Centre for Internet and Society

Architectures of Knowledge

praskrishna — 2016-07-30T14:44:01Z

Rohini Lakshane was a speaker at a workshop organized by Columbia's Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.

Rohini briefly spoke about WikiSource, and content donation in Indian languages done by some libraries and non-profits as a result of the efforts of the CIS-A2K team. See the event schedule here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/architectures-of-knowledge

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 3.)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:54:47Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries in Wikipedia gender gap narrowing on both local (India) and global scales.

This is the third (last) part of the blog series, please see Part 1 and Part 2.

Responding to the Wikipedia gender gap problem, former WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner set a target in 2011 to raise the female editor percentage to 25% by 2015. In an interview in August 2014, Jimmy Wales declared that “we’ve completely failed,” Gardner also noted that the solutions should come from local Wikipedian communities rather than from the Foundation on a macro scale.

Although the target was not met, initiatives and reforms taken places globally and locally in the past five years are not fruitless. And as mentioned in Part 2, we should not define this movement as merely pursuing a goal towards certain percentage or number. As for now dialogue has been created to include the issue into more strategic plans; collectives are established to cumulate and share resources across communities. There has been abundance of learning (and definitely much more to learn) in the issue.

What has been done?

Be it ongoing or spontaneous, international or local, there have been many interventions trying to address the gender gap in Wikipedia.

Intervention events

In July 2015, WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was launched to “turn "redlinks (non-existing pages) into blue ones (existing pages).” The project encourages editors worldwide to create (or expand) female-related pages (biographies, women’s work, contribution, issues, etc.) that fit the notability criteria of Wikipedia. WiR also picks monthly and annual topics to feature. Currently in September, 2016, edit-a-thons on Women in nursing and women labour activists are happening online. And “Women scientists” edit-a-thon is a year-long featured topic for 2016. Although WiR is still primarily an English-WP project, some communities have expanded and localized it to local initiatives.

Coincidentally, in 2013, Indian Wikipedian communities have carried out one of the biggest and most well-known gender gap intervention – Lilavatis’ Daughters. “Lilavati’s Daughters” is a book of essay collections featuring nearly one hundred women scientists in Indian since the Victorian Era. The 2013 edit-a-thon was hence to create Wikipedia pages for these biographies in different Indian languages. Collaborating with institutions and colleges, the event was greeted with high popularity and success. Similar events were also carried out afterwards, including Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon which has been held annually since 2014; the last event was held in July, 2016 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Another significant initiative across the globe and in Indian communities is the annual Wikiwomen’s history month in March along with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8^th. The initiative started in 2012, edit-a-thons, photo-thons (updating photos onto Wikimedia Commons), and meetups have been held to raise the awareness of the gender gap online, create female-related content available on Wikipedia, and to strengthen the bonding between local Wikiwomen.

Recently, Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with the United Nations to launch the one-day Her Story project Edit-a-thon on August 12^th, 2016 to celebrate International Youth Day globally. Cities in India like Chennai and Delhi also held local edit-a-thons on the day of in response to the event. With the opportunity to work alongside the UN, it is a good sign that the Wikipedia gender gap issue is drawing global attention, not just in the Wikipedian community level, but also in global institution level.

Collaborative

The Wikiwomen’s Collaborative is a global platform for female Wikipedians to share projects, insights, and support. The Collaborative also encourages participants to write blog post on the Wikiwomen’s Blog to spread more words about the gender gap issue and initiatives. A Gender Gap Task Force (GGTF) was founded in 2013 aiming to challenge the patriarchal culture of knowledge and Wikipedia. GGTF tries to fix the encyclopedia’s imbalance power structure by initiating discussion and examination on its policies and editor interaction. It has also been a place to cumulate research studies and resources on the gender gap topic. A (global) gender gap mailing list is also created to spread the news and words with more communities.

Improvement in the Interface

Aside from events and collectives organized by respective communities, the Wikipedia platform itself has also been under constant transition in the last few years, trying to create a friendlier place for women and newcomers.

Since June 2012, the new prototype Visual Editor has become available in more and more language versions of Wikimedia projects – including most Indian languages. Visual Editor enables editor to contribute without learning the Wiki markups, as it creates the “write-as-how-you-will-see-it” feature requiring only basic typing skills. Nevertheless, Visual Editor does have several limitations comparing to the traditional edit source option, including slower speed, unavailable in talk and discussion namespaces, limited template editing options, and so on. While a research in 2013 on Visual Editor’s use in English Wikipedia showed low effectiveness of the new feature in attracting and encouraging new editors, more research should also be done in the non-English (especially Global South) context. Online tutorial resources about editing are also becoming available in Indian communities.

Traditional Wiki markup editing screenshot

Visual Editor screenshot

On the other hand, mobile apps of Wikipedia has been improved in its editing function. Although the apps are still in constant development to make the function smoother and easier for mobile users, it is a great breakthrough for those who do not have personal computers to contribute in small ways (or even in great ways – some have created pages and denied the statement that mobile editing is impractical).

What’s more to be learned?

There is no denying that our Indian language communities have been putting efforts to highlight and address the gender gap issue on Wikipedia. The Wikiconference India 2016 in August also had a panel responding to this topic where panelists from both outreach and research threads proposed localized perspective and strategies to fix the problem.

However, there are still much more to be learned. First of all, we need a more organized feedback loop (a cycle of planning-executing-evaluating-sharing learning) for local interventions to learn from our success and mistakes. Secondly, the issue has to become more “public” in a sense that we are not just promoting within our own circles. Awareness-building through media coverage and institutional collaboration can bring in greater public opinions and volunteers to help the online encyclopedia become a more inclusive place. The third point is a change of mindset: women's feeling and experience should be put forward into the central of our initiatives and interventions.

“We made it clear that we were focusing on the (female) participants and their experience, the content they created online are of course important too, but that’s just the by-product.” -Wikiconference Indian 2016 Gender Gap panel presenter

In other words, as we are engaging more and more women, the focus should not be numbers but the humans. At the same time, we should always encourage women to stand out and speak out. As mentioned in the previous part, gender discrimination cases have not yet been reported in our communities, but we also have to ensure if it does happen both the female editors and the community should have a certain level of awareness (what constitutes harassment/discrimination/sexism; when and how to call out) and a report and support mechanism to the problem.

The road to a real equalized knowledge system is not easy. As many have noticed and pointed out “This is not just a Wikipedia problem!” Indeed, similar gender imbalance exists in our academies, IT industries, free and open-source software (FOSS) workplace, to name a few. Nonetheless, with the flexibility and the strong bond that Indian Wikipedian communities possess, we can be one of the pioneers in positive changes. After all, the knowledge created and action taken today will shape what our tomorrow can be like.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-3

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 2)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:55:39Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

In the last part of the blog series, we examined the definition and danger of the Wikipedia gender gap. This issue has been puzzling for many – why is there such a wide gap globally?

Why is there a gender gap?

The reasons behind the Wikipedia gender gap are complex and culturally-sensitive. Two main types of barriers are discussed as “inside of Wikipedia (internal)” and “outside of Wikipedia (external).”

Internal	External
Challenges using Wiki mark-up and its interface	Limited access to internet and facilities
(rare in India) Challenges in getting help from community members	Lack of skills
(rare in India) Being discriminated as a newcomer	Lack of confidence
(rare in India) Experience of discriminative behavior/conflicts	Limited time
The fear of becoming “visible” as one of the few female in the community	Preference to more socially interactive online activities (Lack of interest)
	Awareness - not knowing Wikipedia is editable

(From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience)

India v.s. the World

Unfortunately, most studies have been done in English Wikipedia and rarely in other smaller language communities, despite the fact that these barriers can vary a lot in different cultural, political, and economic context. In India, practitioners and researchers have identified a few potential causes of low female participation rate on Wikipedia. Contrary to what was discovered in the English Wikipedia, researchers have found that Indian female Wikipedians are generally more active and willing to participate in both online and offline interactions compared to those in the English Wikipedia community. Reports of gender discrimination cases are also fewer than those in the Western context. A possible explanation to both phenomena is that Indian Wikipedian communities are rather small and close-knitted which encourage more interpersonal networking and prevent anonymous attacks[1].

Awareness

However, recruiting and keeping female Wikipedians in India do have its own barriers to overcome. “Awareness” is discovered as one of the very primary barriers for most to start editing Wikipedia. Many did not know that the online encyclopedia is easily editable, and even more have not heard of (or are unfamiliar with the use of) Wikipedia. Outreach events are important portals for both men and women to discover and join local Wikipedia communities. And this is where weakness can be turned into strength; as most newcomers are brought in through community outreach events or personal connection, it creates a strong bond within the members and a more welcoming culture featuring collectivism rather than individualism.

On the societal level?

Although the binary categorization of inside and outside of Wikipedia is widely used, it can easily lead us to believe that we can draw a clear line in between Wikipedia and the offline world, but neglect the big picture which shapes both sides of the table. Ignoring the fundamental (societal) level of the issue and its linkage to other factors poses the risk of nurturing a symptom-fixing solution instead of a system-questioning culture.

For example, societal factors such as expectation on women’s/girls’ role and priority in her family can prevent them from the access to required facilities, internet, training, and personal leisure time for joining (or continuing editing) Wikipedia. On the psychological experience side, some women reported that they do not feel comfortable when being so “visible” online and in the community[2]; and this has a lot to do with how our online (and offline) society has been constructed and conceptualized as an “unsafe” space for women.

In fact, Wagner et al. (2015)[3] have found that a nation’s Gender Inequality Index (GII) is associated to the country’s editor gender bias on Wikipedia. Although it was a study focusing on Global North samples, the logic behind is most likely applicable in India (which ranked 130 out of 188 countries’ GII in 2014) – as the more unequally women is treated in the society, the less likely that she can reach the pre-requisite to be a Wikipedian, or even be online. For example, in India there is a much lower literacy rate for female than male – 53.7% to 75.3% as reported in the 2011 Census. At the same time, population (above the age of 25) with at least some secondary education is 56.6% for male and only 27% for female in India based on the UN Human Development Report.

All these societal factors and nuances feed into the gaps we see today – in higher academic positions, in industries, and eventually in Wikipedia. It is definitely not easy to address the macro-scale problems, but what we can do is to change it from the community level to influence individuals and the society. Hence, we are not just battling against an online phenomenon created by individuals’ unwillingness to participate, but challenging and redressing the patriarchal power while transforming the traditions of how knowledge flows. After all, bridging the gender gap should not be merely a target of “We will reach X% female participation rate by Y years,” it has much greater potential and responsibility in the long run for our generations and societies.

In the next part of the blog series, we talk about: What has been done? & What’s more to be learned?

[1] From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience and from WCI 2016 presentation:

[2] Jadine, L., (2013). Same Gaps Different Experience

[3] Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-2

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1)

ting — 2016-09-21T10:13:59Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

“Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors…. only 8.5% of editors are women.”

Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only 3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been silenced and forgotten?

What is the Wikipedia gender gap?

There are two main focus on the gender gap within Wikipedia – the editor demographic and the coverage of topics – which are essentially flip sides of a coin. With fewer female contributors, we are losing a more diverse knowledge platform for all. But the issue is far more complex than simply having less information about “friendship bracelets” than “baseball cards.”

Looking at the biography pages on Wikipedia, researchers found that not only is the number of female biographies much lower than males’ (due to historical factors, availability of firsthand sources, and editors’ interest), but the linguistic and topical bias within also presents a male-centered discourse. For example, on women’s biography pages, words related to one’s gender such as “women,” “female,” “lady” will be used more commonly than the counterpart words in men’s pages; and that a women’s biography will have more information about her marriage and family life than her male counterpart’s. Studies also found that female-related articles are more likely to be linked to male-related ones but not the other way around[1]. This demonstrates that the editing preference, styles, and content are closely related to the editors’ genders and how they see the world. In other words, language and knowledge cannot be separated from one’s gender – the Internet may be bodiless but it can never become genderless[2].

Wagner et al.’s paper[3] in early 2016 also confirmed the existence of a “glass ceiling” for female figures to be considered “notable” enough to have a Wikipedia bio page (or for the page not to be deleted). Who gets to decide what is “notable enough” becomes questionable when we understand the gender bias. As a matter of fact, while the difference in male and female biography numbers is narrower for globally known figures, a larger gender gap exists for “local hero(ine)s” because of the notability threshold applied. That is to say, many women and female-related topics are underrepresented (and underappreciated) on Wikipedia.

The danger and why it matters

Low awareness

The Wikipedia gender gap is problematic and deserves more attention than ever not only because gender imbalance should be tackled both online and offline, but also that this imbalance is so prevalent and has been taken for granted by most. Little do people consider, that with every single “click” on one’s google search, we can be provided with an answer from a single-gender narration. This imbalance and its problems are behind the scene – the share of male and female editors are never on the surface without a holistic survey. While gender balance has been pushed in our business, education, and government sectors, the online encyclopedia feeding billions of internet users (and over 300 million in India itself) is still constructed in a male-dominant culture with little questioning from the public.

Legacy and influence

There is the saying that Internet is changing the human default from “forgetting” into “remembering.” Wikipedia can serve as a great tool for digitization of knowledge and the preservation of languages. What is to be recorded now will become parts of (perhaps the most accessible) history in the future, and we cannot afford a history without women’s voices and knowledge. Hence, to include more women editors and women-related content is not simply out of a concern of diversity, it is to ensure that this time we can pass on the legacy in a better and more equitable fashion for the whole population.

The vicious circle

“We’ve to participate in meet ups and workshops, then question (from family members) arises like how many guys are there, is there any girl or not. In one sentence we're discouraged by our surrounding.”

– Female editor from local community

The urgency of this problem is that the lesser women are presented in the communities, the harder a motivation can be established for new female editors to join. Now that we have made this issue visible, the core mission we have is to ensure a change in the system and environment that helps women feel more welcomed and comfortable – even when they are aware that they are the minority.

In the next part of this blog series: Why is there a Gender Gap?

[1] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

Graells-Garrido, Lalmas, & Menczer, (2015). First women second sex: gender bias in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media (pp165).

Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

[2] Code, L. (2000). Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London: Routledge

[3] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-1

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access

rahim — 2015-01-20T18:47:13Z

Andhra Loyola College (ALC) and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.

Highlights

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia.
ALC faculty and students to create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia.
Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance to be produced on Telugu Wikipedia

This is a big leap for the college in opening up itself to the internet world. The college is planning to train its faculty and students to create free econtent in Telugu. These resources will in turn be dedicated to the society.

The signing of the MoU took place in the college premises on August 14, 2014 at 2.00 p.m.

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ was released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0) on the same stage.

The event was organized by ALC and CIS.

CIS-A2K has been closely working with ALC. They have organised 4 workshops for students and faculty. CIS-A2K also helped in QR coding of the institute.

Now, this MoU would further enable CISA2K and ALC to collaboratively work on creating free and open knowledge in Telugu across various disciplines on Telugu Wikipedia. This collaboration is set to benefit millions of Telugus to freely access knowledge in Telugu on the internet.

Media Coverage

ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/alc-cis-sign-mou-better-net-access

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

bhuvana — 2019-10-03T11:56:37Z

There is a need for research on how Open Source communities are trying to balance the gender ratio and how they provide the safe space environment to its contributors. With this in mind I have come up with this blog as I am an active contributor of Mozilla since 5 years and also got myself recently introduced to Wikimedia and its sister projects, have interacted with few Indian women contributors in both of these communities and came out with a few observations on how I see them in India and what could be improved in both communities.

Opening note

Wikipedia community

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of articles where many users can edit it freely and it has become so large that you run across it all the time in Google. It is so popular that it is now one of the Top 5 websites in the world! The reason behind the growth is because the articles are simple and useful.

Wikipedians are the contributors who do a communal work to improve the content by editing bits of text and cluster them to the large database. Beyond this there are other sister projects of Wikimedia which interest the audience on whichever they are expertise about. The main motivation for these contributors is their freedom to contribute in their own native language which they are more passionate about. This is a great social cause they are contributing towards.

Mozilla community

Mozilla makes browsers, apps, code and tools that put people before profit. In fact, there’s a non-profit Foundation at the heart of the enterprise.Their mission is to keep the internet open and accessible to all. Hope everyone uses or had at least at some point seen Firefox browser/logo, so this is the prime product of Mozilla. There are various projects to support the Firefox browser and they are mostly Open Source.

Mozillians are the volunteers who contribute in the improvement of these projects thus helping the world to access the internet and the Open web.Mozilla Volunteers are passionate to learn,collaborate and knowledge share among a large world-wide community and the crew is a mix of coder, non-coders, policy makers and anyone who supports Open Web. The point that drives everyone to contribute is that the community creates a vibe to contribute and to create a safe and better experience in accessing the digital world.

WikiProject Women

This a group of editors who aim to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women's topics. It brings Wikipedia users of all genders, sexual orientations, geographic locations, and personal backgrounds together to discuss and collaborate on coverage of women's content across Wikipedia.There are various streams in which women can be part of the larger mission for instance:

Art and Feminism

Women in Red

Wiki loves women

Womoz

Women & Mozilla ("WoMoz") a community composed of members from different Open Source projects.It is mainly dedicated to improving women's visibility and involvement in Free/Open Source and Mozilla, and to increase the number of women contributors. Anyone can participate in this project, regardless of sex, age, job, etc. We are united by the common goal of promoting women's visibility and involvement in open source communities. They also believe that the Internet, FLOSS projects and computing must remain open and participatory. This also means accessible in the same way to all - women and men alike.

It also believe solutions should continuously be proposed in order to improve the visibility of all minorities, who for various reasons might not have equal access to computers or the Internet. This project is an example of this, as it aims at ameliorating women's presence and participation in Mozilla and open source. But currently this group is not very active, except for a few regional contributors where they find massive necessity to focus on the women participation.

Overview of the strategies used for increasing women participation

Methodologies used

Both the communities are great supporters of the Free Softwares and licenses and so the methods that is used in addressing the gender gap issues is as follows:

Conduct gender neutral events like hack-a-thons/ edit-a-thons where the tutor is a woman or there is a large ratio of under represented community in the event.
Host monthly offline/online meetups.
Work on projects which are gender neutral based.
Following up special protocols like CoCs strictly at these events.
Days like “International Women’s Day” and on similar significant occasions some unique events will be hosted and contributors will be appreciated.

Impact on Indian communities

The WikiProject woman and WoMoz programs play a very important role among the Indian communities. Although I do not see a single or uniform progress there is always a good scale-up among the regional communities. For a country like India where there is still necessity for uplifting the presence and awareness of these type of FOSS programs I feel that most of these programs are extensively hosted in urban or developed phases of the country. Recently, the internet access has spread across but then the basic knowledge of contributing to Open Source is still abandoned. The end result and the what the contributors shall get on contributing to these communities must be emphasised more.

Closing note

My study and analysis on these two communities is drawn from personal interest and engagement with these communities since I have been contributing and interacting with the contributors for the last few years. The objective of this post is basically to bring about an awareness on the accessible resources on bridging the digital divide , and how these resources can be modified and taken further for a country like India. The efforts taken to improve the gender neutrality by the above communities is laudable but more light has to be thrown on improving the measures taken to sustain women contributors

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

http://www.womoz.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/analysis-on-the-strategies-of-mozilla-and-wiki-communities-on-gender-gap-aspects-1

Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges

nitika — 2013-05-08T02:26:36Z

Nitika Tandon, in this blog post, provides an analysis of the Konkani Wikipedia. She reflects on the challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia and identifies four possible solutions.

Konkani is a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighbouring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Kokan belt) – some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. All of these neighbouring states are places where speakers from Goa may have migrated over the past five centuries (Garry, 2001).[1] Each region has a different dialect, pronunciation style, vocabulary, tone and sometimes, significant differences in grammar.

The total number of Konkani speakers seems to have remained remarkably stable for over a century. This is borne out by the census reports over the years. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).[2]

Goa has a high literacy rate of 87.4 per cent.[3] Goa is also in one of the top three states/union territories with highest computer density. In Goa, about 31.1 per cent of households use computers while 12.7 per cent of households use computers with internet.[4]

Konkani Wikipedia is currently in its incubation stage with very few editors. About 86 articles have been added but much work needs to be done 1) to push it as a live Wikipedia project and 2) to improve quality and quantity of articles. Konkani Wikipedia promotes editing in all scripts (Roman, Devanagari, Kannada) equally.

Challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Wikipedia has grown meagerly in the past 7 years ever since the inception of the project (in 2006). It is still an extremely small project with barely 86 articles. The project received maximum number of edits in 2007-2008 and since then the level of activity has been gradually decreasing with negligible edits in 2012-2013.
There are handful of volunteers who have ever edited on Konkani Wikipedia and they too seem to have lost interest/inclination to sustain their edits. There are only 16 editors who have total of 10 edits or more on Konkani Wikipedia. In addition, no virtual/physical meeting of any kind has ever been organised by/for the volunteers. No outreach event had also been organised for Konkani Wikipedia until Dec 2012.[5]
Problem of usage of multiple scripts in Konkani Wikipedia aggravates the massive challenges the project currently faces. Konkani does not have a unique script of its own and hence scripts of the other languages native to the regions are used. Konkani speakers are spread across different states and they use multiple scripts like Kannada, Devanagari, Roman and Perso-Arabic scripts. There is no one/common script - Konkani thus has a unique distinction of being written in four scripts.
Multiple script issue ties in with some religious aspects as well. The Goan Hindus use the Devanagari script in their writings while the Goan Christians use the Roman script. The Saraswats of Karnataka use the Devanagari script in North Kanara district and the Kannada script in Udupi and South Kanara. Malayalam script is used in Kerala, but now there is a move to use the Devanagari script.

Because of these reasons and more Konkani Wikipedia has struggled to grow since its inception. It has been in the incubation stage for the past 7 years with an extremely small number of volunteers.

Fact Sheet

Parameters	Number
No. of scripts used in current incubation project	3 (Roman, Devanagari, Kannada)
No. of articles in Devnagri script	52
No. of articles in Roman script	32
No. of articles in Kannada script	2
No. of system messages translated in Devnagari script	126 (including 30 core messages)
No. of system messages translated in Roman script	500
No. of system messages translated in Kannada script	0
No. of editors with more than 10 edits	16
No. of editors with less than 10 edits	32
No. of articles	86
No. of redirects	4
No. of revisions	1113 (including 254 minor edits)

Multiple script issue faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Developing of Konkani Wikipedia faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. Enabling the users to access and edit all articles in different scripts is the main problem faced by this wiki.

Similar challenge faced by other wikis: Similar problem was faced by Kashmiri Wikipedia which used Pasho, Sharada and Devanagari scripts. Punjabi has the Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts, of which the former is used in India and the latter in Pakistan. Chinese language has two major writing systems; simplified and traditional Chinese. Other Wikipedias that have faced similar challenge are Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Korean Wikipedia, etc.

Possible solutions: Let’s look at what are the possible solutions to this problem of multiple scripts, how some of these language Wikipedias have tackled this in the past, and what might or might not work for Konkani Wikipedia in particular.

Possible Solution 1: Automatic conversion system.

A plug-in could be built into the server end of language Wikipedia to automatically transliterate content from one script into another.
Other Wikis using this solution are Chinese, Serbian, Kazakh, Kurdish Wikipedias. To give an example, Automatic conversion system has been running successfully on Chinese Wikipedia since 2004 and has been well received by the community. In addition to Chinese Wikipedia, Chinese Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks also have the conversion systems.
Automatic transliteration from one script to another might not work for Konkani Wikipedia, as there are dialectical differences and also there is no ready tool available for to convert one script to another. (transliterating between Roman to Devanagari or Roman to Kannada script etc.).

Possible Solution 2: Partial automatic conversion system.

A plug-in could be used that can transliterate one script to at least another; out of all the writing systems used.
Other Wikis using this solution are Tajik, Uzbek, Gan Wikipedia. To give an example, Tajik Wikipedia currently has auto-converting system for two of the writing systems (Cyrillic - Latin) but not into Perso-Arabic.
This could be a possible solution for Konkani Wikipedia if the community decides that they’d like to have transliteration tools installed at least for the Indian scripts.

Possible Solution 3: Multiple writing system

Have multiple articles in different scripts about the same topic. For example, have multiple articles about India in Konkani Wikipedia - one in Devanagari script, another in Roman script and yet another in Kannada script.
Some of the other wikis considering to adopt multiple writing system in the near future are Korean and Javanese Wikipedia.
This could be the short term solution for Konkani Wikipedia. It is something that is currently being used in Konkani Wikipedia in incubation and might also prove to be one of the best solutions for live Konkani Wikipedia project.

Possible Solution 4: Create separate wikis for each script

Create separate wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.
Separate wikis were created for Punjabi-Gurmukhi and Punjabi-Shahmukhi.
This could potentially be the long term solution for Konkani Wikipedia i.e. to have different Wikis for each active writing system - Konkani-Roman, Konkani-Devanagari and Konkani-Kannada. If there is an intersted active community to create content for a particular script; we could push that to a new project in due course of time. As things stand, the Roman script has been active in the recent past, followed by Devanagari and Kannada in that order.

Mitigation or consensus building: The community needs to reach consensus on how to deal with this issue. The best short term solution seems to be having multiple writing systems in the same Konkani Wikipedia project. However, in the long run we could evaluate the option of creating separate wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.

[1]. Garry, Jane, & Rubino, Carl. (Ed.). (2001). Facts about the world's languages: an encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. New York & Dublin: A New England Publishing Associates Book.

[2]. http://bit.ly/RNVq53

[3]. http://bit.ly/13gBsoo

[4]. http://bit.ly/JUUjJ6

[5]. http://bit.ly/12eY4Dn

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

Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs

hasan — 2015-12-15T07:39:15Z

University of Mysore considered to be one of the most prestigious institutions in the country has been famous for its innovative pedagogic techniques and opening up for students various avenues of knowledge acquisition.

The Kannada Encyclopedia project that was taken up by the Kuvempu Kannada Adhyana Samsthe, (KIKS), Manasagangothri, Mysore was one of its kind during its inception. It is safe to say that though Kannda has seen many other projects and attempts towards compiling encyclopedias, to this day the Vishwakoshas produced by University of Mysore are among the top picks regarding quality of the content, scope of the information and its reach with the general public. Many other encyclopedia projects such as “Bala Vignana Kosha” compiled by Shivaram Karanth, “Jnana Gangothri” by Niranjana, the “Kananda Sahitya Vishwakosha” from the Kannada University, Hampi have provided encyclopedic content to the Kannada readers.

The idea of the University of Mysore complied Vishwakoshas was simple. It seeked to provide basic and elemenatry information about key topics all around the universe (physical, spiritual, material, cultural, social, behavioural, political and many other domains of knowledge) to the general public. The intention was to make information accessible and easily understandable. It was not expected to educate or assist people in gaining profieciency regarding a certain topic but was expected to provide salient features, brief history and concise introduction.

Rationale for Institutional partnership:

The compilation of topics that were to be part of the Vishwakosha was done alphabetically and till date 13 Vishwakoshas have been produced along with one Kannada Vishaya Vishwakosha which exclusively deals with matters pertaining to Kannada land, language, literature, politics, culture, entertainment and other aspects of Kannada life. The Vishwakosha project was a method to democratise the process of production of knowledge. People from all walks of life were invited to contribute to the Vishwakosha along with the academicians and researchers. The submissions were then scrutinised by the review committee and was edited, information added as per the requirements. As this was not a text only Vishwakosha many attempts were made to source images as well. These were not used as ornamental or page filling purpose but was also informative in its own way with adequate meta data.

These encyclopedias have been extremely popular with the Kannada audience both for the content and for its competitive pricing. Prasaranga, the publication division of University of Mysore had also offered an discount for people who would purchase the entire set of Vishwakoshas at a special rate. The Vishwakosha project faced many problems and the last volume of the Vishwakosha was released in the year , while the first volume was released in . University of Mysore has also digitised the Vishwakoshas and made it avaialable for general public on a CD.

Plan of Action:

Access to Knowledge team sought to bring these treasure troves of Knowledge onto the digital platform and update the information available on these Vishwakoshas. It was a shot in the arm for the activities being conducted by CIS-A2K when University of Mysore agreed to re-release all of its encyclopedias under free licence for the benefit of larger Kannada community. University of Mysore also agreed to handover soft copies of the few encyclopedias (that were already digitised) to create and redirect content towards Kannada Wikipedia.

A2K team has conducted three skill building and Wikipedia orientation workshops with the students of University of Mysore in order to kick start the content generation activities. These workshops were received very positively by the students. However due to lack of an active community and serious infrastructural issues the students could not continue with the activities that had been planned. Due to the inactivity of these new volunteers we have witnessed a decrease in the activity of content generation effort as aimed earlier.

CIS-A2K facilitated extracting the legacy text from the soft-copies, converting them to Unicode, distributing the files among volunteers and Christ University interns and uploading them to Kannada Wikisource. These articles will serve as primary material for new content generation on Kannada Wikipedia. CIS-A2K celeberated Open Knowledge Day in collaboration with University of Mysore.

The non availability of infrastructual requirement, administrative difficulties such as scheduling of academic calendar offered the A2K team many invaluable lessons towards fostering an institutional partnership. A2K team adopted corrective measures and has been using the encyclopedias donated by University of Mysore as a primary reference for the subsequent edit-a-thons. A2K has also created a project page on Meta to attract Kannada Wikimedians towards content generation.

Outcome and Output:

A2K team utilised its institutional partnership with Christ University in the initial stages and digitised volumes of Kannada Encyclopedias. These were used both as references for the edit-a-thons conducted by CIS-A2K and as a primary reference material that was curated into an independent article on Kannada Wikipedia. Many Kannada Wikimedians have joined hands with A2K in acheiving this. This is an on-going activity.

Plans for Future:

As University of Mysore has rich archival collection particulalry in Indian Languages, A2K team intends to talk to individual departments to bring this content to Open Knowledge repositiries.

A2K team would like to involve various Departments to dedicate some staff on an hourly basis towards speedy completion of the project.

The existing MoU is understood as a one time activity of content donation (print and e copy of Vishwakosha) where as A2K would like to continue this activity as a long term engagement that will facilitate in building research skills and writing skills.

A2K team intends to request to University of Mysore should select/suggest some student volunteers for the digitisation project. With the inclusion of Kannada PA A2K team would collaborate with key Departments at the University of Mysore to conduct digitisation and translation sprints that will be facilitated by and other Wikimedians.

A2K team would like to collate all the new articles created with the help of the content donated by University of Mysore and circulate it as a newsletter on a monthly basis and sent to the Kannada community and University of Mysore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-of-institutional-partnerships-university-of-mysore-and-guru-g-learning-lab

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

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB College, Bhubaneswar

subha — 2012-12-07T22:40:32Z

The Centre for Internet and Society along with Odia Wikipedians in Bhubaneswar organized an Odia Wikipedia workshop on November 18, 2012. It was held in KMBB College of Engineering. Odia Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in Odia language which everyone can edit.

Odia Wikipedians gathered in the temple city of Bhubaneswar on November 18, 2012 to organize the third Odia Wikipedia workshop in KMBB College of Engineering. KMBB College of Engineering is a BPUT affiliated engineering college supported by Ama Odisha, an organization working for media, communication and development of Odia language. Dr. Dhanada Mishra, Director-Academics, KMBB and a veteran educationalist and open source source enthusiast supported this event. Forty-five students from KMBB attended this workshop. The agenda for the two-and-a-half hour session was to educate students about open source movement, journey of Wikipedia and how to contribute to Odia Wikipedia and how it would help them. Nine active Odia Wikipedians joined to support this event.

Dr. Mishra began the session by introducing Odia Wikipedians to the students. He spoke about Open source movement, how the community supports various open source projects, how Wikipedia was started and how it is essential for students to take part in such activities. Subhashish Panigrahi briefly spoke about the history of Odia wikipedia, how it grew up in the recent years to its present state. Odia Wikipedian Manoranjan Behera discussed about how everyone can contribute to the Wikipedia.

To explain the easiness of typing in Odia, some of the students were invited to write text on a board and test the typing tool on Odia Wikipedia. A new article about the college was created and one of the students wrote few sentences. Wikipedians explained the importance of creating user accounts and demonstrated how to search an article, how to create an article and the basics of editing an article. A Question and Answer session was held for students to put their queries. At the end of the session, contact details were shared with the students and the Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki) of Odia Wikipedia was shown so that students could continue editing and remain in touch with fellow wikipedians.

Odia daily “The Sambad” covered this event.

Presentation: Copy of Introduction to Wikipedia! on Prezi
Video:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Academy of Media Learning

subha — 2013-07-17T07:06:59Z

Odia Wikipedians were invited to Academy of Media Learning (AML), Bhubaneswar for a guest lecture and a workshop on contributing to Odia Wikipedia. The event was organised by the Centre for Internet & Society on November 10, 2012. This is a report about the activities in AML.

Soon after Odia Wiki community got felicitated by OdishaDiary.co for Youth Achievement Award for their outstanding contribution for Odia language many institutions have started taking the work of the wikipedians with more seriousness. To empower the community with more activities active members took part in a discussion to start more long term projects like "education programs". In early November, a couple of meetups and workshops were organized in different institutions in Odisha. One of those institutions in Academy of Media Learning. It is a budding institution for journalism and digital media in the city of Bhubaneswar. The institute is led by the Founder-CEO of this institution Nilambar Rath, a veteran journalist and news producer and Saumya Parida, Executive Editor and journalist in the Odia media circle. Subhashish Panigrahi of CIS was invited to AML along with other fellow Wikipedians for a guest lecture and workshop about "Contibution to Wikipedia and its Benefits for Students".

Odia wikipedians like Ansuman Giri, Manoranjan Behera and Diptiman Panigrahi also came over for the event.

Meeting with Nilambar Rath and Saumya Parida

Prior to the lecture and workshop, wikipedians discussed about the education program with the faculty members on how it is essential to engage students in such a program. Subhashish explained the older education programs for other language and the recent Odia Wikipedia Education Program initiated at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. During this meeting Mr. Rath also suggested to include more linguists and Odia language professors in the community who would guide on standards of language, writing style and grammar as Odia Wikipedia is being accessed more on a daily basis by the main stream media.

Workshop

There were a small set of enthusiast communication students gathered for the event. Subhashish took them through a presentation explaining about Wikipedia, how people like them contribute to Wikipedia and make it grow day by day and how Odia Wikipedia was started. The participants were surprised to see Odia Wikipedia for the first time! Even being communication students and working closely with Odia media they have never came through it. After the presentation he emphasized about the reason why we are focusing on long term support programs like "education program" and how it would be beneficial for students. Students were given a small break for asking queries before a training workshop on editing Odia Wikipedia. One of the students was invited to create his user account. Wikipedians explained how to type in Odia using the typing scheme. Few of the students were invited to edit and make small changes in various articles. Going forward, students were shown Chatasabha and the facebook group page to ask queries online.


A picture of the participants at the Odia Wikipedia workshop at Academy of Media Learning

Picture credit: Manoranjan Behera

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wiki-workshop-at-aml

An International Conclave of Odia Language

praskrishna — 2015-03-08T05:06:14Z

Subhashish Panigrahi is participating in this event.

See the invitation letter and the concept letter.

The Odia language traces its roots back to 4th Century BC. Odisha was the first state to be carved out as a separate state on the basis of the language. The dawn of 20th February 2014 was a proud moment for all Odias as Odia language was accorded the ‘Classical language’ status of our country and occupied the 6th position. This achievement was due to the relentless effort of many scholars and activists. Now it becomes the responsibility of all the Odias to preserve, propagate and carry forward the legacy of the Odia language which is spoken by around 40 million people in India and around 45 million people globally. We will see that a day will come when it will be used as the first language in all government offices for official communications.

THE INTELLECTS, a forum of progressive individuals and intellectuals in Delhi, believes it as an utmost duty and responsibility to promote Odia identity in India and abroad. In its bid to impart our language to Pravasi Odias living in and around Delhi, THE INTELLECTS is on a missionary zeal. It has started its mission called “ASA SIKHIBA AMARI BHASHA” in National Capital region.

And now, the forum in association with SHRI JAGANNATH MANDIR, TYAGRAJNAGAR is organizing a two days conclave, on 20th & 21st February 2015, to celebrate the 1st anniversary of Classical status to Odia language & the World Mother tongue Day with a special focus on our mother tongue Odia.

The Event

International Conclave of Odia Language:
The event will be a two days festival showcasing the Odia identity in the national Capital and bringing some best minds of the country to discuss on various issues of immense need on language and culture of Odisha. Around 200 eminent people from across the world including many renowned experts from various walks of life are the invited speakers.

It will be our proud privilege to have you with us for the occasion.
With Kind Regards

Debendra Rout
Convener of the conclave & Chairman of The Intellects
Email: cm.intellects@gmail.com
Mob: +91-9350127370

Programme

Celebration of 1st Anniversary of Classical status of Odia language
Date: 20th February, Friday, Time: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Venue: Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi

Welcome
Inauguration of Conclave
Inauguration of Special Report on the Conclave
Felicitation of prominent personalities for their contribution to
Odia language
Addresses
Vote of Thanks
Cultural Programme
Dinner

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/international-conclave-odia-language

An Article on Kannada Wikipedian H R Lakshmivenkatesh

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T08:28:04Z

Karnataka Sangha Mumbai published an article on Kannada Wikipedian H.R.Lakshmivenkatesh in its March 2014 edition.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was instrumental in highlighting this fact and making people of Mumbai come to know about this. The article can be downloaded here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/an-article-on-kannada-wikipedian-hr-lakshmivenkatesh

An Article on Kannada Wikipedia

pavanaja — 2014-12-05T01:22:53Z

I wrote an article on Kannada Wikipedia which was published in the Yojana magazine on November 2014 issue.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/yojana-november-2014-pavanaja-article-on-kannada-wikipedia

ALC signs MoU for better net access

praskrishna — 2014-08-20T06:50:48Z

Andhra Loyola College (ALC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society – Access to Knowledge (CSI-A2K) here on Thursday.

The MoU will enable faculty and students to have more access on internet world, said the ALC management.

Read the original article published in the Hindu on August 15, 2014.

Institute principal Fr. G.A.P. Kishore, vice-principals Fr. P. Anil Kumar and Fr. Rex Angelo, correspondent Fr. Raju and CSI-A2K programme director T. Vishnu Vardhan signed the papers. Faculty of various departments participated in the programme. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Kishore said for the first time in AP, ALC has made the MoU with CSI-A2K to work collaboratively to improve Telugu Wikipedia. Very soon the digital content in botany, physics, Telugu, chemistry, ethics, religion, music and other subjects of the institution would be produced in Telugu Wikipedia, said the principal.

“A ten-member core committee has been constituted to train the faculty in each department in the college on A2K, who will teach the students. CSI will train the trainers and upload the material from time to time,” said Mr. Rex Angelo. Mr. Vishnu Vardhan said that CSI is promoting institutional partnerships across the country to promote regional languages. The society has plans to team up with more colleges in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and take up more outreach programmes in the next few days.

“Wikipedia has access to over 287 languages and 3.5 crore essays in the world. It is very unfortunate, that it has very few items in Indian languages,” said the programme director.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-august-15-2014-alc-signs-mou-for-better-net-access

Centre for Internet and Society

Architectures of Knowledge

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 3.)

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 2)

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1)

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access

Highlights

Media Coverage

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges

Challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Fact Sheet

Multiple script issue faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur

Important links:

Media Coverage

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB College, Bhubaneswar

Presentation:

Video:

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Academy of Media Learning

Meeting with Nilambar Rath and Saumya Parida

Workshop

An International Conclave of Odia Language

The Event

Programme

An Article on Kannada Wikipedian H R Lakshmivenkatesh

An Article on Kannada Wikipedia

ALC signs MoU for better net access