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Open Movement in India (2013-23): The Idea and Its Expressions
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-movement-in-india-idea-and-its-expressions
<b>This report identifies some broad patterns that have materialized in the Open Movement in the country in the last decade. The report is based on a reading of the available literature on selected projects and conversations with academicians and advocates of the Open. The rough outline of the Open initiatives is accompanied by reflections on the nature of the Open here and the need to envision it differently from what it currently is.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The report was prepared by Soni Wadhwa, and the visual elements of this study have been sourced by Joseph Francis. CIS’s Access to Knowledge team is grateful to Soni for embarking on the study and making the recommendations. The full report can be read <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/open-movement-india.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open, as an idea, has not received systematic attention in India. Openness as a philosophy is rooted in the belief that sharing ideas and resources is healthy for the knowledge economy, especially in contemporary times. This sharing does not take anything away from any entity; rather, it enables collaboration and innovation for the larger social good. With the Internet and digital technology, one can see the faster spread of such innovation across the globe while also allowing for plenty of room for its adaptation to regional contexts. Anchored in the thought and efforts of individuals such as Richard Stallman (1992; 2002; 2006; 2009) and Tim Berners-Lee (Berners Lee, 2004; Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001; Berners-Lee et al 1992; Berners-Lee and Tim, 2010; Berners-Lee, Tim and Hendler, 2001; Berners-Lee, Tim and Shadbollt, 2011; Bizer, Heath and Berners-Lee 2011) who take a view contrary to that of keeping public funded research and innovation locked away under copyright and patent laws, the Open Movement originated in the Global North.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the West, specifically in the USA, with the support from the institutions such as the Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the manifestation of the Open Movement through the push for OER (Open Educational Resources) translated into a greater uptake from educational institutions such as Rice University and the MIT (through MIT OCW – Open CourseWare)(Bliss and Smith, 2017). With prestigious universities offering MOOCs (massive open online courses) through platforms such as edX and Coursera, educational resources have come to be seen as a social good: keeping them available for mass access has been an intentional move towards equal access to quality educational materials. In addition to OER, Open Access (the idea that research funded by public funds need to be made available publicly rather than behind a paywall erected by commercial publishers), as an expression of the Open Movement, has also been present in institutional funding mechanisms in the West, again, especially in the USA. A lot of research emerging out of grants extended to individuals and institutions have space for allocation of funds towards the cost of Open Access publishing for dissemination of results. Several other initiatives such as the Creative Commons, and the Wikimedia Foundation have been working towards making Openness a reality by charting out various projects, pathways, and initiatives to keep knowledge accessible to all for learning as well as collaboration.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, the state of the Open Movement is thrown into stark relief by the much longer and much more engaged Western imagination and practice of Openness. Indeed, studying its contours here is equivalent to studying its absences and is therefore very challenging. Here, Open, as an idea, has come via the West and still seems to be struggling to be defined and accepted as an ideal to strive towards. It is an alien concept, deeply misunderstood by the stakeholders who control sharing of knowledge resources: policy makers, legislators, leaders of research and institutions, and researchers and academicians in general.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To suggest another example, a pilot survey of Indian faculty members’ attitudes towards use of Open Knowledge sources such as Wikipedia in Indian classrooms reveals that faculty members are very suspicious and skeptical of such sources. They see it as a source of misinformation and therefore, as unreliable.What gets missed is the idea that the content on these sources is not merely for consumption of information and knowledge but are also platforms for knowledge creation and collaboration. In contrast to the two scenarios of OER and Open Access mentioned above, India does not show a long history of organized effort towards making information and knowledge accessible to all, not just through earmarking funds or mechanisms for making publicly funded research available in the public domain via Open Access, but through nurturing a culture of the Open as the default mode of dissemination.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What, then, are we to make of the direction in which the Open Movement is headed in India? Is it possible to shape its trajectory in India? Is it possible to ascertain the ways in which the ideas or benefits of the Open can be made to resonate with the Indian educational and research scenario? Can Indian educators and researchers afford to stay out of the Open ecosystem? What alternative modes of innovation do they champion? These are the questions that this study of the Open Movement in India in the last decade (2013-2023) seeks to explore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The study is not an exhaustive one: it looks at only some examples that engage with the idea of the Open. The selective nature of the study is informed by two rationales. One, an all-encompassing review would be impossible given the constraints on time and resources: indeed, such a review would be the task of a full-fledged tracking project (which is one of the futures that this report suggests at the end). Two, given that Open does not have a clear pathway or a central, strategic vision to drive it as a movement, the selection of projects themselves is a symptom of the disjointed ways in which the idea of Open struggles to take shape or survive in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The year 2013 has been chosen as a starting point for this exploration because it was the year the Wikimedia Foundation extended a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, to work with various Wikipedia communities in India towards the growth of the Open ecosystem in India. This last decade then is of grave importance to the CIS because it helps the organization reflect on their own work vis-a-vis that of other Open advocates CIS’s work, since then, is available on its website through details of its initiatives via its Access to Knowledge and Openness Programmes (see, for instance, their work on <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities">bridging gender gap</a> on Indian Wikimedia communities, apart from a host of other training and advocacy initiatives <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k">here</a>). This study is an aid to survey the idea and expressions of the Open as a broader movement and thus help CIS reflect on new directions and strategies to be pursued in the near future, to begin with.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, there is more to the year 2013 than the happenstance of the grant to CIS per se: indeed, one can spot other organized efforts emerging in the Indian ecosystem since then. NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning), which was established in 2003, began to offer MOOCs on its platform in 2014. Coincidentally, 2013 was also the year the Bichitra Project (an online variorum of the work of the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore), funded by the Ministry of Culture, went live. Together, the international foray into the Indian Open Movement and the governmental gravitas to strive towards making education and the literature of a great Indian author) accessible provide the rationale for this study’s focus on the examination of the nature of championing for the cause of the Open, its successes, failures, and potential for its growth in the next decade.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The approach or methodology to explore answers to these questions involved: analysis of primary as well as secondary research available on the different initiatives in India; interactions with experts working in the Open domain in India including some Indian academicians, especially on the discussion of Open Access which impacts their publishing record, and in turn, impacts their career advancement. The reading and the conversations supplemented each other in the process of investigation: the existing literature provided facts through texts (blogs, papers, documentation on websites and so on) while the interactions opened up more nuances of intersections through perspectives that do not always make it to the static texts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Any study on the Open Movement in India owes a huge debt to Arul George Scaria’s gargantuan <a href="https://osf.io/m3q4s">Open Science India Report (2019)</a>. At over 350 pages, it is a detailed study of Open Access projects and also includes a survey conducted among academic fraternity. It also offers concrete suggestions to strengthen access in research. It is remarkable for the larger view it takes of access to include access for persons with disabilities and access in terms of language, suggesting that research should also be accessible in Indian languages, and also in jargon-free English for wider audiences. Apart from Scaria’s study, there are journalistic pieces about Open Data in India, given the relevance it has for governance.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This current study does not aspire to be monumental like Scaria’s. However, it is hoped that its relevance to the ongoing conversations about openness would be noted at at least two levels. One, between 2019 (when Scaria’s report was published) and 2023 (the end point of this study), socioeconomic changes such as COVID-19 and the resulting remote work, one expects, have highlighted the significance of openness. For instance, given the serious constraints it posed for travel, a lot of commercial publishers kept their resources open so that further research, within medicine and outside, could keep happening. Thus, it becomes imperative to understand if the Indian ecosystem displayed any stronger endeavor towards openness. To anticipate a couple of suggestions discussed in the report below, certain things such as Indian researchers’ apathy or disdain for Open Access has not quite changed in the span of these four years. However, Government of India’s open initiatives such as Anuvadini and Bhashini around tools for navigating and producing content in Indian languages have started to appear.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Two, Scaria’s study subsumed all knowledge under “science”: in other words, science, in his report, is a metonym for knowledge. This current study, in being inclusive of humanities and the arts, especially as relevant to Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums), engages with knowledge or movement in general irrespective of its disciplinary boundaries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With that statement on where this report is situated, some notes about its structure are in order. This study begins with an overview of the legal and policy environment in India. It then moves on to explore the nature of Open projects in India. There are many ways to organize the narrative around Openness, with the domain wise bifurcation of the different aspects of the Open (The OPEN Movements, 2023). In contrast, this goes on to organize the projects around positionalities, rather than the domains. That is, the different projects and initiatives are narrativised as:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Public funded projects: These are endeavors emerging from funds provided by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture and distributed via grants to Higher Education Institutes in India, especially the IITs. They stand out as one category in that they are characterized by:</p>
<ol> </ol>
<ul>
<li>The vision to provide basic infrastructure of education and archival material in the public domain</li>
<li>The capacity to think and execute in terms of massive impact and scale</li>
<li>A wide scope for aiming higher in terms of innovation, approach, and access</li>
</ul>
<p>Volunteer undertakings: These are projects undertaken by non governmental organizations such as the Sanchaya Foundation, SFLC (Software Freedom Law Centre) and FOSSUnited characterized by:</p>
<ol> </ol>
<ul>
<li>A niche focus on a language or a domain or an audience </li>
<li>A preoccupation with developing a community rather than delivering an output</li>
<li>A qualitative aspect to engagement and documentation, as opposed to impact in terms of numbers</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Within volunteer undertakings, the role of philanthropic foundations is very briefly touched upon. There are entities such as the SRTT (Sir Ratan Tata Trust) and SDTT (Sir Dorabji Tata Trust) that supported the cause of the Open in the initial stages via their investment in the larger educational and cultural cause. These foundations also seem to have discontinued their efforts in the long term perhaps given the scope of work involved. In addition to philanthropic foundations, mention is also made of international projects. The international Open Knowledge projects in India involve the Wikimedia Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation that have funded various initiatives in India and have continued to stay invested in the larger vision as well as execution of Openness through their grants.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The discussion of the above mentioned types of projects is followed by an examination of the attitudes of academicians teaching at Higher Education Institutes towards Open Access as a specific niche within the Open Movement. Conversation with faculty members in different institutions reveals that Open as an idea is not quite clear to the academia, or at least occupies a space of dissonance: while it is desired as an ideal, it is very strongly constrained by the judgments of fellow peers and employing institutions. In contrast, conversations with experts in Open Access reveals that Open Access deserves a much stronger effort: not just to push for policy changes but also to decolonize Indian academia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The study concludes with some threads that can be pursued from the projects the Open Movement in India has witnessed in the last decade. These points of engagement could become points of reflection for further initiatives in the next decade or two.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-movement-in-india-idea-and-its-expressions'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-movement-in-india-idea-and-its-expressions</a>
</p>
No publishersoniCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpenness2024-02-13T02:57:29ZBlog EntryUsing the Wikimedia sphere for the revitalization of small and underrepresented languages in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/using-wikimedia-sphere-for-revitalization-of-small-and-underrepresented-languages-in-india
<b>This report explores opportunities within the Wikimedia movement and projects to help revitalise small and underrepresented languages in India and provide recommendations to CIS’s Access to Knowledge team in furthering this effort. The report is mainly based on a roundtable conversation on Digital Access in Bhubaneswar with a diverse range of backgrounds and professions, including independent researchers, representatives from non-profit organizations, retired government officials, Wikimedia contributors (both Odia and Santali), ecological activists, directors of research institutes, consultants, and journalists. This was organized by the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in collaboration with Vasundhara, Bhubaneswar.</b>
<p>This strategic note discusses a broad program idea of offering barrier-free open access to resources in various underrepresented languages in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Languages spoken in the Republic of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians. Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the population belong to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroasiatic_languages">Austroasiatic</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages">Sino–Tibetan</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kra%E2%80%93Dai_languages">Tai–Kadai</a>, and a few other minor language families and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate">isolates</a>. According to the People's Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (840). Ethnologue lists a lower number of 456.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php"><span>UNESCO endangerment classification</span></a> is as follows:</p>
<ol> </ol><ol>
<li><i>Vulnerable</i>: most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)</li>
<li><i>Definitely endangered</i>: children no longer learn the language as a 'mother tongue' in the home</li>
<li><i>Severely endangered</i>: language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves</li>
<li><i>Critically endangered</i>: the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently</li>
<li><i>Extinct</i>: there are no speakers left</li>
</ol><ol> </ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">North-East India is home to more than 200 languages, out of which 82 are listed as <i>Vulnerable</i>, 63 as <i>Definitely Endangered</i>, 6 as <i>Severely Endangered</i>, 46 as <i>Critically Endangered </i>and 6 as <i>Extinct </i>(<a href="https://www.kaggle.com/the-guardian/extinct-languages"><span>The Guardian Dataset</span></a>). Arunachal Pradesh is the state with the highest number of languages, with as many as 66 languages spoken there, while West Bengal has the highest number of scripts, nine, and around 38 languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The state of Odisha has 62 Scheduled Tribes who speak as many as 74 dialects. Their ethos, ideology, worldview, value orientations and cultural heritage are rich and varied. Odisha has the unique distinction of having 93 different Scheduled Caste communities spread over 30 districts and 314 blocks of the state having different dialects. Apart from the languages of the North-East and the state of Odisha, there are several other languages all over India that deserve better representation on the Internet. While a handful of these languages enjoy status and visibility as official languages of the states and thereby hold some currency as widely spoken languages in their linguistic territories, there are many more languages that do not have speakers counting beyond a few hundred. Examples include the Bellari language (Spoken in Karnataka by 1000 speakers), the Toda language (Spoken in Tamil Nadu by 1600 speakers) and the Naiki language (Spoken in Maharashtra by 1500 speakers). What these languages do share in common with the languages of the North-East mentioned earlier is that they all lack free and open source knowledge and data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of these languages are the official languages of the states and are widely spoken in this region. On the other hand, some of the languages have a few hundred native speakers. However, irrespective of the size of the native population or official status of the language, they all lack free and open source knowledge & data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These languages show a range of marked cross-linguistic features which pose several interesting questions to Linguistic theories and speech processing research. Moreover, the close geographical proximity of these languages makes them vulnerable to changes in multiple linguistic levels, making these languages an excellent resource to study language change. Despite this, these languages severely lack digital preservation. One of the major reasons that contribute to the lack of resources is the difficulty in human access to some of the areas in these regions. Moreover, with English and Hindi being used as a lingua franca in these regions, the actual number of speakers proficient in their native language is much fewer than the number shown in the census reports. This makes it more important than ever to initiate a preservation process which does not primarily depend on fieldwork while also increasing the presence of the language in the digital sphere.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As language technologies advance and more sophisticated tools are built using Artificial Intelligence, the divide between low resource languages and others is likely to get even larger as a common prerequisite of these advanced systems is the existence of a large amount of digital data. Low resource languages are at a risk of being left behind.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Research on these languages by researchers are mostly conducted by collecting data personally, which causes a huge hindrance to the research process, as most of it remains as a private collection or published in closed journals. Moreover, data collection through fieldwork is particularly challenging in this region due to the restricted access to most of the disturbed areas.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The goal of this program is to facilitate the study of these languages by making existing resources discoverable and building open-source structured datasets and tools using the Wikimedia sphere to enrich the language research landscape of small and underrepresented Indian languages.</p>
<p><b>Role of CIS-A2K</b></p>
<ul>
<li>To design and commission relevant research studies in collaboration with language communities to define the premises of the program. The plan is to work with languages which are being written in single or multiple scripts in the pilot phase.</li>
<li>To develop strategies regarding the integration of language datasets with Wikimedia projects</li>
<li>Skill building of volunteers and community leaders in Wikimedia projects</li>
<li>Structure of local knowledge to be compiled for contribution</li>
<li>To identify the specific Wiki projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Lingua Libre etc to build the archives of these languages</li>
<li>Designing outreach and knowledge dissemination processes</li>
<li>To develop partnerships with other academic, social, cultural and research institutions in the language sector for the sustainability of the project</li>
<li>Material support - Sound recorders, microphones, hard discs, laptop, scanner, internet hardware</li>
<li>Financial support - Remuneration of intern/fellow, internet data recharge</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Specific objectives</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ol> </ol><ol>
<li>Empowering the communities by enhancing digital literacy and connecting them with the world of knowledge and people outside.</li>
<li>Revitalizing/enriching the languages by increasing their use, coverage and depth using technological interventions.</li>
<li>Creating an ecosystem for developing language learning resources and tools; particularly, in the context of the New Education Policy.</li>
<li>Enabling scholars and researchers to overcome the challenge of finding appropriate data and expanding the knowledge on these languages.</li>
<li>By using the Wikimedia sphere, the infrastructural and technological support is secured, so that these languages are able to function in the digital world.</li>
</ol><ol> </ol>
<p>It is important to realise that these objectives can introduce new dynamics into other spheres of activity, such as education and the development of language.</p>
<p><b>Methodology</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p>Our target languages broadly belong to two sets:</p>
<ol>
<li>Languages which are primarily spoken in various states of India and have some or no digital presence on the internet.</li>
<li>Endangered languages which have extremely limited or no digital presence.</li>
</ol>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Survey of ongoing work</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Several individuals and institutions are working on languages across the globe. There are significant initiatives in India also to revitalise the small languages in the digital sphere. Some of these are listed in the reference section at the end. An exhaustive survey of all such efforts will be done to map the present status as well as a listing of stakeholders. The target languages for A2K’s future work and the potential collaborators will also be identified through these exercises.</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Digital Dictionary Making</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A dictionary is a vital resource for any language learning. The idea of collaborative dictionaries using platforms like Wiktionary or Wikidata Lexemes eliminates the need for expert lexicographers and terminologists and rather follows the method in which the users enter data as new entries, definitions, and so on, and the same is reviewed by editors, once published. An offline e-dictionary application using this dataset could be developed to overcome the problem of sparse internet connectivity where the user is only expected to download & install the application once and use the dictionary offline at any moment.</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Data Acquisition Strategies</b></p>
<ol> </ol><ol>
<li>Leveraging Crowdsourcing using <a href="https://lingualibre.org/wiki/LinguaLibre:Main_Page"><span>LinguaLibre</span></a> for the creation of Speech CorporaGiven the scarcity of text and speech corpora for these low-resource languages, the main potential source for dataset creation is by crowdsourcing.</li>
<li>Using Optical Character Recognition techniques -</li>
</ol>
<p>The digitisation of texts in the public domain would be done and made available freely by uploading them on Wikimedia projects. The digital copy will be made machine-readable using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Processing the acquired data</b></p>
<ol>
<li>Preprocess</li>
<li>Processing Speech Corpora</li>
<li>Processing Bilingual Parallel text Corpora</li>
</ol>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Housing datasets</b></p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page"><span>Wiki Commons</span></a> for media files</li>
<li><a><span>Wikidata</span></a> for Lexemes</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page"><span>Wikisource</span></a> for texts</li>
</ol>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Capacity Building workshops</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Promoting the language among the young speakers of the community, since they are the future of the language and if it survives, it will belong to them.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Help language speakers possess up-to-date digital competencies and feel confident about them to actively participate in the digital world and increase content in their own native language.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Promoting contributions on platforms like <a href="https://storyweaver.org.in/"><span>Storyweaver</span></a>, <a href="https://prathambooks.org/"><span>Pratham Books</span></a>, <a href="https://www.eklavya.in/index.php/about-us-eklavya"><span>Eklavya</span></a> etc.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Promote the upskilling of native speakers and other disseminators</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Facilitate knowledge exchange through participatory mechanisms both virtually and face-to-face.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The potential communities would be introduced to <a href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incubator:Main_Page"><span>Incubator</span></a> for building new Wikimedia projects</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Educational development</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Applying Open access philosophy to advance language pedagogy.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Develop language learning resources and tools, particularly, in the context of the New Education Policy.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>References</b></p>
<ol>
<li>Wikipedia articles</li>
<li>SCSTRTI, Odisha - <a href="https://www.scstrti.in/index.php/resources/mle-initiative/bilingual-dictionaries"><span>https://www.scstrti.in/index.php/resources/mle-initiative/bilingual-dictionaries</span></a></li>
<li>Most populous languages of Odisha - <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Languages_of_Odisha.svg"><span>https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Languages_of_Odisha.svg</span></a> </li>
<li>People’s Linguistic Survey of India - <a href="https://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/"><span>https://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/</span></a></li>
<li>The state and fate of linguistic diversity and inclusion in the NLP world - <a href="https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.560/"><span>https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.560/</span></a></li>
<li>Bhasha India - <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/bhashaindia"><span>https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/bhashaindia</span></a> </li>
<li>Omniglot - <a href="https://www.omniglot.com/index.htm"><span>https://www.omniglot.com/index.htm</span></a></li>
<li>Bharatavani - <a href="https://bharatavani.in/"><span>https://bharatavani.in/</span></a></li>
<li>Storyweaver - <a href="https://storyweaver.org.in/"><span>https://storyweaver.org.in/</span></a> </li>
<li>Dimasa Thairili - <a href="https://www.dimasathairili.com/"><span>https://www.dimasathairili.com/</span></a></li>
<li>SIL International - <a href="https://www.sil.org/"><span>https://www.sil.org/</span></a></li>
<li>Ethnologue - <a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/"><span>https://www.ethnologue.com/</span></a></li>
<li>Global Recordings Network - <a href="https://globalrecordings.net/en/"><span>https://globalrecordings.net/en/</span></a></li>
<li>Glottolog - <a href="https://glottolog.org/"><span>https://glottolog.org/</span></a></li>
<li>Endangered Languages Project - <a href="https://endangeredlanguages.com/"><span>https://endangeredlanguages.com/</span></a></li>
</ol>
<hr />
<p>This is a report by Subodh Kulkarni with editorial oversight and support by Tanveer Hasan and Soni Wadhwa. Click to download the PDF <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/files/underrepresented-languages-and-wikimedia-projects.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/using-wikimedia-sphere-for-revitalization-of-small-and-underrepresented-languages-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/using-wikimedia-sphere-for-revitalization-of-small-and-underrepresented-languages-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K Research2024-02-10T04:35:45ZBlog EntryExploring Knowledge Repositories on Water Resources in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india
<b>This research study explores knowledge repositories on water resources in India, with a focus on how the digital transition has impacted the process of creation & access to these resources and possible collaborations to build open digital repositories around water. The research was undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Chiara Furtado. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2021–2022.</b>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Water is the most precious natural resource for the existence of all living organisms on earth. As human beings have not treated it respectfully in recent years, there are increasing challenges with accessibility and availability of water across large parts of the world today. In India, the groundwater levels are depleting at an alarming rate due to over exploitation<sup>.[1]</sup> The quality of surface water reserves is degenerating due to pollution caused by discharge of wastewater, sewage and untreated industrial effluents.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup> The condition of rivers is getting worse due to illegal and unregulated use of these resources across India. Due to damming almost all the rivers flow for only 8-10 months in a year. Above all, the pollution caused due to solid wastes and effluents have destroyed living organisms and aquatic life. Therefore most of the rivers in India are called ‘dying rivers’.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> There have been several discussions and debates happening around this degradation of rivers, especially in the last decade.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Efforts by various organisations are afoot to document the state of affairs, spread awareness and undertake activities on the ground with community participation. Citizen-led efforts have also been instrumental in strengthening several water conservation efforts in India. It is seen that these peoples’ movements have been further strengthened due to empowerment through enhanced awareness of these issues around conservation, and better access to knowledge on the subject, especially through scientific studies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K has initiated <a title="CIS-A2K/Events/Partnerships under Project Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Partnerships_under_Project_Jal_Bodh_-_Knowledge_resource_on_Water">Project Jalbodh</a> in 2017 in collaboration with a few organisations to generate water related content. During one of the ‘River dialogues’, a CIS-A2K member was invited to introduce Wikimedia projects to the organisations working on water resources. In the discussions, it was revealed that there is negligible content about rivers, water pollution, floods, irrigation system etc. in Wikimedia projects. Following this, an analysis of content on these subjects on Marathi, Hindi & English Wikipedia and media on Wikimedia Commons was undertaken. The need to develop structured categorisation of content was also felt. As the organisations are trying their best to disseminate knowledge about water issues, they realised the potential of Wikimedia projects due to the high level of searchable content available on these platforms which can be accessed by the general public. In keeping with these objectives, over the last two years, various workshops were conducted with organisations working at the grassroots to develop the structure of articles, categorisation and re-licensing of source material on these topics across various Wikimedia projects. <a class="text external" href="http://tarunbharatsangh.in/" rel="nofollow">Tarun Bharat Sangh</a> is leading this process, and has uploaded <a title="c:Category:Books published by Tarun Bharat Sangh, India" class="extiw" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_published_by_Tarun_Bharat_Sangh,_India">90 books & reports on Wikimedia Commons</a> under free licences, and created articles on rivers in Marathi, Hindi and English Wikipedia projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">During these content generation events it was realised that the organisations are working closely with communities which are conversant mostly with local or regional Indian languages only. The availability and access to water related resources in these languages is therefore an important issue. The communities are in need of simple, accessible and ready to use content in various forms. They also require a platform on which they can document/archive their water conservation efforts for other communities to take lessons and motivation from these projects.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Research Questions</h2>
<p>This study was framed by the following questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>How has the digital transition impacted the process of creation and access to water related resources in India.</li>
<li>What are possible collaborations and processes to build open digital repositories around water, with special reference to rivers.</li></ol>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study adopted a qualitative approach, with the method comprising online/offline, semi-structured interviews with organisations working in the water resources sector. Based on desk research and conversations with existing partners in the sector, a long list of organisations was developed.(See Annexure I). Further, eight organisations were shortlisted for interviews based on their experience and impact of work in the water conservation sector. Due to various constraints, eventually interviews with three organisations were completed. The interview questionnaire focused on the nature, objective and scope of the offline and online resources available, human resources involved, language aspects, documentation practices, methods of dissemination, utility, accessibility, training value of the material, intellectual property rights (IPR) policies and public outreach efforts. These interviews were conducted online and in-person and recorded with consent from the participants, along with a clear explanation on the objectives of the study and the data collection. As mentioned above, there were a few constraints with the research process and methods adopted, as well as external factors. These included restrictions on travel and in-person meetings due to the COVID 19 pandemic, and challenges with online platforms. Some of the organisations were not comfortable with online or telephonic interviews and insisted upon physical interactions. The online interviews were less effective with the organisations as they were unaware about the free & open knowledge platforms like Wikimedia, Internet Archive etc. In addition to this, introductory sessions were conducted to give them a background to the work of the programme and context of the study. A general challenge here was also logistical issues related to scheduling conversations etc. given that personnel were located across different departments.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Description of Organisations Interviewed</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management [ACWADAM]'</strong><em> </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://www.acwadam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=featured&Itemid=101" rel="nofollow">ACWADAM</a> is an organisation dedicated to establish a groundwater management agenda in India. It is a premier education and action research institution engaged in developing and disseminating knowledge on groundwater management. It is also involved in facilitation of projects on groundwater management through action research programmes, training and policy advocacy, with a collaborative, participatory approach. ACWADAM's mission is to facilitate groundwater management programmes in partnership with various organisations spread across the country. Over the years, it has developed expertise on aquifer-based groundwater management based on the science of hydrogeology.</p>
<div><strong>Action for Agricultural Renewal in Maharashtra [AFARM]</strong></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://www.afarm.org/index" rel="nofollow">AFARM</a> was founded in 1969 as an apex Institution to coordinate programmes of voluntary organisations engaged in providing drinking water and agricultural extension services to villages in drought affected Maharashtra. It is one of the pioneering networking organisations in the country working in the areas of sustainable agriculture, irrigation, disaster relief and drinking water resource management. It acts as a platform for several civil society organisations for the promotion of sustainable and equitable development. The emphasis is on capacity building of organisations through action research, advocacy and field projects at grassroots. AFARM is providing support and consultancy at the policy level.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>BAIF Development Research Foundation [BAIF]</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://baif.org.in/" rel="nofollow">BAIF</a> was established on the strong foundation of Gandhian values with the aim to improve quality of life through development research and capacity building. BAIF’s vision is to build a self-reliant rural society assured of food security, safe drinking water, good health, gender equity, low child mortality, literacy, high moral values and clean environment. It is striving towards the mission to create opportunities of gainful self-employment for the rural and tribal families with a focus on disadvantaged sections, ensuring sustainable livelihood, healthy environment, better quality of life and good human values. BAIF believes in field research, effective use of local resources, extension of appropriate technologies and upgradation of skills and capabilities with community participation.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Observations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Availability of digital datasets on water resource projects:</strong> Many organisations in the sector rely on online information and databases on sites such as – <a class="text external" href="https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/" rel="nofollow">Census of India</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://mausam.imd.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">IMD</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://earth.google.com/web/" rel="nofollow">Google Earth</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/home/index.php" rel="nofollow">Bhuvan</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://cgwb.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">CGWB</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://gsda.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">GSDA</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://mrsac.maharashtra.gov.in/mahagsda/" rel="nofollow">MRSAC</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://bhulekh.mahabhumi.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Bhumi Abhilekh</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://www.surveyofindia.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Survey of India</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://www.indiawaterportal.org/" rel="nofollow">India Water Portal</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://farmer.gov.in/stateagridepartments.aspx" rel="nofollow">Agriculture Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://wrd.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Irrigation Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://moef.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Forest Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://maharain.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Maharain</a> etc. Many of the global datasets on water resources and related topics such as agriculture, population, topography, forestry, climate change etc. are also in the public domain. However, the updating of data is not done regularly. For example, we have to refer to census data for 2011 even in 2022. Many of the datasets are also at a macro level, providing very little granular data. The water resource projects mostly need micro level data which is collected through on-ground surveys.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Effectiveness of digital platforms, and challenges with internet coverage:</strong> Organisations have found the use of digital platforms and tools effective for quick exchange of common training modules, process videos, drawings and manuals, as part of their water resource projects. The digital format has also been very effective for dissemination of advisories, alerts etc. through smartphones, which have enabled better access to information on gadgets quickly. However, two-way communication is necessary when timely solutions to queries of the farmers are to be provided, and that has been difficult to set up in a sustained manner through a digital format.<br />Many organisations in the sector also engage in capacity-building efforts for staff, volunteers and communities. When building these communities and mobilising them for action, the process needs spontaneous feedback, live conversations, reading the expressions and actual interactions with each other. All these things are completely missing from virtual interactions. These organisational processes and capacity-building efforts were grossly hampered during the pandemic due to a reliance on online meetings alone.<br />There are still challenges of internet connectivity in rural and remote areas where the communities are involved in water management projects. The consistency of bandwidth is a major issue when it comes to streaming of audio-visual content, uploading of content, online workshops, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Lack of documentation skills, and challenges with language:</strong> Most of the documents used in water resources related projects are technical in nature. The technical team invests more time in the implementation, hence the time and skills required for documentation are limited. This gap between technical skills and documentation skills is challenging. There are ample structures, technological methods, apps etc. for collecting the data but at the same time, the resources for data collection or structured data development are not sufficiently provided. There are also several language-related challenges at the field level. Crucial parts of the training and awareness material need to be translated in the local languages as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Mobilisation and motivation for communities and wider public:</strong> The offline and online content is not very effective to mobilise or motivate the people involved in action at the field level in water conservation efforts. The organisers are exploring all the modes of communication and content available, but there is no alternative for human leadership.<br />Some organisations like Paani Foundation have beautifully captured the success stories of these efforts in dramatic short films. These films inspire the public temporarily, but the content can not be used often. Also, the production costs of such content are high resulting in very few options for wider outreach to engage a general audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Negligible content about water sector in public domain or Wikimedia projects in local languages:</strong> All the organisations agree upon the lack of searchable content on water related topics on the internet and in the public domain through projects like Wikimedia. The activists looking for solutions on some technical issues, the community searching for good projects in other parts of India or the planners looking for some structured databases on impact of projects, all of them get very little content on the internet. The local language content on water resources has almost negligible presence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Need for a comprehensive portal giving information to stakeholders at different levels:</strong> The different stakeholders concerned with water resources seek information and data on various levels and diverse formats according to application and purpose. As of now, no such comprehensive platform in multiple languages exists which caters to these needs. The requirements include a wide range like, sample design of water conservation structures, contour maps of region, rainfall data, estimates of raw material, ground water aquifer maps, water pollution parameters, operation of dams, irrigation systems, water policies, water treaties, government notifications, etc. A well structured and categorised knowledge repository and database on water resources is the need of the hour. Such a knowledge base would strongly support the actions on the ground.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Recommendations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Developing a Process Documentation Strategy:</strong> The continuous changes in knowledge resources and data regarding various topics related to water resources need to be documented from time to time. The dynamic nature of water related issues requires a proactive process documentation strategy for the organisation as well as the citizen science groups in the society. The ideal example is the trajectory of the monsoon season in India every year and the rainfall in various agro-climatic regions. The watershed conservation projects, river rejuvenation programs, pollution control projects are long term processes with long term impacts. The journey of several years is painstaking, needs patience and struggles on the ground with constant motivational efforts. The persons directly engaged in these efforts may not be able to spend time on documentation of the many resources that are a result of these efforts. Hence, a solid process documentation strategy is required. The process documentation is also crucial for assessment of project impact on environment, livelihoods, economy, geography and people. There are also citizen movements which have been active for a long time, which are instrumental in giving birth to new laws, rules, guidelines, notifications, etc. The different milestones and turning points in these processes are to be documented in time. This documentation can guide the larger citizens’ movements to design their strategies and to resolve issues arising during the course of this work, and across different thematic areas as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Accessible datasets open for all in the public domain:</strong> There is an important need to compile the datasets on water resources developed by different agencies with people’s participation and government funding for the planning of public works or schemes. The open access to such reliable and factual datasets in the public domain serves the purpose of transparency and accountability of public infrastructure programmes. This facility for society would provide impetus to rigorous analysis, studies, research and innovative designing of public infrastructure. The processing and presentation of data in visual formats, including infographics can boost understanding, awareness, and logical thinking processes among enthusiasts who would like to engage with water conservation efforts. Different perspectives can emerge after relating and comparing datasets. The networking of agencies, organisations, experts and citizen forums would further develop complementary datasets. This synergy will definitely create a community data pool beneficial for everyone.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Digital and open access content development for capacity building of field level activists:</strong> Various organisations have developed training material for field level activists in different formats. Most of this is not online or digitised. Through networking efforts, the integration could be done to develop systematic modules for capacity building. The modules would be hosted as Open Educational Resources (OERs) on Wikimedia projects or other free knowledge platforms. The topic wise categories will make the selection easier. These categories can include local water source, rivers, waste water disposal, pollution, water based livelihoods, water conservation treatments etc. The format combining course work with some hands-on experiments is beneficial to facilitate the process of self-study, self-assessment and self-design. This online repository can be accessed by the field activists working on water resources anytime, anywhere when they need guidance to resolve issues or trouble-shooting on site.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Orientation of organisations towards free knowledge platforms and Wikimedia projects:</strong> Over the years, the organisations working in this sector have created valuable material for wider circulation to create awareness and empower communities. These resources have been used effectively and in a few locations for a certain period of time. The outreach and dissemination through integration of these resources will have more impact in the coming years if digital platforms are utilised efficiently. The basic orientation of the organisations regarding such free knowledge digital platforms, including copyright issues, Creative Commons licences, digitisation process and internet technologies is necessary to kick start this knowledge dissemination movement. Some pilot projects could be executed to demonstrate the potential of Wikimedia projects in database generation, documentation of case studies, audio-visual repositories and reference libraries.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;"><br /></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">References<br /></h2>
<ol><li>"Groundwater". edugreen.teri.res.in. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li><li>"‘Discharge of untreated industrial effluents, sewage major source of river pollution’". The Indian Express. 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li><li>Naresh Singaravelu & Harshita Mishra (6 June 2019). "Rivers in India: a reality check". https://www.thehindu.com/. The Hindu. Retrieved 28 Sep 2022.</li><li>"Living rivers, dying rivers: Everything you wanted to know about rivers in India | India Water Portal". www.indiawaterportal.org. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li></ol>
<hr />
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:23:24ZBlog EntryInfrastructural Needs of Indian Language Wikisource Projects
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects
<b>This is a short study on identifying the infrastructural gaps on Indian language Wikisource projects, and potential strategies to address the same. The study was undertaken by Jayantha Nath, Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Satdeep Gill, with writing and editorial oversight by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and an external review by Divyank Katira. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2021-22.</b>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Infrastructural_Needs_of_Indian_Language_Wikisource_Projects"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This research project is an effort to understand some of the infrastructural needs of Wikisource platforms in India. With a focus on technological capacity, resources and training, this short pilot study collected baseline data from <a title="Indic Wikisource Community" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Indic_Wikisource_Community">Indian language Wikisource communities</a> to identify key knowledge gaps and areas of improvement. The final report here offers an overview of the current challenges in this space, and some learnings and recommendations on potential strategies to address these gaps, including through collaborative intervention and training.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Context</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a> projects have been an important part of the open knowledge movement in India, as it is a hub of out of copyright and freely licensed texts in a number of languages from across the world. With a focus on creating a ‘growing free content online library of source texts, as well as translations of source texts in any language', it functions as an important open knowledge repository that supports content development on various sister projects such as <a title="Wikipedia" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a>, <a title="Wikiquote" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote">Wikiquote</a> etc. <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a> projects in Indian languages have seen tremendous growth, especially over the last decade with increased efforts in content donation under free licences, digitization initiatives and availability of source texts. There have also been several advancements in Indic language computing and availability of digital infrastructure, such as more Indian language fonts, many with Unicode support, and increased flexibility in working with texts due to <a title="en:Optical character recognition" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">Optical Character Recognition (OCR)</a> technologies. There has also been a general growth in awareness about the need for sourcing and making available more content in Indian languages, and better access to platforms like Wikisource has aided these efforts to a great extent.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, several Indian language communities also continue to grapple with persistent challenges in this space, across diverse Wikimedia projects. Similarly, with Wikisource, there have been concerns about a lack of active participation and efforts towards bringing more content on the platform, including translations, and encouraging the use of source texts across projects among others. While a majority of the contributors are comfortable with <a title="wikisource:Help:Transclusion" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion">transcribing texts</a>, more technical tasks such as importing new books, creating Index pages and transcluding books are left to a very small number of contributors. These point to a lack of not just awareness and resources, but also a need for capacity-building efforts to address the skill gaps, improvements in digital infrastructures to resolve basic issues with platforms, and diversification of the scope of work undertaken. For instance, the most recent <a title="Community Wishlist Survey 2022" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022">Community Wishlist Survey 2022</a> highlights some basic fixes that need attention− such as bugs with the search and replace function to improve search and mass uploads −to more advanced work such as expanding existing functionality in indexing, integrating structured data and <a title="Content translation group" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Content_translation_group">translation tools</a> and functionalities across Indian languages, to name a few.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A research needs assessment survey conducted by CIS-A2K last year also highlighted the need for better technological support for Wikimedia projects, and capacity-building in important areas of work in the Indian language communities. While this is not specific to Wikisource alone, observations by community members and active Wikisource contributors over the last few years illustrate that many of these concerns and knowledge gaps are prevalent in this community as well. This study was therefore an attempt to identify these challenges, by collecting baseline data on key areas of work in Indian language Wikisource projects, beginning with a focus on selected language communities, and areas of interest. The attempt was also to enable contributors to achieve a more detailed understanding of the requirements of communities, in the contexts of certain languages, and aid in developing potential strategies to address them.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Research objectives</h2>
<p>The study had two areas of focus:</p>
<ul>
<li>What are the key challenges with working on Indian language Wikisource projects currently? These may include anything from obstacles in Wikisource workflow, policies and open licences, to challenges such as quality of content and lack of community engagement?</li>
<li>What are gap areas and spaces for improvement in the infrastructure of these platforms, especially related to technological capacity, resources and training?</li></ul>
<h2>Research methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study adopted a mixed methods approach, comprising a survey and interviews with community members. The survey focussed on key areas of ongoing work, and potential challenges for Wikisource projects in India - including technological support, skill-building, policies on content donation and curation, and open access and licensing. The survey was opened to all Wikisource communities and publicised on relevant mailing lists and community platforms. Simultaneously, a detailed interview questionnaire was also prepared, along with the selection criteria for interviews with community members. The project team worked with one short-term research assistant over a 2–3-month period for the data collection through interviews and surveys. The research assistant also provided translation support as needed and worked closely in coordinating with community members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The criteria considered for selection of the language communities for the study were language family and size, amount of content on Wikisource (according to bytes/number of proofread pages), recent activity and a good track record/sustained progress and challenges with the same over the last several years. External factors, such as visibility and prevalence of the languages on other online platforms, technical and cultural resources and complexities of working with certain languages etc. were also considered during the selection process. Keeping these in mind, the languages selected for this study were as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://ta.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Tamil Wikisource</a> (One of the largest Wikisource communities in India, which has considerable content, is active and has seen steady growth over the last few years)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://as.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Assamese Wikisource</a> (A growing Wikisource community, which has also seen a lot of activity in recent years)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://ml.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Malayalam Wikisource</a> (A large and active Wikisource community, which in recent years has some decline in engagement, despite good resources and activity on other Wiki platforms)</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Using a purposive sampling technique, the team identified community members for interviews across these three languages and reached out over the course of six months in order to conduct semi-structured interviews. The criteria for selection of interviewees included a mix of senior/experienced and new contributors, those working across several projects and languages, those with expertise in specific/advanced technical areas of Wikisource, licensing and content donation efforts, and keeping in mind gender parity within the sample. There were however several challenges with this exercise, including basic barriers such as bad internet and phone connectivity, digital fatigue and unavailability of people due to the second wave of the pandemic, and limited time on Wikimedia projects. As a result, this method was unsuccessful, as it managed to gather very limited data for the study. The timeline of the survey was also extended as a result, and it received a total of 21 responses. The survey data offers several insights into some of these key areas of work and challenges, and the following is a report based on an analysis of this limited data set and observations on the same. Given the limited sample size and final dataset, it would be important to note that we may need several steps before the observations/findings may be considered to be representative at any scale.</p>
<h2>Observations and Learnings</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As mentioned earlier, the dataset comprised of 21 respondents on the survey, many of them contributors across diverse Wikimedia projects including English and Indian language Wikipedia projects, <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a>, <a title="Wikibooks" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks">Wikibooks</a>, <a title="Wikidata" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata">Wikidata</a>, <a title="Wikiquote" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote">Wikiquote</a>, <a title="Wiktionary" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary">Wiktionary</a>, <a title="Wikivoyage" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage">Wikivoyage</a>, <a title="Wikimedia Commons" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons">Wikimedia Commons</a>, software such as Media Wiki, and initiatives like Wikimedia in Education. The respondents ranged across nine languages (in alphabetical order) – <a class="external text" href="https://as.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Assamese</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://bn.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Bengali</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">English</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://hi.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Hindi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://kn.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Kannada</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://mr.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Marathi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://ml.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Malayalam</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://pa.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Punjabi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://te.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Telugu</a> and <a class="external text" href="https://ta.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Tamil</a>. Several of them are also part of user groups working in some of these languages. The experience of the contributors’ ranges from 6 months to 12 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Almost all the respondents note that contributions towards proofreading, and bringing more content on the <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource projects</a> (including work on related processes by the <a title="Volunteer Response Team" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Response_Team">Volunteer Response Team</a>, previously known as <a title="Open-source Ticket Request System" class="mw-redirect" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open-source_Ticket_Request_System">Open Source Ticket Request System</a>, and OCR) have been key milestones in their work, either as individuals or communities. Some respondents have also pointed out some new work such as audio books, and working on technological aspects, especially with gadgets and best practices shared by other global communities. The data offers some key insights into the kinds of challenges currently faced by <a title="Indic Wikisource Community" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Indic_Wikisource_Community">Indian language Wikisource contributors</a>, and what could be potential areas of improvement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As noted in Fig.1, an overwhelming percentage of the respondents noted that ‘capacity-building and training’ (81%) is an area that needs the most improvement, followed closely by ‘community engagement’ (66%) and ‘technological infrastructure’ (57%). These are key areas that show repetitive patterns across the data set, in terms of recurring challenges as well. As noted by respondents, training in Wikisource workflows, procedure and guidance, learning to use advanced templates/techniques, recruiting new volunteers etc. have been key challenges. Community engagement has seen a dip, especially over last year with the pandemic and related decline in activity on projects, as well as events and therefore opportunities to meet. There is a need for more contributors and strategies to encourage work and retain them on the projects. Scanning and post-production processing of scans emerged as a significant challenge, given lack of resources and infrastructure, and related issues such as poor quality of scanned work and no uniformity in the book selection criteria. There are also some areas of technical support such as broken tools on Wikisource projects, missing symbols in some language tool bars, and an abundance of formatting tags which could present barriers for new contributors.</p>
<p>The following are some of the responses and observations in specific areas mentioned above:</p>
</td>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Figure2.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Figure 2" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Capacity-building and training</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As most contributors would be well aware, capacity-building and technological infrastructure are two closely connected aspects of Wikimedia projects. The responses under this thematic reflect the same, in terms of a need for better training in optimising the use of available and advanced technical skills for Wikisource projects. This includes training on specific skills and processes such as <a title="Scanning old books" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scanning_old_books">scanning</a>, <a title="en:Optical character recognition" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">text conversion</a>, <a title="wikisource:Help:Beginner's guide to proofreading" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Beginner%27s_guide_to_proofreading">formatting</a>, sourcing, <a title="wikisource:Help:Transclusion" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion">transclusion</a>, creating gadgets, writing bots. There is a need for better writing and spelling skills to improve the quality of content generated. The survey also suggested potential ways to address these skill gaps, all of which were seen as relevant by a majority of respondents (66.7%). [See Fig 2]</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Community Engagement</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Community engagement ranked second in terms of the challenges noted by respondents on the survey. The survey also looked at engagement in comparison with Wikipedia projects, as it has been observed that the latter see more active participation. This was confirmed by some of the responses as well. Some of the main reasons for lack of participation as noted by respondents is that Wikisource is a specialised project, that needs a specific skill-set and demands time and effort, hence may not appeal to all contributors. Also, it has lesser content and visibility compared to some of the Wikipedias or other projects which may be more easily updated. Thus, there is a need for actively recruiting new volunteers, and capacity-building to enable more contributions, as well as targeted outreach efforts in spaces related to literature and books to enhance discoverability. Some respondents also mentioned that a lack of awareness, coordination and interaction among contributors could be potential reasons. Finally, there are also external factors such as balancing volunteer work with other commitments such as family and financial problems, many contributors being students who move on to full-time careers, effects of the pandemic and paucity of time and interaction, and loss of interest over time in the projects.</p>
<p>Again, efforts to address community engagement need some strategic measures, including but not limited to community interaction, incentives and better visibility for work in, as noted in Fig.3.</p>
<h3>Technological infrastructure</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Technological infrastructure, which is one of the key areas of focus for this study, has also been a persistent challenge for Indian language communities, also given the resource-heavy work any form of computing with Indic languages entails. While some respondents did not notice any specific issues in their communities, there were some patterns or gaps that were reflected across communities. There is a need for basic hardware like scanners and good computers, or rather centralised facilities for scanning and good internet connectivity in order to cover more collections and regional areas. In addition to this, there is also a need for technical improvements such as easy-to-use widgets, gadgets and better tags to enhance formatting work as part of the transcription of texts, incorporating certain signs and symbols within toolbars, spell-checker, full list of syntaxes while proofreading, and stages for fixing mistakes and adding formatting tags. An important observation was that some language communities access and edit Wikisource on mobile phones, so there is a need for a mobile application that can provide a seamless editing experience, and connect more people with the projects. As mentioned earlier, there are also several technical fixes such as a number of pending bugs in projects. A related requirement therefore is for MediaWiki developers with good language skills to work on translation of interfaces. A few respondents also mentioned additional challenges such as improvement of new books, Graphical User Interface (GUI) and page layout, and the functionality to view Wikisource in other formats as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some specific areas of improvement were also assessed on the survey, drawing upon a review of the <a title="Community Wishlist Survey" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey">community wishlists</a> for the last few years. These included Optical Character Recognition (OCR), translation, visual editor, transclusion, user interface, search function and export of books. While all these functionalities did not receive responses from the entire set, many found these to be key challenges. OCR received the most responses (19), with 31.6% assessing this at 1 (needs minimal updates, functional with space for innovation). Translation received 18 responses, with 38.9% marking this at 4 (major challenges, requires focused work). Similarly, transclusion also received 18 responses with about 27.8% voting at 5 (significant challenges, requires long-term effort and resources). Visual editor, search function and export of books all received 17 responses each, with a majority in all three assessing these as 5. Of these search function had more people assessing the functionality at 5 (41.2%), followed closely by visual editor and export of books (35.3% each). User interface received 16 responses, with 31.3 % of respondents assessing it at 5 as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Wikisource.png/@@images/5072e098-7223-42ce-b52b-71503241c5e4.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Open Access and Content Creation</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In addition to the above, content curation and related aspects of open access and relicensing are also spaces with prevalent knowledge gaps in terms of protocols and best practices, which poses a challenge for content generation on Wikisource projects. Lack of awareness about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and relicensing in fact has been a significant impediment in content donation efforts, across projects. In this survey, a large number of respondents (42.6%) also said they were either unaware of these issues with Wikisource or about IPR itself, or mentioned that it was not applicable in this context. Among the challenges/issues mentioned, the need for simple, easily accessible advocacy material in print about open access was prominent, in order to encourage content creators/authors to share work on open licences. It was also noted that this process may be difficult for people who are not well-versed in the technical/legal aspects of the project, especially in terms of tracking down individual creators for consent to re-license and share their work. Respondents also noted that this work needs support from institutions to help set up collaborations, such as with educational organisations, publishing houses and authors, as also an understanding of official documentation and wider promotion etc. which may encourage more people to share content on open licences.</p>
<p>All of these aspects are further reflected in terms of strategies to address these issues as well, as observed in Fig. 4.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A similar disparity exists with content curation best practices as well, with a majority of respondents noting that their respective communities do not have clearly defined protocols for content curation. While such benchmarking is naturally difficult given several socio-cultural and linguistic subjectivities of each project, this also means that what makes it to Wikisource in a particular language can be defined by many factors, which also informs the quality, types and formats of content produced. Potential methods to address this include developing guidelines for content creation, and forms of review by experts as well as community members, all of which ranked high in the survey responses. ( See Fig 5)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As we did not receive enough responses on the interview questionnaires, there was not much additional qualitative data that could be gathered. There are however resonances with the survey responses, namely in terms of technical/hardware challenges such as poor quality of scanning, and the need for an app which is user-friendly and will further facilitate mobile editing, especially in areas with limited digital infrastructure and access. Some observations include the importance of the <a title="Volunteer Response Team" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Response_Team">OTRS process</a> in adding new content, and the need for better online and offline training, especially for new volunteers, in technical skills. Similarly, collaborations with educational institutions and local print media could be useful in creating more awareness, and therefore tapping into more content and resources in terms of new volunteers. Additionally, there are also some interesting observations on individual communities working on connecting work across projects, for example Wikisource and Wikiquote.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Conclusions and Recommendations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While the scope of the study had to be reduced significantly given several methodological challenges and external factors as mentioned earlier, the analysis of data does offer some significant learnings on the current challenges prevalent across Indian language Wikisource projects. Needless to say, many of these are also fairly contextual and nuanced, depending on how well-resourced certain languages are, given factors such as basic internet connectivity and digital literacy. The following is a short summary of key recommendations from this exercise.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Technological Infrastructure:</strong> Across the board, gaps in development of technological infrastructure have been prominent, ranging from basic fixes to advanced tools and user-friendly apps that may help mitigate some of the issues related to access. It is also notable that early challenges such as OCR and translation do not present as significant obstacles here (but continue to remain areas of ongoing work); features such as the visual editor, search and export functionalities emerged as continual challenges. The need for a user-friendly mobile app is also an important observation here. Some of this work is also quite resource-intensive in terms of funding; it would be prudent to look at collaborations with related organisations and local fundraising efforts that may help facilitate the same.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Capacity-Building:</strong> Similarly, capacity-building efforts need to be strengthened within communities, given the nature of work which is specialised and often quite technical( for example the process of transclusion). In addition to bringing in new volunteers, and equipping them with the requisite skill-sets to contribute effectively, there is a need for contributors with advanced skill-sets who may be able to address more technical challenges. Efforts here could include reaching out to the wider free and open source communities for external expertise, and working on a collaborative model of workshopping around strategic issues, and developing relevant skill-sets. Community-engagement: As noted by many respondents, bringing in new volunteers and their retention on projects has been a continual challenge, also due to the factors mentioned above. Improvements in technical infrastructure and capacity-building would help address some of these challenges as well. In addition to this, as noted by respondents, developing proactive collaborations with diverse institutions and individuals (educational/media/creative practice) would help widen networks, hence creating better awareness and visibility for work, such as through social media content and may also foster better engagement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Content Curation and Open Access:</strong> As is widely understood, discourse around open access and relicensing is layered, and the protocols often vary widely depending on linguistic factors and cultural context. Instead of developing benchmarks, it may be prudent therefore to develop accessible content on existing, global relicensing protocols, in translation across languages. These may be further used by communities to understand and engage better with efforts in content donation. Guidelines for content curation will again need to be similarly developed and modified, keeping in mind how policies also evolve and change. An important consideration here in addition to quality, is also that of ethics of access and use, especially by communities themselves.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This short study was an effort to map some of the prevalent infrastructural challenges that underlie work on Indian language Wikisource projects. The observations from this report may offer useful insights in thinking through and developing strategies to address these gaps, through collaborative efforts in training and building resources for projects.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:21:20ZBlog EntryMapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages
<b>This research study explores content production processes on gender and sexuality in Indian languages, its digital documentation and factors that affect its availability and use on open access platforms. The research was undertaken by Yashashwini Srinivas, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Torsha Sarkar. This research was part of short-term studies undertaken at the CIS-A2K programme 2021-22.</b>
<p>Read the report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mapping_Content_on_Gender_and_Sexuality_in_Indian_Languages">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian languages is a research project that studies the content production process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages and challenges it with its digital documentation. It examines the diverse nature of content creation on these topics, processes of its digitalisation and related challenges that contribute to the disparity in its availability and use on open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects, and potential strategies to address the same.<br /><br />Through conversations with individuals and institutions working on gender, sexuality and allied topics like feminism, with a focus on women, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ related content, the study explores various aspects of content creation across multiple Indian languages, its access and use. Based on analysing this data and drawing on ongoing work within the mainstream discourse on gender and sexuality, the report offers a set of observations on ways to address challenges related to the gender gap in the content creation process on open knowledge platforms.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Context and Methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Collaborative knowledge production platforms such as Wikimedia projects have recognised the existence of a <a title="Gender gap" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap">gender gap and bias</a> across its projects, understood largely as disparities in participation by and content related to women and, by extension, individuals across diverse gender and sexual identities. As observed in global literature as well as by work done by Indian language communities (with a focus largely on women Wikimedians), the gap is a result of various infrastructural and socio-cultural factors, including limited access to devices and the internet; balancing professional, domestic and volunteer work; lack of technical capacity-building and communication skills; limited presence in leadership positions, and the need for safe and healthy working environments among others. Several efforts have been made globally and in Indian language communities to address these challenges.<br /><br />The issue of the gender gap, or indeed the challenges identified, are not unique to Wikimedia projects alone but are reflective of gender disparities in the public sphere and across the internet more broadly. Key learning from previous work in this space has been the need to connect these conversations and efforts to bridge the gender gap with the wider public discourse related to content creation on gender and sexuality online and in Indian languages. This study aimed to map such content with perspectives drawn from diverse gender and sexual identities. Importantly, it sought to understand better some of the infrastructural and cultural factors that shape creating such content and making it publicly available in diverse languages.<br /><br />This study was done across four Indian languages - Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu (while English remained inevitable), focusing on content under two sub-themes– a. Cultural History and b. Feminist Production/Publication. The respondents in the study included organisations and individuals working in the areas of gender, sexuality and allied areas like feminist interventions and publishing, with a focus on writers, translators, artists, and multi-format content creators and curators. The study adopted a qualitative approach and comprised 19 semi-structured interviews (including four focused group discussions with organisations). Owing to the pandemic, all interactions for this study were done through telephonic conversation, email and virtual conferencing. These interactions have helped us understand the process of content creation in these areas. These problems manifest as gendered disparities in engagement with online platforms and potential solutions to address the same.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Key Research Areas</h2>
<p>The three major thematic areas this research study focused on are as follows.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Nature of the Knowledge Produced</strong><br />Content production on gender and sexuality in Indian languages spans several areas, including education, activism, advocacy and rights and justice, to name a few, given the location of much early writing in this space within the women’s rights and several other social movements in India. Important observations on the nature of this content by respondents include the emergence of a feminist critique across fields and disciplines, active interventions in the public discourse around gender and sexuality and the need for an intersectional approach to the process of content production. The growth of content in Indian languages and their increased availability on online platforms is also an important step towards addressing the predominance of Anglocentric and academic perspectives in these areas of research and work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Digital Spaces, and movement of Content from Paper to Pixel</strong><br />The cohort of the participants of this study has pointed out the evolution of the internet and digital tools from a luxury to a necessity but also acknowledged the widespread disparity in their access and use. However, the interesting outcome of this has been the transformation of traditional publishing methods and the emergence of cost-efficient space to produce content in various formats (like on social media) which fosters wider dissemination and engagement. However, increasing digital content production also comes with the need for advancements in digital literacy, resources and infrastructure. Digitalisation and open access to content on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is, therefore, a resource-intensive process, with related challenges such as copyright restrictions and technical limitations to access and use of Indian language content etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Indian Languages</strong><br />The content creation process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is complex given the country's diversity. Still, socio-cultural factors continue to determine the growth and use of languages, often resulting from asymmetries of power amongst diverse communities. This includes the marginalisation of certain forms of language use and content production processes that are not seen as within the ambit of dominant languages. Further, the lack of a gender-neutral vocabulary across many Indian languages and the significant challenges in the translation are important issues that emerged in this space. While the translation of content on gender and sexuality into Indian languages from English and other foreign languages is challenging due to the lack of a gender-neutral and conceptual vocabulary, as noted earlier; the lack of reverse translations and limitations within publishing and wider circulation of content are some of the factors that continue to affect work in this space.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Learnings</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The learnings from this study outline the many challenges in content production on gender and sexuality, especially in Indian languages and its availability in digital spaces. These include the need to recognise that gendered disparities result from asymmetries of power, thus calling for a more critical outlook and intersectional approach towards the processes of content production (and related work such as translation, digitisation and archiving). They also offer several strategies and best practices drawn from observations by the respondents to address some of these gaps in content creation and circulation to ensure sustainable knowledge production ecosystems.<br /><br />These include the dire need to bridge technical and infrastructural gaps, facilitate visibility and engagement with content through collaborations with key institutions and individuals in this space, and capacity-building through developing pedagogy and tools. Further, there is a need to diversify the approach towards creating and sourcing content and creating safe working environments by developing redressal mechanisms for marginalised and vulnerable communities. As Wikimedia projects constitute a major part of the digital knowledge ecosystem and have been working towards more diversity and inclusion across their projects, a sustained approach to bridge these gaps may be adopted in the Indian context. This would contribute immensely to efforts to bridge the gender gap across Wikimedia projects and in the larger digital public sphere.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages</a>
</p>
No publisherYashashwini SrinivasCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:03:20ZBlog EntryDigitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat
<b>The digitization project of O Bharat, a historic biweekly published between 1912 to 1949 in Goa was completed through collaboration of different organizations. The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust initiated the project in collaboration with Marathi department of Goa University, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha and Goa Central Library. The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme facilitated the project with technical and financial assistance. Two local students scanned 12000 pages in 8 days. The year wise volumes of O Bharat are now freely available on Wikimedia Commons in the form of archive.</b>
<table class="plain">
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<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/OBharatPortuguese.jpg" alt="O Bharat Portuguese" class="image-inline" title="O Bharat Portuguese" /></th><th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_OBharatMarathi.jpg" alt="O Bharat Marathi" class="image-inline" title="O Bharat Marathi" /></th>
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<td>Above: Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese</td>
<td>Above: Front page of O Bharat in Marathi</td>
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</table>
<h3>Context</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and <a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Goa">monuments in South Goa</a>. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded <a class="text external" href="http://www.bharatkar.info/" rel="nofollow">Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust</a>, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at <a class="text external" href="http://centrallibrary.goa.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Goa Central Public Library</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Partnerships</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a <a class="text external" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation_review_and_partnerships_in_Goa">series of discussions</a> and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the <a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:O_Bharat">project on Wikimedia Commons</a> on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.</p>
<h3>Media links</h3>
<p>The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.dainikgomantak.com/FlashClient/Show_Story_IPad.aspx?storySrc=http://epaper-sakal-application.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/DainikGomantakEpaperData/DainikGomantak/GOA/2022/08/18/Main/DainikGomantak_Goa_2022_08_18_Main_DA_013/588_1306_1362_2406.jpg&uname=" rel="nofollow">News in Gomantak</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.navhindtimes.in/" rel="nofollow">News in Navhind Times</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.thegoan.net/m5/3564268/Goan-Varta/Goan-Varta#page/3/1" rel="nofollow">News in Goan Varta</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.navprabha.com/" rel="nofollow">News in Navprabha</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>This was originally published on <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2022/Contents/India_report">Wikimedia Blog</a> in September 2022</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaGLAMWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen ContentOpenness2022-10-11T14:53:58ZBlog EntryDigitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat
<b>It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.</b>
<h3><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Bharat.png" alt="Bharat" class="image-inline" title="Bharat" /></h3>
<h3>Context</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and </span><a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Goa">monuments in South Goa</a><span>. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded </span><a class="text external" href="http://www.bharatkar.info/" rel="nofollow">Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust</a><span>, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at <a class="text external" href="http://centrallibrary.goa.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Goa Central Public Library</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Partnerships</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a <a class="text external" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation_review_and_partnerships_in_Goa">series of discussions</a> and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. <span>The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the </span><a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:O_Bharat">project on Wikimedia Commons</a><span> on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.</span></p>
<h3>Media links</h3>
<p>The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.dainikgomantak.com/FlashClient/Show_Story_IPad.aspx?storySrc=http://epaper-sakal-application.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/DainikGomantakEpaperData/DainikGomantak/GOA/2022/08/18/Main/DainikGomantak_Goa_2022_08_18_Main_DA_013/588_1306_1362_2406.jpg&uname=" rel="nofollow">News in Gomantak</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.navhindtimes.in/" rel="nofollow">News in Navhind Times</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.thegoan.net/m5/3564268/Goan-Varta/Goan-Varta#page/3/1" rel="nofollow">News in Goan Varta</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.navprabha.com/" rel="nofollow">News in Navprabha</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p><span>This was originally published on </span><a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2022/Contents/India_report">Wikimedia Blog</a><span> in September 2022</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen ContentOpenness2022-10-11T13:11:15ZBlog EntryWikimedia Wikimeet India 2021/Report
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-report
<b>In March 2020, the whole world came to a standstill. What many deemed as a regular ‘flu’ turned out to be the pandemic that brought everyone to their knees. The things that we always did, we could no longer do them. We were all confined to our homes with no choice but to work online. Hanging out with friends, attending weddings, and being a part of the conferences and seminars suddenly became a part of the past. We started using the word unprecedented a lot. </b>
<p align="center"><strong><i>“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change!”</i></strong></p>
<p align="right">- <strong><i>Wayne Dyer</i></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>For the last many months, we have been getting used to this new ‘normal’. Students and teachers are getting accustomed to the classes and tests happening online. What people thought was impossible, has now become possible. No one could have guessed that birthday parties, gatherings, even marriages would be conducted online. We have now got used to being part of webinars, sessions, and conferences online. A2K is not an exception to this. We planned and conducted a national meet named ‘</span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Program">Wikimedia Wikimeet India </a><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Program">202</a><span>1’.</span></p>
<p align="center"><strong><i>“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success!” </i></strong></p>
<p align="right">- <strong><i>Henry Ford</i></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Background:</strong><span> We, at A2K, have organised many such training sessions and conferences like </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Train_the_Trainer_Program">Train the Trainer</a><span>, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/MediaWiki_Training">Media Wiki Training</a><span>, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Wiki_Advanced_Training/2018">Advanced Wiki Training</a><span>. But due to COVID restrictions it was not possible to organise such an event offline this year. So this year, we decided to organise a virtual meet for the Wikimedians of India. This meet was planned and conducted especially for the Wikimedians who are already working or are interested in working on Wikimedia projects that deal with Indian content.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Our main <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021">objectives</a> behind organising this meet were to celebrate the work done by Wikimedians of India, to provide an online platform for wiki-learning and skill-share, to support discussions and interactions, to give training on important and relevant topics, and explore the medium of online training and wiki-event for future use.</p>
<p>After all the planning, our three-day event of Wikimedia Wikimeet took place from 19 February to 21 February, 2021.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>Community Engagement:</span></strong> We decided to organise this meet as there seemed to be a scarcity in volunteer’s and user’s contribution. Moreover, we have always believed in giving back to the community. So, we took an initiative to keep the community engaged. Our goal was to encourage volunteers and users to come forward and take lead in Wikimedia activities. To make it easy for our volunteers and the users to select their area of interest, we started <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Request_for_Comments">Request for Comments</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Get_involved">Community Engagement</a>. It is a forum where open discussions can take place about and where participants can share their knowledge, expertise, and experience. The tasks that were conducted under this were Logo Design, Translation, and Knowledge on Hybrid / Blended Learning Model.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>Modes of Promotion:</span></strong> This event would not have been a success if not for our participants. We began promoting the event by using our India Mailing list. Our next step was to publicise the event on our social media channels and pages and also in messenger groups. We sent bulk messages on Indic Village Pumps announcing that the Wikimedia Wikimeet was about to take place. Our next step was to start a fortnightly <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Newsletter">newsletter</a> about the event. It was started to notify the people of updates. We encouraged our users to sign up for the newsletter so they would get immediate updates. This way, our volunteers and users knew what was happening with regard to the event and they also came to know what was about to happen in the coming 15 days.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another thing we did was to put up a <a href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/2020/11/05/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-lets-focus-on-why/">blogpost</a> on Diff about our event. Our blogpost stated the importance of organising such an event. We have also discussed the background ideas in the same post. Our next <a href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/2020/11/11/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-entering-the-design-stage/">blogpost</a> dealt with the ‘how’ of our event. In it, we discussed the ideas of designing the event. Total 5 <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021#Footnotes">blogposts</a> were written and put up. Another article named <a href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/06/18/charaiveti-01-wikimedia-wikimeet-and-beyond-ideas-and-opinions/">Wikimedia Wikimeet and Beyond: Ideas and Opinions</a> was written and posted a few months later.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>Organisation Methodology:</span></strong> Every great journey begins with one step. With that in mind, we first decided on the organisation methodology. The team tried its best to maintain transparency from planning and organisation till the execution and the end of the meet. This was the first ever large scale meet that we were planning to organise. Thus, some of the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Resources">resources</a> came in handy in our planning stage. To mention a few, we took inspiration and guidance from <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2020">Celtic Knot Conference</a>, <a href="https://sites.google.com/stanford.edu/ld42020/track-descriptions?authuser=0">LD4 Conference</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Online_Meeting_2020">Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting</a>, <a href="https://summit.creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons Global Summit</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ItWikiCon/2020">Italy Wiki Conference</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite/2020_Virtual_conference">Wikicite Virtual Conference</a>, and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transition/Global_Conversations">Wikimedia Strategy Global Conversation</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next step the core team took was to appoint a program committee. The main function of this <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Program">program committee</a> was to select important submissions and presentations. Following are the 5 members of our program committee:</p>
<p><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kiril_Simeonovski">Kiril Simeonovski</a>: He is the founding member of <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Macedonia">Wikimedia Macedonia</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Shared_Knowledge">Shared Knowledge</a> and has been the president of Shared Knowledge since 2014.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netha_Hussain">Netha Hussain</a>: She has been a volunteer in the Wikimedia Movement since 2010. Nowadays she mostly works in English WIkipedia and Wikidata, but she is also active in Commons, Metawiki, and <a href="https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%89%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%8B%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%8D:Netha_Hussain">Malayalam Wikipedia</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal">Shyamal</a><span>: He is interested in the natural history of India, environmental consciousness in general, and history of science, especially biology.</span></p>
<p><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mahir256">Mahir256</a><span>: He is an </span><a>administrator</a><span> on Wikidata, an </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Administrators">administrator</a><span> on </span><a href="https://bn.wikisource.org/wiki/%E0%A6%89%E0%A6%87%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%82%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%A8:%E0%A6%AA%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%A7%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A8_%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A4%E0%A6%BE">Bengali Wikisource</a><span>, and has a native understanding of English language.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bodhisattwa">Bodhisattwa</a><span>: He has been a volunteer editor in different Wikimedia projects since 2012. He is mostly active on Bengali Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. He is also a part-time coordinator at the </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K">Center for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge</a><span>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was necessary for the participants of this event to register prior to the event. A <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Registration">registration form</a> was open and made available for the duration of a month. After the deadline of this registration form, another special registration form with criteria was given to the participants. The participants were then selected according to the criteria.</p>
<p>The event took place on <a href="https://zoom.us/">Zoom</a>. We used the official Zoom account of the Center for Internet and Society. The main reason behind registrations was to avoid zoom-bombing. The eligible participants were given the link to join the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wikimedia Wikimeet was a three - day long event. We tried our best to accommodate all the presenters, moderators, attendees, and participants. Time was set according to them. This was a national level event but we were able to involve a few experienced international experts. So we had to take the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) as well as the Indian Standard Time (IST) into consideration so that the volunteers, participants, and experts could all attend all the sessions and could engage in fruitful discussions.</p>
<p><strong><span>Selection of Presentations and Sessions:</span></strong> We received 44 submissions for this event and eventually after discussions 29 were selected to be featured in the event. A committee was given the task to select the submissions based on the topics that are crucial to Indic editors. We also had willing participants from the Wikimedia Foundation as presenters to acquaint the members of Indian community and volunteers with the important topics and issues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We also invited international guests and experts to speak to our Indian Wikimedian community about the topics that are relevant currently and would be crucial for Indic writers and editors in future. We invited the experts from France to talk about their <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Lingua_Libre_-_record_your_language">Lingua Libre</a> project. We also invited the team to talk about Strategy. Our keynote speakers were also invited for this event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>Event:</span></strong> After taking all the submissions into consideration, our program committee made a <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Program">program schedule</a> for the three-day event. The tracks that were selected by the program committee for the presentations were: Growth of Wikimedia communities and partnerships, Information on technical Aspects and tools, Strategy of Wikimedia movement, GLAM & Content copyrights, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Other than that, we tried to follow the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Friendly_space_policy/en">Friendly Space Policy</a> completely. All the rules of the said policy were cleared before the event. The team tried its best to remove the language barrier for our Non-English speakers. We urged the Wikimedians to translate their content in their language for their respective communities. This practice was followed by quite a few Indic Wikimedians.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>30 sessions</strong> were planned in all. Every session had a separate Etherpad link. As this was a virtual event, this facility was provided for the participants as well as the experts to interact during and after the session. Due to shortage of time, the notes and questions were made on the Etherpad. Experts and presenters wrote their answers on the Etherpad as well. All the sessions and presentations were recorded and are now available to everyone on the Commons under the name <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021">Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021</a>.</p>
<p>During this three-day event, around 200 participants joined in at different times. Out of the <strong>30 presentations</strong>, 18 presenters were from India and the remaining were international presenters.</p>
<p>Day 1 (Friday, 19 February, 2021):</p>
<p>There were 9 presentations on Day 1 of the event. After the introduction by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Titodutta">Tito Dutta</a>, the keynote speech was delivered by Asaf Bartov (<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ijon">Ijon</a>). This was attended by <a href="https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wmwmopeningspeech">86</a> participants.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the keynote speech, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Diptanshu_Das">Dipantshu Das</a> shed a light on ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Attracting_experts_to_contribute_to_Wikimedia_movement">Attracting experts to contribute to Wikimedia’</a>. He highlighted that it was the need of the hour. And this work would greatly help communities in India. He talked about urging academicians to contribute to Wikipedia more openly.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next presentation was made by Sudhanshu Gautam and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AMuigai_(WMF)">Angie Muigai</a>. They talked about ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Growing_Wikipedia%E2%80%99s_reach_in_India_with_a_new_Wikipedia_app">Growing Wikipedia’s reach in India with a new Wikipedia app</a>’ in their presentation, they talked about the importance of making Wikipedia mobile friendly with the increase of internet users in India. They mentioned that there was an opportunity to provide ideas to increase the readership.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The next two presentations under the growth track were: ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Help_your_community_grow">Help your community grow</a>’ and ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Help_your_community_grow">Introducing newcomers from Wikisource to Wikipedia: A case study from Hindi Wikipedia’</a>. The first session was a 20 minutes long presentation followed by a conversation and it was beneficial to welcome and retain new users to Wikipedia and also increase the quality of new users’ edits. The second presentation shed some light on how to retain the new users and volunteers once they join the community after attending sessions and workshops.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On day 1, there were three presentations about the partnerships: ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Engaging_with_partners_in_the_movement!_WMF%27s_approach">Engaging with partners in the movement! WMF's approach</a>’, ‘GLAM Mapping leads to Wikimedian in Residence’, and ‘Discover Structured Data on Commons for you and your partners’.</p>
<p>In the first presentation, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:PDas_(WMF)">Praveen Das</a> underlined the importance of working with various partners from different fields for mutual growth.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next presenter <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%80">Arya Joshi</a> talked about the GLAM mapping research conducted by CIS - A2K and her work with Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, Pune. She talked about offline and online documentation of work and creating new opportunities for research.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The final presentation of the day was Discover Structured Data on Commons for you and your partners by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alicia_Fagerving_(WMSE)">Alicia Fagerving</a>. In this session, the presenter gave recommendations to make optimum use of the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data">Structured Data on Commons (SDC)</a> to improve workflow. This presentation was followed by a workshop where the participants edited SDC and then there was a discussion.</p>
<p>Day 2 (Saturday, 20 February, 2021):</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Day 2 began with a special morning session and keynote speech by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Katherine_(WMF)">Katherine Maher</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Katherine_(WMF)">Amanda Keton</a>. In her <a href="https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wmwmd02special">speech</a>, Katherine highlighted how Indian community is important to the Wikimedia movement. She also talked about the growth of emerging communities. Groups and Wikimedians who have been doing good work were also recognised. She talked about relaunching the Grant strategy. It was a fruitful session with comments and question - answers.</p>
<p>After the keynote address, there were 3 presentations that dealt with the technical aspect and issues.</p>
<p>The first talk was about <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Gadgets_and_tools_for_a_Wikipedia_Editor">Gadgets and tools for a Wikipedia Editor</a> by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ranjithsiji">Ranjith Siji</a>. He introduced and explained different kinds of scripts and tools required to edit and browse Wikipedia.</p>
<p>The second session was a 60 minute long workshop followed by a conversation about <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Transforming_Data_from_the_Web_with_OpenRefine">Transforming Data from the Web with OpenRefine</a>. It was conducted by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gnoeee">Gnoeee</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ranjithsiji">Ranjith Siji</a>. This was a basic level training given to the new users of <a href="https://openrefine.org/">OpenRefine</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last technical presentation was <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Writing_UserScripts_and_gadgets">Writing UserScripts and gadgets</a> by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jayprakash12345">Jay Prakash</a>. In his session, the presenter imparted basic to intermediate level training on writing user scripts and explaining how to use it as a gadget on Wiki.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last 4 sessions of the day dealt with Strategy. The first presentation ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/An_update_from_the_Sustainability_Initiative">An update from the Sustainability Initiative</a>’ in this category was made by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gnom">Gnom</a> from Germany. He gave an update on the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_Initiative">Sustainability Initiative</a>. His talk consisted of an update on current developments around environmental sustainability in the Wikimedia movement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next presentation named ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Grants_in_2021_-_What_is_the_process%3F">Grants in 2021 - What is the process?</a>’ was by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:THasan_(WMF)">Tanveer Hasan</a>. As a part of the Community Resources team, the presenter shared a process update and gathered feedback on how to improve the strategy relaunch process.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next presentation titled ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Movement_Strategy_and_South_Asia">Movement Strategy and South Asia</a>’ was done by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anna_Torres_(WMAR)">Anna Torres</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hillun_Vilayl_Napis_(WMID)">Hillun Vilayl Napis</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kayusyussuf">Kayode Yussuf</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:THasan_(WMF)">Tanveer Hassan</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MPourzaki_(WMF)">Mehrdad Pourzaki</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RMerkley_(WMF)">Ryan Merkley</a>, and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:KVaidla_(WMF)">Kaarel Vaidla</a>. In this session, all the presenters talked about the initiatives that are most relevant and important in 2021 in communities of South Asia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last session of the day was ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Distributed_leadership_and_global_decision-making_-_the_Interim_Global_Council">Distributed leadership and global decision-making - the Interim Global Council’</a>. It was delivered by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MPourzaki_(WMF)">Mehrdad Pourzaki</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RMerkley_(WMF)">Ryan Merkley</a>, and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:KVaidla_(WMF)">Kaarel Vaidla</a>. They talked about global decision making and distributed leadership. Their aim was to acquaint the South Asian communities to the conversations, possibilities, and updates.</p>
<p>Day 3 (Sunday, 21 February, 2021):</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last day of the event was dedicated to ‘<a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42375">International Mother Language Day</a>’. The day began with 2 consecutive sessions by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Diptanshu_Das">Dipantshu Das</a> named ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Copyright,_Copyleft,_and_Wikimedia_movement">Copyright, Copyleft, and Wikimedia movement</a>’ and ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Building_a_diamond_open_access_journal_on_Wikimedia_platform">Building a diamond open access journal on Wikimedia platform</a>’. In the first session, the presenter talked about the importance of intellectual property rights and copyright to the Wikimedia movement. In the second session, the presenter talked about the importance of having diamond open access journals especially in India as the article processing charges for open access journals can be very high in India due to conversion rates.</p>
<p>Next session was a workshop conducted by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jayanta_(CIS-A2K)">Jayanta Nath</a> on <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Wikisource_Workshop_-_Basic">Wikisource</a>. Another workshop was conducted at the same time by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rangan_Datta_Wiki">Rangan Datta</a> on <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Wikivoyage_Workshop">Wikivoyage</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next 4 presentations on Day 3 were community based. The first presentation in this series was titled <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Internship_Program_in_Tamil_Wiki_Projects">‘Internship Program in Tamil Wiki Projects</a>’ and was delivered by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Neechalkaran">Neechalkaran</a>. It was a knowledge sharing session on the internship program for college students.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second presentation was made by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Subodh_(CIS-A2K)">Subodh Kulkarni</a> and the title was ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Re-licensing_and_Digitisation_process_in_Maharashtra">Re-licensing and Digitisation process in Maharashtra</a>’. The presenter explained the relicensing process taking place in Maharashtra Marathi community, authors, copyright holders, and organisations.</p>
<p>The third session was conducted by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ziko">Ziko</a> and was named ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Rules_that_every_wiki_needs">Rules that every wiki needs</a>’. In this session, the presenter introduced the topic ‘law and rules every wiki needs’.</p>
<p>The last session in the Community category was ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/100wikidays">100wikidays</a>’ and it was conducted by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ssgapu22">Sangram Senapati</a>. In this session, the presenter shared his story of writing an article for Wiki each and every day for 100 days.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last four presentations of the day were dedicated to language. In the session titled ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Servants_Of_Knowledge_initiative_for_Digital_Archiving_Kannada_%26_other_Indic_language_content">Servants Of Knowledge initiative for Digital Archiving Kannada & other Indic language content</a>’, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Omshivaprakash">Omshivprakash</a> talked about the impact of digitisation of art, history, and culture on language preservation. He primarily talked about the Kannada language.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next session was on ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Spell4Wiki_-_Audio_upload_tool_for_Wikimedia_commons_%26_Multilingual_dictionary_based_on_Wiktionary">Spell4Wiki - Audio upload tool for Wikimedia commons & Multilingual dictionary based on Wiktionary</a>’ by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Manimaran96">Manimaran</a>. In this presentation, he introduced the Spell4wiki app. He also described the features and benefits of using the said app.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Next session was conducted by invited guest experts from France. The session was about ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Lingua_Libre_-_record_your_language">Lingua Libre - record your language</a>’ and ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Lingua_Libre_bot_and_recording_wizard">Lingua Libre bot and recording wizard’</a>. It was conducted by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ad%C3%A9la%C3%AFde_Calais_WMFr">Adélaïde Calais</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Poslovitch">Poslovitch</a>, and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Yug">Yug</a>. Lingua Libre is a website created by Wikimedia France to record vocabulary. Its aim is to build a collaborative and multilingual bank. In the session, the two tools used in the Lingua Libre project, the Record Wizard and the Lingua Libre Bot, were also introduced.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last session before the closing keynote speech was ‘<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions/Section_Translation:_New_Ways_to_Contribute_on_Mobile_Devices">Section Translation: New Ways to Contribute on Mobile Devices’</a>. It was presented by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Aaharoni-WMF">Amir Aharoni</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NGkountas_(WMF)">NGkountas</a>, and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pginer-WMF">Pau Giner</a>. The presenters talked about the content translation extension. Further, they talked about two new features that are to be deployed that can be used by more people in many countries and languages.</p>
<p>The closing keynote speech was given by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tarunno">Tarunno</a>. He spoke about ‘<a href="https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wmwmclosingspeech">International Mother Language Day - The love for Language and a sound of silence</a>’ The event ended with a closing session by Tito Dutta.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>Hurdles we faced:</span></strong> At the beginning, we found it difficult to form a team to organise the event. Due to the pandemic, we were unsure about approaching the wikimedians and were also worried about the participation. As it was a virtual event, the internet was the most important factor in it. Many participants and volunteers faced problems due to low internet connectivity.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>Our achievements:</span></strong> This was the first ever national level virtual event conducted in India by A2K. We were able to create a platform for the wikimedians to interact. Though it was initially a national event, we were able to get international guests as well.</p>
<p>We received positive feedback and precious suggestions from the participants. Following are some quotes:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Productive, helpful sessions. Was very helpful to me personally. Good effort by all involved. If I were to suggest improvements, Would have liked slots for conversations, and networking sessions. A "state of nation" like updates by projects would have helped too. “</p>
<p>“Thanks a lot again, this was a very good event.</p>
<p>Online events are not the same as physical ones but it was still very interesting and useful.”</p>
<p>“I was a presenter and presented a workshop on Wikivoyage. It was a nice program and I'm looking forward to more such virtual and physical events.”</p>
<p>We also received some feedback videos that were an appreciation for A2K. Following are a couple of links:</p>
<p><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021_%E2%80%93_message_from_Manavpreet_Kaur.webm">Manavpreet Kaur</a></p>
<p><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimeet_India_2021followup_message_from_Mehrdad_Pourzaki.webm">Mehrdad Pourzaki</a></p>
<p>We also received audio feedback from <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiMeet-2021-Comment.ogg">Ashwin Bandur</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span>What’s next?!</span></strong>: After all the stumbles and hurdles and achievements we had in Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, we have already started planning for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2022. Tito Dutta has <a href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/06/18/charaiveti-01-wikimedia-wikimeet-and-beyond-ideas-and-opinions/">written</a> about the planning for next year’s meet.</p>
<p align="center"><strong><i>“It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.” </i></strong></p>
<p align="right">- <strong><i>Carl Friedrich Gauss</i></strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-report'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-report</a>
</p>
No publisherNitesh Gill and Tito DuttaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaMalayalam Wikipedia2021-08-20T14:01:55ZBlog EntryBodh: a new tool for Wikidata lexicographical data
https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bodh-a-new-tool-for-wikidata-lexicographical-data
<b>We are happy to announce that a new tool, named Bodh, has been developed by Jay Prakash, as a CIS-A2K assignment, to add or modify statements for lexemes, senses and forms.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://bodh.toolforge.org/">This tool </a>presents lexicographical data in tabular format generated from SPARQL queries or from manual lists. Users can switch whether to work on lexeme proper, sense or form and add or modify statements there.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The idea of this tool was inspired by the one and only <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13520818">Magnus Manske's</a> <a href="https://tabernacle.toolforge.org/#/">Tabernacle</a> which helps editors to add or modify statements, labels, descriptions and aliases for Wikidata's entity data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The tool is going to be documented <a>here</a>. Users of this tool can request for more features or report for bugs using this <a href="https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/5166/">phabricator project profile</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Happy editing!</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bodh-a-new-tool-for-wikidata-lexicographical-data'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bodh-a-new-tool-for-wikidata-lexicographical-data</a>
</p>
No publisherBodhisattwa MandalWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipedia2021-06-28T01:19:11ZNews ItemResearch Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects
<b>This is a compilation of the final reports from a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2021, on an array of topics related to Indian language Wikimedia projects. The projects were undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, Ananth Subray, Satpal Dandiwal and Nitesh Gill, with research oversight and editorial support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and internal review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">See the full report on Wikimedia Commons <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Research_Studies_on_Indian_Language_Wikimedia_Projects.pdf&page=1">here</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Click to download the full report <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects" class="internal-link">here</a></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia and its many sister projects have been rich sites of study for researchers across the world for many years now. The online encyclopedia presents a microcosm of the real world in terms of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, including content and infrastructure, and community interaction among many other things. Research about Wikimedia projects and platforms has been undertaken in various languages, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, as illustrated by the research index on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and several important publications over the last several years. Research on Indian languageWikimedia projects and platforms, and on topics related to the sub-continent have also emerged significantly over the last several years.However, as understood in the course of the studies in this compilation as well, awareness about such research within the communities itself remains limited. While there is a lot of important work being undertaken on topics relevant to Indian Wikimedia projects, often by researchers who are Wikimedians themselves, factors such as dissemination beyond academic spaces, and accessibility in terms of language and context seem to also affect their availability to the larger communities, and in terms of implementation of learnings and recommendations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The six short-term research studies undertaken by the Access to Knowledge team over 2019–2021 were therefore initiated as a pilot, an initial foray into the space of research on Wikimedia projects in India. Based on the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation, this work was undertaken primarily to tap into new areas of work, while also drawing upon existing expertise at CIS, and in order to build the capacity of the team. With these broader motivations in mind, the research was structured with the following objectives to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Identify knowledge gaps, challenges, and opportunities in different aspects of content creation and participation in Indian language Wikimedia projects.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Develop a better understanding of systemic issues such as gender bias in Indian language communities, access to and reuse of cultural content, open learning in multilingual classrooms, and specific experiences of content creation within Wikimedia communities in India and associated initiatives.</li>
<li>Develop recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The studies in this compilation therefore examine different aspects of Wikimedia platforms and projects in India, in close alignment with existing work in the programme. These include the gender gap in Indian Wikimedia communities, creating multilingual and open educational platforms and resources, focus on specific projects such as GLAM and Wikidata, and efforts and challenges with content creation, access and outreach in specific language communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Working on these studies has been a learning experience, especially given the diverse contexts in which the projects are located, and the capacities and interests of the researchers themselves. The design of the studies was also therefore developed and modified to build on existing capacities within the team, and its learnings from previous years of working with various language communities. Capacity-building for team members on research design, methods, fieldwork and documentation was mostly done through close individual supervision and collaborative work. The methods used were largely qualitative, and ranged from interviews, literature reviews, data visualisations, focused group discussions and comparative analyses. The effort was also to try and capture the scale and diversity of the nature of work being undertaken in different Indian language communities through these projects. There were several challenges as well, beginning with framing the research questions and project design in a way that they were accessible to a wider community of people who would be engaged in contributing their inputs towards the work. Process-related challenges, such as translation of interview questionnaires into Indian languages revealed several interesting gaps, such as the lack of technical terms related to digitization or open access in these languages. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to restrictions on field visits, thus effectively hampering in person conversations and easier access to community members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There have been several learnings in the course of working on these studies, key among them being questions of awareness, relevance and impact. The lack of existing and easily accessible research (including those outside academic work) on several areas of Wikimedia in the Indian context has been a limitation in many ways, offering little in terms of available knowledge and best practices to work with. The limited awareness about, and imagined relevance of research in the regular work of communities has also been an impediment. As illustrated by learnings from a short research needs assessment carried out earlier this year, few community members were aware of research on Wikimedia projects being undertaken in India, and on a global scale. More importantly, there needs to be a conversation on its relevance to their own work, and to the larger movement. An effective communication strategy for research work, in different Indian languages, would perhaps address some of these gaps. A closely related question is also that of impact. The studies in this collection largely focus on short-term impact, through best practices and recommendations that may be developed through the research studies. While this is definitely a pragmatic approach, often the interest in a problem-solution design may look at research purely from an instrumental lens to identify quick solutions and their implementation, without a critical take on exploring and understanding larger, systemic or structural gaps that may be contributing to the problems itself. Going forward, it would be imperative therefore to identify areas of research, and build processes of research design that may address these challenges. Given the dynamic nature of Wikimedia, its platforms and communities, it is important to identify immediate gaps and possible solutions, but also to speak precisely to this aspect of long-term impact and relevance, to both current areas of work and the growth of the larger movement. We hope the studies in this compilation offer some insights towards these, and many more interesting questions related to research on Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement in India.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects</a>
</p>
No publishersnehaCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K Research2022-10-21T12:59:55ZBlog EntryAccess to Knowledge 2019–2020 Utilisation Certificate
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/access-to-knowledge-201920132020-utilisation-certificate
<b>Access to Knowledge 2019–2020 WMF APG Utilisation Certificate</b>
<div align="center">
<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u5sCxQbilNxTg1iWsu-nUs5ojWovoH1P/preview" align="middle" height="980" width="670"></iframe></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/access-to-knowledge-201920132020-utilisation-certificate'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/access-to-knowledge-201920132020-utilisation-certificate</a>
</p>
No publishertitoWikimediaAccess to Knowledge2020-09-30T22:15:27ZBlog EntryProject Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-0-utilisation-certificate
<b>Project Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-0-utilisation-certificate'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-0-utilisation-certificate</a>
</p>
No publisherA2KWikimediaWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeProject Tiger2020-09-23T23:40:44ZFileWikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science
<b>An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.
</b>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-97ab1c14-7fff-85ee-ada3-f2e9409c4480"></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Hour of code event</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-873db869-7fff-ba7f-7961-738c71b373c1"> <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PvdIcLLPTRrWxRng81lxpZayqHoXiQ6C143wz1JGzJMA5waxIbsvn8DBlxdwCLV0GsEDLigyREWiIbKjkKfGi9Xv4Kaspp-OaBkehQd56As3A3i7GviyO0PBBu9QOMQCquLDRqsR" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The “<a class="external-link" href="https://hourofcode.com/in">Hour of Code</a>” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper">Grace Hopper</a>, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 400-500 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were <a class="external-link" href="https://www.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia</a>, <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/">Mozilla</a>, <a href="https://developers.google.com/community/gdg">Google Developers Groups</a>, <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/developercircles/">Facebook Devcircles</a>, <a href="https://www.womentechmakers.com/">Women Tech Makers</a> and <a href="https://soai.world/">School of AI</a> where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2b0e0b9f-7fff-bebd-e541-6eef9130b86d"><strong>Wiki Orientation</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-8680976f-7fff-f4d6-82f6-fd00faecf88b"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/8P434MuQgXUVy_K2mnVRRgDwy8WfWUQ0oglLrpUj65Vi5iydeXUOZyMdckIO1_AL4tiwFPvyQp_tnRGKGIvyV9blRM_Hq44u0f-SgAv-8MZKUntdU8kIX_-szR6H4u-Z6GPIj6tT" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: start;"><a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-9c4b5c5d-7fff-ae7c-9ca8-d3b45460fd92"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3-l8ksMxppChRGdeNXlFbKf6Otxe0EkWpTut1HNGUxXhq-T8ogcmlG5HwFW_rDIxa85BNUvLV2BaG4ExbnDaKRJMeApH7RImubvWbejFVKNen4FL0HBUFyroLzqnXRjDUvE4nuQk" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: start;"><a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-cd49061e-7fff-06e1-303e-0810be036596"></span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on <a href="http://wikidata.org/">Wikidata</a>, <a href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource</a>, <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia commons</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program">Wikimedia in Education program</a>. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Bridging Gender Gap </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Research/Bridging_gender_gap">Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages</a>”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"> <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/zzlhB5fqWC8PGaE2Bqr3mpJUHc8tGhSssRf4G7lb7Dm5pBGrrW1G7Ca0M5oQAXloQTVwS-MapJQIGw1QVR8LNsgQMzFkuoZ0F5k1RycUSZ5s0oX5kRAkIiVcyziIfYwVRJwU28x3" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-489f2d13-7fff-cb65-7e89-a4453fd1c656"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bf32409e-7fff-bfe5-9b8a-3d6230a1e080"><br /></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Key observations/ learnings</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-fd8e76ba-7fff-2345-8c3c-a763a49aedf3"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/q3PI3c37BgQRc4ML_XVrLgwIqp9PN_zv1adLFdCtBM-IFJCyBBjkcG59ccpRCo1P_mWlMfKj-5BumFUS04l1u6W8Gc1nLMZOaHh6oDg01z5wFtD930qthGW8DMBV3HfmE7KPMQAO" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a1d57c54-7fff-99af-34c9-f33c7b995d55"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg</a></p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia. </p>
</li></ul>
<p dir="ltr"><br /><br />Press coverage about the event can be seen at <a href="https://youtu.be/5APh01ScHrM">Desathin Nambikai </a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/QEWl8z0Q07Y">The Covai mail news</a> , <a href="https://youtu.be/BkZbDWmvWdQ">Prime Time Tamil </a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/16mqiY_M3NE">Covai news</a> and <a href="http://bit.ly/2PTC3u6"> Updatenews360.com</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science</a>
</p>
No publisherbhuvanaWikimedia EducationCIS-A2KOpen SourceWikimediawomen and internetWikipedia gender gapteaching2019-12-23T08:18:11ZBlog EntryProject Tiger 2.0
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-telugu
<b>If you think that Indian languages are as important as international languages, like English, then, you are on the same page with this article. If not, then, let me explain, why it is a significant and much bigger issue than you think.</b>
<p><span>The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.</span></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">భారతీయ భాషలు కూడా ఆంగ్లం వంటి అంతర్జాతీయ భాషలతో సమానంగా ముఖ్యమైనవి అని మీరు అనుకుంటే ఈ వ్యాసం మీరు తప్పకుండ చదవాలి. ఒక వేళా మీకు అలా అనిపించకపోతే, ఈ విషయం ఎంత ముఖ్యమైనది మరియు పెద్దది అని చెప్తాను చూడండి. ప్రతి రోజు లక్షల మంది వినియోగదారులు అంతర్జాలం నుండి సమాచారాన్ని పొందడానికి ప్రయత్నిస్తుంటారు. భారతదేశంలో, మాతృభాషలో సమాచారాన్ని పొందడానికి ప్రయత్నించే వినియోగదారుల సంఖ్య అధికంగా ఉంది. 2021వ సంవత్సరం నాటికీ, హిందీ వినియోగదారుల సంఖ్య ఆంగ్ల వినియోగదారుల సంఖ్యను అధిగమిస్తుందని మరియు మరికొన్ని భారతీయ భాషలు అంతర్జాలంలో 30% వినియోగదారులను కలిగి ఉంటాయని అధ్యయనం చెబుతుంది. 68% అంతర్జాల వినియోగదారులు ఆంగ్ల భాష సమాచారం కంటే స్థానిక భాషా సమాచారం నమ్మదగినదిగా భావిస్త్తున్నారని పరిశోధన పేర్కొనింది.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">ఈ వాస్తవాలు అన్నీ ఉన్నప్పటికీ, భారతీయ భాషలలోని సమాచారాన్ని పొందకుండా వినియోగదారులను పరిమితం చేసే ఒక ప్రధాన కారణం, ఆన్లైన్లో కనిపించే భారీ జ్ఞాన అంతరం. గూగుల్ యొక్క పరిశోధనా బృందం భారతీయ భాషలలో అంతర్జాలంలో ఎక్కువగా శోధించిన మరియు తప్పిపోయిన అంశాల ఫలితాలను విశ్లేషించినప్పుడు, వారు వికీమీడియా ఫౌండేషన్తో భాగస్వామ్యం కావాలని నిర్ణయించుకున్నారు మరియు ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ అనే పైలట్ ప్రోగ్రామ్ను ప్రారంభించారు. దీనిని 2017లో, సెంటర్ ఫర్ ఇంటర్నెట్ అండ్ సొసైటీ - యాక్సిస్ టు నాలెడ్జ్ వారి సహకారంతో భారతీయ వికీమీడియన్లను తమ స్థానిక భాషలో నాణ్యత గల సమాచారమును అభివృద్ధి చేయటంలో ప్రోత్సహించడానికి ప్రారంభించారు.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ అనేది భారత దేశంలో పులులను రక్షించడం కోసం ప్రారంభించిన పర్యావరణ ప్రాజెక్ట్. దానిని స్ఫూర్తిగా తీసుకోని వికీపీడియా యొక్క ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ భారత దేశపు స్థానిక భాషలను సంరక్షించుకుంటూ స్థానిక భాషా వికీపీడియాలలో నాణ్యమైన సమాచారమును అభివృద్ధి చేయటమే లక్ష్యంగా పెట్టుకుంది. ఈ ప్రాజెక్ట్ రెండు దశల్లో జరుగుతుంది: ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ 2018 లో భాగంగా గూగుల్, వ్యాసాల రచనలను పెంచడానికి సాంకేతిక సహకారం అవసరమయ్యే అనుభవజ్ఞులైన వికీమీడియన్లకు మరియు ఆశాజనక వికీమీడియన్లకు 50 క్రోమ్బుక్లు మరియు 100 ఇంటర్నెట్ స్టైపెండ్లను అందచేయడం జరిగింది. పంపిణీ పూర్తయిన తర్వాత, కమ్యూనిటీలు గూగుల్ అందించిన జాబితా నుండి కథనాలను సృష్టించడం ప్రారంభించాయి.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">2018 లో జరిగిన ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ యొక్క మొదటి పునరావృతంలో, 12 భారతీయ కమ్యూనిటీలు మార్చి నుండి మేల వరకు 3 నెలలు జరిగిన వ్యాస రచన పోటీలో పాల్గొని, మొత్తం 1,65,774 పేజీ వీక్షణలతో 4,466 వ్యాసాలను సృష్టించాయి! ప్రతి వ్యాసాన్ని సంబంధిత భాషా జ్యూరీ సభ్యుడు పారామితుల ప్రకారం సమీక్షిస్తారు. ఒక వ్యాసం అన్ని ప్రమాణాలకు అనుగుణంగా ఉంటేనే అది అంగీకరించబడుతుంది. ఈ పోటీలో పంజాబీ కమ్యూనిటీ 1320 వ్యాసాలతో విజయం సాధించింది, తమిళ కమ్యూనిటీ 1241 వ్యాసాలతో రెండవ స్థానంలో ఉంది.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">ప్రతి కమ్యూనిటీ నుండి మొదటి మూడు స్థానాలలోవచ్చినవిజేతలకు ఇచ్చే నెలవారీ బహుమతులతో పాటు, గెలిచిన మరియు రన్నరప్ కమ్యూనిటీలు పంజాబ్లోని అమృత్సర్లో 3 రోజుల శిక్షణను పొందారు. ఈ ట్రైనింగ్సెషన్కు యూజర్: అసఫ్ (WMF) నాయకత్వం వహించారు, అక్కడ అతను ఎన్సైక్లోపెడిక్ విలువతో వ్యాసాలు రాయడం గురించి పాల్గొనేవారికి నేర్పించాడు మరియు వికీడేటా మరియు అందులో ఉపయోగించిన సాధనాలను కూడా పరిచయం చేశాడు.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">2018 లో ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ యొక్క భారీ విజయాన్ని చూసిన తరువాత, రెండవ పునరుక్తిని ప్రాజెక్ట్ టైగర్ 2.0 లేదా గ్లో (వికీపీడియాలో పెరుగుతున్న స్థానిక భాషా కంటెంట్) అని ప్రారంభించారు. భారతదేశంతో పాటు మరో రెండు దేశాల్లో ఇది మొదటిసారి నడుస్తోంది. ఇంతకుముందు పాల్గొన్న 12 భాషా సంఘాలతో పాటు, సంతాలి మరియు సంస్కృతం కూడా ఈ సంవత్సరం పోటీలో పాల్గొనడానికి అంగీకరించాయి. కమ్యూనిటీలు వ్రాయడానికి వారి స్వంత కథనాల సమితితో పాటు గూగుల్ ఇచ్చిన జాబితాతో వస్తున్నాయి. ఈ సంవత్సరం, ఈ ప్రాజెక్ట్ అధిక నాణ్యత కలిగిన కథనాలను లక్ష్యంగా పెట్టుకుంది. మరియు అన్నీ కమ్యూనిటీల వారు కూడా అదే విధంగా చేయటానికి కట్టుబడి ఉన్నాయి.</p>
<p dir="ltr">మీరు పోటీలో చేరడానికి ఆసక్తి కలిగి ఉంటే, దయచేసి ఈ లింకును సందర్శించండి</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia_(Project_Tiger_2.0)">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia_(Project_Tiger_2.0)</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-telugu'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-telugu</a>
</p>
No publisherSuswetha Kolluru and Nitesh GillWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2019-11-24T09:17:42ZBlog EntryProject Tiger 2.0
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-hindi
<b>If you think that Indian languages are as important as international languages, like English, then, you are on the same page with this article. If not, then, let me explain, why it is a significant and much bigger issue than you think.</b>
<p>The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.</p>
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<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">अगर आप सोचते हैं कि मूल भाषाएँ भी अंग्रेजी जैसी अंतरराष्ट्रीय भाषाओं जितनी ही महत्वपूर्ण है, तो इस पोस्ट को ज़रूर पढ़िए। यदि आपको ऐसा नही लगता, तो आइए आपको संक्षेप में बताएँ कि यह एक जरूरी और बड़ा मुद्दा है। हर दिन, लाखों उपभोगकर्ता इंटरनेट से जानकारी प्राप्त करने की कोशिश करते हैं। भारत में, बहु-गिनती अपनी मूल भाषा में जानकारी प्राप्त करने वालों की है। आंकड़े बताते हैं कि साल 2021 तक, हिन्दी उपभोगकर्ताओं की गिनती अंग्रेजी उपभोगकर्ताओं की गिनती को पार कर देगी और कुछ ओर भारती भाषाएँ मिलकर भारती भाषा के इंटरनेट उपभोग-कर्ता आधार का 30% बनती है। खोज अनुसार 68% इंटरनेट उपभोगकर्ता स्थानीय सामग्री को अंग्रेजी से ज्यादा भरोसेमंद मानता है।</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">इन सब तथ्यों के बावजूद, भारतीय भाषा के इंटरनेट उपभोगकर्ताओं के लिए जानकारी प्राप्त करने का दायरा बहुत सीमित है जिस का मुख्य कारण ऑनलाइन मौजूदा ज्ञान की कमी है। इस समस्या का समाधान करने के लिए, गूगल ने विकीमीडिया फ़ाउंडेशन के साथ मिलकर काम का फैसला लिया। गूगल और विकीमीडिया ने मिलकर एक पायलट प्रोजेक्ट शुरू किया जिस का नाम प्राजैकट टाइगर रखा रखा। इस प्रोजेक्ट को भारतीय भाषाओं के विकिपीडियाओं का समर्थन (Supporting Indian language Wikipedias) के नाम से भी जाना जाता है। 2017 में सैंटर फार इंटरनेट एंड सोसाइटी- एक्सिस टू नॉलेज के माध्यम से भारती विकीमिडीअनस के सहयोग के साथ स्थानीय भाषाओं के विकीपीडिया पर उच्च गुणवत्ता की सामग्री को तैयार करना शुरू किया गया।</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का नाम भारत में शुरू किए गए 'Save Tiger' प्रोजेक्ट से प्रेरित है। Save Tiger परियोजना का उद्देश्य टाइगर की रक्षा करना था और प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का लक्ष्य भारतीय भाषाओं को संरक्षित करना और स्थानीय विकिपीडिया पर मूल भाषा में सामग्री तैयार करना है। इस परियोजना को दो चरणों में विभाजित किया गया है। पहले चरण में, गूगल ने 2018 में अनुभवी और सक्रिय विकीमीडिया को 50 क्रामबुक और 100 इंटरनेट सुविधाएँ प्रदान की थी। चयनित विकिमेडियनों को प्रौद्योगिकी सुविधाएँ प्रदान करने के बाद, प्रतियोगिता के लिए गूगल द्वारा उपलब्ध कराए गए लेखों की सूची से और समुदाय द्वारा उत्पादित स्थानीय लेखों की सूची से लेख बनाना शुरू किया।</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर पहली बार 2018 में आयोजित किया गया था, जिसमें 12 भारतीय समुदाय शामिल थे। इन समुदायों ने मार्च से मई तक 3 महीने के लेख लेखन प्रतियोगिता में अपना योगदान दिया और 4,466 नए लेख बनाए। प्रत्येक समुदाय द्वारा अपनी स्वयं की जूरी चुनी गई थी, जिन्होंने मानदंडों के अनुसार बनाए गए लेखों की समीक्षा की थी। यदि कोई लेख सभी मापदंडों को पूरा करता है, तो उसे स्वीकार किया गया और एक अंक दिया गया। इस प्रतियोगिता में पंजाबी समुदाय ने कुल 1,320 लेखों के साथ प्रतियोगिता में जीत हासिल की, जबकि तमिल समुदाय 1,241 लेखों के साथ दूसरे स्थान पर रहा।</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">प्रत्येक समुदाय के प्रथम तीन प्रतिभागियों को मासिक पुरस्कार देने के अलावा, विजेता और उप-विजेता समुदायों को अमृतसर, पंजाब में तीन दिन का विकी प्रशिक्षण दिया गया था। इसका नेतृत्व User: Asaf (WMF) द्वारा किया गया जहां उन्होने प्रतिभागियों को लेख लिखने के लिए नियमों से परिचित कराया और विकीडाटा के बारे में बताने के साथ-साथ इसमें इस्तेमाल किए गए टूलों का उपयोग करना भी सिखाया गया।</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">2018 में प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर की उत्कृष्ट सफलता को देखने के बाद, दूसरी बार प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का आयोजन किया जा रहा है, जिसका नाम प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर 2.0 या GLOW (GLOW-Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia) है। यह भारत के अलावा पहली बार दो ओर देशों में आयोजित किया जा रहा है। पिछली बार 12 भाषाई समुदायों ने इसमें भाग लिया था। इसके अलावा, इस वर्ष संथाली और संस्कृत भी इस प्रतियोगिता में भाग लेने के लिए सहमत हो गए हैं। समुदाय, जल्द ही, गूगल द्वारा उपलब्ध कराए गए लेखों की सूची और उनके द्वारा बनाई गई स्थानीय सूचियों से लेख बनाना शुरू करेंगे। इस वर्ष, इस परियोजना का उद्देश्य उच्च गुणवत्ता वाले लेख हैं और समुदाय ऐसा करने के लिए प्रतिबद्ध हैं।</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-hindi'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-hindi</a>
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No publisherSuswetha Kolluru and Nitesh GillWikimediaCIS-A2KWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2019-11-24T09:15:06ZBlog Entry