Centre for Internet and Society

A Wikipedia Workshop at SRM University, Chennai

noopur — 2012-12-27T05:57:34Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi in association with Metawings Institute organized a one-day workshop on contributing to Wikipedia at SRM University on December 17, 2012. About 40 students from different engineering colleges in Chennai participated in the workshop. Metawings coordinated for the logistics and for spreading the word among the students.

The three-hour workshop was mostly interactive. Since most students had a fair idea of what Wikipedia is and who writes articles on Wikipedia, they had many queries on who the 'editors' were, who selects them, how one can become an editor, how to determine reliability and authenticity of Wikipedia articles and so on. This was a pattern that I observed in many workshops that we conduct where people who have a level of ease and familiarity with using Wikipedia to get information, have often wondered if the information they are using is reliable or not. This also gives us a chance to explain how their contributions can make the encyclopedia more inclusive, informative and reliable.

One student was called upon to create a user account and instead of answering his query on patrolling edits, I encouraged him to vandalize a popular article just to see how quickly it is reverted and the correct version is restored. Some students were also interested in knowing about Indian language Wikipedias. So, I invited a student to create his account in Tamil Wikipedia and create his user page subsequently.

After the workshop the students wanted to stay in touch and receive more information on Wikipedia projects they could contribute to and filled up contact forms.

Special thanks to Metawings for helping us out with the logistics and to the student coordinators at SRM University for their cooperation!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai

A Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT

subha — 2013-01-04T16:30:28Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi collaborated with Metawings Institute to spread the words about Wikipedia for Indian languages. A one-day workshop was organized to educated the students on contributing to Wikipedia on December 21, 2012. About 170 engineering students took part in this event.

The workshop began with interaction with the students about their understanding. I asked few questions like what is Wikipedia, who edits articles on Wikipedia, is it paid or free, did they ever try to edit Wikipedia, etc. I took them through a presentation to explain basics of Wikipedia, five pillars, notability and copyright issues related to vandalism. One of the students were called to create his user account. Students were showed the simpler sign up process. To explain how articles are edited we introduced errors in the article on Bengaluru and made it the capital of India for few minutes! Students were explained how Wikipedia editors correct mistakes like these in real time and correct facts are published in Wikipedia. A majority of the students asked about the authenticity of articles which is open to anyone. So I got a chance to refresh the page and show how the error introduced was reverted within a few minutes.


Above is a picture of the participants from the Wikipedia Workshop at Karkala

The session went on with such interaction and students were explained more about the importance of citing references to add credibility to the facts they can add on Wikipedia articles.

We also had Dr. Ashok Kumar, prof, Computer science department, a wikipedian and columnist for Kannada newspaper Udaya Vani. Dr. Kumar introduced Kannada Wikipedia to the students. At the end of the session I had a discussion with him about organizing more workshops for Kannada Wikipedia and supporting participant students. Special thanks to Metawings for finding the venue and supporting for the event.

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

A Wikipedia Workshop at IISC

praskrishna — 2013-12-31T03:38:30Z

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

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

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

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

A Wikipedia Presentation at BITS, Goa

Radhakrishna Arvapally — 2015-03-09T01:21:43Z

Quark is one of India's largest science, technology and management festivals, held every February at BITS Pilani - K.K. Birla Goa Campus. This year in 2015, the event was held from February 6 to 8, 2015. This blog post captures the key moments. About 12 delegates attended the event.

How it Started?

For celebrating this annual event, "Quark 2015", BITS Pilani invited speakers from all over India. Many parallel tracks happen during this event. I got an Invite to speak about Wikimedia projects.The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) supported my event participation.

Dr. Sunil Kumar, a BITS physics professor who could not join the presentation due to conflicting meetings met me in the morning that day. He was curious to understand how Wikimedia projects work, how people collaborate to write the same article, how the conflicting views gets resolved among editors and how one can trust the content. He was excited to know the mechanics behind. We discussed about organizing a quiz for their students. He responded very positive and said that he will discuss this internally and get back to me later.

CIS team also helped me to establish contact with Luis Gomes, a local Konkani Wikipedian. We met at the event and shared our thoughts. It was a good learning for me to understand how Konkani Wikipedia is progressing.

I gave my speech in the afternoon. The participants showed great enthusiasm to learn about Wikipedia projects. The session was very interactive. The participants tried answering open ended questions like — As on today, what are the possible ways to preserve unique knowledge and skill? The participants also asked questions on the source of knowledge contribution to Wikipedia and how it survives?

My presentation showcased how anyone could contribute to Wikipedia and also explore greater possibilities of exploring existing frame work with examples like QRpedia, WikiWand, and many more.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/a-wikipedia-presentation-at-goa

A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi

Yuvraj Pandian — 2012-12-04T07:31:21Z

Wikipedian Yuvaraj Pandian visited the CIS office in Delhi and helped the Access to Knowledge team conduct a super-ad-hoc mini-hackathon with two other volunteers, Sheel from Delhi and Harsh from Ahmedabad. The aim was to get them a kickstart in developing userscripts/gadgets, and get them to a point where the prior existing documentation makes sense to them.

The ad-hoc plan had three parts:

The execution environment (Concept of userscripts vs gadgets, ResourceLoader)
The API concepts (Special:ApiSandbox, concept of 'actions' in the API)
Accessing the API from JS (mediawiki.api module, concept of AJAX)

Here is the account of what they did, written by Yuvi:

"We covered all parts of them slowly, with both Harsh and Sheel working at things until they fully understood what they were doing and why whatever they were doing was working.

I introduced them to the environment first by having them execute code in Chrome's JS Console, and then in their own common.js. Once they understood the context in which the code was getting executed, the 'ResourceLoader default modules'[1]documentation started making sense to them, and they could pick up other modules from there.

We then explored the API via the API Sandbox[2], which is a relatively new (and not very well known) way of letting people play around with the API. It is a massive improvement over the older, non-interactive docs[3], and both Harsh and Sheel were very excited about being able to discover all the things they could do with the API. A fair amount of time was spent messing around with it on different wikipedias (en, hi and gu) and reading bits of the API Documentation[4] to understand the concepts behind the actions - and for filling in the gaps.

Finally we had them use the API from a userscript to make calls. I went through the entire process line by line, explaining how AJAX works and how asynchronous programming works. We traced the flow of code together to understand how the seamingly nonlinear asynchronous programming model works. Then we dug into a bit of how to use the mw.loader module to make dependencies work, and why the same code that was working in the chrome js console was not working in their common.js.

It ended with them trying to port HotCat to their native language wikipedias. Harsh started to explore more about getting started with MediaWiki dev itself (rather than just gadgets), but the clone took a looooong time and we had run out of time by then. I directed him to a WMF tech open chat happening today, and hopefully that could help!

[1].https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules
[2].https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox
[3].https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
[4].https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi

A Wikipedia Editing Workshop in Goa

praskrishna — 2013-03-05T09:10:24Z

On the occasion of International Women's Day, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society is organizing a wikipedia editing workshop on March 8, 2013 at Nirmala Institute of Education, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., followed by an offline and online editathon.

The online editathon is a month-long affair, which will be held every weekend starting with the weekend after March 8. The goal of the month-long event is to encourage more women to contribute to Wikipedia and increase representation of articles related to women in Wikipedia.

The event aims at creating new articles, expanding the existing stubs and translating English articles to various Indian languages. Members are requested to start edithons in regional language Wikipedias.

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

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad

subha — 2013-01-22T03:09:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a Wikipedia workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology (RKGIT), Ghaziabad in collaboration with Metawings on January 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the happenings from the one-day workshop in this blog post.

As part of the soft skill development training program, RKGIT, an engineering college is working on a series of activities to empower the students with practical approach and competence for their professional life. We were invited to conduct a workshop for the students of mechanical engineering and help them understand the real reasons for contributions to Wikipedia as a volunteer.

Some of the focus areas we set for the workshop were:

Number of students not to exceed 60 to make sure that we get enough time and space to interact actively and pay individual attention.

Number of coordinators to support with logistics to conduct the workshop smoothly.
Active participation of teachers.
Arrangement of internet labs with multiple IP addresses for smooth user account creation.

Around 65 mechanical engineering students from second and third year participated in this workshop. We began the workshop with an interactive discussion about their practical relation with Wikipedia as students and the usability and difficulties that they face. I presented about some important facts about Wikipedia and voluntary contribution in different ways. During and after the presentation students asked a lot of questions about the notability and authenticity of articles, collaboration vs. fights among editors, references and its significance, etc.

There was a short break to make way for students to settle in the internet lab for a hands on training session. We faced problems with the LAN and 3G network for mobile broadband which made this session longer than expected. There were problems for creating accounts because of the Internet explorer and X based systems and the students couldn't create their user accounts. So, we had to manage with them contributing anonymously from IP addresses. Despite these unexpected technical problems all of them edited various articles. Some of them tried to vandalize and observe the quick reversal of the vandals.

Subhashish presenting about Wikipedia to the participants

I had a discussion with the director about conducting more such workshops, especially technical workshops where students can code and contribute to MediaWiki.

Quick links:

Presentation used for this workshop: www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia
English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org (Click here to create an account on Wikipedia)

Presentation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad

A Telugu Wiki Meetup @ CIS, Bangalore

SJ Veera — 2013-08-19T06:53:18Z

On June 2, 2013, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) hosted a Telugu wiki meetup in its Bangalore office. Updates from the meetup is shared in this blog post.

Access the Telugu wikipedia page about the event here

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the Telegu Wiki Mahotsavam held in Hyderabad earlier this year (in April 2013) due to personal and professional constraints even though Arjuna Rao called me twice and requested me to attend it. However, when he called again recently about a planned meetup in Bangalore, I willingly took up the initiative.

I used the "Category: Wikipedians in Bangalore" and communicated with all the Telugu users. I met T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge, Centre for Internet and Society and personally and took his views. Myself and Arjuna took the initial steps to organize this meeting. Arjuna managed to invite Dr. T. Ramakrishna and Gudipati Narayana for this meetup. He also managed to announce about this event in the press.

We finally met at CIS and had a two-hour session:

The Programme

Welcome note by Sasi
Mutual introductions
An introduction was given to Telugu Wiki projects with practical examples. (Using, searching, editing, interaction and getting help)
Guests’ doubts were clarified by the Telugu Wikipedians Ravichandra, Arjuna and Sasi
Dr. Ramakrishna suggested that parallel to the Telugu Wikipedia development, Telugu should be encouraged to be used in administration. This should start with interactions with the officials and the organizations working towards it
Gudipati Narayana conveyed his view that Telugu Wikipedia can be used to increase the standards in Telugu teaching
Both the guests promised that they will do their bit in organizing the Wikipedia awareness events in the organizations know to them

A group photo of Telegu Wikipedians from the meetup held at CIS, Bangalore is seen below

It is decided that a Telugu Wiki Meet-Up will be held on second Saturday of every month in Bangalore for Telugu Wikipedians.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/telugu-wiki-meet-up-at-cis-june-2-2013

A Telegu Wiki Meetup @ CIS

SJ Veera (Telugu Wikipedian) — 2013-09-01T11:30:18Z

Telugu Wikipedians had their monthly meetup at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore on Saturday, July 13, 2013, 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Telugu Wikipedians Arjuna, Ravichandra, Sasi and Rahmanuddin participated in the meetup. Telugu lecturer Gudipati Narayana and Haribabu on behalf of Bengaluru Telugu Tejam also attended the event. Dr. T. Ramakrishna, who translated Aurobindo Ghosh's "Savitri" to Telugu was the chief guest for this meetup. This is the second monthly Telugu Wikipedia workshop in Bangalore.

An Introduction to Telugu Wiki

The workshop began with the mutual introduction and thereafter the participants were briefed about content creation and editing of articles. A practical demonstration was given by creating an article on Bengaluru Telugu Tejam. Arjuna, Ravichandra, Rahmanuddin and Sasi responded to the queries from the participants and clarified their doubts.

Introduction to Savitri

Dr. T. Ramakrishna thereafter gave a presentation of Aurobindo's book "Savitri". He spoke in length about Aurobindo Ghosh, his contributions to the freedom movement of India, and a brief background about Savitri, an epic poem in blank verse based upon a theology from the Mahabharata. Dr. Ramakrishna said that Sri Aurobindo who was a great spiritual leader and a yogi conveyed the message that religion and culture in India are not interlinked or interrelated. He also said that the characters in the present story tells to mankind how to increase spiritual energy.

Telugu Wikipedia Issues and Projects

The following were some of the observations and decisions taken at this meetup:

It was decided to complete the "Telugu Famous Personalities" as soon as possible so that new projects could be taken up.
Narayana has promised to make a plan to train Telugu lecturers and students on Telugu Wikipedia and to release it very soon to TE-Wikipedia
Rahmanuddin proposed to increase participation in Telugu Writers Meetings and Internet Meetings which are held across the globe so that the awareness on TE-Wiki can be increased
Arjuna requested to look into the plans which would answer the issues raised in Telugu Wikipedian Meet
Dr. Ramakrishna felt that more pressure should be brought on the Government of India to increase the usage of Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam.
After completing the current priorities, projects related to Bangalore should be taken up.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/telegu-wiki-meet-up-july-13-2013

A Report of the Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar

praskrishna — 2012-12-07T22:37:59Z

(By Debapriya Priyadashi Chakra) Sambad, Odisha's most widely read and largest circulated daily, on November 19, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Read a detailed report about this workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur

praskrishna — 2012-12-05T05:20:38Z

The Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, on December 3, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia Workshop organized in IIT, Kharagpur, West Bengal.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Udupi

praskrishna — 2013-04-26T06:29:15Z

The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society is organizing a Kannada wikipedia workshop at the MGM college in Udupi. Govinda Pai Research Centre, MGM College Udupi is sponsoring the event.The workshop will begin at 10.00 a.m. and end by 5.00 p.m. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja will give a talk on Kannada wikipedia.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

What is Wikipedia?
Who edits Wikipedia?
How does Wikipedia work?
HOW TO EDIT?
What can I edit?
Why to contribute to Wikipedia
Kannada specific topics
Brief on Creative Commons
Hands-on

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-udupi-april-29-2013

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mysore

pavanaja — 2013-10-04T04:40:46Z

On Tuesday, August 6, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at the Centre for Proficiency Development and Placement Services (CPDPS), Manasa Gangotri campus, University of Mysore, Karnataka by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

The main objective of this workshop was to acquaint the participants about Wikipedia and get them a hands-on experience of editing Wikipedia and also encourage them to contribute to the Kannada Wikipedia. The participants were also asked to reflect upon their experiences and perceptions of editing and contributing to Wikipedia, and identify areas in which they could add more value to the existing initiatives.

Most of the previous Kannada Wikipedia workshops have been well covered well by the leading Kannada newspapers like Vijaya Karnataka, Prajavani, etc.

This generated quite some interest in many people and we began getting requests to conduct more Kannada Wikipedia workshops. One such request came from Prof. Niranjana Vanalli, Director of CPDPS, to conduct a Kannada Wikipedia workshop at his centre. The date was finalised for August 6, 2013. This was announced in the leading local newspapers. As a result, nearly 50 persons registered for the workshop.

Above: Dr. Pavanaja conducting the workshop in Mysore

The workshop was inaugurated by Dr. P. Nagabhushan, Chairman of Computer Studies, Dept. of Studies in Computer Science, University of Mysore. He said that Wikipedia could facilitate the growth of Kannada language in this digital era. Prof. Niranjana Vanalli welcomed everyone and also did the role of MC for the inaugural program. The workshop was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. started about half an hour late. Initially there were 22 people and as the day progressed we saw more people joining in for the workshop. In the end there were about 60 participants. Dr. Pavanaja spoke briefly and requested Mysore University to re-release their famous Kannada Encyclopaedia under the Creative Commons license so as to facilitate the growth of Kannada Wikipedia.

The inauguration programme was very well covered by media. The Hindu highlighted my request about releasing encyclopaedias under the Creative Commons license.

After the inauguration, all those who were interested in the hands-on session shifted to the computer lab in the same building. Dr. Pavanaja gave a presentation on Wikipedia, then Kannada Wikipedia, and then spoke about its importance. This was followed by some demos on using Wikipedia and editing Wikipedia. The participants created their usernames in Kannada Wikipedia. Very soon the limit of creating 6 new editors per IP address was reached and the remaining people could not create their usernames. Some participants registered using Dr. Pavanaja’s laptop. The rest of the participants watched the demos and promised to go home and register later. Many people did so and have e-mailed their usernames.

Kiran Ravikumar, a young active Wikipedian from Mysore gave a brief presentation about Creative Commons and how to use it with Wikipedia. He demonstrated uploading some image under Wikimedia Commons and linking it from Wikipedia.

Above: Wikipedian Kiran Ravikumar making his presentation

Some new editors have begun doing wiki editing. We may need to monitor, and nurture these new editors till the time they become well versed.

We would like to thank Prof. Niranjana Vanalli for all the local arrangements, publicity and and making the workshop to happen.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-wikipedia-university-of-mysore

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Sagara

pavanaja — 2014-03-25T08:51:36Z

On Sunday, July 28, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Sagara, Shimoga Dist, Karnataka by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. In this post, I share with you the happenings from the workshop.

Video

Some months ago, I got a phone call from Chinmaya M Rao from Sagara, Shimoga District requesting me to conduct a Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Sagara. He informed me that there are quite a good number of writers in that area who are interested in adding content to Kannada Wikipedia but don't know how to. Many telephonic discussions followed, many dates were considered, changed, iterated and finally the workshop was organised on Sunday, July 28, 2013. The programme was inaugurated by Shri Kagodu Thimmappa, Speaker of the current Legislative Assembly of Karnataka. Famous Kannada writer Naa D'Souza was the chief guest. Shri G.T. Shridhar Sharma, President of Kannada Times Media World, presided over the function. The programme was jointly organised by CIS and Kannada Times Media World, Sagara.

	Speaking after inaugurating the workshop, Shri Kagodu Thimmappa said "the basic knowledge of technology has become important as one could get ample, accurate information on various topics, and current affairs of the world in a minute all languages, including Kannada. It is the onus of the people of the sate to preserve and promote the use of Kannada language." (Deccan Herald, Shimaga edition, July 30, 2013). Naa D'Souza mentioned how earlier knowledge was the monopoly of some particular sections of the society and how technology has transformed knowledge into an asset of all the people irrespective of caste, race, religion, region and financial status.
Seen above is a picture of Shri Kagodu Thimmappa inagurating the workshop

I then gave a brief introduction to Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia. There are many encylopaedias in Kannada but very few are regularly updated. They are seldom digitised. People who add content to Kannada Wikipedia are in search of authentic information. These are available in many encylopaedias brought in by various academies, associations and universities funded by the Government of Karnataka. People of the state have a right on these content. I requested Shri Kagodu Thimmappa to bring them under the Creative Commons License so that the active Kannada Wikipedians can make use of them to add content into Kannada Wikipedia. Shri Kagodu Thimmappa promised to look into this.

After the inauguration, the actual presentation by me started at a cybercafe run by Istam Computers. It was raining heavily. Participants walked for 5 minutes in heavy rain to reach the venue. The presentation went on till lunch time. The place was very congested. One participant, B. V. Ravindranath, who is a practicing Chartered Accountant at Sagara, offered his place to conduct the hands-on workshop. Hence, all participants went to the new venue which was quite comfortable. Participants did the hands-on editing of Wikipedia till 7.30 p.m. Eleven persons participated in the workshop and edited actively. Some were seen editing Kannada Wikipedia regularly after the workshop.
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is seen sharing a light moment with participants from the workshop in the above picture.

After the inauguration, the actual presentation by me started at a cybercafe run by Istam Computers. It was raining heavily. Participants walked for 5 minutes in heavy rain to reach the venue. The presentation went on till lunch time. The place was very congested. One participant, B. V. Ravindranath, who is a practicing Chartered Accountant at Sagara, offered his place to conduct the hands-on workshop. Hence, all participants went to the new venue which was quite comfortable. Participants did the hands-on editing of Wikipedia till 7.30 p.m. Eleven persons participated in the workshop and edited actively. Some were seen editing Kannada Wikipedia regularly after the workshop.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is seen sharing a light moment with participants from the workshop in the above picture.

An active Kannada Wikipedian, B S Chandrashekhar from Sagara, who has more than 4500 edits on Kannada Wikipedia to his credit was felicitated during the inauguration function. He is 79 years old. Despite his old age, he actively paticipated in the workshop till the end and learnt many intricacies which he was otherwise unaware of.

In the end, I would like to personally thank Chinmay Rao and G. T. Shridhar Sharma of Kannada Times who toiled a lot in organising the wokrshop. Also thanks to B. V. Ravindranath, CA, who provided the venue for the hands-on workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-at-sagara

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet

pavanaja — 2013-09-05T06:46:39Z

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

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

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

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


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

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

Media Coverage

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

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