Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K: Work Accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia

nitika — 2013-12-31T11:48:02Z

The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K team) is pleased to share with you the key accomplishments about the work it accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia from September to December 2013 in this report. In accordance with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Program’s (CIS-A2K) Konkani Work Plan 2013-14 the program has invested time and effort to build Konkani Wikimedia community and projects.

Highlights

Increased editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia

CIS-A2K has been organising different programs and workshops. The idea is to bring in as many volunteers as possible who can contribute to Konkani Wikipedia for years to come. We have organised these outreach sessions mainly in Devanagari, Romi and Kannada scripts. As a result of these programs we have been able to significantly increase no. of editors, consistently have minimum of 5-6 active editors per month and build a community of volunteers. You can also view level of editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia for the past few months in the chart below:


Above: Edits Per Month on Konkani Wikipedia (Mar-13 to Dec-13) (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Increased number of articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Total number of articles increased from 150 in Sep 2013 to 315 in Nov 2013. The number of articles have doubled over a period of 3 months. We should keep in mind that out of those who edited in Devanagari; 95% of them were completely new to the input method and had to spend considerable time learning and practicing it.


Above: No. of articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Translated Media Wiki messages

CIS-A2K organised translation sprint to help translate Media Wiki interface messages. We achieved translating 79% of these messages in Konkani Devanagari while all 100% messages have already been translated in Romi script

Re-release of Konkani Vishwaksh under Creative Commons License

Upon CIS-A2K‘s explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era. Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work that took over 14 years to develop. It encompasses the world’s information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. To know more about click here and here

Initiated & Completed 30% of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

Goa University in collaboration with the CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. 37 participants are enrolled in this project who are working to digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized. The program started on 19th October and in just about 2 months 30% of the encyclopedia had already been digitized. You can monitor the progress of this project on Wikisource. Here are the links for Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4. Please note that some of the participants firstly digitize the encylopedia either in their Sandbox or offline and then move it to Wikisource. To know more about the project click here.

Signed an MoU with Goa University

Goa University entered into a three year MoU with CIS for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University and CIS-A2K will work together to help build Konkani Wikipedia and community.

White paper by a Linguist

Fr. Pratap Naik, S.J. B.Sc., B.Ed. M.A. (Linguistics), M.Phil. (Linguistics), Ph.D. (Linguistics) has written a white paper discussing issues faced by Konkani language and his views on how it should be dealt on Wikimedia projects. We'll soon upload the white paper on Wikimedia Commons and make the link available.

14 Outreach session, over 450 participants, in 3 months

CIS-A2K organised about 14 outreach sessions and reached out to over 450 people to create awareness about Konkani Wikipedia and the community between Sep-Dec 2013. Details of these sessions can be found here.

Got consensus from field experts

Over the past few months CIS-A2K has spoken with Konkani Wikipedians (such as Frederick Noronha, Deepak D'Souza, Seby Fernandes) Konkani linguists (such as Fr. Pratap), professors from Konkani Department at Goa University (Dr. Madhavi Sardesai and Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar), cultural experts (such as Prof. Alito Siqueira and Harriet Vidyasagar) and other experts to propose a solution for Konkani Wikipedia that faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. To a great extent we have got consensus from different field experts that we should strive to create separate Wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.

Wikipedians Speak

One of the ongoing projects of CIS-A2K is 'Wikipedians Speak' which are small videos of Wikipedians that captures their expereinces, learnings and challenges. As a part of this project CIS-A2K published several videos of Konkani Wikipedians.

Link to the post published on Wikipedia

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

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Alvas Vishva Nudisiri Virasat

praskrishna — 2013-12-31T09:48:19Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society conducted a workshop at Moodabidre from December 19 to 22, 2013.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a presentation about Kannada Wikipedia and also conducted a workshop on Kannada Wikipedia as a parallel track. He spoke about Kannada and IT in general and also about Kannada Wikipedia. The event was covered by Prajavani (December 22), Hosadigantha (December 22), and Deccan Herald (December 22). Scanned copies of these are reproduced below:


Above: A report published by Prajavani


Above: Article by Guruprasad TN about Kannada Wikipedia, Dr. Pavanaja is quoted.


Above: Article in Hosadigantha. Dr. Pavanaja is quoted.

Also there was a report published by Udayavani on December 24, 2013. This can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/1cjwIyD.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-alvas-vishva-nudisiri-virasat

Odisha: Odia Wikipedia reaching 5000 article mark!

praskrishna — 2013-12-31T05:10:30Z

Many are not aware of the existence of Odia Wikipedia and other Indian language Wikipedias. But Odia Wikipedia has been growing gradually all these years and has become the most searched website and largest online encyclopedia in Odia language.

The Report by Odisha Diary bureau, Bhubaneswar was published on December 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

Initiated in 2002 Odia Wikipedia saw its first edit in 2004 and suffered from low contribution for almost seven years. But slowly the gloomy scene changed with the first workshop in Bengaluru which started initiating more consecutive Wikipedia training workshops in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Nalconagar, Baleswar, Dhenkanal and many other cities. Over these years after many outreach workshops individuals who are experts in different subject areas and organizations and institutions like Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal and KIIT University have been associated with the Odia Wikipedia editor community.

After Gopal Chandra Praharaj's Purnachandra Ordiya Bhashakosha and Binod Kanungo's Jnanamandal no such progressive encyclopedic compilation was done in Odia. Where the encyclopedias take years for reprinting which is also negligible in regional languages Odia Wikipedia articles get revised every now and then. “This has been possible because of the collaborative writing mechanism of Wikipedia All of us keep editing the articles that refine the content and make it free from biased and incorrect facts.”, says Mrutyunjaya Kar, one of the very active Wikipedians. Some time ago noted linguists like Natabara Satpathy and Deepak Kanungo raised questions about the authenticity and writing standards of the articles on Odia Wikipedia.

"But I think we have overcome those issues of poor quality content. And the very thing Wikipedia got is the gradual growth of articles in terms of amount of information and accuracy. Something that attracted me to Odia Wikipedia is the way one liner stub articles grow to good quality articles in few days", says Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer to Centre of Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program that is working for the growth of Indian languages. Many of the valuable aspects of Odisha's history, diverse languages, cultural heritage and tourism are being documented and shared for free on the internet which otherwise would not ever come to the limelight.

Available in 286 world languages Wikipedia is edited by more than 77,000 contributors across the world. Odia Wikipedia has only a small community consisting handful of contributors. We aim to reach out to more people to spread the sum of the entire knowledge in our own language, says another active contributor Shitikantha Dash. Odia Wikipedia could be accessed at: https://or.wikipedia.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-december-17-2013-odia-wikipedia-reaching-5000-article-mark

Telugu Wikipedia completes 10 years

rahim — 2013-12-31T04:40:40Z

Telugu Wikipedia completed 10 years on December 10, 2013. Several training sessions, aka Wiki Academies, were planned by the Telugu Wikipedia community to mark the occasion.

The article by Rahmanuddin Shaikh was published by DNA on December 16, 2013. It was edited by Rohini Lakshané.

Telugu Wikipedia completed 10 years on December 10, 2013. Several training sessions, aka Wiki Academies, were planned by the Telugu Wikipedia community to mark the occasion. One such session, the Te-Wiki Shikshana Shibir was organised at Hyderabad on December 8. It was the fifth Wiki Academy ever held in the city.

The Wiki Academy saw a turnout of around 21 people coming from various teaching backgrounds, right from a professor of Telugu from Osmania University to a teacher at a private school. Teachers, professors, student-teachers, and instructors participated in the event. It has carved the way for organising Te-Wiki Dasabdi (Telugu Wikipedia decennial celebrations) with more enthusiasm.

The Telugu teaching community has affirmed that it would make use of the Telugu Wikipedia in and out of the classroom. Many of the participants have already turned into Wikipedia editors. "A few of the difficulties the Telugu teaching fraternity faces have been solved by the Telugu Wikipedia," said one of the participants hailing from Mysore CIIL. "I've been horrified by the mere touch of keyboard and mouse, this Telugu Wikipedia seems promising to deal with my Computerophobia," said HoD, Telugu Osmania University, Prof S.V. Satyanarayana. The professor also urged the organisers to conduct one such workshop for his students in the coming days.

Resources:

Event page on Telugu Wikipedia
Photos of the WikiAcademy
Cross-posted at Wikimedia India Chapter blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-december-16-2013-rahmanuddin-shaikh-telugu-wikipedia-completes-10-years

Wikipedia Training Session @ Tiruvur

praskrishna — 2014-01-09T09:52:42Z

A Wikipedia training session was conducted by T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik at Srivahini College in Tiruvur on December 19, 2013.

About 150 - 200 people attended in each of the two sessions. The event was co-organised by CIS-A2K and the Telugu Wikipedia community.


Above: T. Vishnu Vardhan addressing students at the Srivahini college in Tiruvur.

The following newspapers covered the event on December 19, 2013:

Awareness on Wikipedia, Andhraprabha, December 19, 2013
Wikipedia Helps Spread Knowledge, Eenadu, December 19, 2013
The Many Uses of Wikipedia, Sakshi, December 19, 2013
Awareness on Wikipedia, Prajasakthi, December 19, 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-training-session-tiruvur

Pooja Tople on Wikimedia Projects

nitika — 2013-12-31T11:04:59Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.

Video


Above: Participant of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project, Pooja Tople, talks about her experiences with Wikimedia Projects

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/pooja-tople-wikipedia-projects

Darshana Mandrekar speaks on Konkani Wikipedia

nitika — 2013-12-31T10:38:07Z

Darshana Mandrekar a participant at the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program speaks about her inspiration to edit Konkani Wikipedia.

Video


Above: Darshana Mandrekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/darshana-mandrekar-on-konkani-wikipedia

Darshan Kandolkar on Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process

nitika — 2013-12-31T10:47:46Z

Darshan Kandolkar, talks about his experience with Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process and Konkani translation sprint.

Video


Above: Darshan Kandolkar's interview on Konkani Wikipedia

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

Varsha Kavlekar on Konkani Wikipedia Incubator

nitika — 2013-12-31T10:56:22Z

Konkani Wikipedia Editor, Varsha Kavlekar, talks about her experience with Konkani Wikipedia Incubator.

Video


Above: Varsha speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

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

A Feature on Telugu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-12-30T06:01:59Z

Namaste Telangana newspaper has done a Sunday magazine feature on Telugu Wikipedia on the occasion of the 10th anniversary.

Click to download the file.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/feature-on-telugu-wikipedia

A Wikipedia Workshop at IISC

praskrishna — 2013-12-31T03:38:30Z

Along with Wikipedian Shiju Alex we supported the Assamese Wikipedians to organize a workshop at IISC.

Assamese Wikipedian Gitartha Bordoloi took a session explaining about Wikipedia. Almost 13 scholars from Assam who are currently researching at IISC took part in this workshop. This also opened a new avenue for us to start an Assamese Wiki community in Bangalore.

Click to download the original published by Amarasom Gl Publications. The link to the original is here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-workshop-iisc

Konkani Vishwakosh Encyclopedia released under Free License

nitika — 2013-12-31T12:42:35Z

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

Read the blog post originally published on the Wikipedia page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CIS-A2K’s Accomplishments

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

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

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

Konkani Vishwakosh available on Wikimedia Commons

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

Project Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (KVDP)

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

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

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

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

Boost to Konkani Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

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

First ever Train-the-Trainer Program in India

nitika — 2013-12-31T12:18:48Z

Access to Knowledge Programme at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS-A2K) organized the first ever Train the Trainer Program in India. 20 Wikimedians from 8 different language communities and 10 different cities across India attended CIS-A2K’s Train the Trainer (TTT).

Read the post originally published on Wikipedia here.

The residency program was spread over four days. The event was represented by Wikimedia communities including Bengali, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Odia. The event was organized to help build capacity amongst Wikimedia volunteers to conduct effective and efficient outreach programs in their respective regions in an effort to expand the Wikimedia movement to reach the nooks and crannies of a large nation like India. CIS-A2K realizes that with a small team of five it cannot cover all communities. This program would create leadership, which in turn will hopefully take the movement forward.

Hari Prasad Nadig, one of TTT’s resource persons and sysop on both Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia, said, “I think the training program was in the right direction. In fact I thought it was a very good idea.

It falls in-line with what is needed to be done with utmost importance for the Indian Wikipedia community – creating more trainers/mentors who can bring in editors to Wikipedia or guide the existing ones.”

Post-Event Survey & Report

CIS-A2K conducted a post-event survey to evaluate TTT program and also review individual training and development activities organized during the four-day workshop. The main aim of the survey was to understand how the attendees perceived the event and help CIS-A2K plan a more successful and well-attended event in the future.

Including a variety of questions ranging from likert scale questions, drag and drop list, paragraph text, multiple choices, provided an interactive and systematic way to gather participant’s feedback. The survey questions were also designed to cover different aspects of the event including attendee’s opinions of the sessions, as well as what they learned. Results and findings will be used to refine and improve the next TTT program.

CIS-A2K’s Findings I

Overall Rating – The event scored an average of 8.3 when participants were asked to rank the overall effectiveness of TTT on a scale of 1 to 10. Survey respondents found value in the program and felt the event met their expectations. A vast majority (83 percent) said they would recommend TTT to fellow Wikipedians. “The overall experience of the TTT program was quite satisfactory. What I liked about it was the timely flow of the entire planned schedule and the preparedness of CIS – A2K team,” said Rangilo Gujarati, a Gujarati Wikipedian.

Inspirational Factor – One of the questions: “After the workshop, how inspired do you feel to strengthen your Wikipedia community and project?” received an anonymous reply: “It was really a nice time with you all. I got to learn many new things. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to attend this workshop. I’m inspired and looking forward to using my skills and conduct an edit-a-thon in my language community soon.”

“The overall experience of TTT program was quite uniquely satisfactory.” said Rangilo Gujarati.

Participants gave an above average rating of 8.25 on a scale of 10. We believe this high number indicates that CIS-A2K’s was able to inspire more volunteers to conduct online and offline outreach activities to grow their Wikimedia communities.

New Learnings – “It was a good experience for me. I learned a lot of things by interacting with so many TTT participants from different communities. The sessions were extremely useful and informative”, said Pranayraj1985, an active Telugu Wikipedian. Most participants got to learn new things during the course of four day workshop. The question ‘Do you feel you got to learn new things from TTT workshops?’ got an average rating 8.58.

Feedback on various sessions – One of the participants said “All workshops were excellent. The event managed to cover different aspects such as crowdsourcing, copyright, social media, digitization, media wiki etc. There was bit of everything to match everyone’s taste. Each one of the sessions gave a lot of energy to Wikipedians. These types of programs should be conducted often. Thanks for giving us the opportunity.”

Presenting with Impact I & II was the most liked session according to feedback. DIY digitization led by Malayalam Wikipedian Vishwa Prabha and Odia Wikipedian Subhashish Panagrahi also received a high ranking. This was followed by Copyright CC and Wikimedia led by Achal Prabhala.

Sessions such as Spectogram, Accessing Media Wiki Data, Wikimedia India Chapter – History & Present were found to be less useful. This could be due to the fact that some of the participants already had sufficient knowledge about the topic or were simply not interested in the topic.

“It was a good experience for me. The sessions were extremely useful and informative”, said Pranayraj1985

Follow up Session – 92 percent of the participants recommend CIS-A2K organize a follow-up session for them in the coming months. Eight percent of them did not think it’s required. One of the resource persons from Malayalam community, Vishwa Prabha, offered to organize the follow-up meet in Kerala. He said, “December would be a good time for a follow-up meet, I would like to suggest Alappuzha (Kerala) as a venue. This could be scheduled just before or just after the WikiSangamotsavam, which is being planned by the ML community. This could also be a great opportunity for TTT members to interact with the ML community, one of the most vibrant wiki communities in Asia.”
Recommendation to other Wikimedians – 83 percent of the participants said that if another TTT program was t be organized they will recommend it to their fellow Wikimedian volunteers; while 17 percent of them won’t.

CIS-A2K’s Findings II

All participants unanimously suggested that CIS-A2K continue this program in the future and offered suggestions to improve it next time:

Organize more ice-breaking activities – Even after a four day workshop a lot of participants thought they didn’t get enough time to get to know volunteers from other language communities. This was owing to the fact that participants had relatively little free time. Communication in a multilingual environment was also rather difficult for some.

Provide longer breaks – Some participants complained that the length of breaks were too short. “While trying to stuff in so many topics (all of them being quite essential and worthy) within such a short time, the breaks seemed too short,” said one participant.

Organize parallel and optional sessions – There were some participants who were not interested in technical aspects of Wikimedia projects such as Python or MediaWiki and would have liked the option of attending a parallel non-technical session. One of the participants said “Let us say for example, not everyone is interested in knowing how to access media wiki data using XML, so why force the participants to attend, even if they don’t want to. What could have been done is, some other kind of session/talk or extension of any previous session in parallel so folks uninterested in XML can attend that.” If scale permits, CIS-A2K will aim to organize parallel sessions so that the participants can choose the session they’d like to attend.

Wikipedians during at the CIS-A2K Train-the-Trainer Program Digitization workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Provide ideas and action points – Providing a report and case study on how TTT participants can infuse the lessons learned into their outreach and community activities would have been helpful. CIS-A2K was informed that the participants were highly encouraged and motivated to strengthen their language communities but didn’t know where to start or whom to reach out for help.

Create Wiki Projects for TTT participants – One of the attendees suggested that we should initiate some intra-community collaboration projects (like railway network, Bibliography database, taxonomy database, reusable standard templates among Indic communities etc) and ask participants to volunteer on these projects with a common goal. This will help break barriers as well as help volunteers get to know each other better. Another attendee said, “Another way could be to ask them to work towards creating a repository of outreach material (coursebooks, presentation modules, standards/workflows, PR, media, publicity and courses) for each Indian language community.”
Organize advanced technical sessions – A few participants would have liked more technical sessions such as bat running, edit tools, web linkups etc. CIS-A2K got requests to invite experts and organize more advanced technical sessions.

Participants during Information literacy and Internet research techniques for Wikipedia editors (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Conclusion

Overall, the participants and resource persons were satisfied with India’s first ever Wikimedia Train the Trainer Program. A special thanks to all the participants and the resource persons who gave their time and energy to make this program a success. A list of all participants and resource persons can be found on program meta page.

CIS-A2K will definitely try to incorporate these ideas and suggestions a the second annual TTT program. Please stay tuned to learn more about when and where it will take place!

A group photo on the last day (by Pranayraj, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Copyright notes: "HPN" by HPNadig, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons, "Photograph of Rangilo Gujarati" by Rangilo Gujarati, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons, "My Photo", "CIS A2K - Train the Trainer Programme.jpg" by Pranayraj1985, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons, "CIS-A2K Train-the-Trainer Program11.jpg", "CIS-A2K Train-the-Trainer Program2.jpg" by Subhashish Panigrahi, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons

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

You Too Can Write on Wikipedia! — Training workshop

praskrishna — 2013-12-06T07:55:38Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in collaboration with Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and National Institute of Tourims and Hospitality Management is organizing a two-days training workshop (December 5-6, 2013) in Gachibowli, Hyderabad.

As you may know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and is the 5th most-visited website in the world! It's completely free to use and re-use, it has no advertising, and is available in more than 280 different languages - including 20+ Indian languages. Wikipedia articles are written by ordinary people who volunteer to share their knowledge with the world.

What will you gain from Wikipedia editing?

It improves writing skills. Wikipedia provides students/professionals/researchers a platform to hone their writing skills. Writing on Wikipedia enhances critical thinking and the ability to see all sides of a story. Students will find this incredibility useful in both their personal and professional lives while evaluating the pros and cons of different situations, projects, assignments etc. Wikipedia editing also strengthens research skills. A Wikipedia editor has to provide credible references by looking up books, journals and online materials. Writing on Wikipedia is a good practice for those who will also work on a thesis or a research project.

Your articles will be read by thousands of people across the globe. If you edit a Wikipedia article, it is there *forever* and the audience can be any number from the 500 million who read Wikipedia every month!

It'll boost your chances in admissions or scholarships or placements.

It teaches students how to collaborate! Editing Wikipedia is magical. You add some content and someone from some other part of the class or school or town or country or somewhere else in the world adds a little bit more and makes the contribution that much better. Wikipedia helps one learn how to work productively with other people, even those you don’t know and may never actually meet.

The workshop will cover the following:

What exactly is Wikipedia and how does it work?
Who edits Wikipedia?
How do I edit Wikipedia?
What can I edit?
How can I input text in Indian languages?
How do I insert images?
How do I find and add references?
Do’s and Don’ts

Schedule

December 5, 2013 (Day 1)

Timing	Activity
09.30 to 10.00 a.m.	Welcome and Introduction
10.00 to 11.15 a.m.	Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet
11.15 to 11.30 a.m.	Tea/Coffee Break
11.30 to 01.00 p.m.	Wikipedia demonstration + Basics of Wikipedia Editing (hands on activity)
01.00 to 02.00 p.m.	Lunch Break
02.00 to 02.15 p.m.	Energizer
02.15 to 03.45 p.m.	Basics of Wikipedia Editing (Hands on activity)
03.45 to 04.00 p.m.	Tea/Coffee Break
04.00 to 05.30 p.m.	NPOV on Wikipedia (Spectrogram activity)
05.30 to 05.45 p.m.	Look back on what has worked and what has not

December 6, 2013 (Day 2)

Timing	Activity
09.30 to 11.15 a.m.	Advanced Wikipedia Editing (Hands on activity)
11.15 to 11.30 a.m.	Tea/Coffee Break
11.30 to 01.00 p.m.	On Wiki activity
01.00 to 02.00 p.m.	Lunch Break
02.00 to 02.15 p.m.	Energizer
02.15 to 03.45 p.m.	Wikimedia projects and Tourism
03.45 to 04.00 p.m.	Tea/Coffee Break
04.00 to 05.30 p.m.	Group Activity – Wiki projects on Tourism
05.30 to 05.45 p.m.	Feedback and Closing session

For map of the venue: click this link: http://sh.st/r90j

For venue: click this link: http://sh.st/r889

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/you-too-can-write-on-wikipedia-2014-training-workshop

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — November 2013

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T13:41:04Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of November 2013:

CIS-A2K Narrative ReportThis narrative report captures the work done by the A2K program during the period of September 2012 to June 2013. It examines projects and activities and its impact and outcomes over a period of the initial Ten months of the Grant. This report will also inform CIS-A2K program’s strategy for the next one year to achieve the goals set out by its donor, Wikimedia Foundation, and goals listed in our Work Plans (which were developed in consultation with the Wikimedia community in India). Importantly, this Narrative Report is critical for the Wikimedia community in India, Global Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation to get a comprehensive overview of A2K’s work and to critically assess the A2K program’s eligibility for further support. The report compiled by by T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi can be accessed at http://bit.ly/1dFyjpO.
► Announcements

CIS Signs MoU with Christ University, Bangalore (November 20, 2013): The Access to Knowledge team signed a MoU as part of which CIS-A2K and Christ University will impart Wikipedia education in Indian classrooms: http://bit.ly/1ehr8kz.
We are happy to share with you that Rahmanuddin Shaik has been selected for the role of "Community Communications Consultant" at CIS-A2K! Rahmanuddin is an active contributor on Wikimedia Commons, Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu Wikisource: http://bit.ly/1bwrEu3.

►Articles

ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಟ್ಟ ಸಸಿಗೆ ಈಗ ಹತ್ತು ವರ್ಷ (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Kannada Prabha, November 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/17LOw4O. The article highlights 10 years of Kannada Wikipedia, the current status of the Kannada Wikipedia vis-a-vis number of articles, number of editors, active editors, and page views per month.
Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, November 14, 2013):http://bit.ly/ILwLMr. The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane of DNA.

►Blog Entries

Train the Trainer Program (by Subhashish Panigrahi, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18hjw0n.
Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA (by Nitika Tandon, November 26, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z.

► Events Organised

Wikipedia Orientation Programme for MA Students (Christ University, Bangalore, November 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/ItxAtu. Syed Muzammiluddin was the trainer. Twenty students participated.

Wikipedia Orientation Programme for the Second Language Students (Christ University, Bangalore, November 12, 13, 16 and 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1bxsOYF. T. Vishnu Vardhan, Syed Muzammiluddin and Dr. U.B.Pavanaja were the trainers. About 1200 second language students participated in the programme.
Documentation and Wikipedia Contribution — A One Day Workshop (Kalinga Institute of Social Studies, Bhubaneswar, November 14, 2013). The workshop was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi: http://bit.ly/1fSvl1v.
Documentation and Wikipedia Workshop (Kalinga School of Management, Bhubaneswar, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/Imf0DV. Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the workshop.
Konknni Wikipedia Workshop (organised by Dalgado Konknni Akademi and CIS-A2K, Goa Central State Library, November 16 and 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSwiH5.
Tenth Anniversary of Wikipedia (H N Multimedia Hall, National College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1eJ6da9. Dr. U R Ananthamurthy, Prof. G. Venkatasubbiah and Ravi Hegde were the guests of honour. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
First Phase of Odia Wikipedia Workshop (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Bhubaneswar, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18doDer. Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSAUwT. Nitika Tandon conducted the event.
Konkani Vishwakosh: Doubt Solving Session I (Goa Central State Library, November 26, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z. Nitika Tandon conducted the session.
Konkani Vishwakosh: Doubt Solving Session II (Goa Central State Library, November 28, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z. Nitika Tandon conducted the session.
Editing Sprint for Vishwakosh (Goa Central, State Library, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z. Nitika Tandon conducted the event.

► Event Co-organised

The Relaunch of Creative Commons India (co-organised by Wikimedia India, Acharya Narendra Dev College and CIS, India Islamic Cultural Centre, November 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/HPxrAO. Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development was the chief guest at the event.

► Event Participated In

Wikimedia Diversity Conference (organized by German Wikipedia Community, GLS Campus, Berlin): http://bit.ly/Ixr9W8. T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at this event and made a presentation on the challenges and opportunities for the Wikimedia movement in India.

► Media Coverage CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Kannada Wikipedia and its Tenth Anniversary (RadioCity, November 2, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dHEwBI.
Indian Govt to Build Machine Translation System for 22 Indic Languages (by Brindaalakshmi, Medianama, November 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/J4qg7V. CIS MoU with Goa University is mentioned.
10th anniversary of Kannada wikipedia (by ND Shiva Kumar, The Times of India, November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/IxqDr7.
Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Udayavani, November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aFwqF1.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಈಗ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ. ಅದರ ಪ್ರಯುಕ್ತ ಒಂದು ಆಚರಣೆ (Avadhi Website, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/ImiBSy.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಗೆ 10, ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆ ಸಾಲದು: ಪ್ರೊ .ಜಿವಿ (OneindiaKannada, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/19blS17.
Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Vijayavani, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b7exSa.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ ಸಂಭ್ರಮ (Prajavani, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hWtt9v.
ಕನ್ನಡದ ಆನ್‌ಲೈನ್ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ದುರ್ಬಲ (Vijaya Karnataka, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hWtsCy.
Panaji: DKA organizes two day Konkani Wikipedia workshop (Daijiworld, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1inoi03.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Muzammiluddin Syed, one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi and one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

About CIS
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-november-2013