Centre for Internet and Society

The Knowledge Base is Liberated

Subodh Kulkarni and Madhav Gadgil — 2019-08-05T23:04:33Z

The article published in Sunday supplement of Loksatta newspaper of Express group, written jointly by Madhav Gadgil & Subodh Kulkarni summarises - the status of searchable open knowledge available on web, eagerness of youth generation across the social strata to access knowledge on new gadgets and the approaches to build resources in Marathi on web harnessing potential of Wikimedia projects. It also elaborates major three breakthroughs – Free & open source software movement, Unicode revolution and development of collaborative knowledge building and sharing free platforms like Wikimedia projects easily accessible to people in their own languages.

The article by Subodh Kulkarni and Madhav Gadgil titled ज्ञानभांडार मुक्त झाले.. in Marathi was published by Loksatta on August 3, 2019.

In 2020, Maharashtra state is celebrating its 60th anniversary, it is also 100th death anniversary of Lokmanya Tilak while the state has recently celebrated 100th birth anniversaries of Lokkavi Annabhau Sathe and Lokshahir Amar Shekh. These three social reformers and prolific writers had shaped the socio-political history of Maharashtra. On this occasion, appeal is made to the Marathi community for bringing the complete works of these three reformers in Wikimedia projects in searchable & freely accessible form. It is also mentioned that these efforts are being facilitated by Centre for Internet & Society and other like-minded organisations. The aim is to complete this project before Marathi language day in February 2020.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/loksatta-august-3-2019-subodh-kulkarni-and-madhav-gadgil-the-knowledge-base-is-liberated

The joys of being a Wikipedian

praskrishna — 2014-07-30T05:19:16Z

Radha Krishna, an engineer, had always wanted to share information online so that people who wanted to learn more could just log in and benefit by reading his articles. Eight years ago he started his own website for this very purpose. But he found it hard to maintain the site. He then chanced upon Wikipedia, the largest open-source encyclopedia, which was then just becoming popular in the country.

The article by Svetlana Lasrado was published in the New Indian Express on July 29, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

He registered an account on the website and started contributing to it by editing articles and adding references. Krishna, who has contributed over 4000 articles so far, prides himself on being one of the first few Wiki editors from Bangalore.

Komal Khatokar, on the other hand, has not spent as much time on the site as Krishna.

This 19-year-old B Com student of Christ University had to contribute one article to the Indian language Wikipedia last year as part of her assignment in a language of her choice, Sanskrit. She says, “I wrote an article on G V Iyer, who was the first person to direct a movie in Sanskrit.”

But it did not stop there. Last May, she took up an internship project with The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), which acts as a catalyst for the Wikipedia movement in India. She wanted to explore the world of Wiki writing.

“I took part in a project to add articles from the Kannada encyclopedia online. We uploaded over 1200 articles, which will go live on the main website in October.” Komal now edits copies on the site and despite her hectic college schedule, wants to continue contributing to Wikipedia in any way that she can.

Anybody with an Internet access can edit an article on Wikipedia. Globally, the English Wikipedia has over 4 million articles and there are over a million registered users.

And in Bangalore, from just 10 members five years ago, there are now over 100 registered volunteers who contribute to the website on a daily basis, says Vishnu Vardhan, from CIS and adds, “Now, the maximum number of Wikipedians from India are from Bangalore and majority of the founding members of the Wikimedia India Chapter are also from here.”

Apart from English content, world over Wikipedia has many regional chapters covering over 200 languages to increase representation of region-specific content. In India, the Access to Knowledge programme developed by CIS works towards the growth of Indian language Wikipedias. In this regard, Vishnu states that Bangalore has a majority of active Kannada Wikipedia volunteers and is the single largest location for active Malayalam Wikipedians. Bangalore is also the second largest location for Telugu Wikipedia community after Hyderabad, he observes. The strong volunteer community is involved in the Wiki movement in ways more than one.

Different ways to contribute

Jeph Paul is not a Wikipedian in the traditional sense of the word. Why? Because he doesn't contribute or edit articles on the website. What he does is very technical. He develops tools and gadgets for Wikipedia in India to enhance user experience. Jeph got involved when Wikipedia started providing grants of up to $30000 to people who wanted to improve the usability and functionality of the website. Jeph applied and received $500 for his project. His project was simple -- he created a visual representation of how an article evolved. He explains, “There are over 100 editors who pore over just one article and modify it — the edits can be a sentence that is rewritten, a reference link added or citations made. But the changes are a lot and minute. I created a tool where people could see what changes are made and how the article evolves over a period of time.”

Besides developing tools and software, Jeph points out that users can generate visual content. For instance, there are some topics such as historical monuments which require visual documentation. Users can submit their visual repository to Wikipedia to enhance text content.

Wikipedia Caveats

Wikipedia, globally ranked sixth among all the websites based on web traffic, has laid down a list of rules and guidelines which users are required to follow. For instance, when one edits articles, one should avoid personal opinions. Komal cites a recent furore when there were slanderous remarks made against actor Ambarish.

“Such personal opinions should be reserved for blogs. Wikipedia is a public domain website. Hence, when you become a contributor, you have a certain responsibility. You should refrain from portraying biased sentiments through your articles,” she observes. Contemplating on this, Komal adds that Wikipedians should not fabricate content. "They should only include what’s already published and authenticate it using a credible source," she adds.

Another rule that is of utmost importance is compliance with copyright. Radha Krishna explains, “If you want to include information from a website or article, you can't copy the text verbatim. You have to analyse the content and paraphrase it based on your own understanding, citing legitimate references.”

When in doubt, the Wikipedians assert, it is always best to take help from other editors and collaborators through the ‘Talk’ option on the website or through monthly meetings.

It's easy to be a Wikipedia contributor:

Register: Although a visitor can edit articles, it is good to register to keep a record of your edits. You will also get an access to Wikipedia’s enhanced editing features.

Start with editing: Click the ‘Edit’ tab on the article’s page to modify the copy -- check typos, grammar, sentence structure and add an explanation. For example, if it is a spelling correction, add 'Typo'.

Preview: After editing, see a preview of the modifications by clicking ‘Show Preview’.

Save: Then save the changes by clicking the ‘Save Page’ tab.

Format: Wiki uses a markup language called wikitext to format text. Acquaint yourself with this language by reading the online tutorial. For instance, you can change a text to bold or italics by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes.

Link: You can add inline citations by linking a word to another Wikipedia page. To do so, put the word in double square brackets. You can also change the display text.

Categorise: Add categories near the bottom of the article by typing the topic using Category:

Add footnotes: You can add reference tags around your source using <ref>Your Source</ref>.

Add external links: To add a link to an external credible website, type the URL inside a single set of brackets, followed by a space and the text to be displayed.

Talk to other editors: Use talk pages to discuss articles or any issues with other Wikipedians.

For a detailed tutorial on how to edit an article, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

Wiki meets and awareness programmes: Since 2010, the Bangalore Wikipedia community has conducted over 40 meet-ups, according to Vishnu. “This helps increase participation among all volunteers, improves engagement and understanding of the work that is being done on an ongoing basis,” he opines.

Apart from this, their main focus is to get more people to join the fray through ‘Wiki Academy’ which travels to different organisations in the country to get people acquainted to the website and give them hands-on training on editing articles. Radha Krishna explains, “We recently conducted a workshop at C-DOT and Don Bosco Engineering College.” He adds, “Wikipedia has a lot of sister projects too like Wikiversity, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary, which people are not aware of. We want people to make use of these tools too.”

Rules every Wikipedian should follow:

Don't share unpublished results

Don't expound your personal theories or start debates

Respect other editors

If you spot an error, correct it

Write without using jargons

Do not violate copyright and attribute statements

Do not promote yourself

Do not be biased in your tone of writing. Always cover significant point of views

Don't be afraid to ask for help

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-july-29-2014-svetlana-lasrado

The Intellects holds 2nd International Conclave of Odia Language

praskrishna — 2016-02-27T05:35:17Z

The Intellects, a Delhi-based progressive forum of intellectuals, held the 2nd International Conclave of Odia Language at the India International Centre in New Delhi today.

Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and won an award. Look for the coverage by Odisha News here.

The seminar had the title of ‘Aamari Bhasha Pathe’. The conclave was inaugurated by eminent Novelist and Writer Dr. Bibhuti Pattnaik and Rajya Sabha MP Baishnab Charan Parida among others. In the inaugural session, the speakers, including Shri Baishnab Parida, Dr. Natabar Satpathy, Dr. Amarendra Khatua, Poet Sankarshan Parida, Dr. Iti Samanta, Smt. Mamata Mohapatra, Mr. Subhasish Panigrahi stressed on the need of promotion of Odia language and its development on the global arena. They highlighted various angles of Odia language, its history and the challenges it faced apart from outlining the modalities to give it a big boost.

In the second leg, a Poets’ Conference was held. Dr. Jagannath Prasad Das, Dr. Amarendra Khatua, Poet Sankarshan Parida, Dr. Anita Panda, Poet Gajanan Mishra, Smt. Yashodhara Mishra, Poet Manas Ranjan Mohapatra and many other recited poems.

In the last leg, Kendra Sahitya Akademi President, Dr. Vishwanath Tiwari and Sir Mark Tully (former Bureau Chief of BBC, New Delhi), graced the occasion among others. Several eminent personalities were honoured and received the awards from The Intellects.

Ama Gourav Samman – Shri Bibhuti Pattnaik

Amari Bhasha Pathe Samman:

Shri Baishnab Parida
Dr. Amarendra Khatua
Smt. Kunu Dash
Dr. Iti Samanta
Dr. Natabar Satpathy
Shri Gajanan Mishra
Shri Sankarshan Parida
Smt. Mamata Mohapatra
Shri Kulamani Biswal

Yuva Prerana Samman:

Shri Subhasish Panigrahi
Shri Manoranjan Mohanty
Shri Subhranshu Panda

Swabhimani Odia Sanghthan Samman:

Biswajit Dash (IPROCH)
Sanjeev Mohanty (Odisha Forum)
Bijaya Kumar Dash (Sukha Dukha Prakashan)

Shri Debendra Rout, Chairman of The Intellects and Parambrahma Tripathy, Secretary (Literature), The Intellects, organised the event successfully with all their hard efforts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/odisha-news-february-22-2016-intellects-holds-second-international-conclave-of-odia-language

The Dynamics of Education to Employment Journey: Opportunities and Challenges

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T09:40:19Z

KIIT School of Management, KIIT Univeristy is holding the 7th National Management Convention 2014 at its campus in Bhubaneswar on February 21 and 22, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi have been invited to address the students of KIIT University.

Click to download the event brochure

Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi spoke at the event and also evaluated submissions by students and researchers. Subhashish's presentation titled Redefining Education to Employment Journey: Voices of the Youth/Students can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dynamics-of-education-to-employment-journey

The Digital Classroom in the Time of Wikipedia

nishant — 2015-10-05T14:53:30Z

The digital turn in education comes across a wide range of initiatives and processes. The Wikipedia which is the largest user generated content website stands as a figurehead of such a digital turn, writes Nishant Shah.

Context

The digital turn in education has been described across a wide range of initiatives and processes. These include the introduction of digital tools and gadgets as a part of the learning environment, building digital archives and repositories of learning and curriculum building, facilitating remote access to education through information and communications technologies infrastructure, improving quality of access to education and learning resources, building diverse and customised syllabi to accommodate for alternative and contesting perspectives, building peer knowledge communities of information and knowledge production, and including non-canonical material and experiences into formal institutions of education. Different locations, contexts, geo-political circumstances, socio-economic factors, and cultural differences influence the spread, rise and integration of digital technologies in mainstream education. Much academic, policy and implementation attention has been given to these processes and several models of new learning environments and infrastructure have been postulated over the last two decades. The democratising promise of internet technologies has been largely if not exclusively about education, learning, literacy and production of knowledge from different parts of the world.

Wikipedia, one of the first and possibly the largest user generated content websites, that aims to put together the ‘sum total of all human knowledge’ in an open encyclopaedia, stands as the figurehead of such a digital turn. It questions and subverts the traditional analogue forms of knowledge production and relationships. The much discussed experiment conducted by Nature (Giles, 2005 and Orlowski, 2006) that established Wikipedia as an almost equal (if not more) reliable source of information to the fountainhead of print-based knowledge Encyclopaedia Britannica, has become the touchstone by which digital collaborative knowledge structures seek their validity within mainstream classroom pedagogy and learning. Wikipedia itself has emerged as an object of deep scrutiny and contestation, with warring factions going strong about its strengths and weaknesses. The supporters look at how this collaborative peer-to-peer structure has changed knowledge relationships that defined consumers, producers and mediators of knowledge. They see in the rise of Wikipedia, and other such wiki-based structures and user generated content sites that remix, reuse and share knowledge within the digital realm, the potentials and possibilities of changing the futures of knowledge ecologies and economies. The detractors of Wikipedia make a strong case for specialised and expert curatorial practices of knowledge, without which the information explosion of the digital world would collapse all distinctions between speculative writing and rigorous accountable research.

Concerns

In the seemingly unbridgeable differences of these two contesting positions, there is however, a set of common presumptions which remained unquestioned and unchallenged. The example of Wikipedia accordingly serves to throw in sharp relief these more general questions regarding digitally produced knowledge and digitally enabled learning practices.

Design of Trust

The first among them is the concern around Authority and Authorship (Liang, 2010). Increasingly, as Wikipedia becomes a de facto global reference site available in different languages, there is a growing dependence on the authority of information available on Wikipedia. Given that the number of users of Wikipedia is exponentially higher than the number of editors on Wikipedia, there are many users who never confront the structures of participation, processes of editing, and questioning the source of information (Harouni, 2009, Broughton, 2002) found on the site. This is not a problem exclusive to Wikipedia. Given the explosion of user generated sites which often gloss over the problems of authority and authorship, misdirected or misguided information, there is a need for digital criticality which can help people sift through different kinds of information and develop the capacity for effective critical judgment regarding both truth or falsity and rhetorical persuasiveness or manipulation. Especially within the context of scholarly and academic research and learning, classroom teaching and pedagogy, there is a need to define new parameters by which information introduced in the classroom or learning environment needs to stand deeper scrutiny regarding reliability (over authority).

Flattened Politics

The second concern has to do with the depoliticized perception of participation, collaboration and knowledge production on Wikipedia (Graham, 2010). Not only are geographical counters, experiential knowledges and non-standard forms of citation (Prabhala, 2010) ignored on Wikipedia, but they are also rendered redundant under the guise of objectivity. The essentially viral nature of information online and conditions of easy replicability that allow for copy and paste cultures often means that the information gets de-contextualised and de-politicized from its original intentions and circuits of production/distribution.

In many ways, Wikipedia’s adherence to an encyclopaedic model, promotes the idea that there is universal, objective knowledge which can be produced and understood without engaging with the politics of context, language, translation, evidence, etc. This adoption of an older model of aggregating knowledge becomes problematic in the light of new perspectives and theories of reading and writing, which establish knowledge as a contested terrain rather than the benign site that can be mediated through protocols, bots and procedures (Miller, 2007 and Rosenzweig, 2006). In classrooms, students and teachers are both faced with problems when they encounter the simultaneously authoritative and collaborative, definite and tentative nature of information on Wikipedia. The flattened structure of information further complicates our engagement with the larger contexts it refers to and often hinders the learner’s ability to go beyond the self contained universe of Wikipedia, unable to engage with that which has been omitted or left-out and only concentrating on that what has been written and represented.

Technology as Tool

The third concern marks a larger anxiety with the Web 2.0 technologies and their integration with formal structures of education and learning. It has to do with new configurations of power, recalibrated hierarchies of learning and teaching, and distributed communities of learning which might not often be cohesive and concurrent. With the unqualified emphasis on digital gadgets – OLPC, Smart Boards, iPads – and ubiquitous connectivity, there is often a danger to reducing these structures to sheer functionality. There have been experiments where pedagogues have merely introduced user generated sites as reference material and ways of accessing information without actually looking at how they posit questions to existing education systems. The larger trend of distrusting non-academic spaces continues.

A lecture on the problems of Wikipedia is immediately followed by a ban on or “policing” of the use of Wikipedia as a reliable resource, trying to create a false and divisive distinction between offline and online learning tools (Davidson, 2007). With the increased focus on ‘Digital Natives’ within education policy and everyday classroom pedagogy, there is a call for changing the existing classroom and replacing it with a digital classroom – a classroom that challenges the teacher-student relationships, the authority of the prescribed curricula, and the form of learning and teaching within college and university structures. The Digital Classroom is often mistaken to be a virtualisation of the contemporary classroom, where virtual presences and cloud-based resources of learning structure the syllabi and the methods of learning. However, the larger anxieties are about rendering the physical classroom digital by establishing new relationships and structures at the levels of curricula design, teaching, learning and evaluation. The need is to look beyond the social media as a tool, and start unpacking the transparency of the digital interface and the perceived non-hierarchical nature of information filtering (Geiger, 2010) on Wikipedia and other such user generated content portals.

Quality of Access

The fourth concern draws from digital internet rhetoric of Do It Yourself. There is a heavy promotion of howthe only thing that stops a student (or anybody who is a learner) from being an intelligent and engaged student is lack of resources. This rhetoric finds bolstering in other political movements like FLOSS and A2K (Willinsky, 2006). There is a presumption that the teacher is merely a proxy for the paucity of resources and that once the students have unlimited access to the ‘sum total of all human knowledge’, they will be able to Learn everything on their own. The DIY University models, the proposition of phasing out teachers and investing in digital infrastructure instead, the idea that the digital native student has instinctive abilities to navigate through knowledge systems (like a fish does to water), all obfuscate not only the traditional learning processes but also reduce all learning to Access.

There is no debate about the quality of access. Even when factual errors are spotted, it is celebrated as an opportunity to improve so that information on Wikipedia is by definition flawed and always potentially in the process of being improved. There is little theorisation of both the role of a teacher in a classroom and the relationship with information access and learning. The presumption that the only gating factor to better education is lack of resources glosses over questions of social and economic disadvantage, political contexts, age, language, race, gender, sexuality, social support, etc., that come into play when designing inclusive education systems. Instead, there is a promotion of fact-based skill-oriented learning that fits the larger neo-liberal agenda of producing workforces who necessarily should not have to be critical in their everyday labours (Achterman, 2005). Universities and colleges are finding increasing pressure to produce students who work within such flat knowledge horizons towards market expansion and promotion of information capitalism rather than a critical learner who is able to deploy lessons learned from education in order to question and change the reality of the conditions within which s/he lives.

Rationale

Given these dramatic measures and accelerated changes happening in academia and within the university systems across the worlds, it is necessary to dwell on what a digital college classroom and learning environment looks like in the time of Wikipedia. A synthesis of perspectives from different stakeholders in varied disciplines, engaging with knowledge production, consumption, distribution and access is necessary to understand what the futures and contours of the university system and classroom pedagogy are. The ambition is to look at Wikipedia as a symptom of our times rather than a site of analyses.

Call for Proposals

This is a call for proposals towards a special Reader, from people who are interested in producing historical and contemporary accounts of relationships between education, technology, learning, and pedagogy in order to map existing crises and questions of our present times. We take the classroom as the unit where different processes and flows of the education system meet. In this context, we invite researchers, academic practitioners, students, artists, new media theorists, education policy actors and historians of knowledge to look at the Digital Classroom in the Time of Wikipedia as an opportunity to question global trends in education and ways by which Wikipedia (and other such structures) can be fruitfully integrated in formal education towards better learning. Proposals can be for producing theoretical accounts, critical analyses, case-studies from one’s practice, review of information and knowledge, narratives of art and activist interventions, regional and local snap-shots, and other innovative forms by which the diverse and complex questions can be elaborated.

Key Questions

Proposals can be inspired by but not limited to some of the questions listed below that we identify as beginning points for engaging with the area:

What does a digital classroom look like? If we had to think beyond just integration of digital tools into the classroom, what are the new models and structures of classrooms (physical, pedagogical, or otherwise) that we are looking at?
What are the new relationships that we are mapping in the time of Wikipedia – student-teacher, teacher-curriculum, student-classroom, student-student, technology-education, pedagogy-learning? How do we account for the shifts and map the transitions?
How do we understand the changing nature and function of the university and education with the rise of the internet? What are the policy and practice visions of the University of the Future?
What does the integration of Wikipedia and similar structures in everyday classroom practice lead to? What does it change and for whom?
What is the role of the teacher in the age of ubiquitous information access? How do we restructure our ideas of pedagogy, learning and evaluation?
What are the historical tensions between technology and education that are being replayed with the rise of the digital?
What does the rise of Wikipedia mean for our traditional understandings of data repositories? What are the politics and implications of Wikimedia’s other projects on Alternative Citation, Wikipictures, GLAM, etc. on the larger knowledge ecology and industry?

References:

Achterman, D. (2005). “Surviving Wikipedia: Improving student search habits through information literacy and teacher collaboration”, Knowledge Quest, 33(5), 38−40.
Davidson, C. (2007). “We can’t ignore the influence of digital technologies”, Education Digest, 73(1), 15−18.
Geiger, S. (2011). “The Lives of Bots”, Critical Point of View A Wikipedia Reader (Eds.) Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz. Institute of Network Cultures : Amsterdam.
Giles, J. (2005). “Internet encyclopedias go head to head”, Nature, 438(7070), 900−901.
Graham, M. (2011). “Wiki Space: Palimpsests and the Politics of Exclusion”, Critical Point of View A Wikipedia Reader (Eds.) Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz. Institute of Network Cultures : Amsterdam.
Harouni, H. (2009). “High School Research and Critical Literacy: Social Studies with and Despite Wikipedia”, Harvard Educational Review, 79 (3), 473-494.
Liang, L. (2011). “A brief History of the Internet from the 15th to the 18th Century”, Critical Point of View A Wikipedia Reader (Eds.) Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz. Institute of Network Cultures : Amsterdam.
Miller, N. (2007). “Wikipedia revisited” ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 64(2), 147−150.
Orlowski, A. (2006, March 26). Nature mag cooked Wikipedia study, The Register. Retrieved December 17, 2011, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/
Prabhala, A. (2011). People Are Knowledge. Documentary retrieved from December 17, 2011 from http://vimeo.com/26469276.
Rosenzweig, R. (2006). “Can history be open source? Wikipedia and the future of the past” Journal of American History, 93(1), 117–146.
Willinsky, J. (2006). The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. MIT Press :Massachusetts.
Collaborators: Dr. David Theo Goldberg, University of California Humanities Research Institute and Claudia Sullivan, Digital Media and Learning Initiative, HASTAC.
Photo source: Flickr (Creative Commons-licensed content for noncommercial use requiring attribution and share alike distribution).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/digital-classroom/digital-classroom-in-time-of-wikipedia

Tewiki 10th Anniversary

rahim — 2014-03-19T11:01:01Z

Tewiki 10th anniversary celebration 2014, started on February 15 in Vijayawada at Kakaraparti Bhavanarayana College. It was co-organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team and the Telugu Wikipedia community. Ch.Arjuna Rao expressed his happiness on Telugu Wikipedias completion of 10 years and 55000 articles in Telugu on the inauguration of decade celebrations.

The full details are captured in the report published on the meta page. The following is an abridged version of the same in English.

The founding president of the Wikimedia India Chapter CH.Arjunarao , T.Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, CIS-A2K, President of the decade ceremonial committee BK Viswanath. K.B.N.college officials Sambasiva Rao, Rajith Kumar and Krishnamurthy inaugurated the function by Jyothi Prajwalana.

Talking on the occasion the chairman of Andhra Pradesh official languages commission Buddha Prasad said that 2014-15 must be declared as the year of the Telugu Wikipedia and to make the most of it by more exciting activities. Telugu Wikipedia has put in more efforts than governments and universities to the culture of the Telugu language. Many great personalities served Telugu language and culture were remembered in this occasion including Lakshmanrao, Mallampalli.

Telugu Computer: Past, Present, Future of the Convention

Komarraju Laxmana Rao Visishta Wikipedian award-winner Veeven organised an awareness seminar. Veeven talked about how in 2004, a decade ago, the Internet Telugu writing, and reading had many problems, and how by the year 2014 they got eliminated in the sequence. He also touched upon the future development of the technology used in the Telugu language. He said that Microsoft Office, Libre Office, Adobe In Design, Adobe Photoshop, etc., will be used as the applications in Telugu. Today Telugu is expected to be used in mobile phones, i. Pods, and this justifies the use of Android in Telugu.

Convention on Wikidata

Rahmanuddin spoke about wikidata. He explained in detail how linking an article in all languages is the first step and linking diagrams and figures is the second step and showed participants that in the third stage classification is included. He explained it with examples of the mango tree and the word 'mother'. After this he showed how the link the particular article to the word. Thereafter he spoke about the app developed by Tamil students to link a particular word to the article and urged that people should start using these apps early on in their life as then only development in this field would be possible.

Experiences of Other Language Wikipedians

Some Tamilians shared their experience in developing Tamil wiki. They said that government and other organisations have helped a lot in developing Tamil wiki. Government organisations helped a lot in filing data in digital form. Many educational institutions have take part in this project. Some even proposed that Tamil wiki might be made a part of the education for students. They said that they shared this info about Tamil wiki to various friends and organisations.

Odia wikipedian Mrutunjay said that they attached the voice app feature to help with pronounciation. They attached the Odiya files to English words so that it will be useful for easy search. He also mentioned that there is a lack of creative writers in Odisha and that they are trying to overcome this problem.

Malayalam wikipedian K.Manoj said that from wikisource Malayalam remains the topmost Indian language for obtaining various data from a specific language. He said that over 200 books and 800 articles were included in the Malayalam wiki. They organised the structure in such a way that students will be able to use it from a very early age. These books in wikisource were used by many students.Konkani wiki. Darsan said that in 2007 they started the Konkani wiki. Goa students made a significant contribution to the development of this project. They uploaded 290 articles till now and they are trying to digitalise konkani wiki and other projects to help them develop.

Making a substantial contribution to the Telugu Wikipedia Nisar Ahmed also spoke about the developments in Urdu Wikipedia. He came to share his experience with others. He said that Urdu language was born in India and in the globalized Urdu wikipedia there are only 2 or 3 Urdu wikipedians from India. He also spoke of the experiences of an article on national anthem and about the views of the Pakistani community.He further discussed about the difficulties in work caused by different countries, the available options and how to solve those problems and gain experiences.

More pictures of the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/tewiki-10-anniversary

Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia: Vijayavani Coverage

praskrishna — 2013-11-20T07:16:23Z

Vijayavani published a report of the forthcoming tenth anniversary celebration of Kannada Wikipedia on November 17.

The details of the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tenth-anniversary-kannada-wikipedia-vijayavani-report

Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia: Udayavani Coverage

praskrishna — 2013-11-20T07:25:08Z

Udayavani, on November 15, 2013 published about the upcoming tenth anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia.

See the original published by Udayavani here.

ನ.17ರಂದು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ

ಕನ್ನಡ ನೆಟ್ಟಿಗರ ಜ್ಞಾನದಾಹವನ್ನು ತಣಿಸುತ್ತಿರುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ 10 ವಸಂತಗಳನ್ನು ಪೂರೈಸಿರುವ ಸಂತಸವನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಇದೇ ಭಾನುವಾರ, ನವೆಂಬರ್ 17, 2013ರಂದು ಡಾ. ಎಚ್. ನರಸಿಂಹಯ್ಯ ಸಭಾಂಗಣ, ನ್ಯಾಶನಲ್ ಕಾಲೇಜು, ಬಸವನಗುಡಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ ಸಮಾರಂಭವನ್ನು ಆಯೋಜಿಸಿದೆ.

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಮುಖಾಂತರವೇ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ವಿನಿಮಯ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರು ಈ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿ, ತಾವು ಬರೆದ ಲೇಖನ, ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮುಖತಃ ಚರ್ಚಿಸುವ ಅವಕಾಶವನ್ನು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಒದಗಿಸಿದೆ. ಜೊತೆಗೆ, ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಪರಿಚಯ, ಸಂಪಾದಕ ಆಗುವ ವಿಧಾನ, ಲೇಖನ ಬರೆಯುವ ಬಗೆ, ಚಿತ್ರಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವ ವಿವರಗಳನ್ನು ಈ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಡಲಾಗುವುದು.

ಕನ್ನಡದ ಖ್ಯಾತ ಲೇಖಕ ಡಾ. ಯು.ಆರ್. ಅನಂತಮೂರ್ತಿ, ಸಂಶೋಧಕ ಡಾ. ಜಿ. ವೆಂಕಟಸುಬ್ಬಯ್ಯ ಮತ್ತು ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತ ರವಿ ಹೆಗಡೆ ಅವರ ಮಾತುಗಳನ್ನು ಕೇಳುವ ಸುಯೋಗ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರಿಗೆ ಲಭಿಸಲಿದೆ. ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲಿಚ್ಛಿಸುವವರು ಮೊದಲೇ ನೋಂದಾಯಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬೇಕು.

ಸ್ಥಳ : ಎಚ್.ಎನ್. ಮಲ್ಟಿಮೀಡಿಯ ಹಾಲ್, ನ್ಯಾಶನಲ್ ಕಾಲೇಜು, ಬಸವನಗುಡಿ

ದಿನಾಂಕ : ನವಂಬರ್ 17, 2013
ಸಮಯ : 9:30ರಿಂದ 13:00

ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ವಿವರ:

9:30-10:00 ನೋಂದಣಿ
10:00 ರಿಂದ 11:00 ಸಭಾ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ
ಸ್ವಾಗತ ಗೀತೆ - ಲಕ್ಷ್ಮಿ ಚೈತನ್ಯ
ಸ್ವಾಗತ ಮತ್ತು ನಿರ್ವಹಣೆ - ಡಾ. ಎ. ಸತ್ಯನಾರಾಯಣ
ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವನೆ - ಡಾ. ಯು. ಬಿ. ಪವನಜ

ಮುಖ್ಯ ಅತಿಥಿಗಳ ಮಾತು

ಡಾ. ಯು. ಆರ್. ಅನಂತಮೂರ್ತಿ
ನಾಡೋಜ ಪ್ರೊ.ಜಿ. ವೆಂಕಟಸುಬ್ಬಯ್ಯ
ರವಿ ಹೆಗಡೆ, ಸಮೂಹ ಸಂಪಾದಕ, ಉದಯವಾಣಿ

ಹತ್ತು ವರ್ಷದಲ್ಲಿ ಉತ್ತಮ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಿದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರುಗಳಿಗೆ ಮತ್ತು ನಿರ್ವಾಹಕರುಗಳಿಗೆ ಸ್ಮರಣಿಕೆ ನೀಡಿಕೆ
ಧನ್ಯವಾದ ಸಮರ್ಪಣೆ
11:00 - 11:15 - ಚಹಾ

11:15 - 12:00

ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಪ್ರಾತ್ಯಕ್ಷಿಕೆ - ಓಂಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ
ಕ್ರಿಯೇಟಿವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್ - ಕಿರಣ್ ರವಿಕುಮಾರ
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯನ್ನರುಗಳ ಮಾತು

12:00-13:00 - ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವ (edit-a-thon)
ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸಿದ್ಧ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಂಡು ಬಂದು ಲೇಖನ ಸೇರಿಸುವುದು.

ಸಾಧ್ಯವಿದ್ದವರು ಲ್ಯಾಪ್‌ಟಾಪ್, ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್ ಡಾಂಗಲ್ ಮತ್ತು ಒಂದು ಸಿದ್ಧಪಡಿಸಿದ ಲೇಖನ ತಂದು ಕೊನೆಯ ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವದಲ್ಲಿ ಪಾಲ್ಗೊಳ್ಳಬಹುದು. ಬರುವವರು ದಯವಿಟ್ಟು ಈ ಪುಟದಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಂದಾಯಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಿ - https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ/ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ

ಎಲ್ಲ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಸುದ್ದಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಒನ್ಇಂಡಿಯಾ ನೋಟ. ನಿರಂತರ ಸುದ್ದಿ ಪಡೆಯಲು Facebook ಮತ್ತು Twitter ಮೇಲೆ ಇರಲಿ ಕಣ್ಣು.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-udayavani-november-15

Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-11-14T10:17:23Z

Kannada Wikipedia has completed 10 years. The Kannada Wikipedia community will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of Kannada Wikpedia on Nov 17, 2013 from 9.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. at H N Multimedia Hall, National College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore. CIS-A2K is a co-sponsor for the program.

The guests of honour will be Dr. U R Ananthamurthy, Prof. G. Venkatasubbiah and Ravi Hegde. There will be speeches by the chief guests from 10.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja. This will be followed by a talk by some Kannada Wikipedians. At the end there will be a edit-a-thon where Wikipedians will add some articles to Kannada Wikipedia.

Register for the event here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/tenth-anniversary-of-kannada-wikipedia

Ten Telugu Books Re-released Under CC-BY-SA 3.0 License

rahim — 2014-07-08T05:29:39Z

For the first time in the history of Indian books, 10 Telugu books by a single author were released under Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA 3.0) on June 22, 2014 at 10 a.m. at Golden Threshold, Abids, Hyderabad.

The event was organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team.

CIS-A2K has collaborated with Telugu Wikipedians in convincing Indu Gnaana Vedika to re-release 10 of their books under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license which is compatible with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Unlike the predominant digitization efforts (which only makes scanned images available), these books will be uploaded on Telugu Wikisource (www .te .wikisource .org) and converted into Unicode (searchable) text. This will ensure that these books are freely read, both online and offline in various formats like PDF, epub, mobi, text, etc. This is a major milestone initiative by CIS-A2K to make the sum of all knowledge in Telugu freely available to all Telugus over the internet and is part of its Telugu language area plan.

Telugu Wikipedia has been in existence for 10 years and has 57000 articles on various topics. Telugu Wikisource is one of the sister projects of Wikipedia which has more than 9600 pages and 100 books, it is the largest online Unicode book library available today at the service of Telugu people.

The Programme

The event started with invocation by Indu Gnaana Vedika followed by introduction of Chief Guest and Guest of Honour.

The patron of Indu Gnaana Vedika, Sri Sri Sri Prabodhananda Yogeeswarulu presided over as the chief guest and N Rahamthulla, long time wikipedian and Special collector, Srisailam project, Kurnool was the guest of honour.

Addressing the gathering, Prabodhananda emphasised on the importance of availability of knowledge in ones own mother language, and also why knowledge should not be confined to books alone, but should be brought onto various platforms, internet being one among them. This would not only ensure wider reach for the books, but also enable the language to survive in the fast changing era.

Then, a video interview of guest of honour, Rahamthulla was played, where he spoke about creation of new technical jargon in ones own mother language and how Telugu was being used as administrative language in his office among his subordinates.

Rahamthulla also spoke on the practices he brought into in his own office to adopt mother language at work and gave out suggestions that would effectively help all in adoption of mother language at work places with Telugu as an example.

This was followed by Veeven’s talk on “End-User’s perspective of free licenses”, where he spoke about importance of open content, free software and free licenses.

Then, program director of CIS-A2K, T. Vishnu Vardhan spoke about the importance of creative commons licenses in the context of Indian languages in Internet. In his speech, Vishnu informed that there is enormous literature and content available in Indian languages which is unusable because of ignorance of licenses. He listed out guidelines that would help writers to have their work reach millions through releasing it under a free license.

Then, in a formal manner, the copyright holder of the books signed on the documents, specifying that the books are released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. In the tea break that followed, participants enquired experts on free licenses.


Above: Prabodhananda handing over the signed agreement to Vishnu Vardhan (by Rahmanuddin Shaik, CC-BY-SA 3.0 License)

A Wikisource demonstration by Rahmanuddin Shaik was shown followed by Q & A session.

Then there was a panel discussion on “CC licenses” which saw participation from one each of a free license expert, writer and end user. This brought in awareness and more deeper thought into bringing in more literature in Telugu into CC licenses.

An outcome of the event was:

N Rahamthulla promised to re-release his books under CC license.
Mandali Buddhaprasad, Deputy Speaker, Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly, gave permission to release 4 of his books under CC license.
Several other writers have come forward to re-release their books under free licenses.

Given below is the certificate signed by Sri Sri Sri Acharya Yogeeshwarulu giving permission to publish his works under CC-BY-SA 3.0 License:

For additional details of the event, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ten-telugu-books-re-released-under-cc-by-sa-license

Telugu Wikisource Workshop

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-08-16T08:40:55Z

Recently, a Telugu Wikisource Workshop was conducted in Hyderabad between 22- 23 July, 2017

An introductory Wikisource workshop was recently held for Telugu Wikipedians in Hyderabad. This event was held in conjunction with the NTR Trust, an organisation working towards socio-economic change in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Wikisource aims to build a library of source texts as well as translations. The workshop held between 22- 23 July was conducted for both existing Wikimedians and those new to the movement. Prior to the workshop, Telugu Wikipedians were consulted and were asked to take part in the event and provide their support. The participants were taught the basics of Wikisource and encouraged to contribute to it. They were given a tutorial on the entire process from uploading the book to completing it as an eBook. They were taught important aspects such as copyright, Creative Commons licenses as this would help them select books to upload on Wikisource.

Says participant Sri Ramamurthy "I am contributing to Telugu Wikisource for a long time, regularly. I could learn how to do some important aspects of Telugu Wikisource like indexing a book and techniques like OCR in this event. This turned out to be a very useful event. As resource persons are from Telugu language and sessions were in Telugu, I could easily and quickly grasp things."

Ten index pages were created during the event and 193 pages were uploaded onto Telugu Wikisource after the event. The event had only two female participants and eight male participants. CIS-A2K hopes to make more of a concerted effort to bridge this gap in participation between males and females.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/telugu-wikisource-workshop

Telugu Wikipedia Winter Camp at Andhra Loyola College

rahim — 2015-02-26T02:27:05Z

Students of physics, statistics and Telugu departments of Andhra Loyola College spent 5 days of their Christmas vacation of 2014 to edit and enrich Telugu Wikipedia and Wikisource. They worked on their respective subject areas and came up with more than 100 new articles on Telugu Wikipedia and about 300 pages of Veeresalingam's works were typed on Telugu Wikisource.

CIS-A2K has signed an MoU with Andhra Loyola College to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe. In this approoach, a two month camp was organised in the college campus. In continuation to the two month camp, 5 days of students' Christmas vacation were marked as Wiki Winter Camp at Andhra Loyola College. 5 students from each of Physics, Statistics and Telugu showed interest to attend the camp. By the time, camp began, there were not 15 but 41 students from various disciplines who attended the camp.


Students and faculty who attended the camp. Source :Wikimedia Commons

For physics and statistics-department students, first day of the wiki winter camp involved students exploring English and Telugu Wikipedias, glancing through various reference websites such as JSTOR, IEEE Explorer, Google scholar, and their own textbooks in Telugu medium. New entrants created their user accounts on Telugu Wikipedia. Students got an essence of how an article on Wikipedia should look like, what should be there and what not. Few students came up with their own ray diagrams for physics (optics - mirrors) articles, uploaded them to Wkimedia Commons and then put them up in their articles. For some of the students, it was the first time they were typing in Telugu, and they felt very curious and excited. The rest of the three days students added about 103 articles on Telugu Wikipedia on physics, and a 10 articles on statistics. By the end of 5 days camp, faculty and co-ordinator for physics, Dr. Sahaya Bhaskaran expressed happiness at his students' work, he affirmed that one can learn his respective subject only if he understands it in his native language, and if he could reproduce that in his native language, he would remember for long.

For Telugu students the five-day camp was fun typing in works of Kandukuri Veeresaingam. First day, students who were new entrants learnt to type in Telugu, and were introduced to the Wikisource platform. In all, they typed about 300 pages of a compilation of Veeresalingam's works. Sri Kola Sekhar, faculty of Telugu a ALC and co-ordinator for Telugu wiki winter camp said he was confident of making students type entire Veeresalingam works in a year's time.

At the end of the 5 day camp, students were given a review of their work, and students felicitated with certificates.

Convener for the camp, Dr. B. Sivakumari, who is also a Wikipedia co-ordinator for Botany, expressed her gratitude to CIS-A2K team for organising the program.

This event has also contributed in achieving the 60,000+ article count landmark at Telugu Wikipedia and 10,000+ pages landmark at Telugu Wikisource.


Media coverage in Eenadu daily

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/telugu-wikipedia-winter-camp-at-andhra-loyola-college

Telugu Wikipedia struggles to stay afloat

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T07:46:10Z

For a language that is spoken by 10 crore people, content is sparse.

The article by Renuka Phadnis was published in the Hindu on July 28, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Sujatha, a Chennai-based homemaker, has set for herself the task of updating the Telugu Wikipedia with details of all the districts in Andhra Pradesh.

“I asked others but no one joined me in adding ‘edits’. They said they were too busy,” she says.

For a language that is spoken by 10 crore people, including a tech-savvy population, content in the 11-year-old Telugu Wikipedia is sparse and growing slowly with 20,000 articles added in the last one decade.

T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge Programme of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), said Telugu Wikipedia was lagging behind its other Indian-language counterparts despite there being no other content repository in Telugu.

The reason is not lack of writers in the language. There are 1,000 to 2,000 active Telugu bloggers writing on topics ranging from poetry to politics. In fact, the Telugu Wikipedia was started by such bloggers.

But they are reluctant to contribute to the Telugu Wikipedia and prefer blogging because they can see their names after adding the content. Rahimanuddin Shaik, Programme Officer and system operator for Telugu Wikipedia at CIS, said, “You could call it the ‘identity crisis’ of Telugu Wikipedia writers.”

In 2006-07, an attempt was made to induce content in the Telugu Wikipedia by injecting 30,000 ‘articles’ by a bot, a Python-based script. They were one-liners about villages in Andhra Pradesh, introduced with the expectation that people would add more content. That effort did trigger 5,000 articles.

Later, in 2013, the Telugu Wikipedia became more collaborative and Hyderabad University associated itself with it by hosting Telugu Wikipedia events on its Golden Threshold campus.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-27-2014-renuka-phadnis-telugu-wikipedia-struggles-to-stay-afloat

Telugu Wikipedia stall at Vijayawada Book Festival

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-15T16:23:32Z

The Telugu Wikipedia community put up a stall at the Vijayawada Book Festival in January, in order to increase reach of the regional language encyclopaedia.

Last in a series of book stalls set up across the Telugu-speaking region, the Telugu community set up shop at the 27th Vijayawada Book Festival from 3 to 11 January 2017 at the PWD Grounds. The community had previously set up similar book stalls in Rajahmundry and Hyderabad. Considered one of the largest book festivals in India with deep-rooted cultural significance in the Telugu literary circles, the Telugu community aims to increase the reach and visibility of Telugu Wikipedia through the setting up of this stall.

The book festival, open for the public from 11 am to 11 pm, was inaugurated by Kendra Sahitya Akademi winner Rachapalem Chandrasekhar Reddy, with a collection of 235 stalls to browse from. The festival was organised in partnership with the Andhra Pradesh Department of Language and Culture and NTR Trust. The stall was set up by Telugu Wikipedia community members with support from CIS-A2K and NTR Trust.

More than 150 individuals were engaged through this event. Interested members of public would receive follow-up through "Know-How" videos of Telugu Wikipedia. This provides basic information regarding editing and contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects. They would also receive invitations to offline events taking place in Vijayawada in the future.

Telugu Wikipedia editor User:Pranayraj1985 said of his experience in talking to the public about Telugu Wikipedia, "I learnt a lot about what people know about Wikipedia and what they didn't know. In general, many of the visitors exclaim when they [come to] know, there is Wikipedia in Telugu language. But, in contrast, here in Vijayawada, we could at least find handful of people who knew there is something called Telugu Wikipedia.

The link to the events page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/telugu-wikipedia-stall-at-vijayawada-book-festival

Telugu Wikipedia Meet-up @ CIS

praskrishna — 2013-08-19T06:53:03Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is hosting a meet-up on June 2, 2013 in its office in Bangalore, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. All are cordially invited.

Click to read the full details on Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/telugu-wikipedia-meetup-at-cis