Centre for Internet and Society

Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages

Yashashwini Srinivas — 2022-10-21T13:03:20Z

This research study explores content production processes on gender and sexuality in Indian languages, its digital documentation and factors that affect its availability and use on open access platforms. The research was undertaken by Yashashwini Srinivas, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Torsha Sarkar. This research was part of short-term studies undertaken at the CIS-A2K programme 2021-22.

Read the report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

Introduction

Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian languages is a research project that studies the content production process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages and challenges it with its digital documentation. It examines the diverse nature of content creation on these topics, processes of its digitalisation and related challenges that contribute to the disparity in its availability and use on open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects, and potential strategies to address the same.

Through conversations with individuals and institutions working on gender, sexuality and allied topics like feminism, with a focus on women, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ related content, the study explores various aspects of content creation across multiple Indian languages, its access and use. Based on analysing this data and drawing on ongoing work within the mainstream discourse on gender and sexuality, the report offers a set of observations on ways to address challenges related to the gender gap in the content creation process on open knowledge platforms.

Context and Methods

Collaborative knowledge production platforms such as Wikimedia projects have recognised the existence of a gender gap and bias across its projects, understood largely as disparities in participation by and content related to women and, by extension, individuals across diverse gender and sexual identities. As observed in global literature as well as by work done by Indian language communities (with a focus largely on women Wikimedians), the gap is a result of various infrastructural and socio-cultural factors, including limited access to devices and the internet; balancing professional, domestic and volunteer work; lack of technical capacity-building and communication skills; limited presence in leadership positions, and the need for safe and healthy working environments among others. Several efforts have been made globally and in Indian language communities to address these challenges.

The issue of the gender gap, or indeed the challenges identified, are not unique to Wikimedia projects alone but are reflective of gender disparities in the public sphere and across the internet more broadly. Key learning from previous work in this space has been the need to connect these conversations and efforts to bridge the gender gap with the wider public discourse related to content creation on gender and sexuality online and in Indian languages. This study aimed to map such content with perspectives drawn from diverse gender and sexual identities. Importantly, it sought to understand better some of the infrastructural and cultural factors that shape creating such content and making it publicly available in diverse languages.

This study was done across four Indian languages - Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu (while English remained inevitable), focusing on content under two sub-themes– a. Cultural History and b. Feminist Production/Publication. The respondents in the study included organisations and individuals working in the areas of gender, sexuality and allied areas like feminist interventions and publishing, with a focus on writers, translators, artists, and multi-format content creators and curators. The study adopted a qualitative approach and comprised 19 semi-structured interviews (including four focused group discussions with organisations). Owing to the pandemic, all interactions for this study were done through telephonic conversation, email and virtual conferencing. These interactions have helped us understand the process of content creation in these areas. These problems manifest as gendered disparities in engagement with online platforms and potential solutions to address the same.

Key Research Areas

The three major thematic areas this research study focused on are as follows.

Nature of the Knowledge Produced
Content production on gender and sexuality in Indian languages spans several areas, including education, activism, advocacy and rights and justice, to name a few, given the location of much early writing in this space within the women’s rights and several other social movements in India. Important observations on the nature of this content by respondents include the emergence of a feminist critique across fields and disciplines, active interventions in the public discourse around gender and sexuality and the need for an intersectional approach to the process of content production. The growth of content in Indian languages and their increased availability on online platforms is also an important step towards addressing the predominance of Anglocentric and academic perspectives in these areas of research and work.

Digital Spaces, and movement of Content from Paper to Pixel
The cohort of the participants of this study has pointed out the evolution of the internet and digital tools from a luxury to a necessity but also acknowledged the widespread disparity in their access and use. However, the interesting outcome of this has been the transformation of traditional publishing methods and the emergence of cost-efficient space to produce content in various formats (like on social media) which fosters wider dissemination and engagement. However, increasing digital content production also comes with the need for advancements in digital literacy, resources and infrastructure. Digitalisation and open access to content on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is, therefore, a resource-intensive process, with related challenges such as copyright restrictions and technical limitations to access and use of Indian language content etc.

Indian Languages
The content creation process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is complex given the country's diversity. Still, socio-cultural factors continue to determine the growth and use of languages, often resulting from asymmetries of power amongst diverse communities. This includes the marginalisation of certain forms of language use and content production processes that are not seen as within the ambit of dominant languages. Further, the lack of a gender-neutral vocabulary across many Indian languages and the significant challenges in the translation are important issues that emerged in this space. While the translation of content on gender and sexuality into Indian languages from English and other foreign languages is challenging due to the lack of a gender-neutral and conceptual vocabulary, as noted earlier; the lack of reverse translations and limitations within publishing and wider circulation of content are some of the factors that continue to affect work in this space.

Learnings

The learnings from this study outline the many challenges in content production on gender and sexuality, especially in Indian languages and its availability in digital spaces. These include the need to recognise that gendered disparities result from asymmetries of power, thus calling for a more critical outlook and intersectional approach towards the processes of content production (and related work such as translation, digitisation and archiving). They also offer several strategies and best practices drawn from observations by the respondents to address some of these gaps in content creation and circulation to ensure sustainable knowledge production ecosystems.

These include the dire need to bridge technical and infrastructural gaps, facilitate visibility and engagement with content through collaborations with key institutions and individuals in this space, and capacity-building through developing pedagogy and tools. Further, there is a need to diversify the approach towards creating and sourcing content and creating safe working environments by developing redressal mechanisms for marginalised and vulnerable communities. As Wikimedia projects constitute a major part of the digital knowledge ecosystem and have been working towards more diversity and inclusion across their projects, a sustained approach to bridge these gaps may be adopted in the Indian context. This would contribute immensely to efforts to bridge the gender gap across Wikimedia projects and in the larger digital public sphere.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages

Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949

subodh — 2022-10-11T13:11:15Z

It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.

Context

The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and monuments in South Goa. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.

As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at Goa Central Public Library.

About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence

Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.

Partnerships

The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a series of discussions and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the project on Wikimedia Commons on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.

Media links

The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog in September 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat

Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949

subodh — 2022-10-11T14:53:58Z

The digitization project of O Bharat, a historic biweekly published between 1912 to 1949 in Goa was completed through collaboration of different organizations. The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust initiated the project in collaboration with Marathi department of Goa University, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha and Goa Central Library. The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme facilitated the project with technical and financial assistance. Two local students scanned 12000 pages in 8 days. The year wise volumes of O Bharat are now freely available on Wikimedia Commons in the form of archive.


Above: Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese	Above: Front page of O Bharat in Marathi

Context

About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence

Partnerships

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

Media links

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog in September 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat

Research Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21

sneha — 2022-10-21T12:59:55Z

This is a compilation of the final reports from a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2021, on an array of topics related to Indian language Wikimedia projects. The projects were undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, Ananth Subray, Satpal Dandiwal and Nitesh Gill, with research oversight and editorial support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and internal review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon.

See the full report on Wikimedia Commons here

Click to download the full report here

Wikipedia and its many sister projects have been rich sites of study for researchers across the world for many years now. The online encyclopedia presents a microcosm of the real world in terms of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, including content and infrastructure, and community interaction among many other things. Research about Wikimedia projects and platforms has been undertaken in various languages, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, as illustrated by the research index on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and several important publications over the last several years. Research on Indian languageWikimedia projects and platforms, and on topics related to the sub-continent have also emerged significantly over the last several years.However, as understood in the course of the studies in this compilation as well, awareness about such research within the communities itself remains limited. While there is a lot of important work being undertaken on topics relevant to Indian Wikimedia projects, often by researchers who are Wikimedians themselves, factors such as dissemination beyond academic spaces, and accessibility in terms of language and context seem to also affect their availability to the larger communities, and in terms of implementation of learnings and recommendations.

The six short-term research studies undertaken by the Access to Knowledge team over 2019–2021 were therefore initiated as a pilot, an initial foray into the space of research on Wikimedia projects in India. Based on the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation, this work was undertaken primarily to tap into new areas of work, while also drawing upon existing expertise at CIS, and in order to build the capacity of the team. With these broader motivations in mind, the research was structured with the following objectives to:

Identify knowledge gaps, challenges, and opportunities in different aspects of content creation and participation in Indian language Wikimedia projects.
Develop a better understanding of systemic issues such as gender bias in Indian language communities, access to and reuse of cultural content, open learning in multilingual classrooms, and specific experiences of content creation within Wikimedia communities in India and associated initiatives.
Develop recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.

The studies in this compilation therefore examine different aspects of Wikimedia platforms and projects in India, in close alignment with existing work in the programme. These include the gender gap in Indian Wikimedia communities, creating multilingual and open educational platforms and resources, focus on specific projects such as GLAM and Wikidata, and efforts and challenges with content creation, access and outreach in specific language communities.

Working on these studies has been a learning experience, especially given the diverse contexts in which the projects are located, and the capacities and interests of the researchers themselves. The design of the studies was also therefore developed and modified to build on existing capacities within the team, and its learnings from previous years of working with various language communities. Capacity-building for team members on research design, methods, fieldwork and documentation was mostly done through close individual supervision and collaborative work. The methods used were largely qualitative, and ranged from interviews, literature reviews, data visualisations, focused group discussions and comparative analyses. The effort was also to try and capture the scale and diversity of the nature of work being undertaken in different Indian language communities through these projects. There were several challenges as well, beginning with framing the research questions and project design in a way that they were accessible to a wider community of people who would be engaged in contributing their inputs towards the work. Process-related challenges, such as translation of interview questionnaires into Indian languages revealed several interesting gaps, such as the lack of technical terms related to digitization or open access in these languages. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to restrictions on field visits, thus effectively hampering in person conversations and easier access to community members.

There have been several learnings in the course of working on these studies, key among them being questions of awareness, relevance and impact. The lack of existing and easily accessible research (including those outside academic work) on several areas of Wikimedia in the Indian context has been a limitation in many ways, offering little in terms of available knowledge and best practices to work with. The limited awareness about, and imagined relevance of research in the regular work of communities has also been an impediment. As illustrated by learnings from a short research needs assessment carried out earlier this year, few community members were aware of research on Wikimedia projects being undertaken in India, and on a global scale. More importantly, there needs to be a conversation on its relevance to their own work, and to the larger movement. An effective communication strategy for research work, in different Indian languages, would perhaps address some of these gaps. A closely related question is also that of impact. The studies in this collection largely focus on short-term impact, through best practices and recommendations that may be developed through the research studies. While this is definitely a pragmatic approach, often the interest in a problem-solution design may look at research purely from an instrumental lens to identify quick solutions and their implementation, without a critical take on exploring and understanding larger, systemic or structural gaps that may be contributing to the problems itself. Going forward, it would be imperative therefore to identify areas of research, and build processes of research design that may address these challenges. Given the dynamic nature of Wikimedia, its platforms and communities, it is important to identify immediate gaps and possible solutions, but also to speak precisely to this aspect of long-term impact and relevance, to both current areas of work and the growth of the larger movement. We hope the studies in this compilation offer some insights towards these, and many more interesting questions related to research on Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects

A Comparative Study of Article Creation Campaigns on Wikipedia - Part I

Nitesh Gill and Suswetha Kolluru — 2021-06-11T10:56:40Z

This is a short report on a comparative analysis of two prominent Wikimedia initiatives, Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger, to understand prevailing challenges and opportunities, and strategies to address the same. The report has been authored by Nitesh Gill with inputs from Suswetha Kolluru, and editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020.

Introduction

The motive of the Wikimedia movement is to aid growth and access to free knowledge across the world. Over the last several years, apart from the online encyclopedia, Wikimedia has also developed and supported many projects, campaigns, events or edit-a-thons simultaneously on its various sister projects such as Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource and others. Campaigns and contests such as Art & Feminism (2014), Women in Red (2015), Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki loves Butterfly, Wikipedia Asian Month (2015), #1Lib1Ref, Project Tiger (2018) etc. play a crucial role in motivating communities to create new content while working together in an organized manner.

The objective of this study is to undertake a comparative analysis of two projects/article creation campaigns on Wikipedia, which are Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM) and Project Tiger. They are both primarily online writing contests. WAM has been organised every year in November since 2015. It is an international edit-a-thon. Project Tiger is a contest which is organised in India. Several Indian language communities take part in this actively. The first iteration of Project Tiger was organized in 2018 and two iterations have taken place till date. While different in terms of the region or area of focus, both campaigns have a common goal of content creation in regional languages. The Indian Wikipedia communities’ contributions are extensive in both projects. It would be interesting to learn from both of them and also understand what works and what needs to be improved in the future.

Research Questions

As suggested by the title, the aim of this study is primarily to better understand the motivation behind long-term edit-a-thons with the help of WAM and PT. Through a comparative analysis, it will attempt to understand the participants' perspective on contributing to these types of projects, prevailing challenges and opportunities, and the knowledge gaps in content creation as well as in participation.

The objectives of this study are to :

Understand the key motivations for volunteers to contribute to article creation campaigns/contests.
Outline the unique aspects of Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger for content creation on Wikipedia, challenges and opportunities and ways to build on the same.

Background

The objective of the Wikimedia movement is to facilitate the growth of free knowledge, through its various projects and platforms. Before starting Wikipedia, in 2000 Nupedia was launched and on 15 January 2001 Wikipedia was set up as a free encyclopedia. All the Wikimedia projects such as Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc. are central knowledge hubs. These are the platforms where knowledge from around the world can be found but this means it also requires participation from an active volunteer community across numerous languages. There are many ways to contribute to these platforms as a volunteer. One way is participating in an edit-a-thon, where several volunteers can actively work together on the same platform. Edit-a-thons started just after a few years of Wikipedia’s existence. In the beginning, the main objective of the edit-a-thons was content creation; this remains the primary objective, although now they also focus on expanding/adding to existing content, thus contributing towards increasing the number of articles on Wikipedia. A prominent feature of these types of events is the interaction among experienced and new editors. The edit-a-thons can happen online as well as at physical, offline locations. In September 2004, Jimmy Wales proposed the Editing weekends’ concept which was a starting point of edit-a-thons. He started a discussion about spending the holidays in a common space where editors could edit or learn about Wikipedia. The event itself was not very prominent but managed to start discussions about similar events among volunteers. A few years later, in March 2009 in Sydney, the first GLAM edit-a-thon was organised at the Powerhouse Museum. According to English Wikipedia, in 2011, an edit-a-thon was organized on cultural partnerships, mainly with the British Library, with a second series taking place later that same year. After that, it became a popular event among volunteers and every community started to organize these types of events. Gradually, Wikimedians also thought about more such campaigns in the form of edit-a-thons; these events were successful and helped achieve the stated agenda of content creation on Wikipedia. In 2013, a research study was conducted about the edit-a-thon as part of the Wikimedia Programme Evaluation report, which noted its history, statistics, budget, inputs, resources and outputs etc. But so far little research has been done on particular edit-a-thons such as Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger and their impact on the growth of content on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Asian Month

Wikipedia Asian Month is a long-duration edit-a-thon structured around specific topics. The discussion about this edit-a-thon started in 2015 during Wikimania. A separate meeting was held for all the Asian language communities where the WAM proposal was presented by User:Addis Wang, and endorsed by all members present. Before WAM, similar events were already being conducted but this was the first attempt to establish collaboration on a broader level with the Asian language communities. Also before this project, local Wikipedias had only a little content regarding Asia.

The aim of this project was to create more content related to Asia on the regional Wikipedias, with a focus only on new content. Diversification of content, collaboration and cultural exchange are the main objectives of the project. Small incentives like receiving postcards from countries that participants added content about were introduced to encourage more participation. Postcards and the badge of ‘Wikipedia Brand Ambassador’ were added to motivate the contributors. The Wikipedia Asian Month took initiative to encourage and expand participants and communities. As a member from the Punjabi community, Gaurav, notes, “Wikipedia Asian Month was a boost for the communities or Wikipedians. The prize was just a postcard, although this prize gave positive energy to participants and they created articles just for getting appreciation.” In the first iteration, there were around 42 participating communities out of which 11 were Indian language communities. After the first iteration of WAM, when asked about Indian language communities' participation in 2015, Addis Wang replied, “Yes! As one of the largest Wikimedia communities in Asia, and maybe the most diverse community in the world, the Indic community is highly involved in the Wikipedia Asian Month since the idea was proposed during Wikimania 2015. In last year’s edition, India is the country that received the most postcards sent by Wikipedia Asian Month. Also, Wikipedian Asian Ambassadors of English Wikipedia, who created most articles during the Asian Month, are from India.” As noted in 2019 by the campaign coordinators , “In the past three years, over 20,500 high-quality articles have been added in more than 50 language-specific Wikipedias by more than 2,000 Wikipedia editors”, (excluding 2019). In 2020, WAM also happened in the same month, November, just like every year.

Project Tiger

Some years ago Google initiated efforts to bridge a gap in Indian language content online . They partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation who in turn collaborated with CIS-A2K and started a pilot project named Project Tiger, in 2018. Also called Supporting Indian language Wikipedias in 2018, Project Tiger did well and received good participation from all the communities, which led to its second iteration in 2019. Project Tiger is a unique and recent initiative that is aimed at creating locally relevant content on Indic Wikipedias that is most searched for by users online. It is distinct from other contests because it is one of the longest running Wiki edit-a-thons, considering it runs for over 3 months with several Indic communities competing with each other. It is an online writing contest which is organised in India. Several Indian language communities take part in this actively. The project is conducted in two phases i.e, the contest includes hardware support distribution to promising volunteers and a 3-month online writing contest on Indian language Wikipedias.The first phase of the contest is the distribution of hardware support, through which 50 Laptops by Google and internet stipends are offered to 100 experienced and promising Wikimedians, who need infrastructure support to increase contributions on Wikipedia. Once the distribution is done, communities start creating articles from the list of topics provided by Google. Other than the list, the community is encouraged to come up with their own set of articles that is relevant to Wikipedia in their own language. Project Tiger, as the name suggests, is inspired by, and named after, an environmental project in India to save tigers. Similarly, Wikipedia’s Project Tiger aims at nurturing locally relevant content on Indic language Wikipedias.

Methods

The primary method for this study consisted of interviews with community members who participated in either of the projects or who knew about both. These interviews were conducted via phone calls as well as in written form via a questionnaire/survey. The observations from the study are descriptive and include direct quotations (with the permission) of the participant. Due to a shortage of time and availability of community members, only a limited number of interviews have been conducted for the study. These interviewees were selected primarily based on their active participation or their contributions in their regional language Wikipedia. The interviews were conducted with participants from Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Santali, Tamil language communities from India. These interviewees also include the main organizers of WAM. The fountain tool developer was also interviewed as part of the study because the tool is a common factor in both the projects. Questionnaires varied depending on the category of respondents, such as participants, contributors, local and international organisers, developer etc. A total of 17 interviews were conducted for both projects. 9 interviews were conducted with the WAM international team, local organisers and participants and 7 interviews with PT organisers and contributors, and one with the fountain tool developer. The interviews were conducted in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Telugu. A consent form was shared with all the interviewees, including permission for recording the interviews.

The data collection was followed by a comparative analysis of Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger. These both are pilot contests which have some similarities, but also some unique aspects. We compared the objectives, scope, process, communication, communities, languages, content, and achievements of these two projects. Data for this was primarily collected through the interviews mentioned above, but also a review of the event pages, and a random sampling of talk pages, reports and statistics on these projects available on Wikipedia. These two projects have similarities, differences as well as some limitations. This comparison would help in understanding the importance and need for these types of contests. The motive for the comparison is to better understand the strategies of both projects which focus on increasing the content in local languages. These learnings may inform the process of working on the next iteration of these projects.

Part II of this post will look at some of the observations and learnings from this report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-comparative-study-of-wikimedia-article-creation-campaigns-in-india

Content Creation on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia

Satpal Singh — 2021-05-15T12:24:21Z

This is a short study on the nature of content creation related to Punjab on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia, its challenges and opportunities, and observations and potential strategies to address the same. The report has been authored by Satpal Singh, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020.

Introduction

The objective of this study is to understand the challenges for content creation related to Punjab that exists on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia. There are articles about Punjabi language and culture on Punjabi Wikipedia but there is a need for better understanding of the nature of this content from the perspective of the readers’ interests, coverage of topics, and quality. A large community of interested Punjabi Wikimedians have been actively working over several years to introduce Wikimedia and related projects to people across the world, including those from their own community. An important part of achieving this goal is to contribute to and build more diverse and bettergood quality content about Punjab on Wikipedia. This short study is therefore an attempt to analyse the nature of existing content, challenges in content creation/curation and outreach, and some observations and strategies to address the same.

Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia. It is available in around 290+ languages. There are two Punjabi Wikipedia editions, which are Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia and Western Punjabi Wikipedia. Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia is in Gurmukhi script and Western Punjabi Wikipedia is in Shahmukhi script. This study focuses on the Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia. The Eastern edition domain came into existence on 3 June 2002, but the first three articles were only written in August 2004. There was not much contribution made during the next six years. In July 2012, it had reached 2,400 articles. Then a group of people, largely students from Punjabi University, Patiala started contributing actively on Punjabi Wikipedia, as a result of which it became an active Wikipedia in 2013, and has stayed so until date. There are currently 35, 351 articles on the Gurmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia, with a number of registered users on Punjabi Wikipedia at 36,348. [1]

One group of people has been proactively involved in Punjabi Wikipedia for a long time, which is the Punjabi Wikimedians User Group. Apart from this, a number of people from different parts of the world also contribute to Wikipedia. Punjabi Wikimedians got affiliation as a User Group from Wikimedia Foundation in November 2015. Punjabi Wikimedians was the first affiliated user group from India, and have been involved in several activities and initiatives undertaken towards content creation. They organized WikiConference India in 2016 at Chandigarh and their members have participated in various events and conferences. They have also collaborated with other institutions in order to encourage content creation on Punjabi Wikipedia, one example is the collaboration with Punjabi Sahitya Academy. Apart from Wikipedia, this user group is also active on Punjabi Wikisource, Punjabi Wiktionary, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. The first meeting of the Punjabi Wiki community was organized in Patiala on 1 February 2015. After that the community conducted various monthly meetups in different parts of the Punjab. People from the community also joined various training programs and events in different parts of India and participated in various conferences in other countries.

Research Objectives and Method

This study analyses various aspects of how content related to Punjab is created on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia. This analysis would help in understanding the gap between what kind of content presently exists and what is needed, from the perspective of Punjabi language contributors and users. The objective of this study is to understand how much content related to Punjab exists on this Wikipedia at present; what is the nature of this content, what are challenges for content creation and possible strategies to address the same. There is a broader understanding that while content is being created proactively, there is still a need to analyse its quality and prevalent gaps if any, which would encourage more contributors and readers to actively engage with Punjabi Wikipedia.

The method for this study consisted of analysis of the existing content on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia, and conversations with selected Wikimedians on their assessment of content on topics related to Punjab. The main topics for this study were articles related to the Punjab region, including culture, literature, and politics. To understand if there are specific challenges to the creation of content on these topics, interviews with a few selected long-time contributors and administrators were conducted, with an emphasis on aspects such as sourcing Punjabi language material, finding references, digitization, tagging etc.

The objective of this study was also to understand where these conversations (undertaken as part of the study) may offer strategies to address knowledge gaps in specific areas of work. Questions were prepared and a total of five interviews of Punjabi Wiki community members were conducted. The people interviewed were chosen on the basis of their involvement and experience of working in the community.

Observations and Analysis

There are an estimated 33 million Eastern Punjabi speakers in the world,[2] and it is a widely spoken language in India especially in Punjab state. Over 70% people have access to the internet in Punjab on the phone.[3] The main objective of this study was to understand the nature of existing content on Punjabi Wikipedia, and various challenges in content creation, coverage of topics and quality. The following were some of the main observations and learnings from the study.:

Challenges with Lack of Existing Content

The conversations with selected Wikimedia contributors and users offered an insight into what Punjabi readers and online contributors think about the content available on the internet in Punjabi language, and how Punjabi Wikipedia is impactful in this scenario, especially in addressing any gaps in this area. It was found during discussions with interviewees that there are less number of Punjabi language websites in the field of language, literature, politics, and general knowledge. Most of the websites are in English language. PunjabiPedia and Punjabi Wikipedia are encyclopedic websites which are providing knowledge in Gurmukhi script. Apart from this, websites like SikhiWiki are providing knowledge in the Roman script and Punjabi newspaper websites are providing their news updates in Gurmukhi script. So, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the few available sites that offers information on a variety of topics in the local language. As a result, it may have a good viewership, but at the same time, there is also the additional problem of not having good or reliable online sources or references.

Another important point mentioned by people interviewed was that while there are 30,000+ articles on Punjabi Wikipedia and they are categorised across different topics, there is a lack of content about Punjab itself. It was suggested that, therefore, this should be an area of priority for the community to work on. Even the most viewed articles of Punjabi Wikipedia do not meet the good article criteria of Wikipedia. For example, the article of Harmandir Sahib on Punjabi Wikipedia has not been written according to good article criteria, as it too has no category and it is without proper sections.[4] There are not many references in most of the important articles. Another example is the article of the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, which has only 2 references.[5] Apart from this, articles about cities and villages of Punjab are mostly stub articles. The total number of villages in Punjab is about twelve thousand and a good number of the articles about these villages are available on Punjabi Wikipedia. They are too small and the need is to expand those articles. There are about 7,000+ articles in the stub category. So, such articles therefore need more work and improvement in terms of quality.

Methods of Creating New Content

Most of the content on Punjabi Wikipedia is about other countries or regions apart from Punjab or India. One of the reasons for this is that most of the editors are doing content translation, from existing content on English or other regional language Wikipedias into Punjabi Wikipedia. In order to fill the content gap about Punjab there should be content creation specifically on topics related to the state. Content translation tools, while helpful, have also contributed to the fact that people prefer translation and they use Google Translate in the content tool. The tool itself is accurate and works fine with Punjabi, but the issue is that most of the people are doing only translation, as it is the easiest way to contribute. Apart from the above, it was also noted by the interviewees that editathons about other countries or cultures, while useful, are not beneficial in the immediate context. Nitesh Gill [6] observes that there should be more discussion among the community members about upcoming events or editathons. She says: “Sometimes two or more events are going on in the same time period and the same contributors take part in those activities. It should be better that with cooperation we can have one event at one time. We will grow in a better way if we do something about this.”

There is less viewership of those articles which are related to other countries or cultures apart from India, for example the article of Constantine Peter Cavafy. But articles of importance from the perspective of region and culture are not edited for a long time, such as the article about Punjabi storywriter Maninder Kang, which is smaller than the article of Constantine Peter Cavafy. For example, Stalinjeet Brar [7] notes that: “The article of former chief minister of Punjab, Prakash Singh Badal on Punjabi Wikipedia is a relevant article. He is a remarkable personality of Punjab in the history of politics. He left his position in 2017 but the article still shows that he is chief minister of Punjab. This is our major mistake. We have to work on this aspect.” [8] He also added that the statistics of cricketers like Virat Kohli, are not updated. In this regard, we can integrate Wikidata with Wikipedia articles so one change on Wikidata can provide automatically updated data on Punjabi articles.

He also added that an assessment of existing events and initiatives, such as Project Tiger would be useful to understand the challenges and opportunities for content creation on Indian language Wikipedias The first Project Tiger editathon happened from 1 March to 31 May 2018 and the second Project Tiger event was organised from 10 October 2019 to 11 January 2020, which was named “Project Tiger 2.0”. Project Tiger coordinators can assess the number of views of those articles which were created during the event and therefore arrive at a potential strategy for our target audience. It is therefore useful to undertake such an analysis and evaluation at the end of big events.

Strategies for New Content Creation

It was observed that to fill this content gap about Punjab and its culture on Punjabi Wikipedia, the community needs to approach this topic accordingly. It was suggested by every interviewee that we have to organise an editathon to edit top viewed articles. To maintain continuity in this approach, community members should cooperate with each other. Charan Gill [9] noted that we should engage students and professors in different subjects to collaborate and work on these areas with editors. This will be helpful in producing good quality articles. The community needs to engage experts from different areas or fields. Manavpreet Kaur [10] suggests that we should focus on good article criteria when we go to a college or institution to teach students how to edit Wikipedia. For example, she notes that there were very few articles about forensic science when she joined Punjabi Wikipedia and existing content was two or three line articles. She tried to fill this gap and as a professor of forensic science, she engaged her students to edit Wikipedia content related to forensic science. So, we can have this kind of approach to fill the content gap on Punjabi Wikipedia. We should encourage colleges in Punjab and teachers to participate in this free knowledge movement. Wikimedia projects are platforms for Punjabi language community to provide knowledge in their own language. Manavpreet and Nitesh also note that there are less number of women participants in this movement. To fill the gender gap we should also focus on engaging women contributors. According to Manav, the Wikidata Game was interesting for her, and noted that especially for new editors these types of games and editing techniques are so valuable in order to engage the younger generations of editors with this movement.

Hardarshan [11] shared his view that to engage the new generation with Punjabi Wikipedia or the broader free knowledge movement we should also work on basic articles related to the technological world. For example, articles on computers and other devices , mobile games etc. He also notes that while Punjabi Wikipedia has articles on advanced topics, most of them are translated, and not new content. But it does not have basic articles of good quality to offer an appropriate understanding of the topic. There is also a problem of translating technical vocabulary into the Punjabi language, which can be addressed by engaging experts and scholars as part of editathons and other initiatives for content creation . This way, the energy and interests of volunteers may also be harnessed with the right methods. Key members from the community can assign articles to newcomers, so that will help in further content creation. Nitesh shared her observation that “I was a beginner type volunteer at one time and later on with experience I have organised various events within my community. So, we should encourage our team members or volunteers. They can be good organisers or leaders of this movement.”

To engage students, there should be more syllabus oriented content on Punjabi Wikipedia. To bring a change in the structure, Stalinjeet suggested that we should not blindly follow policies of other languages like English and French or policies of the Wikimedia Foundation in India. We need to rethink these policies in the context of the needs of the local languages. Prioritization of editathons is also necessary, including coordination and working collaboratively on when to participate in which event.

In addition to the above, it has been noticed that it is difficult for communities with a small number of members to contribute collaboratively, so it is imperative to slowly increase the number of contributors as well. There are various Wikimedia projects that volunteers can join or they can contribute to any project according to their interest. They are not limited only to Punjabi Wikipedia. A good number of people are also active on Punjabi Wikisource as well. The need of the hour therefore, is to engage new people with Wikipedia or with this movement to make good changes to the modes of access to knowledge in Indian languages. Experienced Wikimedians should share their learnings, apart from training that is required for advanced editing.

Conclusion

As illustrated by observations above, content creation on (Eastern) Punjabi Wikipedia faces a specific set of challenges. The people interviewed as part of this study have offered various suggestions on what can be done to address these limitations, and improve the quality of content. . Punjabi Wikipedia is an important source of information and knowledge for Punjabi internet readers due to the lack of websites providing content in the language. So, the responsibility of its reliability to provide such content in a sustainable manner is even greater. Work on creating more content on these platforms needs to be undertaken after understanding the response and ways of engagement of the readers. People today want to read less and learn more. Punjabi Wikipedia articles therefore need to be informative and include as many references as possible. A crucial gap here is also the lack of information on how to contribute to Punjabi Wikipedia in a productive and easy way. Good documentation of help pages and more frequent training would help in addressing this shortcoming as well.

In conclusion, the main strategy to address these knowledge gaps, as illustrated by the learnings from this study, is that we should update existing articles on Punjabi Wikipedia at priority, with a focus on expanding top viewed stub articles. A focus on quality of content is therefore more important than quantity. In addition to this, knowledge-sharing by experienced Wikipedians, diverse modes of training and engaging new contributors, and working on strategies for sustainable content creation would go a long way in addressing the content gaps on Punjabi Wikipedia.

Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

References:

[1] Statistics as of 09 February 2020, 05:32 PM

[2] “Punjabi, Eastern,” Ethnologue, accessed February 9, 2021, https://www.ethnologue.com/language/pan.

[3] Roy, C. Vijay. “In Punjab, over 70% people access the internet on the phone” The Tribune India, May 2, 2019. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/business/in-punjab-over-70-people-access-internet-on-phone-766809. Accessed February 9, 2021.

[4] As of 04 March 2021 09:59 AM

[5] As of 04 March 2021 09:59 AM

[6] She is a research scholar from Moga, Punjab and pursuing her Ph.D from University of Delhi in Punjabi literature. She has been contributing on Punjabi Wikipedia from 2015. Her remarkable contribution on Punjabi Wikipedia is that she has completed 1000WikiDays challenge, which means one article every day. See: https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Nitesh_Gill

[7] Stalinjeet Brar is from Faridkot and has been contributing on Wikimedia projects since August 2014. He is doing his Ph.D in Punjabi language and his research topic is also a comparative study of Punjabi Wikipedia and PunjabiPedia. See: https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Stalinjeet_Brar

[8] As of 04 March 2021, 09:59 AM

[9] Charan Gill is an experienced volunteer, aged 76 years old. He has been contributing on Wikimedia projects since 2008 He is the top contributor from Punjabi Wiki Community with more than 59,000 edits on Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia.. See: https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Charan_Gill

[10] Manavpreet Kaur is from Forensic science field and completed her Phd in the same subject also. She engaged with Punjabi Wikipedia in 2014 and also as a volunteer she has completed 100WikiDays challenge and has done various forms of outreach for the community. See: https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Manavpreet_Kaur

[11] As a student of secondary school, Benipal hardarshan is one of the youngest Wikimedians from Punjabi Wiki community. He made his first edit in 2014 but is actively contributing from 2016. He is an active administrator on Punjabi WIkisource.. See: https://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Benipal_hardarshan

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/content-creation-on-eastern-punjabi-wikipedia

Wikipedia in the Classroom: A Study of the Wikimedia in Education at CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

Ananth Subray — 2021-05-15T12:33:31Z

This is a short study on the Wikimedia in Education (WIE) at Christ University, Bengaluru, which aims to offer an overview of the key objectives and challenges of this project and map its impact on teaching-learning practices in multilingual classrooms. The report has been authored by Ananth Subray, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020.

Introduction

The growth of collaborative and open access platforms such as Wikimedia over the last decade has opened up new avenues to think about access to open educational resources by people across the world. The Wikimedia in Education (WIE) is one such instance of a collaborative effort undertaken with educators and learners across the world, to promote knowledge equity and rethink digital forms of pedagogy, both inside and outside the classroom. The Wikimedia movement has collaborated with diverse partners around the world as part of WIE. These collaborators are using Wikipedia as part of educational content, with the objective of enabling better access to content, fostering various skills among students and augmenting content on Wikipedia in local languages As part of this program, students work on new articles, improve existing ones or work on sister projects of Wikipedia such as Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

In 2011, the first pilot Education Program in India was started with the help of the Wikimedia Foundation in Pune. The following were some of the motivating factors :

“India has the world's largest youth population of 1.2 billion people and it has 28 languages with hundreds of dialects.
Consumption and creation of content on the Internet is growing fast in India. In 2018, India had over 480 million internet users across the country.[1]
There are 23 Indic languages Wikipedias - but they all have limited content compared to English Wikipedia. The average article count is less than 40,000. There are many strong reasons to increase participation from India - and that is a primary objective of the India Education program.”

Later in 2013, after an assessment of the pilot project in Pune, discussions with CHRIST (Deemed to be University) in Bengaluru were initiated by Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K). After preparing a detailed plan about Wikipedia in Education and CHRIST, the program was started with the help of community members, faculty members from the Department of Languages and people from CIS-A2K. Some of the main objectives of the program were to [2] :

Strengthen critical thinking skills in students;
Develop language proficiency in terms of cohesively presenting an idea or concept;
Develop the ability to closely read/assess information or data;
Develop the ability to collaborate in a team environment; and
Cultivate the ability to be a producer of knowledge than a passive consumer.

CHRIST has been running Wikipedia in Education for the past 7 years. This study aims to understand the progress of this initiative, and its opportunities and limitations so far, especially with respect to Indian educational institutions engaging with a virtual community through Wikipedia. In particular, students, teachers, and other stakeholders have been an integral part of this online community at CHRIST.

Context

“ Wikipedia is the best tool available to us to go digital. We are happy that Wikipedia builds in the process and our students also learn.”
- Dr Anil Pinto, Registrar, Christ University

Wikipedia is a collaborative knowledge platform, with a vision to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”.[3] The word "Wikipedia" is derived from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick" and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links designed to guide the user to related pages with additional information. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by a community of language speakers. Wikipedia currently has more than 54 million articles in more than 300 languages and is supposed to be the largest reference website in the world.[4]

After the effort of the Wikimedia Foundation in initiating a pilot program at Pune, a similar collaboration was discussed between CIS-A2K and CHRIST (Deemed to be University). As both institutions have a keen interest in developing content in Indic languages on the Internet, it was an encouraging factor for this collaboration They discussed the various ways in which the program can engage students of the university, including promoting content creation in natural sciences in regional languages, publishing CHRIST (Deemed to be University) books on Wikisource, digitising old/ rare books, in addition to editing and creating articles, especially in their subject areas of study.

Faculty members from the Department of Languages supported the initiative, with the following objectives in mind [5]:

Modern forms of teaching/learning such as learning/contributing to Wikipedia are a life-long process that learners can access anytime and anywhere.
Information explosion is an ever-increasing phenomenon, and it is imperative to be able to access such information easily. Modern education should meet the needs of a diversity of learners, and Wikipedia being an open platform may be an important aspect in meeting this need.
Open knowledge platforms such as Wikipedia are a crucial component of the information society so individuals should possess technological literacy and grasp digital tools of teaching/learning so as to access them easily.

Later in November 2013, CHRIST & CIS-A2K signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to officially start a Wikipedia in Education initiative to introduce the creation/editing of Wikipedia articles as a component of the Continuous Internal Assessment (CIA) for all undergraduate students studying Kannada, Hindi or Sanskrit as a second language at the university.

Around 900 students were involved in this project in the first iteration. To monitor and train the students the position of Class Ambassadors was created, where two students proficient in the language were selected and given special training to help their peers in the class. The participating students themselves decided upon the topics of the articles to be created/edited by them. Since then every year the WIE at CHRIST has been modified according to the requirement of different stakeholders after undertaking a needs assessment.

Research Method and Questions

This study is qualitative in nature, with a focus on key stakeholders of the program, and explores the experience of the participants (student, teacher, trainer, and Wikipedian) to understand their learnings from this experience. Interviews were conducted with students, community members, faculty members, and members of the CIS-A2K team to understand their perspectives on different aspects of the project. A total of 14 interviews were conducted, which included 5 faculty members, 6 students, and 3 community members who were involved with the program in the earlier days of Wikipedia in Education at CHRIST.

The research questions of the study are as follows:

What were the motivations and challenges for different stakeholders (students, faculty and community members) in conducting and participating in the WIE at CHRIST (Deemed to be University)?
What was the impact observed by these stakeholders as a result of their engagement with this program, (including personal changes/improvements if any)?

The responses were then analysed to consolidate a set of observations about the program.

Observations

Benefits of using Wikipedia in teaching

Using Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool trains students on how to share information related to advanced topics in every discipline with the general audience in an effective manner, as this is sometimes not covered in academic training. Teaching this style of writing is helpful and has a high impact on the way information is accessed by most readers regularly. As the readers and consumers of information on the Internet are increasing day by day, it also offers a lot of scope for students to add content on diverse topics. The first step for CHRIST towards incorporating Wikipedia in the curriculum was to understand that it can be used as an educational tool, for the benefit of the students, such as improving digital literacy skills, writing skills and using the local language on the internet.

How to inculcate Wikipedia in higher education?

When the WIE was started at CHRIST, there was a small change in the plans for the course and the continuous internal assessment (CIA). Students contributed to Wikipedia projects by making edits or creating articles, proofreading pages on Wikisource, etc. Here faculty members or community members with the help of the CIS-A2K team introduced the students to Wikipedia and its interface, and also monitored the student's activity and progress.

Students created articles related to subjects of their specialisation, and academic topics which are mostly read by the students of the same age group. Since these sets of articles are widely read, it attracts the attention of the Wikipedia communities. They correct mistakes if any and teach the students basic aspects of editing and article creation.

Wikipedia in Education is facilitated with the help of a faculty member who is familiar with Wikipedia and its community. Having faculty members with no experience in editing Wikipedia is not efficient and as they can't effectively use Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool. Also, it will be difficult to answer the students’ queries and properly guide them. While it may not be possible for faculty members to equip themselves with advanced skills, they are encouraged to learn the basic aspects of Wikipedia before teaching the students. This gives them the confidence to respond to the concerns of the students in doing assignments on Wikimedia platforms.

Changes made in the WIE at CHRIST based on the students’ feedback and community requirements are as follows[6]:

Year	Changes made in the program at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) over the last 7 years
2013-14	Wikipedia in Education was started to increase the awareness about the Wikimedia community among students.
2014-15	The use of sandbox was explained and it was introduced to students A peer review system was started to enhance the quality of the work New evaluation methods were adapted. Wikisource was Introduced to the students.
2015-16	A certificate course & Wikimedia internship was introduced to attract more students to the Wikimedia world. Ambassadors were selected to have multiple touchpoint systems.
2016-17	Different methods were chosen to increase awareness of the work done by the students, such as social media promotion. Students were involved in a national conference to meet different community members.
2017-18	Community members were involved in different steps. Faculty members started to do the evaluations of the articles.
2018-19	New methods were adopted to promote the work done at the University. Community members started reviewing the articles written by the students.

How is students writing a Wikipedia article for their assignments helpful in achieving larger learning objectives?

Wikimedia in Education opened up a number of ways in which students get to choose and work on their favourite topics, areas of interest, and aid teachers in designing new and innovative assignments. Faculty members have also found different tools to evaluate the assignment, track the student’s work and to spot plagiarism of assignments among students. Writing assignments on a Wikimedia platform helps students to understand the importance of group collaboration and teamwork. Wikipedia helps the faculty members to imbibe group collaboration among students and monitor individual progress with the help of "User contribution". Some of the tools developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, such as the Program & events dashboard help aculty members to evaluate the work of the students and monitor each edit done by all the students.

How is Wikipedia in Education helpful for community members?

A group of 20-25 students from over 1000 students from each batch contributing to various topics on Wikipedia helps the community to generate more content and enhance the usefulness of the Wikipedia projects that have been engaged with as part of the program.

The content created as part of the WIE is reviewed by language experts and subject experts which helps the community to create more quality articles in less time. Since the articles created by students are in the sandbox, after reviewing these articles they are moved to the main namespace by the community members with minor changes. In Wikimedia in Education, more students gain skills and knowledge related to Wikipedia which can result in a good number of student volunteers in the community and potential long-term contributors. Some of the students make it a hobby to write articles on Wikipedia even after completing the course; this increases the potential of having more long-term contributors and helps to strengthen the existing community.

Last but not least, it has benefits beyond the Wikipedia community and classroom. Wikipedia content is under a free license for the entire world. As such, the students' work translates into aiding all those who use Wikipedia — which, as recent studies indicate, means most Internet users.[7]

What do students think about Wikipedia assignments?

Some students communicated that they are very confused about Wikipedia, and some feel it is easy to contribute and engage with it. Some students shared that they initially faced difficulty but when a faculty member helped them clear their doubts, it enabled them to improve their perception of learning this tool.

The majority of the students who responded to interviews prefer a Wikipedia assignment over a traditional one when they are provided with frequent training on how to contribute to Wikipedia. The students who disliked the assignment usually noted that it was more difficult than just writing a regular paper in an offline word processing software. Those who liked the Wikipedia assignment commented that their project resulted in an above-average group paper that would be seen and appreciated by others.

Some of the students at the university appreciated Wikipedia in Education as their work is read by the wider public, and the fact that they are creating useful digital content on the internet, rather than just writing assignments on paper to be read by faculty members.

Limitations of the program

Despite its many positive aspects, the project comes with certain limitations as well. Students may or may not be well versed with the language, especially with respect to the community standards on quality and expectations of active community members, and they may not be able to create the article as per the same. In this situation, sometimes the community may get annoyed by looking at such articles. Trainers/faculty members should pay more attention to these kinds of students or class ambassadors to guide these students in the whole process.

During the orientations, some of the students may not pay attention properly and won't follow the instructions, which leads to incorrectly prepared articles and edits. Also, students may vandalise the Wikipedia pages while contributing and burden the communities. In such cases, the trainer/faculty members should monitor them thoroughly with the program & events dashboard and correct them if any students vandalise a Wikipedia page.

Conclusions and Recommendations

This study helped us understand the challenges and advantages observed by the students with both the opportunity and access to Wikipedia platforms to communicate on advanced topics in science/higher education to the general public. One observation from the students who took part in the WIE was that they had improved their own capacity to assess the quality of the material they used in order to write the articles, because of the visible nature of Wikipedia.

While implementing Wikipedia in Education at Christ we became aware of several aspects that should be kept in mind before introducing students to the Wikipedia movement. These are a few observations from the interviews: :

The faculty members who are part of the WIE should be Wikipedians, or at least they should know the basic aspects of editing Wikipedia, as this will help them to create more awareness and interest among the student community. If the faculty members are not well versed with Wikipedia and its editing skills it will be difficult for them to use Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool in an effective manner. Some efforts to train the faculty members of CHRIST were made at regular intervals during the program.
The number of students involved in the education program should be proportionate to the number of in-charge faculty members. This helps them give more attention to the students and they will be able to learn more about Wikipedia.
In order to help the students learn and contribute effectively, , they need to be trained at regular intervals and provided with the user manuals/videos, etc. This will enrich the student's knowledge about Wikipedia and editing skills. Also, monitoring the students will be helpful to know the progress of the student's activity.
Wikipedia has articulated style guidelines, and students should be given information in detail on these at the beginning of the project, as this helps them to avoid many mistakes.
Students need to create their own illustrations/diagrams and upload them to Wikimedia Commons on a free license, and then use them on Wikipedia articles. This will help them to understand the workflow of creating an illustration and also give more value to the article.
Strategies to follow up with the students who have graduated need to be prepared before starting the WIE. This will help us to retain the interest of students who have graduated, and potentially convert them to Wikimedians who will continue to contribute in the long-term.

This short report is an attempt to consolidate and analyse our experiences and learnings from working on the WIE at CHRIST( Deemed to be University) over the last few years. We have also tried to capture some of the many challenges and opportunities with initiating and building strategies for teaching-learning with Indian languages and open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia in the classroom. As we move towards increasingly online modes of pedagogy and training, we hope that these observations will be helpful in the process of building and sustaining such initiatives in education programs across various Indian language Wikipedia communities.

References

[1] Keelery, Sandhya. “Total Internet Users in India.” Statista, October 16, 2020.

[2] The objectives are as per the discussion among the stakeholders in the early days of Wikimedia in Education at CHRIST.

[3] “Jimmy Wales - The Sum of All Human Knowledge.” The On Being Project. Krista Tippett, September 8, 2016.

[4] “Wikipedia:About.” In Wikipedia. Accessed February 3, 2021.

[5] These objectives are paraphrased from the MoU signed with CHRIST ( Deemed to be) University in 2013.

[6] Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. “The Centre for Internet and Society/Progress Report” Accessed February 3, 2021.

[7] Weiqin Chen and Rolf Reber, 2011. “Writing Wikipedia articles as course assignment” Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computers in Education, accessed February 3, 2021.

Notes

[1] See Annexures I, II and III for the interview questionnaires for students, faculty members and community members.

[2] Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-in-the-classroom-a-study-of-the-wikimedia-in-education-program-at-christ-deemed-to-be-university