Centre for Internet and Society

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

nitika — 2013-09-03T10:37:15Z

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

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

Introduction

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

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

Highlights of the Workshop

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


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

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

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

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

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

Media Coverage

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

Learnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Challenges

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


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

Acknowledgements

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


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

What's Next?

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

Additional Info:

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

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

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

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

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

Incubation

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

Day 1: Building the Blocks

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

Intro Yourself

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

Editing Time

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

Game Time

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

Rat and Frog Game

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

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

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

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

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

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

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

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

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

Media Coverage

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

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

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

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

praskrishna — 2013-10-04T10:49:51Z

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

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

The CIS-A2K programme organised a four-day workshop in collaboration with the Goa University for students of M.A. (Konkani) at the Central State Library, Konkani Department, University of Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted this workshop. The event saw 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia, which is incubation. The main objective is to bring this seven-year-old project out of incubation into a live Wikipedia project. Event reports, blog entries, videos, guest column and media coverage arising from the workshop can be accessed by clicking on the links below:

Event Reports

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013):
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013):

Guest Columns

Konkani Wikipedia climbing up the Indian language ladder (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, September 6, 2013).
Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013)

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 19, 2013). The event was organised by Wikimedia Foundation. Subhashish participated in the event.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (co-organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Organised

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.
Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan taught a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated in the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, DNA, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).

Other guest columns:

ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by the Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and CIS-A2K, September 13, 2013).
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi.

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-august-2013

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T10:32:39Z

Wikimedia India in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society is organising a workshop on "Digitization of books for Indic language WikiSource" on August 18, 2013, 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

This workshop will be conducted by Malayalam Wikimedian Viswanathan Prabhakaran. Anyone interested in learning about the process of digitising old manuscripts, books and creating text based documents could join this workshop. The workshop will cover the following topics:

Best practices in capturing images using a camera and tripod through demonstration;
An introduction to the types of scanners;
How to hold books and the need to treat old books with proper care;
Discussion on image formats and some basic comparison (i.e. djvu, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF);
Introduction and practical use of SM Tether (using Nikon dSLR) in capturing images;
Practical demonstration of using Scan Tailor (a free software) in post-processing of scanned pages. Splitting, deskewing, rearranging borders, and de-speckling of scanned pages;
Some basic discussion on copyright and introduction to Wiki Source;
Importance of online archival resources (DLI, DSAL, Archive.org, etc) and when to do or not to redo scanning of books (i.e., image resolution) that are already available in scanned format;
OCR and Indian languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digitization-of-books-for-indic-language-wikisource

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T06:24:45Z

T.Vishnu participated in the Telugu meet-up held in Hyderabad on August 25, 2013, via Skype.

Click to read the original published by Telugu Wikipedia here

తెలుగు వికీపీడియా నెలవారీ ముఖాముఖీ సమావేశం. సమావేశానంతరం/ముందు మినీ వికీపీడియా వర్కుషాపు ఉంటుంది.

వివరాలు

ప్రదేశం : థియేటర్ ఔట్రీచ్ యూనిట్ (టి.ఓ.యు), గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్ అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాద్
తేదీ : 25:08:2013; సమయం : 3 p.m. నుండి 6 p.m. వరకూ.

చర్చించాల్సిన అంశాలు

హాంక్‌కాంగ్ లో జరిగిన 2013 వికీమానియా విశేషాలు - విష్ణు
తెవికీ నాణ్యతకు వికీపీడియా ఉపకరణాలు - ECHO; AFT; VISUAL EDITOR - విష్ణు
తెలుగు రంగస్థలం - వికీపీడియా - ప్రణయ్ రాజ్, రామారావు మరియు శేఖర్ బాబు.
తెలుగు ప్రముఖుల ప్రాజెక్టు సమీక్ష - రాజశేఖర్
వ్యాసరచన పోటీ సమీక్ష - పోటీలో విజేతలకు బహుమతుల ప్రదానం.
వికీసోర్సులో s:పోతన తెలుగు భాగవతము చేర్చే పని యొక్క ప్రస్తుత పరిస్థితి.
విక్షనరీలో నెలవారీ కార్యక్రమ ప్రణాలిక.

ఇంకా ఏమయినా విషయాలు దీని పైన చేర్చగలరు

సమావేశం నిర్వాహకులు

Rajasekhar1961 (చర్చ) 13:12, 17 ఆగష్టు 2013 (UTC)

పైన మీ పేరు చేర్చండి

సమావేశానికి ముందస్తు నమోదు

(నమోదు తప్పనిసరికాదు కాని నిర్వాహకులకు సహాయంగా మరియు ఇతరులకు ప్రోత్సాహంగా వుంటుంది. పైన మార్చు నొక్కి మీ పేరు చేర్చవచ్చు)

తప్పక

వాడుకరి:Maheshwar Reddy (చర్చ) 12:05, 22 జూలై 2013 (UTC)

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

Skype ద్వారా చర్చలో పాల్గొనదలచినవారు

విష్ణు (చర్చ) 14:33, 23 ఆగష్టు 2013 (UTC)

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

బహుశా

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

పాల్గొనటానికి కుదరని

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

స్పందనలు

<పై వరసలో స్పందించండి>

నివేదిక

స్కైప్ ద్వారా విష్ణుగారు పాల్గొని హాంక్‌కాంగ్ లో జరిగిన 2013 వికీమానియా విశేషాలు, వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధికోసం జరిగిన చర్చల గురించి తెలియజేశారు.

అనంతరం ఈ క్రింది అంశాల గురించి వివరించారు.

తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు గ్లోబల్ లెవల్ లో గుర్తింపులేదు. తెవికీలో ఉన్న ప్రాజెక్టులలోని కొన్ని వ్యాసాలను (పల్లెవాసుల జీవన విధానం మొ.) ఆంగ్లంలోనికి అనువదించి, ఆంగ్ల వికీపీడియాలో చేర్చడంద్వారా గ్లోబల్ లెవల్ లో గుర్తింపు తీసుకురావడం. వచ్చే వికీమానియాలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు ప్రముఖస్థానం వచ్చేలా కృషిచేయడం.
లీలావతి డాటర్స్ అనే పుస్తకంలోని 64 మంది మహిళా సైంటిస్టుల గురించి వ్యాసాలను రాయడం.
తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో చురుగ్గా పనిచేస్తున్న ఇంజనీర్స్ ను తెలుగు వికీపీడియా మెంటర్స్ గా తయారుచేయడం.
తెలుగు భాషాభివృద్ధికి తోడ్పడే ప్రాజెక్టులను ఎంపికచేసుకొని, ఆ ప్రాజెక్టుల నిర్వాహణకు గ్రాంట్ వచ్చేలా చూడడం.
తెవికీ నాణ్యతకు వికీపీడియా ఉపకరణాల ఉపయోగాలు. 1. ECHO (Notification Tool, రాసిన వ్యాసాల గురించిన సవరణలను చూపించే ఉపకరణం). 2. AFT (Article Feedback Tool, వీక్షకులు, పాఠకులు తమ అభిప్రాయాలను రాసే ఉపకరణం). 3. VISUAL EDITOR (వ్యాసాన్ని వ్యాసపు పేజీలోనే సవరించేందుకు ఉపకరణం).

వచ్చే నెలలో తెలుగు రంగస్థలంపై ప్రాజెక్టు నిర్వహించదలచామని రాజశేఖర్ గారు ప్రతిపాదించగా, రంగస్థలానికి చెందినవారిని వాడుకరులుగా చేర్పించి వారితో వ్యాసాలను రాయించాలనీ, అందుకోసం రంగస్థల అధ్యాపకులైన పెద్ది రామారావు గారి సహయం తీసుకుందామని విష్ణుగారు సూచించారు.
వ్యాసరచన పోటీ విజేతలకు బహుమతుల ప్రధానంకోసం, ఎంపికైనవారు వారివారి చిరునామాను పంపించవలసిందిగా వారి వాడుకరి/వ్యాసపు పేజీలో రాయడం.
వికీసోర్సులో s:పోతన తెలుగు భాగవతము చేర్చే పనిలో భాగంగా 4 స్కంధాలు పూర్తయ్యాయని, మిగతావి మరో వారం రోజుల్లో పూర్తి చేస్తానని రాజశేఖర్ గారు చెప్పారు.
రావూరి భరద్వాజ గారి గురించి, ఆయన రచనల గురించి తెవికీలో రాయడంపై బొగ్గుల శ్రీనివాస్ తో రాజశేఖర్ గారు చర్చించగా, తన వద్దవున్న సమగ్ర సమాచారాన్ని అందించగలనని శ్రీనివాస్ హమీ ఇచ్చారు.

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొన్నవారు

విష్ణు (Skype ద్వారా)
Rajasekhar1961
గుళ్లపల్లి నాగేశ్వరరావు
Pranayraj1985
బొగ్గుల శ్రీనివాస్

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/telugu-wiki-meet-up-hyderabad-august-2013

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur

Gorvachove Pothal — 2013-08-27T12:09:56Z

A training workshop for Odia Wikipedians was held in Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. The workshop was organized by Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal, with financial support from CIS-A2K programme. It was a part of the Access To Knowledge - Outreach Programs.

Hosted by Gorvachove at the Golden Jubilee Seminar Hall of VSSUT, the Odia Wikipedia Workshop was attended by more than 100 students and Professors of the university. He explained the many possibilities of using Wikipedia as an open knowledge and information platform. The members that attended the Workshop have received awareness about Wikimedia projects. An introduction was given to Odia Wikipedia with practical examples. (Using searching, editing, creating new articles). The wiki model was explained by Gorvachove upon questions/doubts from students. He explained how writing articles in Wikipedia can help students think critically, improve their writing skills, strengthen their research skills, etc.

On July 27, 2013, a hands-on session was conducted by Gorvachove. He helped various participants in creating usernames and writing one article about their “Village/Town” (part of the Edit-a-thon started on April 1, 2013) in Odia Wikipedia. The Workshop's objectives that have been achieved, namely:

Spread awareness about Wikimedia projects.
Importance of free knowledge sharing.
A group of enthusiastic students received technical orientation to conduct further workshops.

Important links:

Odia Wikipedia workshop page on Odia Wikipedia: http://or.wikipedia.org/s/gqw
Link to the pictures: http://bit.ly/13VNkzf

Media Coverage

Odia Wikipedia Workshop at VSSUT, Burla (Sambad, July 27, 2013)
ଓଡିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର କର୍ମଶାଳା ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହୋଇଯାଇଛି ବୀର ସୁରେନ୍ଦ୍ର ସାଏ ବୈଷୟିକ ବିଶ୍ୱବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟ, ବୁର୍ଲାରେ (Odishan.com, July 27, 2013)

Seen below are participants doing the Wiki editing at the workshop

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-sambalpur

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

subha — 2013-09-06T12:30:19Z

Rusita Paryekar is one of the 38 students from the MA Konkani department of Goa University gathered at the State Central Library to learn writing and editing articles on Konkani Wikipedia. Currently Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation and needs more voluntary participation from enthusiasts who want their language, Konkani to strengthen its base in the digital knowledge domain.


					Wikipedia editor Rusita Paryekar speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia.

Thirty-eight M.A. students from the Konkani department of Goa came together for a four day long Konkani Wikipedia editing fun workshop and created history. Konkani Wikipedia is one of the Wikipedia projects that went into incubation (a phase every new Wikipedia project goes to allow the editor community to grow and take the project to a sustainable position) seven years back. Sadly it is still in incubation. One of the major reasons is the conflict for script. Konkani is written in 5 different scripts; Devanagari in Goa (as the official script of Goa) and Maharashtra, Roman (also known as Romi) and written by Goan Christian population, Kannada in Mangalore region of Karnataka, and Malayalam in Kochi region of Kerala. The Konkani speaking diaspora is now very much part of the the socio-ethnic groups of these neighbouring regions. The language of these states has naturally influenced Konkani spoken and written by the Konkani diaspora which has resulted in multiple writing standards and dialects. There are four standards of writing systems:

Writing standard that is officially approved by the Directorate of Official language, Government of Goa written in Devanagari script. Majority of the books (includes all Government of Goa publications) are written in this standard.
Writing standard that was influenced by the Portugese language during the Portuguese rule. Earliest available writings in Konkani including The Holy Bible are written in this standards.
Writing standard that Mangalorean Konkani diaspora use.
Writing standard that Keralite Konkani diaspora use.

Interestingly Konkani diaspora of all these regions have produced books in the writing standards mentioned above. The Konkani Wikipedia incubation project currently has 133 articles written in 3 different scripts; Devanagari, Roman and Kannada which has been a problem to get the approval. But this has not stopped the language enthusiasts to stop contributing. While meeting these students I felt that urge for bringing up Konkani in a digital domain and telling the Konkani diaspora about the untold story of Goa. This is the motivation that drives Rusita and many others to contribute to Wikipedia. Her first contribution was about Goan folk songs (गोंयची लोकगितां) which is the first Konkani article about this topic on the internet that is available for free. ‘If I would not write about my culture in my language who would do that?, says Rusita.

Further reading
Manohar L. Sardessai. Influence on Konkani. Journal of South Asian Literature. Vol. 18, No. 1, Goan Literature: A Modern Reader (Winter, Spring 1983), pp. 155-158.

Copyright note: The video and the content of this post are in CC-BY-SA 3.0. Feel free to use, share and remix the content and attribute me.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/voices-from-goa-wikipedia-editor-rusita-paryekar

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

subha — 2013-09-05T09:24:57Z

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

				Video by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Video by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikipedia editors are always volunteers which translates to “Anyone and everyone can contribute to Wikipedia”. What is that brings people in today’s date to write articles on Wikipedia. This is a question we are not sure at times. You get up late in the night and check how many times your article has been edited and feel excited. This happens to many of the wikipedians including myself. It has been a personal journey to ask Wikipedians about the same. While conducting this workshop along with my colleague Nitika, I spent some time with the students asking about their experience of Wikipedia editing. We found that many of them were shy enough to sound low and we could not take the videos. This particular video features Frania Pereira, an MA student from Konkani department of Goa University. She attended the Wikipedia workshop we organized at the Central Library at Panaji for two days and edited articles on Bebinca (Konkani article here) and Colvá fama (Konkani article here), a local festival celebrated by the Colvá Catholics. Frania is worried how people stereotype Goa to be the just land of enjoyment and not look at the diverse culture, its ethnic food and festivals. Even the Konkani speaking population in other regions (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and abroad) don’t know much about this socio-language-cultural diversity. No other language than her mother-toungue Konkani could tell about these. And that is why she edits Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/voices-from-goa

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T06:30:54Z

Wikimania is the annual international conference of the Wikimedia movement. It's organized by a different local team each year. In 2013 the conference took place in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Wikimania allows the community and the general public to learn about and share their experiences with free knowledge initiatives all over the world. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Click to read the details published on the Wikimania website.

The previous conferences were held in Frankfurt, Germany (2005), Boston, USA (2006), Taipei, Taiwan (2007), Alexandria, Egypt (2008), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009), Gdańsk, Poland (2010), Haifa, Israel (2011), and Washington, D.C., USA (2012).

Picture: Wikimania 2013. Official site, CC-BY-SA 3.0

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikimania-2013

Wikipedia writes a new script

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:27:27Z

Wikipedia is available in over 30 Indian languages. Add Konkani to that list. The Centre for Internet and Society has just completed a programme of training students to write for Konkani Wikipedia.

The article was published in the Goan on August 24, 2013.

They sat listening to Subhashish Panigrahi, learning how to seamlessly flow from English to Konkani. Panigrahi walked around the room, 40 sets of eyes and ears followed him eagerly, latching on to his every word. Then the team moved into a small conference room at the new Central Library, where they sat down to work on a few articles in Konkani. The reason: Because Wikipedia has a new language – Konkani.

When on February 4, 1987, Konkani in Devnagri script was declared the official language of Goa according to the Goa Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987, little did the officials know that one day, one of the largest web-based encyclopaedias would want the encyclopaedia to be available also in Konkani for the 30, 00000 or so Konkani language speakers over the world.

Wikipedia, a multi-lingual, web-based, free content encyclopaedia is available in over 30 Indian languages and several languages of other nations. The project to begin a Konkani Wikipedia began in 2006. “Sadly, even after seven years of inception, Konkani Wikipedia has only 90 articles,” says Nitika Tandon, of the CIS-A2K (Centre for Internet & Society, Access to Knowledge) team. The CIS is a movement for open access to web-based information. “Rather than being open receivers of knowledge, we want people to be active producers of knowledge,” she adds. The CIS has selected five Indian languages to uplift and Konkani is one of them.

Carlos Fernandes, the Curator of the Central Library said, “We supported it because this will maintain the culture and develop the language using technology. Articles in Konkani language will be available to people all over the world and thus should one want to research something in Konkani, his search will not be limited to the books of the library.” Another project by the CIS team to make Konkani more well-known is digitising the 4-volume Konkani encyclopaedia published by the Goa University. “This encyclopaedia will be uploaded by this team and will be available under the creative commons licence,” says Dr Gopakumar, the university Librarian.

The programme covered aspects like how Wikipedia works, how to edit articles, how to type in Devnagri, how to create a new article, etc. “We are learning how to about editing and writing in Wikipedia. The 40 students are of MA part 2, and the group is divided into two. The first 20 will work on the first two days and the others will work on the last two,” says Fr Luis Xavier Gomes who is doing his MA in Konkani at Goa University. Fr Gomes will be writing on Konkani tiatr and Konkani cantar after having researched and referenced about the same.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/thegoan-joyce-dias-august-24-2013-wikipedia-writes-a-new-script

Workshop on e-Content Development

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T05:56:16Z

T. Vishnu Vardhan, A2K Programme Director at CIS will be teaching at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad from September 4 to 6, 2013.

Vishnu Vardhan will give guest lecture for the following:

Open Source to Open Knowledge
Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet
e-Content in Indian languages – History, Challenges and Opportunities
Wikipedia Users to Wikipedia Authors – Exploring Wikipedia as an OER Tool
e-Content, e-Student, e-Faculty – Reimagining classroom in the digital Age

Click to download the programme brochure

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/workshop-on-e-content-development

Konkani Wikipedia makes headway

praskrishna — 2013-09-17T06:07:54Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-08-23T16:00:46Z

The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) is holding a workshop on Wikipedia editing at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai on August 24, 10.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.

The morning session will be having a discussion and demonstration on Wikipedia (10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.), which will be followed by a practical session (2.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.).

As part of the run-up to the Indian Languages Mela (planned for September 20-21, 2013), CILHE will conduct a workshop for those who would like create new articles in any Indian Language Wikipedia. The workshop is organized in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) and the Wikipedia Hyderabad community. The objective of the workshop is to train students to edit Wikipedia. Participants are encouraged to work with Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu or any other language of their choice. Although the workshop is mainly intended for potential competitors for the Mela awards for Best New Article in an Indian Language Wikipedia, anyone interested in Wikipedia is welcome.

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 286 different languages - including 20+ Indian languages. Wikipedia articles are written by ordinary people who volunteer to share their knowledge with the world.

The CILHE is committed to producing material in Indian languages for higher education, and is partnering Wikipedia in drawing new editors to the Indian language Wikipedias so that they become an important knowledge resource.

What students gain from Wikipedia editing:

It improves writing skills. Wikipedia provides students 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 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

Participants are required to register at least by August 23, 2013. Send your names to Ritesh Khunyakari riteshpk@gmail.com.

Important Instructions

Each student attending the Wikipedia Training programme should register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by August 23, 2013. Please note that you will not be able to register more than 5 Usernames from a single IP address within 24 hours (a security feature of Wikipedia). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration
Once registered the students must furnish their details on the google doc. I have already entered my data just as sample. Please circulate this link to all the students at the earliest. This should be done by August 24, 2013 before the commencement of the Workshop https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AshSF7ZKRBR5dFBfM2lTaExINTZodVZ4ejd3VURzMEE&usp=sharing
All the students are expected to do editing on Wikipedia. We will choose Telugu Wikipedia (www.te.wikipedia) as a site to do some editing. Please be assured that we will also show how to use English and other language Wikipedias. For this workshop each student should come up with one article at least in an Indian language. This should be typed and be available in a soft copy form and could be carried in a thumb drive or any other storage media which should be easily accessible to them during the training programme.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/workshop-on-editing-wikipedia-in-mumbai

Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong

subha — 2013-09-13T06:03:03Z

The 7th, 8th and 9th of August 2013 saw over 600 Wikipedians across the world participating Wikimania at Hong Kong. The three day annual international conference for users and contributors of Wikipedia brought many debates about open educational research, open source technologies, gender gap, documenting the history of mankind in a free and open platform like Wikipedia and its sister sites in collaboration with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums and all of these in 286 world languages. More and more volunteers are joining this movement and it is expanding the media of accessing and disseminating knowledge.

Here is a school teacher who lives in Salem, a small industrial town in Tamil Nadu. There lives a school teacher who was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Hong Kong long back. They have never met in real life but have been helping in correcting each others mistakes in Wikipedia articles. These two school teachers have taken their knowledge from the four walls of the classrooms to a larger audience of Tamil Wikipedia. I then realized how language brings people together. This is what I heard from my inner voice when I met S.Parvathi from Salem and H.K.Arun from Sri Lanka during Hong Kong Wikimania 2013, an annual gathering of Wikipedia contributors.

Many still are not aware the existence of Wikipedias in Indian languages. There are 20 South Asian language Wikipedias with more than 2 lakh articles contributed totally by about 1500 voluntary contributors in all these languages. There are hundred more contributors like Arun and Parvathi who create new articles in Tamil Wikipedia, and rectify mistakes by new contributors.

Wikipedians are all volunteers who devote their time for building the greatest repository of knowledge on the internet. Wikipedia articles are free from any copyright infringement so anyone can freely access, share, make modifications and redistribute them. Wikipedians have been able to create this ecosystem of nurturing new editors by teaching them the process of encyclopaedic content generation which not only polishes their writing abilities, but strengthens their communication skills.

Wikimania is fun, it brings wikipedians across the globe speaking diverse languages under one roof where they meet each other and share their ideas and collaborate.

Over 600 wikipedians from various countries participated in this year’s Wikimania including 16 from India. In the open world of Wikipedia collaboration always happen beyond borders; one Nepali and four Bangla Wikipedians from Bangladesh also joined the Indian Wikipedians to rejoice the triumph of the effort of all the volunteers from the subcontinent.

The fun was not just limited in creating a wall of their dreams, ambitions and action plans to take their own language Wikipedia to more people or discuss how they could write articles that are important to each others languages. It went upto helping each other to fix problems in typing Indian languages and discussing success stories of successful workshops that resulted bring more student contributors. Ganesh Paudel, a Wikipedian from Nepal says, "My hometown is very close to India and we share the same script with Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit and Konkani. India and Nepal both have sizable population speaking Nepali, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Sanskrit, Bangla and Hindi. I’m personally interested to collaborate with Indians speaking these languages." I could see the glow in his eyes when he wrote and explained the beautiful curvature of Ranjana script to me. Tinu Cherian, another long term Wikipedian who was attending Wikimania for the third time was excitedly live-tweeting the happening at Hong Kong. When I asked how he is feeling after a short break he unfolded his hands and proudly said, "Wikipedia is like religion to me, once a Wikipedian, you are always a Wikipedian!". Netha, a medical college student from Kerala spoke about bringing more women to contribute to Wikipedia. She calls Kavya, a college lecturer and Malayalam wikipedian who spoke about Women and non-conventional education as one of the gems she has discovered in her personal journey.

Wikimania also has Sengai Podhuvan, one of the oldest Indian Wikipedians. His appeal for Wikipedia fundraising brought a lot of donations to Wikimedia Foundation. Dr. Podhuvan shared his story of learning using computer, Tamil typing and writing articles about Wikimania this year brought many academicians, education researchers, policy change makers and open source and open knowledge activists across the world to share their ideas, activities going across the world even while enjoying dinner in the 100th floor.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikimania2013

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet

pavanaja — 2013-09-05T06:46:39Z

On Sunday, August 11, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Shyam Computers, Krishnarajapet, Karnataka. The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet. This report summarizes the proceedings of that workshop and subsequent research into relevant questions flowing from the discussions.

The CIS-A2K team has been getting requests to conduct Kannada Wikipedia workshops from various parts of Karnataka. One such request came from ISRO technician Akash B., who is originally from Krishnarajapet, popularly known as K R Pet, in Mandya Dist of Karnataka. . Shyamesh of Shyam Computers sponsored the venue by lending his cyber centre. The workshop was scheduled for 10.00 a.m. and began a little late at 10.45 a.m.

About 20 participants came together to learn Wikipedia editing. The inauguration was followed by the hands-on workshop. We had some discussions with Akash about the IP address restrictions for registering new users. Usually only 6 persons can register on a day from one IP address. Fortunately, the cyber centre had a dynamic IP. After 6 registrations, we reset the modem so that the remaining participants could register. Akash helped some participants to register the previous day itself.

The participants were quite enthusiastic. We gave a presentation about Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia and then gave a demonstration about editing the Wikipedia. After that the participants tried their hands on editing Kannada Wikipedia. Some of the participants who attended the workshop are now editing the Kannada Wikipedia on a daily basis. We hope that they sustain their interest and enhance the quality of Kannada Wikipedia.


A group picture of the participants from the Krishnarajapet workshop. (Picture by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

A special thanks to Kannada Sahitya Parishat, K R Pet, Akash B and Shyam Computers.

Media Coverage

Prajavani, (August 12, 2013)
Suvarna Times of Karnataka (August 12, 2013)
Vijaya Vani (August 12, 2013)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/a-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-at-krishnarajapet

Centre for Internet and Society

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

Introduction

Highlights of the Workshop

Articles and Participants

Media Coverage

Learnings

Challenges

Acknowledgements

What's Next?

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

Event Reports

Guest Columns

Media Coverage

Blog Entries

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

Events Co-organised

Event Organised

Events Participated

Media Coverage

Other guest columns:

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

About CIS

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు

వివరాలు

చర్చించాల్సిన అంశాలు

సమావేశం నిర్వాహకులు

సమావేశానికి ముందస్తు నమోదు

నివేదిక

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొన్నవారు

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur

Important links:

Media Coverage

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference

Wikipedia writes a new script

Workshop on e-Content Development

Konkani Wikipedia makes headway

A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai

What students gain from Wikipedia editing:

Important Instructions

Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet

Media Coverage