Centre for Internet and Society

"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Vijayawada

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-16T10:38:22Z

"Free-license Wings To Your Books" event held at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada

Over the course of the last one year, CIS-A2K, with the help of Telugu Wikipedia community members, has been regularly conducting re-licensing events, scan-a-thons and digitization activities in and around Guntur and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh in order to raise awareness about free licensing books and content. Notable among these are the series of digitization and proofreading sprints conducted at Andhra Loyola College. The "Free-license Wings To Your Books" held on 8 February, 2017 was a culmination of these series of events in Vijayawada.

This event aimed to raise awareness about free-licensing in Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada. The awareness session was followed by community felicitations to writers Kanuri Badarinadh, Fr. Poodota Jojayya and Fr. Job Sudarsan who have released some their content into CC-BY-SA. Fr. Job Sudarsan announced at the event that all his works shall be re-licensed into CC-BY-SA. Later, certificates were distributed to student Wikipedians who contributed to the digitization of 3,500 pages in Wikisource by participating in the digitization sprint that took place at the event. Notable attendees at the event were Mandali Buddha Prasad, Deputy Speaker of Andhra Pradesh, Samala Ramesh Babu, Editor, Nadustunna Charitra and Fr. G.A.P. Kishore, Principal, Andhra Loyola.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-license-wings-to-your-books-in-vijayawada

Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: February iteration

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-18T05:02:13Z

The February iteration of the Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise took place online.

The Google-translated Telugu articles prioritization is an online exercise intended to prioritize and improve over 1,900 machine-translated articles on Telugu Wikipedia. This project was initiated in 2009 when Google translation project took place on Telugu Wikipedia in several rounds. Jointly organised by the Telugu Wikipedia community and CIS-A2K, this exercise saw the participation of 2 Wikipedians.

47 out of 116 articles have been prioritised for further improvement. Says Telugu Wikipedian User:Meena gayathri.s, "I improved Machine translated articles earlier and my major problem is whether my contribution is being channelled properly or not. I always used to think if we can have a list of articles that separates articles that needed to be improved from that of deleted; it will help a lot in this heavy task. This exercise is helping in the same aspect and that is why I'm contributing to this in every iteration."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/google-translated-telugu-articles-prioritisation-exercise-february-iteration

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, Pune

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T14:31:46Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held at 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, Pune on 7th February 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon conducted by CIS-A2K in partnership with 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, an organisation working in the field of education and social work was held on 7 February, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to train participants from 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee on the basics of Wikipedia editing. The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on education and community development on Marathi Wikipedia. Six participants took part in the three hour workshop conducted at the 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee premises.

This edit-a-thon is part of CIS-A2K's ongoing effort to engage communities of interest to partner and collaborate on contributing to Wikipedia so as to utilize their domain knowledge on the free encyclopaedia. Five articles were created and edited by participants.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-swa-roopwardhinee-pune

"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Guntur

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-16T10:53:51Z

"Free-license Wings To Your Books" event held at Annamayya Library, Guntur

The "Free-license Wings To Your Books" ("Pustakaniki Rekkalu Swecha Nakalu Hakkulu" in Telugu) event, an event aimed to bring more books and content onto Telugu Wikisource was conducted by CIS-A2K with support from Annamayya Library, Guntur on 5 February, 2017. The event was primarily intended to raise awareness about free-licensing among Telugu writers and involve them in content donation on Telugu Wikisource. Telugu Wikipedia community member, User:Nrgullapalli commented on the aptness of the event saying, "this is the right event in present situation."

As part of the event, Writer Bhusurapalli Venkateswarlu, who had previously released his book into CC-BY-SA license and writer Peddi Sambashivarao, who supported content donation drive by encouraging fellow writers, were felicitated. The first ever Telugu book released in print directly under CC-BY-SA license - Kodihalli Murali Mohan's "Andhra Sahityamulo Biruda Namamulu" was launched at the event. CIS-A2K Community Advocate Pavan Santhosh conducted a session on the importance of free-licenses as a better alternative in current Telugu publications. The writers engaged in a discussion on the same topic. However, the event lacked female participation.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-license-wings-to-your-books-in-guntur

Odia Wikipedia Workshop in IIMC, Dhenkanal

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-17T06:31:41Z

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop was conducted at IIMC, Dhenkanal on 31 January, 2017

Since 2013, the Odia Wikipedia community has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal for enabling students of the institution to partake in and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. An Odia Wikipedia workshop was conducted for the students of the institution on 31 January, 2017. The students were given an orientation on the basics of editing Wikipedia on the web and on their smart phones in addition to an explanation of Wikipedia policies, history of Wikipedia and Wiki News.

The 45 English and Odia language students with a male: female ratio of 60: 40, who took part were given a live demonstration of these topics. Along with the help of supportive faculty members, the students were exposed to Commons and Incubator as well. Overall, the event saw the creation of 20 new editors on Odia Wikipedia. A follow-up workshop is also being planned for the students in the coming months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iimc-dhenkanal

Odia Wikipedia and Orientation Training Programme

praskrishna — 2017-01-23T00:58:38Z

An Odia Wikipedia orientation and training programme is being organized by the Centre for Internet & Society's (CIS-A2K) team on 31 January 2017 at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal in Odisha.

Agenda

Bringing new editors on board.
Orientation programme for students of IIMC.
Finding possible partnership with the institute.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/odia-wikipedia-and-orientation-training-programme

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T14:15:43Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was conducted at Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur on 23 January, 2017.

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Shivaji's University's affiliate Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College in Kolhapur on 23 January, 2017. The edit-a-thon aimed to introduce Wikipedia to the students of the College and teach them basic editing skills. The students were trained in categorisation and translation from other language Wikipedias. In addition, the students were taught smart editing on their mobile phones using the Wikipedia app.

The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on Marathi Wikipedia in the field of commerce, so as to keep it relevant to the students who study related subjects at the college. The three-hour-long edit-a-thon conducted at the Computer Lab of the college, involved 50 participants, a mix of male and female students.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-rajarshi-chhatrapati-shahu-college-kolhapur

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Shivaji University, Kolhapur

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T13:47:44Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held at Shivaji University, Kolhapur on 19 January, 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted by CIS-A2K in collaboration with Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha at Shivaji Univeristy, Kolhapur on 19 January, 2017. This was similar in nature to the Wikipedia edit-a-thon conducted at Willingdon College in Sangli. The aim of the edit-a-thon was to introduce Wikipedia to the research and post-graduate students of the University.

The three-hour-long edit-a-thon conducted at the University's Marathi Language Computer Lab also focused on building resources in the field of linguistics on Marathi Wikipedia. In addition to equipping the participants with editing and categorisation skills, the workshop encouraged them to contribute to linguistics-related articles and biography articles of Marathi authors and litterateurs. With 50 participants overall, the event increased the reach of Marathi Wikipedia, introducing it to those previously unaware of its existence.

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

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

WikiSangamotsavam 2016

manasa@cis-india.org — 2017-02-06T12:47:54Z

The Malayalam Wikipedia community jointly held its anniversary celebrations and annual gathering in Kasaragod district, Kerala from 26 to 28 December, 2016. The Centre for Internet and Society was invited to partake in the event.

The Malayalam Wikipedia community held its fifth annual gathering, WikiSangamotsavam, in Kasaragod, the northernmost district of the state of Kerala. The culturally diverse district is a melting pot of seven actively spoken languages- Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, the Beary dialect, Tamil, Marathi and Konkani. It was a three day affair from the 26th to 28th December 2016, with the third day’s WikiVoyage incubator session fittingly held on a houseboat out in the Bekal lake! The event commemorated the regional Wikipedia’s completion of 14 years which fell on the 21st of the month. The community aims to build advanced technical support for its members in the next year.

The first day was marked by a seminar by Mr. Sathyaseelan, a differently abled Wikipedian who demonstrated(video from previous meetup here) how to convert voice to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods for visually challenged Wikipedians. This was followed by a session on Open Street Mapping by the newly elected Malayalam Wikipedia administrator Ranjith Siji. In a one-on-one sit down, Ranjit candidly spoke about the technical challenges that the Malayalam Wikipedia and the wider Wikipedia community faces today. He opines that the existing mobile support for editing wikis is proving insufficient and more robust apps need to be developed to make Wikipedia more mobile ready for on-the-go editors. He’s taking this up as his personal mission for the upcoming year. In light of using freely reusable data, Ranjit says, “collaborative editing must also be enabled as groups can work together to improve local knowledge.”

The second day began with a formal opening ceremony by P. Karunakaran, Member of Parliament for the Kasaragod constituency. He spoke on the importance of furthering the cause of knowledge in India’s most literate state. Then, the Malayalam Wikipedia community sat down for a transparent round table discussion on progress made and targets to be set for 2017. The community noted the success of programs and activities like Ente Gramam (which encouraged members to detail information regarding their village/ ancestral village), Olympics month, Wikipedia Asian Month, Wiki 100 Days, etc. The Wiki 100 Days in particular led to the creation of close to 80 articles a day in Malayalam Wikipedia. The number of articles also saw a surge post the Wiki Conference India 2016 held in Punjab. The discussion mulled on the aspects that need to be improved upon such as selected articles and selected photos on the Main Page which see unenthusiastic voting numbers amongst the community members. Manoj K, an active community member, proposed the strategy of targeting groups of editors(old/new) with niche knowledge of a specific subject or focus area. He related his own experience in this regard: “I’m part of many bird watching and environmental clubs and I talk to them about Wikipedia so that they can use their knowledge about conservation or birds to edit or create those specific wikis.” He also identified challenges that were administrative in nature. “When offline events increase, online participation tends to decrease due to the leg work involved”, he observes. In addition, he feels grant writing and documentation training would also benefit the community. He added that religious vandalism of articles on monuments by fringe groups is also an issue faced by the community.

Anil Kumar, another long time Wikipedian, spoke of the general increase in awareness regarding editing Wikipedia in smaller towns and districts in Kerala. He pointed out that reviving School Wiki would further increase awareness and, subsequently, participation. The Kerala government’s IT@School project is now leading the efforts behind reviving School Wiki which aims to document (in Malayalam) details of all the schools in the state. K. Anvar Sadat, the Executive Director of IT@School spoke to the Malayalam Wikipedia community in a video message enumerating the benefits of a detailed statewide school database. The community also aims to complete their target of 50, 000 Wikipedia articles by the end of the year. The second day came to a close with a seminar on mangalamkali, a local folk dance in the district by Master Ramachandran.

Ranjit Siji further outlined the agenda for 2017 saying that data scraping of public records onto Wikipedia and a tool to maintain edit-a-thons will be a key focus for the community this year. He said, “when data can flow from public record to a wiki, it makes editing much easier and accessible even for new editors.”

When asked Manoj added that the community plans to conduct more online and offline events for community bonding. He said, “monthly meetings and edit-a-thons will keep the community active.” 2017 will also see Wikipedians in the community being rewarded through recognition of their pioneering efforts, he said. However, he emphasised the need for public and social media branding of future events. The final day of the annual gathering was held on a houseboat in Nileshwar. Wikipedian Sajal Karikkan gave a presentation on the Malayalam WikiVoyage project, still in incubation, where users could provide travel guidance about areas they are most familiar with. It was enthusiastically received by the community members. While the event was timed between Christmas and New Year, it did see some enthusiastic participation. However, the community did lack significant participation of women to bridge the gender divide(see chart below). Smitha, a long time Wikipedian and oceanographer feels that working women find it harder. She says, “they simply don’t have the time with their work and family commitments.” With the community planning to create mobile apps for editing in Malayalam, this could be sufficiently addressed through focused efforts to involve more women.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikisangamotsavam-2016

Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Hyderabad Book Fair

manasa@cis-india.org — 2017-02-06T12:48:09Z

Telugu Wikipedia community put up a stall at the Hyderabad Book Fair in December welcoming members of the public to join as editors on the regional encyclopaedia.

The Telugu Wikipedia community put up a stall at the 30th edition of the Hyderabad Book Fair from 15th to 26th December, 2016 at the NTR Stadium. Supported by The Centre for Internet and Society, the volunteers were long time Telugu Wikipedia community members. They helped visitors set up Wikipedia accounts and become editors on the free access encyclopedia. They also spoke to the visitors and explained how Wikipedia works and the collaborative efforts undertaken by various language communities in maintaining the regional language wiki pages. Additionally, a survey was conducted to find out what topics of interest are currently trending among the public. The Telugu Wikipedia community aims to take this feedback into consideration in order to update the topics they frequently edit.

Some visitors seemed interested in attending upcoming Wikipedia events and workshops. The organisers welcomed interested members of the public to attend the Hyderabad Wikipedia Monthly meetup on 22nd January, 2017.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/telugu-wikipedia-stall-at-hyderabad-book-fair

Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Rajahmundry Book Fair

manasa@cis-india.org — 2017-02-06T12:48:36Z

Telugu Wikipedia community put up a stall at the three day Rajahmundry Book Fair from 20 - 23 November 2016.

The initiative was supported by The Centre for Internet and Society and NTR Trust. The stall was run by long time community advocates and editors of Telugu Wikipedia. The volunteers distributed pamphlets and explained to the visitors the basics of editing Wikipedia. They distributed a survey to understand current topics of interest in order to update the Telugu wiki pages. Some visitors utilized the expertise of the volunteers and set up Wikipedia accounts at the stalls.

The book fair in the river side city didn’t see many takers this time round considering the move to demonetise was announced the previous week. The organizers had not made alternative payment arrangements at such short notice. Volunteer Pranay Raj said, “although there were uncontrollable factors at play, the city has great potential and Telugu Wikipedia plans to expand its editor base in the city through institutional partnerships from schools and colleges.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/telugu-wikipedia-stall-at-rajahmundry-book-fair-1

Mini Workshop on Tools: Wikipedia Monthly Meetup, Hyderabad

Manasa Rao and Pavan Santhosh — 2017-02-06T12:49:00Z

Telugu Wikipedia community held its monthly meet-up in Hyderabad on 28 August 2016.

The event was marked by a presentation on quick tools by Pavan Santhosh, Community Advocate and long time member of the Telugu Wikipedia community. He demonstrated the use of PrepBio, a tool that helps create infoboxes on biographical articles. “This make the process of editing and updating edits easier,” he said. He also spoke about Wiki ToDo, a tool that helps find articles with specific edits or improvements required. “This ensures that even new editors can contribute to quality improvement on wikis,” he pointed out. At the end of the session, the community members engaged in an activity that gave them a hands on insight into using these tools.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mini-workshop-on-tools-wikipedia-monthly-meetup-hyderabad

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Sangli, Maharashtra

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T13:22:39Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was conducted at Willingdon College, Sangli on 18 January, 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted in collaboration with Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha at Willingdon College on 18 January, 2017. The goal of the workshop was to begin the building of resources in the field of linguistics on Marathi Wikipedia. To begin with, the edit-a-thon introduced the participants to editing Wikipedia and contributing to Wiki projects. With about 50 participants(of which around 6 were female), the three-hour-long edit-a-thon involved the post-graduate and research students of the Willingdon College.

The edit-a-thon conducted at the Marathi Language Computer Lab of the College also focused on creating/editing Wikipedia pages related to Marathi literature and language. Extensive discussion on these issues was also conducted to develop the concept and theme of the edit-a-thon. While participants were taught basic Wikipedia editing, they were also trained in searching for relevant articles, categorisation and translation from other language Wikipedias.

The workshop received local media coverage by Sakal, a Marathi daily. You can read the article here.

Link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-sangli-maharashtra

Telugu Wikipedia stall at Vijayawada Book Festival

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-15T16:23:32Z

The Telugu Wikipedia community put up a stall at the Vijayawada Book Festival in January, in order to increase reach of the regional language encyclopaedia.

Last in a series of book stalls set up across the Telugu-speaking region, the Telugu community set up shop at the 27th Vijayawada Book Festival from 3 to 11 January 2017 at the PWD Grounds. The community had previously set up similar book stalls in Rajahmundry and Hyderabad. Considered one of the largest book festivals in India with deep-rooted cultural significance in the Telugu literary circles, the Telugu community aims to increase the reach and visibility of Telugu Wikipedia through the setting up of this stall.

The book festival, open for the public from 11 am to 11 pm, was inaugurated by Kendra Sahitya Akademi winner Rachapalem Chandrasekhar Reddy, with a collection of 235 stalls to browse from. The festival was organised in partnership with the Andhra Pradesh Department of Language and Culture and NTR Trust. The stall was set up by Telugu Wikipedia community members with support from CIS-A2K and NTR Trust.

More than 150 individuals were engaged through this event. Interested members of public would receive follow-up through "Know-How" videos of Telugu Wikipedia. This provides basic information regarding editing and contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects. They would also receive invitations to offline events taking place in Vijayawada in the future.

Telugu Wikipedia editor User:Pranayraj1985 said of his experience in talking to the public about Telugu Wikipedia, "I learnt a lot about what people know about Wikipedia and what they didn't know. In general, many of the visitors exclaim when they [come to] know, there is Wikipedia in Telugu language. But, in contrast, here in Vijayawada, we could at least find handful of people who knew there is something called Telugu Wikipedia.

The link to the events page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/telugu-wikipedia-stall-at-vijayawada-book-festival

Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: January iteration

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-15T17:47:50Z

The January iteration of the Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise took place online.

The Google-translated Telugu articles prioritization is an online exercise intended to prioritize and improve over 1,900 machine-translated articles on Telugu Wikipedia. This project began from 2009- 2011 when Google translation project took place on Telugu Wikipedia in several rounds. Jointly organised by the Telugu Wikipedia community and CIS-A2K, this exercise saw the participation of 1 female Wikipedian and 4 male Wikipedians.

12 machine translated articles were improved and 39 have been deleted due to their poor quality. In addition to this, 42 articles have been prioritised for further improvement. Says Telugu Wikipedian User:Meena gayathri.s, "people who wanted to improve Google-translated article waited [for a] long time to get a priority list of articles to be improved and in that aspect, this exercise is very useful."

Several such iterations are planned for the coming months. The meta page for the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/google-translated-telugu-articles-prioritisation-exercise-january-iteration