Centre for Internet and Society

వంద రోజులు.. వంద వ్యాసాలు - తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో మోత్కూరు యువకుని రికార్డు (100 Days...100 Articles: Wikipedian from Motkur created record in Telugu Wikipedia)

pavan — 2016-12-18T15:09:54Z

Pranay Raj Vangari of Motkur Padmashali colony created record in Telugu Wikipedia. "100 Days- 100 Articles" is already going on in many languages worldwide and Pranay Raj took challenge in Telugu Wikipedia, completed it successfully. Pranay is theatre scholor. He started first article in this challenge on september 8 and continued to write articles on every day till December 16 to complete 100 articles. Pranay said that two other Telugu Wikipedians (Pavan and Meena) successfully completed the challenge and explained that he inspired from them to complete it. Telangana state language & cultural department director Mamidi Harikrishna felicitated Pranay in His chamber on this occasion and appreciated for his work.

Clipping of the article in Andhra Jyoti:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/100-days-100-articles-wikipedian-from-motkur-created-record-in-telugu-wikipedia

మిసిమి పత్రిక గ్రంథాలయంలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియన్ల కార్యక్రమం

pavan — 2018-08-22T15:11:03Z

తెలుగు నాట లలిత కళలపై రసజ్ఞత పెంపొందించేందుకు దశాబ్దాలుగా పనిచేస్తున్న పత్రికల్లో మిసిమి విశిష్టమైనది.

ప్రపంచ ప్రఖ్యాతి చెందిన కళాకారుల గురించి కావచ్చు, తెలుగునాట మరుగునపడ్డ చిత్రకారుని గురించి కావచ్చు - తెలుగులో లోటుగా ఉన్న ఆసక్తిదాయకమైన. విజ్ఞానదాయకమైన అంశాలపై మిసిమి వెలుగుపరచడం తెలిసిందే. అలాంటి మిసిమి పత్రిక తమ గ్రంథాలయంలో గత దశాబ్ది పాటు అంతర్జాలంలో తెలుగులో స్వేచ్ఛా విజ్ఞాన సృష్టి చేస్తున్న తెలుగు వికీపీడియా హైదరాబాద్ సమావేశానికి, వికీడేటా లేబుల్‌-అ-థాన్‌కి ఆతిథ్యమిచ్చారు. కార్యక్రమాన్ని తెలుగు వికీపీడియా, సీఐఎస్‌-ఎ2కెల తరఫు నుంచి పవన్‌ సంతోష్‌ నిర్వహించగా, మిసిమి వైపు నుంచి సంపాదక మండలి సభ్యుడు కాండ్రేగుల నాగేశ్వరరావు, ప్రధాన సంపాదకుడు వల్లభనేని అశ్వనీకుమార్ సమన్వయపరిచారు. నిర్వహించిన పవన్‌ సంతోష్‌తో పాటు తెలుగు వికీడియన్‌లు ప్రణయ్‌రాజ్‌, రహ్మానుద్దీన్, వీవెన్, అజయ్‌ పాల్గొన్నారు. మిసిమి సంపాదకులు వల్లభనేని అశ్వినీకుమార్, కాండ్రేగుల నాగేశ్వరరావు, మిసిమి రచయితల్లో ఒకరు, ప్రముఖ తెలుగు అనువాదకులు ముక్తవరం పార్థసారధి ఈ సమావేశంలో పాలుపంచుకున్నారు.

మాట్లాడుతున్న పవన్ సంతోష్, చిత్రంలో వీవెన్, వల్లభనేని అశ్వినీకుమార్, అజయ్ బండి, ముక్తవరం పార్ధసారధిలను చూడవచ్చు.

భారత స్వాతంత్ర్య దినోత్సవానికి సంబంధించిన వికీడేటా లేబుల్‌-అ-థాన్‌లో (మారథాన్, ఎడిటథాన్‌లా లేబుల్స్ చేర్చుకుంటూ వెళ్ళడం లేబులథాన్) భాగంగా ఉదయం 10.30 నుంచి సాయంత్రం 5.30 వరకు పాల్గొన్న వికీపీడియన్లు ఐటంలకు లేబుల్స్ చేర్చారు. లేబులథాన్ థీమ్ ప్రకారం - పలు భాషల కేంద్ర సాహిత్య అకాడమీ పురస్కార గ్రహీతలు, భారత స్వాతంత్ర్యోద్యమం గురించి సంఘటనలు, పరిణామాలు, వ్యక్తులు, సంస్థలు, వగైరా ఐటంలకు తెలుగులో లేబుళ్ళు, వివరణలు చేర్చారు. స్వేచ్ఛగా ఉపయోగించుకుని, అభివృద్ధి చేయగల జ్ఞాన గని. వికీపీడియా వాక్యాలు మనుషులు చదవడానికి తేలికైతే వికీడేటా కంప్యూటర్లు చకచకా విశ్లేషించగల స్ట్రక్చర్డ్ డేటా ప్రాజెక్టు. దీనిలో ఒక్కో అంశానికి తెలుగులో పేరును, వివరణను చేరుస్తూ పోవడం అన్నది భావి తెలుగు భాషాభివృద్ధికి ఉపయోగకరం. సాయంత్రం అయ్యేసరికి 280 పైచిలుకు ఐటంలలో వీవెన్, ప్రణయ్, అజయ్, పవన్ సంతోష్‌లు తెలుగు లేబుల్, వివరణలు అభివృద్ధి చేశారు.

వికీడేటా లేబులథాన్లో నిమగ్నమైన సభ్యులు

కార్యక్రమంలో భాగంగా వికీపీడియన్లతో వల్లభనేని అశ్వినీ కుమార్, ముక్తవరం పార్థసారధి పలు అంశాలు చర్చించారు. పవన్ సంతోష్‌ ఈ సందర్భంగా వికీపీడియా నిర్మాణం వెనుక మూలస్తంభాలు, వాటి అమలు, తెలుగు వికీపీడియా స్థితిగతులు వగైరా వివరించారు. ప్రారంభంలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో నెలనెలా ఇరవై నుంచి ముప్పై మిలియన్ల వరకూ పేజీ వ్యూలు ఉంటున్నాయని పవన్, రహ్మాన్ వివరించారు. ప్రధానంగా మొబైల్‌ వేదికగా చదువుతున్న తెలుగువారు తెలుగులోనే సమాచారాన్ని ఆశిస్తున్నారని వివరించారు. (ఇతర బాధ్యతల కారణంగా ఆపైన సమావేశం నుంచి రహ్మాన్ నిష్క్రమించారు) తెలుగు రచయితలు ఎక్కువమంది వివరాలు తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో దొరకాలని, అందుకు అవసరమైతే డేటా స్థాయిలో తాము సహకరించగలమని వల్లభనేని అశ్వినీకుమార్ పేర్కొనగా తెలుగు వికీపీడియా విషయ ప్రాధాన్యత పరిధిలోని వారికి తెవికీలో వ్యాసాలు సృష్టించడం, మిగిలిన అందరి వివరాలను వేరే వేదికలో సమాచారం అందుబాటులోకి తేవడం చేయవచ్చని వీవెన్ సమాధానమిచ్చారు. ముక్తవరం పార్థసారధి ఉదాహరణ కోసం రచయిత త్రిపుర వ్యాసాన్ని తెరిచి అందులోని సమాచారాన్ని పరిశీలించి ప్రారంభ స్థాయిలో ఉన్నా ఇలా ఎందరో రచయితలు, ఇతర అంశాల గురించి విజ్ఞానాన్ని అందించడం చాలా కీలకమని పేర్కొన్నారు. పార్థసారధి మాట్లాడుతూ ఏ విషయంలోనైనా అత్యున్నత నాణ్యత కోసం అంటూ అసలు పనిచేయకపోవడం కన్నా సాధ్యమైనంత ఉత్తమ నాణ్యతతో పని జరుగుతూండడం మంచిదని తన దృక్పథాన్ని వెల్లడించారు. పవన్ సంతోష్‌ ఒక మంచి వ్యాసాన్ని చూపించి, ఈ స్థాయికి నాణ్యత అభివృద్ధి చేయాలన్న లక్ష్యంతో పనిచేస్తున్న వికీపీడియన్లూ ఉన్నారని తెలిపారు. పవన్ సంతోష్‌ మాట్లాడుతూ మిసిమి వారు నాణ్యమైన వనరులు రూపొందించినవైన చిత్రకళ, సాహిత్యం, సంగీతం, నాట్యం అన్న నాలుగు అంశాలు తీసుకుని, ఈ రంగాల్లో తెలుగువారి గురించి తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో నాణ్యమైన సమాచారం రూపొందించేందుకు ప్రామాణిక మూలాలను జాబితా వేయడం అందరికీ ఉపయుక్తమని సూచించారు. చర్చల్లో భాగంగా తెలుగు వికీపీడియా గురించి, తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో అసలు రాయవచ్చన్న సంగతినీ విస్తృతమైన తెలుగు సముదాయానికి ఎలాగోలా తెలియజేయడం వల్ల వాలంటీర్ల సమస్య తీరుతుందని అభిప్రాయాలు వెల్లడయ్యాయి. ప్రణయ్‌రాజ్ వికీపీడియాలో రాయడం వల్ల ఆత్మతృప్తి, నైపుణ్యం లభిస్తుందని అయితే ఇతర మాధ్యమాల్లా వెనువెంటనే పేరు ప్రఖ్యాతులు రావడం సాధ్యం కాదని, అయినా సిద్ధపడి సేవచేస్తున్న వికీపీడియా సముదాయ సభ్యుల సమున్నత వ్యక్తిత్వం కొనియాడారు. అందరికీ తెలుగులో విజ్ఞానం అన్న తెలుగు వికీపీడియా ఉద్దేశాన్ని ప్రతిధ్వనిస్తూ తమ గ్రంథాలయాన్ని వేదికగా ఇచ్చి, చర్చలో పాల్గొన్నందుకు నిర్వాహకుడు పవన్ సంతోష్‌, వికీపీడియా సభ్యులు కృతజ్ఞతలు తెలిపారు. మిసిమి తరఫున విచ్చేసిన సభ్యులు ప్రతిగా ఒకేలాంటి లక్ష్యాలు ఉన్నందున తెలుగు వికీపీడియన్లు చేసే కృషి పట్ల తమకున్న ఉన్నత భావాన్ని వెల్లడించారు.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/c2ec3fc38c3fc2ec3f-c2ac24c4dc30c3fc15-c17c4dc30c02c25c3ec32c2fc02c32c4b-c24c46c32c41c17c41-c35c3fc15c40c2ac40c21c3fc2fc28c4dc32-c15c3ec30c4dc2fc15c4dc30c2ec02

Bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:35:29Z

On December 14, 2012, a meeting was scheduled with the Vice Chancellor Dr. Satish R Shetye to discuss the possibility of bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in public domain. Nitika Tandon shares the development in this blog post.

As for now the four volume Konkani Encyclopedia is under the copyright of the University of Goa. Dr. Shetye has gifted one whole set of Konkani Encyclopedia to the Centre for Internet and Society and is interested to relinquish the copyright to release it under creative common license and digitize it on Wikipedia. In the coming weeks we'll be working closely with Dr. Shetye and his team to bring this free encyclopedia on Wikipedia.

A Special thanks to Goa State Library, Goa University, Dr. Shetye, Prof. Alito Siqueira, and Prof. Gopakumar for such a wonderful gift. And a big thanks to Harriet Vidyasagar and Debanjan and all those who helped to pull this through.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain

Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!

subha — 2012-11-10T08:30:09Z

A2K team members Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval participated in the "WikiWomenDay" organized by Wikipedia Club Pune at PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus on October 28, 2012. Subhashish unfolds the happenings of this full day free fun workshop.

Globally participation of women on Wikipedia is less than 10 per cent. Women wikipedians across the world have joined hands to boost women's contribution to Wikipedia. Recently the A2K team was in Pune for the WikiWomenDay 2012. Wikipedia Club Pune, the first Wikipedia club in India, to encourage women's participation on Wikipedia, had organized a full day fun event on October 28, 2012 at PAI International Learning Solutions.

Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of Wikipedia Club Pune briefed about the agenda of the event. Noopur spoke about the global contribution on Wikipedia in terms of various topics and how male-centered topics were well covered. Few of the male centric articles were taken up for comparison with those of women to make the audience understand the gap of contribution. A good majority of articles which were of interest to men were well written whereas women centric articles were of bad shape due to lack of contribution from women. A visual representation was shown to the participants to explain the statistical information about gender gap on Wikipedia. Apart from article contribution, male editors were found to be more social and discussed more on talk pages which also bring more male editors on Wikipedia.

Participants were introduced to the basics of Wikipedia editing (five pillars, notability, importance of source of references, vandalism) before they were explained about actual editing. Each of the participants were provided with a computer and one of them was invited to create her user account.

Thereafter Abhishek demonstrated searching an article on Wikipedia and how logging in to Wikipedia allows editors to edit articles which are protected from editing by anyone. One of the logged in editors was asked to make a small edit on an article which surprised many of the participants. They realized that even they can make changes to the articles, for the first time in their life. Then there was a buzz about the credibility of the articles as they all saw that anyone can edit the articles. So the Wikipedia article on Pune was vandalized and Pune was made the capital of India for a few minutes! The page was refreshed after a while and reverted. This was clear enough to demonstrate how active the editor community is on Wikipedia.

Abhishek Suryavanshi demonstrates wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012

Most of the errors and typos get corrected quickly as someone or the other notices that there is a mistake and correct it. However, there are many articles, especially articles of Indian context which still have wrong information because the number of Indian editors are less. A series of editing for various favourite articles chosen by new wikipedians opened up the window for them to understand how important their participation could be. Abhishek, Nikita, Noopur and Subhashish helped the editors with editing.

After engaging the editors for quite sometime with editing there was a fun quiz session to brush up what was taught. The participants were asked questions based on the previous session.

Winners of the quiz were awarded with Wikipedia stickers and badges.

A picture of participants learning wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012 in Pune

Some of the participants left after the lunch break. Those who came back then gathered for a Indian language Wikipedia session. Out of the whole audience there were Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Odia speakers. They all were showed their respective language wikipedias. A demonstration was given to show the typing tool. As the editors were completely new to the Indian language typing, some of them started typing using default Narayam transliteration tool and some took the help of Microsoft ILIT and Google Transliterate as well. During this session new wikipedians edited many articles on Marathi, Hindi and Bengali Wikiepdia. After the whole day session there was still some time left for acclaim and fun. The participants were awarded with participation and contribution certificate by the Wikipedia Club Pune. All the new wikipedians registered on Wikipedia Club Pune.

There was a special announcement for Wikipedia Summit India, Anniversary Celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune. Club members celebrated with cutting a special Wikipedia cake. Rishi Aacharya and Ketaki Pole from PAI International Learning Solutions extended their support for this event.

Meeting with Wikipedia Club Pune members

There was a meeting with some of the Wikipedia Club Pune members on October 27, 2012 at PAI International Learning Solutions. It was attended by Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of the club brought a proposal about the Wikipedia India Summit, anniversary celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune which is planned in the first quarter of 2013. Importance of a India level summit, plans and agenda, logistics and partnership and sponsorship options were discussed during this meeting. There will be public announcement regarding this summit.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune

Books at a Click

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:52:06Z

The OdiaWikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to make rare science books available online for readers, students & science educators.

The article by Diana Sahu was published in the New Indian Express on January 9, 2016.

Readers can now access rare science books in Odia language at Odia Wikisource, an online library of popular books in the language. The Odia Wikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to make these books available online for readers, students and science educators. This apart, books of Sahitya Akademi award winning writer Jagannath Prasad Das have been added to the library. Srujanika's co-founder Puspashree Pattnaik recently provided 700 popular science books that were published by the organisation to the Wikimedia community for digitisation. “These books were appreciated by many and even in demand after going out of print. Hence, we thought if these can be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population. Wikipedia contributors can use these as resources and enhance science content in Odia Wikipedia as well", says Puspashree, a former teacher. She along with her husband Nikhil Pattnaik, a former scientist with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, had published several science books as part of their project to popularise the subject among children. With support from Vigyan Prasar in New Delhi, the couple had also documented rare works of science published in books, magazines, periodicals and newspapers from 1850 to 1950 in electronic format, a few years back. Around science 765 articles written over a century have been put on CDs and DVDs according to the names of authors and year of publication. The science books have been digitised by volunteers of the Odia Wikimedia community and the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit working for supporting Indian language Wikipedia projects and the communities.

Pushpashree Pattnaik

Similarly, the Wikimedia community has re-licensed 30 books of Das under a free license CC-by-SA 4.0. His books can now be accessed at https://orwikisource.org and anyone can use them for academic or research work. “My tryst with internet started very late. I was introduced to digital books through Srujanika's online version of Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha - comprising 9,500 pages in seven volumes- which was impossible to handle on the writing table. That made me think how convenient it would be to have Odia books avail. able on the internet. As a beginning. I decided to put my own writings on the internet", said Das. Prior to Das, eminent writers and litterateurs Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Manoj Panda, Subrat Prusty, Bharat Majhi and organisations like 'Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa' and Aama Odisha' had come forward to make their books available online for free using Odia Wikisource as a platform. At present, Odia Wikisource has 280 Odia books and all are either under Public Domain or Creative Commons Share Alike licences. A team of 10 active contributors, known as "Uikiali' in Odia, are digitising books of various genres ranging from science writing, fiction to 0dia classics. “Apart from the science writ. ings, we are also working on digitising the biography of Nandini Satpathy which has been published by Ashisa Ranjan Mohapatra of Srimati Nandini Satpathy Memorial Trust,” says Mrutyunjaya Kar, administrator of Odia Wikisource and Odia Wikipedia who has been contributing to the Wikimedia projects in Odia, Hindi, Sanskrit and English for the last four years. Odia Wikisource is a sister project of Odia Wikipedia.

These books were appreciated by many and going out of print. If these can be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population.
Pushpashree Pattnaik

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-january-9-2016-diana-sahu-books-at-a-click

Books are a bridge between generations

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T09:27:05Z

Kannada litterateurs stressed on the importance of books and cultivating the habit of reading on the occasion of ‘World Book Day’ on Wednesday.

The article was published in the Deccan Herald on April 23, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was a speaker on the occasion.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, writer Narahalli Balasubramanya said “We should ensure children emulate great minds if we want them to be responsible citizens. This is possible only if we make them read good books.

Today, we are increasingly finding ourselves in the company of corrupt people. It is through books that we can interact with great literary figures such as Bendre and Kuvempu.”

The event was jointly organised by Karnataka Publishers Association, Kendra Sahitya Akademi, Karnataka Lekhakiyara Sangha and Indian Institute of World Culture.

Balasubramanya maintained that the Kendra Sahitya Academy sold books at affordable rates and also gave a funding of Rs 400 crore to the book publishers, annually. “But not many people are aware of books entering market and the works don’t reach people,” he added.

A series of Kannada works written by authors were released on the occasion. Writer Dr Siddalingaiah who released the books said “Books are bridges between our minds and our ancestors’ minds. Every home should have a small library.”

‘Pustaka Bhagya’

“The State government has introduced Anna Bhagya, Ksheera Bhagya and other schemes. Similarly, they should also implement Pustaka Bhagya,” said M V Nagaraj Rao of Shrungara Prakashana.

Technical writer in Kannada U B Pavanaja maintained that in Kannada Wikipedia there was dearth of information on Kannada literary works. “There is enough information about English works but not on Kannada novels and literary publications. The Kannada publishers should strive to feed information and synopsis of each work into the Kannada wikipedia,” he added.

Public Library Department celebrated the occasion by holding a book exhibition and essay competition for children at City Central Library premises on Wednesday.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-april-23-2014-books-are-a-bridge-between-generations

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons

subha — 2014-05-28T06:29:57Z

This blog post is cross-posted from Opensource.com. It was published on May 2, 2014.

Image by opensource.com

I began working with the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2012 for program and community support in India. With the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program, we focus on open access for scholarly publications to help communities enrich Wikipedia entries for Indic languages.

While I was negotiating with a few authors to relicense their copyrighted books to a Creative Commons license (a license that allows anyone to reuse, modify and use content), I began identifying certain areas of motivation for an author to donate their work as free content.

We worked closely with Goa University, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa Trust, and the Institute of Odia Studies and Research.

Increasing open access for publications gained a lot when the government of India launched the National Repository of Open Educational Resources in August 2013 by the request of Wikimedia India. It generally takes a long time and much effort to negotiate with copyright holders for relicensing material as Creative Commons. But, when we do negotiate it, and win, the content is a permanent and valuable addition to open knowledge and the movement.

So far, authors might be avoiding open licensing because:

They think it might put them out of business because others could plagiarize and republish their work without attribution.
They think if they will lose ownership of the content due to the nature of open licenses, which allow reuse.

Open licensing should be important to authors because as more readers and reviewers get access to their books and other online content, the visibility of their work increases, allowing them to gain more respect and popularity. This can, in turn, help authors sell more of the reprints.

The "one book in every child's hand" campaign by Pratham Books was an initiative by a large publisher to license Indian langage books with a CC BY-SA license. The campaign's mission was to provide access to knowledge and good quality education of native Indian languages to students whose families cannot bear educational costs. Pratham Books gained a lot of attention globally and the campaign proved to be a sustainable model for publishers and free licenses.

Scholarly research publications are less prone to plagiarism because of their low retail value compared to mainstream fiction, self-help books, or travel and lifestyle books. Encyclopedic books have even less retail value. Thus, releasing content online under free licenses would not affect such scholarly works or encyclopedic print publications to a large extent.

Photo by Veethika Mishra, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Relicensing projects

Last year, Goa University applied a CC BY-SA 3.0 license to their four-volume encyclopedia, Konkani Vishwakosh. It is the largest encyclopedia compiled in the language. The book is being digitized on Konkani WikiSource, attracting new volunteers.
Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa relicensed eleven of the noted author Dr. Jagannath Mohanty's Odia books under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Classical Odia is a 600+ page book of historical documents and manuscripts on Odia language and literary heritage of more than 2,500 years. The researchers Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty moved from copyright to a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Two Odia language books by linguist Subrat Prusty have been relicensed to CC BY-SA 3.0. They are Jati, Jagruti O Pragati, and Bhasa O Jatiyata and have been digitized as well using ISCII standard fonts (not Unicode). ISCII standard fonts have glyphs with Indic characters that are actually replacements of the Latin characters by Indic characters.
A recent addition is the relicensing of the Kannada language encyclopedia published and copyrighted by Mysore University to a Creative Commons license.

The community and the publishers of books gain mutual benefits when more Indic language books are digitized, put online, and made freely available. By expanding online content and readership, a new life is given to many South Asian and non-Latin works, creating a revival for these languages and cultures.

Read the original post here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-education-may-2-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-books-and-more-are-relicensed-to-creative-commons

Bodh: a new tool for Wikidata lexicographical data

Bodhisattwa Mandal — 2021-06-28T01:19:11Z

We are happy to announce that a new tool, named Bodh, has been developed by Jay Prakash, as a CIS-A2K assignment, to add or modify statements for lexemes, senses and forms.

This tool presents lexicographical data in tabular format generated from SPARQL queries or from manual lists. Users can switch whether to work on lexeme proper, sense or form and add or modify statements there.

The idea of this tool was inspired by the one and only Magnus Manske's Tabernacle which helps editors to add or modify statements, labels, descriptions and aliases for Wikidata's entity data.

The tool is going to be documented here. Users of this tool can request for more features or report for bugs using this phabricator project profile.

Happy editing!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bodh-a-new-tool-for-wikidata-lexicographical-data

BHASHA - Indian Languages Digital Festival

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:14:37Z

Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk at the Bhasha- India Languages Digital Festival a conference organized by news media YourStory, at New Delhi on March 11, 2016. In the panel "The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles" Panigrahi spoke about some of the challenges in growing the Indian-language Wikipedia projects and the communities.

The notes for the talk are below:

Wikipedia, that exists in many Indian languages are not known to masses. I personally did not know about the Odia Wikipedia until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, more contributors joined and the project grew up to what it is today. The site now has over 300,000 visitors every month and it is the largest visited site in Odia language on the Internet. This could probably be the same case for your language.

It has been quite challenging in the past to grow the Indian-language Wikipedia projects. There are many challenges and I would talk about eight of them:

1. Language communities

The language communities of many of the Indian languages are such that many of them even do no know how to search any information online in their language typed in their script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script means that their language does not exist on the Internet. There exist a large gap of ignorance.

2. Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia, as you all know, is written by people like you and me. And from writing to editing everything happens voluntarily. As many people do not probably know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracy that exist in many Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.

3. Language input

There is a vast majority of people in this country that do not know how to type in their own language.

4. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

There are two stages to the lack of Open Access to information. First, lack of native language content on the Internet bars many to access knowledge. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, my state, the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in Odia-language. Our languages are neglected largely in our own states.

5. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional have still been using non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages about 25 years now.^[1] But many of our traditional media has failed to adopt this. Malayala Manorama, one of the most circulated dailies in Malayalam languages and one of the oldest Indian newspaper still has not started using Unicode on their website. Same is the case for many other newspapers in India.

6. Lack of Open Access

The information produced on the Internet in general and by the government, in particular, are mostly copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stop people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of its content. The idea of opening up information for masses in a free license could make the information reach to millions of people.

7. Mobile input

With over 1 billion people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow meaning lot many Indians will have access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be victims of the English-centric Internet rather than being able to enjoy the virtue of the same. Many Indians that have smartphones need pre-built input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

8. People with disabilities

Many cannot read, speak and write. India has over 60 million people with hearing impairment.^[2] There is a need for good quality text to and speech to text engine for these languages. Also, these software products have to be free software so common people, that cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS, can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is way hard for common speakers to use them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival

Bharat Majhi Writings Now Available Under a Creative Commons License

subha — 2014-11-07T15:34:38Z

Before the advent of Odia Wikisource becoming live, Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) got in touch with notable Odia author Bharat Majhi for bringing his writings on the Internet.

Dr. Sailen Routray, Director, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) (also an institutional partner of CIS-A2K) played a key role in initiating a dialog with Mr. Majhi. Five of his books are now available under Creative Commons Share Alike 4.0 (CC-by-SA 4.0) license:

Agadhu Duari
Saralarekhaa
Murtikaara
Mahanagara Padya
Highwayre Kuhudi

Bharat Majhi is a known name in Odia literary circle. His writings on societal structures in rural Odisha, the people, their life, aspiration and suffering have been critically acclaimed. These books also become the first Odia modern poetry books to be available under a CC-by-SA license and Mr. Majhi takes another leap of being the first Odia poet to release his literary work under CC-by-SA 4.0 license.

Video

In this video, Odia-language poet Bharat Majhi reciting a poem from his first book Agadhu Duari. He recently released 5 of his books under CC-by-SA 4.0 license by the efforts of Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS).He also tells Subhashish Panigrahi about his dreams of poetry becoming a performing art coming true by it becoming more open. After other Odia author and poet Dr Jagannath Mohanty, Majhi is the first Odia poet to release poem online under CC-by-SA license and his poetry earn the title of the first Odia modern poetry under the same license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bharat-majhi-writings-now-available-under-cc-license

Beyond Editor Count: Assessing Quality on Wikipedia

teju — 2016-06-12T16:00:13Z

Since Wikipedia is considered as the go-to source for different kinds of knowledge by anyone starting off in a particular field of study, and since Indian languages (IL) are often the default languages of the classroom in India, strengthening the quality of the material available on IL Wikipedias is certain to have widespread tangible and intangible impact.

While there is a need to improve the editor count on IL Wikipedias, it cannot substitute for efforts aimed at enhancing the quality of Wikipedia contributions. Here is an account of an initiative geared towards enriching the IL digital domain and in particular Wikipedia through partnerships with universities.

In collaboration with CIS-A2K, the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE) at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, has been conducting workshops with post graduate and undergraduate students in humanities and social sciences on developing digital open knowledge resources using IL Wikipedias.

These workshops, which are conducted by a resource person from CILHE and anchored by faculty members in partner institutions, are aimed at (a) integrating open knowledge resources into classroom teaching, (b) involving students in developing content relevant to their research interests, and (c) developing the skills to produce well-referenced academic writing.

Besides Wikipedia editing, the workshop process involves exercises that allow students to engage closely with major social science concepts and their meanings. The workshops also include collaborative digital annotation exercises.

This effort is the only one of its kind in the country where both students and teachers participate in creating open knowledge resources that are of use to them and the larger academic and non-academic audience.

Achievements thus far

Workshops are conducted bilingually, across several geographies, with English being the common factor. The Indian languages in question are Marathi, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla and Kannada.

Here is a brief account of two such partnerships. The first is with Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre (KSPWSC) at Pune University, Pune, and the second with the Departments of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) in Hyderabad.

At KSPWSC, around 20 researchers since 2015 have collaboratively annotated 100 key women’s studies texts in Marathi and have written articles on these texts on the Marathi Wikipedia. This is the first part of a larger project called Sau Dhuni Teen (100 x 3), which aims to also cover 100 notable persons and 100 key concepts in women’s studies in addition to the 100 key texts.

This has been a year-long process involving, prior to the workshop,

(a) selection of 100 key texts through a survey of existing women’s studies curricula across the state of Maharashtra in the universities of all 6 major areas of the state;

(b) close reading and analysis of the texts led by faculty.

During the workshop, students learn how to

(a) annotate digitally and for an encyclopedia; how to create concept clusters and clouds of annotation;

(b) overcome translation challenges (English into Marathi, and Marathi into English) through the cultivation of linguistic attentiveness and sensitivity to the cultural contexts involved; and through the use of online and offline dictionaries and other writings on the subjects covered in the 100 key texts. The exposure to the existing literature helps students absorb the necessary vocabulary which is already in use and familiar to readers.

At EFLU, Hyderabad, 25 students speaking a number of Indian languages -Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi - have come together to create articles of relevance to social sciences and humanities teaching and learning. The entries include: the concept of the public sphere, movements for political autonomy, leading Indian scholars, and major contemporary academic and literary works.

Ensuring success and sustainability: Key Factors

Consistent faculty participation coupled with regular meet-ups to develop existing articles and create new ones ensures the success and sustainability of these workshops. Prior to the workshops, the faculty members engage intensively with students in identifying concepts or texts about which writing in Indian languages is limited or inadequate.

Finding a thematic focus has been crucial for retaining interest and participation of the students in different locations, for example - women’s studies in Pune University, rural development at TISS Tuljapur, literary and cultural studies at EFLU.

Measurable outputs for student assessment are important for those faculty seeking to make Wikipedia editing part of internal assessment. These outputs include articles written, information added, references used, and links made, which can be easily computed from the View History pages.

Understanding Quality Enhancement

Participatory knowledge production: The Indian language articles on notable academicians, theorists, phenomena, events, and places written as part of the workshop are accessed, used, and further developed by students as well as Wikipedians other than the original authors.

Changing the pedagogic culture through open access resources: The articles become a strong pedagogic resource in Indian languages which is publicly accessible, generated by users themselves, used to supplement classroom teaching, and open to editing and revision.

Context sensitivity: The success of these workshops may also be assessed in terms of the variety of concept descriptions generated, the relevance of articles to context, and the integration of local experience onto digital knowledge platforms.

In addition to Wikipedia’s criteria for a good article, which include clarity, coherence, focussed development of the article, comprehensive references, use of inter-links and hyperlinks, the Indian language resources developed through our initiative have the significant additional feature of being contextually and culturally sensitive. We believe this is a crucial criterion for Wikipedia to be able to take root in the Indian knowledge domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/beyond-editor-count-assessing-quality-on-wikipedia

Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!

Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-11-04T14:03:49Z

Kannada Wikipedia is one of those Indic language wikipedias which has seen many readers coming up every month. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the experiences of some of the very active Kannada wikipedians from the recent Kannada Wikipedia meetup held in Bengaluru on October 7, 2012.

Seven Kannada wikipedians (a couple of them also contribute to Sanskrit Wikipedia) participated in this event. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi from the Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet & Society and Jessie Wild from the Wikimedia Foundation also participated in the event.

After a brief introduction about the theme of the meetup, Omshivaprakash, one of the active contributors for community building who also solves technical issues besides contributing articles explained the history and happenings of Kannada Wikipedia said “the only reason all of us joined together to contribute for Kannada Wikipedia is because we love our mother language, Kannada.” He explained how he reached out to a renowned Kannada writer asking him to document his own writings and books to become active on Kannada Wikipedia and start contributing. In the recent past Kannada community has organized many outreach events. The presentation for each outreach has been translated and customized for effective presentation. In the past they struggled for the six username creation barrier. Om also spoke about the scope of government partnership for including Kannada Wikipedia in the school syllabus (which worked out really well in Kerala) for which he is willing to meet the government officials. Additionally, he also shared the idea of recording an outreach session and presenting it to the government.

Another active wikipedian, Tejas emphasized the importance of having Kannada Wikipedia as part of the syllabus where lecturers and teachers will be learning to teach about Wikipedia in the classroom. As this will be mandatory, both students and teachers will take it seriously and it would be a sustainable practice. To show the results about 4-5 schools could be shortlisted for a pilot program. Tejas also proposed the idea of including Kannada typing in schools because that is something most people are not taught.

The above picture shows some participants working on their laptops during the meetup.

The wikipedians further discussed about Kannada Wiktionary and how collaborations will work to bridge the gap of wikipedians who contribute separately for Kannada Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Frequently Used Entries for Localization (FUEL) is a great project for creating content on Wiktionary, which will involve bringing new people to the community. In Bengaluru, CIS and Sanchaya co-hosted a two-day workshop for discussion regarding the same. Involving more wikimedians for such workshops would be helpful for both the projects, Wikipedia and Wiktionary. “I was always keen to do something for Kannada language on the web, being a software professional nothing leaves me a better chance to work for such a project like Wikipedia in my own language,” expresses Pavithra, another active Kannada Wikipedian who has supported many outreach events and translation projects.

Wikipedians, those who were a few weeks older, spoke about the problems they are facing when searching databases. Even the experienced wikipedians face the same problem. Options, such as having a central place, like a list of templates with little description and templates which could be standardized so that anyone could contribute to the translation and other things which need contribution, were discussed.

Tejas, a long-term Kannada Wikipedian discussed about the non-standard nature of the South Asian language wiktionaries. If Wiktionary could be standardized it could be easier to ask other communities to collaborate and contribute in their respective languages.

Discussion on Sanskrit Wiki projects:
Abhiram, another wikipedian who initially began with editing Sanskrit WikiSource and then started contributing to Kannada Wikipedia explained the hurdles they faced while spreading the word about Sanskrit WikiSource in Karnataka. Being closely associated to Samskrita Bharati and contributing largely to the Kannada WikiSource project, Abhiram feels not many people can write in Sanskrit though they can speak because of their fluency in the Devanagari script. People who study Sanskrit lose their grip of it after they pass 10^th or 12^th grades. “As Sanskrit is rarely found as a spoken language a lot of ground work and motivation for the contributors are needed to cultivate a community. We could plan for 10 spoken Sanskrit sessions in a month to kick-start before we teach how to edit Sanskrit Wikipedia”, Abhiram added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia

Bargarh Manuscript Digitisation Project

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-16T20:08:04Z

The digitisation of temple manuscripts at the Dadhivamana Temple, Bargarh in Western Odisha followed by a workshop for the students of Imperial College took place between 11- 12 February, 2017.

Shri Dadhivamana Temple, also known as the Srikshetra(Puri) of Western Odisha is a 400-year-old temple in Bargarh, Odisha. The temple is among the most important religious sites in Western Odisha. The temple has a record room with 250 ancient palm leaf manuscripts in the Odia language, dating back to the 16th century. These palm leaf manuscripts tell the stories of the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Skanda Purana and the history of the temple itself.

Given the historical value of the temple, the temple administration and the Temple Trust have preserved the pothi(palm leaf manuscripts) with the help of various chemicals, including the indigenous usage of turmeric and camphor. The process of preservation of the manuscripts began a few years ago years with student volunteers from different colleges in Bhatli helping the temple administration by identifying and storing the manuscripts.

Minati Sahoo, a well known social activist in Bargarh and a few other journalists explained the importance of manuscript digitisation to the temple administration and took permission for digitising the manuscripts in the month of March. One of the pandas (temple priests), Pandit Shri Goura Chandra Ratha, released his book, Jay Shree Dadhibamana, under the Creative Commons 4.0 license. A three-day long digitisation camp will be organised in Bhatli for introducing the students to Wikipedia and the process of digitisation. The manuscripts will be digitised simultaneously during the workshop.

An orientation program was organised at Imperial College, Bargarh for introducing the students of the college to the digitisation process as well as to introduce the pothi digitisation which they would be partaking in. With over 60 participants, the workshop not only explained the idea of the global Wikimedia movement to them, but also taught them how they could use the digitisation skill for the preservation of language. This digitisation project will bring different manuscripts into Odia Wikipedia, while also helping to raise awareness about digitisation of language in western Odisha. After scanning the manuscripts, the Odia Wikipedia community will take help of the students for uploading, digitising and proofreading the same.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bargarh-manuscript-digitisation-project

Barcamp Bangalore

praskrishna — 2014-10-13T04:43:45Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team participated in a Barcamp at SAP Labs, Bangalore on October 12, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja and Rahmanuddin Shaik participated in the event.

Dissecting Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the world’s most famous free and open encyclopaedia which anyone can edit. In this session we will explore various technical aspects of Wikipedia with demonstrations. Wikipedia has its own set of APIs using which we can retrieve information by using various queris and parameters. The output can be generated in various formats. These output can be used for processing by programming languages as input. These will be demonstrated.

Click to read the details on the Barcamp website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/barcamp-bangalore

Bangla Wiki turns 10

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T16:10:12Z

The 10th anniversary of Bengali Wikipedia was marked with a a gathering of Wikipedians of vernacular languages from across the country and beyond at Jadavpur University. Bengali is one of 20 Indian languages to have a Wikipedia presence. The event also celebrated 14 years of the mother edition in English of the open-access, crowd-sourced online encyclopaedia.

Contributed by Sudeshna Banerjee, Showli Chakraborty and Abhinanda Datta the story published in the Telegraph on March 29, 2015 quotes T. Vishnu Vardhan.

"We hear of digital divide all the time. Here it is about digital inclusiveness. The University Grants Commission talks of four factors to make a good university - access, equity, quality and employability. What a teacher cannot give in class, he can offer on the world wide web. The question of quality in Wikipedia can be addressed through workshops like this," said Calcutta University registrar Basab Chaudhuri.

Wikimedia Foundation trustee Bishakha Datta spoke of the uneasy relationship between Wikipedia and academia, especially over authenticity.

"Yes, we do not use original research. So our articles are not admissible as primary sources. At the same time, every piece of information in a Wikipedia article has to be cited and annotated. It is great that an institution like JU has come forward to host us," said Datta, thanking the university's School of Languages and Linguistics.

Joint registrar Sanjay Gopal Sarkar argued in favour of the existence of Wikipedia articles in the vernacular. "It is a part of the empowerment of my mother tongue."

Quantity was a problem, he said. "It is not enough to have 33,000 articles (the English version has 4.7 million). Workshops need to be held in Bengal and Assam on how to write articles. If Wikipedia and the universities join hands, a battalion of writers and editors can be created."

The Bangladeshi delegates revealed how Wikipedia's mission of making knowledge free was getting a technological boost back home. "Grameenphone and Bangla Link, two of our biggest mobile service providers, have made Facebook and Wikipedia free. Subscribers just have to log on to specific domains (0.facebook.com and zero.wikipedia.org) to see picture-less texts," said Ankan Ghosh Dastidar, a Class XI student from Dhaka.

Vishnu Vardhan from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, urged for more institutional tie-ups so that instead of stopping students from going to Wikipedia, teachers would integrate their contributions to Wikipedia in the course. "Andhra Loyola College is the largest contributor to Telegu Wikipedia," he said. Hindi, he added, has the maximum articles among Indian languages, followed by Tamil and Telugu. "But Malayalam has the most active Wikipedians - around 100."

A workshop was held to teach how to type in Bengali and edit the Bengali Wikipedia. Techno India student Ayan Chaudhury addressed queries on downloading the Avro font and typing tricky conjoined letters in Bengali, as also how to create cross references and highlight terms. "Ask yourself two questions when you want to add any information: Is it relevant? Can it be verified? Also do not blindly turn on Google Translate. The quality of its translation is such that a word like 'swipe' becomes ' dhum dhadakka'."

A group editing session took place on the second day with 15 volunteers translating articles from the English Wikipedia and adding new articles in Bengali. Some also worked on Wiktionary, an online dictionary, and others on Wikisource, typing out pages of seminal texts outside copyright.

Crafts for a cause

Artisans from Bengal and Bangladesh joined hands to participate in a handcrafted jewellery and handloom exhibition organised by WIIN (Women and Infants in Need) at Shree Art Gallery in Ballygunge on March 25 and 26.

"The proceeds will be donated to Paripurnata, a home for women with mental disabilities (off EM Bypass). We emphasise on mental health awareness programmes and try and create job opportunities for the residents at Paripurnata. This helps in building their confidence and creates a sense of social acceptance," said Nilanjana Mukherjee, the general secretary of WIIN and Paripurnata.

The exhibition was inaugurated by actress Sonali Gupta, who plays Satyabati to Dhritiman Chaterji's Byomkesh Bakshi in Sajarur Kanta. "This cause is close to my heart. We must come together to help women and infants in need," said Gupta.

The exhibition showcased a collection of saris and jewellery from the Rajshahi district in Bangladesh, quirky handbags, hand-painted mugs, kurtas and dupattas.

Trilingual road trip

An independent film - or indie - by two graduates of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) has hit theatres this Friday. Titled Yahan Sabki Lagi Hai (Everybody Gets Screwed Here), the 100-minute trilingual (English, Hindi and Bengali) black comedy is directed by Calcutta girl Tina A. Bose and Mumbai boy Cyrus R. Khambata.

Produced by Vibrant Works, the film revolves around Kesang and Bharat, who are on their way to a birthday party but their road trip soon turns into a disaster as they find themselves in the middle of a jungle, robbed of all their belongings.

Road trip gone wrong has been done before, but according to the young film-makers, "while most of them have been horror or slasher films, ours travels the philosophical path and focuses on the issues we face in life."

The lead actress is a Tibetan girl, Eden Shyodhi. "We wanted to cast a girl from a minority community. We needed someone who was weird and interesting as the character of Kesang is very unusual. And when we met Eden, she had flaming red hair, just like how we had envisioned Kesang!" said Tina, who has studied in Lady Brabourne College and Jadavpur University. The cast also includes stand-up comedian Varun Thakur and Bengali actor Heerok Das, previously seen in Egaro.

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