z

WikiConference India 2016 is an event to provide a common platform for all Wikimedians in India to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange useful tips, best practices and other information. The Conference is open for participation of Wikimedians from all nations, and will be taking place on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of August 2016 at Chandigarh.

The Conference has a very distinct Indian flavor and deals primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The main objective is to reduce the gap between different communities and get help from other community members on technical issues and other things like best practices in decision making and how we resolve the disputes in the community.

Guests

Katherine Maher, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Nataliia Tymkiv, Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
Asaf Bartov, Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities, Wikimedia Foundation
Runa Bhattacharjee, Manager, Language Engineering Team (International), Wikimedia Foundation
Dr. Surjit Patar, Punjabi poet and writer
Tighe Flanagan, Senior Manager, Wikipedia Education Program, Wikimedia Foundation
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society
Yohann Varun Thomas, President, Wikimedia India
María Kreuz, Communications and Outreach Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation

Social Media Campaign

Facebook event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/146258892472025/ (More suited for conference participants only)
Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/WikiConferenceIndia2016
Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikiConferenceIndia2016/
Official Twitter Handler - https://twitter.com/WikiConIndia
IRC Channel - #wikiconferenceindia

More Info, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/wikiconference-india-2016

The largest Wikipedia gathering in South Asia kicks off

subha — 2016-08-06T17:11:39Z

Wikimedia Conference 2016Wiki Conference India 2016 (WCI), the largest gathering of contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects in South Asia, will be held during August 5-7 this year in Chandigarh, India.

This was published Opensource.com on August 5, 2016

The first iteration of this event was five years ago in 2011. The event is focused around South Asian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects. Hundreds of participants, including over 100 scholarship holders from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, will participate in this three-day event. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success.

Several Wikimedia project and program-related talks, meetups and thematic workshops, focused on technology, program design, volunteer leadership building and engagement, gender gap in Wikipedia, global reach, and education, will keep the participants occupied. There will be separate technical tracks, which were chosen from the results of a pre-event needs assessment survey to ensure that community needs are met. Prior to the conference, a month-long edit-a-thon has been running in twelve South Asian language Wikipedias, and one European language Wikipedia (Ukrainian Wikipedia). The focus of this sprint was to expand the content reach of Wikipedia on Punjab, Punjabi people, and their language and culture as the event is happening in Punjab. So far, more than 1900 articles have been created by about 150 Wikipedians, and the edit-a-thon will be also running during the conference to keep the option of creating more articles open to the participants. Some of the guests includes Wikimedia Foundation's board member Nataliia Tymkiv, the organization's newly promoted executive director Catherine Maher, Punjabi-language poet Surjit Patar and Internet freedom advocate and Centre for Internet and Society's Executive Director Sunil Abraham.

As compared to the last WikiConference India, this conference has more thematic focus, especially on challenges like the gender bias on Wikipedia, and emerging projects like the Wikipedia Education Program. There are as many as six presentations related to gender gap, and six more related to education program.

There has been constant engagement on both on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #WCI2016. Some of the most-used basic phrases in the Punjabi language have been recorded and shared to the participants from outside the region to communicate with the locals.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-august-5-2016-largest-wikipedia-gathering-in-south-asia-kicks-off

WikiConference India 2016 Starts Friday in Chandigarh

praskrishna — 2016-08-05T01:48:32Z

India, a key growth area for Wikipedia, is gearing up for a national conference "for Wikimedians in India to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange useful tips, best practices and other information".

First published by Indo Asian News Service was mirrored on NDTV website on August 4, 2016. Sunil Abraham will be participating.

While the conference is open to "Wikipedians" from across the globe, organisers announced here that it would have a "very distinct Indian flavour and will deal primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia and its sister projects".

Wikipedia, founded in 2001, is the world's sixth-most popular website in terms of overall visitor traffic. Its worldwide monthly readership totals almost 500 million.

Since 2011, the Wikipedia has been working to expand its growth in India, and it held its first Indian conference in Mumbai in November that year, which was attended by 700 persons and addressed by website founder Jimmy Wales.

This year, the meet takes place from August 5-8 in Chandigarh, the city and a Union territory of a million population that serves as the capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana.

"The main objective is to reduce the gap between different communities and get help from other community members on technical issues and other things like best practices in decision making and how we resolve the disputes in the community," the organisers said.

Those attending including Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher, board member Nataliia Tymkiv, senior programme officer for emerging Wikimedia communities Asaf Bartov, language engineering team international manager Runa Bhattacharjee, Punjabi poet Dr Surjit Patar, and Wikipedia education programme senior manager Tighe Flanagan.

From India, participants will include The Centre for Internet and Society executive director Sunil Abraham, and Wikimedia India president Yohann Varun Thomas.

This event includes "hackathons" and "edit-a-thons" - collective workings towards improving the content available online. It will also see sessions on the Wikimedia movement in India, examples of its use in education, innovative tech solutions from India, content translation, a "gentle introduction" to Wikidata, gender gaps, and case studies from various Indian languages.

Participants are coming from the Wikipedias in languages including Punjabi, Kannada, Odia, Tamil, English, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi and Chinese.

Because of its widespread popularity - and contrary to fears that a website "anyone" can edit will not have quality - the Wikipedia notches often among the highest results when information is searched for on the world wide web.

It is a project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of "openly editable content". As the site explains: "The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick) and encyclopedia."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/indo-asian-news-service-ndtv-august-4-2016-wiki-conference-india-2016-starts-friday-in-chandigarh

Live Webinar on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

praskrishna — 2016-08-04T15:07:25Z

Anubha Sinha participated in this event organized by RCEP on July 27, 2016 in New Delhi.

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN has existing FTAs (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand).

Live Webinar RCEP Invite

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/live-webinar-on-regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership

3rd International Conference on Management of Intellectual Property Rights and Strategy

praskrishna — 2016-08-02T15:30:19Z

Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, at IIT Bombay, through the MHRD IPR Chair, organized 3rd International Conference on Management of Intellectual Property Rights and Strategy (MIPS) on July 15 and 16, 2016 at National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai. Anubha Sinha was a speaker on the 'Negotiating India's IP Policy" panel.

MIPS is designed to be biennial in order to create and maintain the quality and its high relevance in the years to come. The broad theme for MIPS is "IP for Development: The emerging paradigm". With Make in India, Digital India missions that is driving both the hard and soft aspect of innovations, the focus this time would be "Driving Nation's Competitiveness - The IP Environment and Ecosystem."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/3rd-international-conference-on-management-of-intellectual-property-rights-and-strategy