Centre for Internet and Society

BHASHA - Indian Languages Digital Festival

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:14:37Z

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

The notes for the talk are below:

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

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

1. Language communities

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

2. Wikipedia's editor community

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

3. Language input

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

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

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

5. Mismatch of conventional and new media

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

6. Lack of Open Access

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

7. Mobile input

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

8. People with disabilities

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

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

WikiTungi: Bhubaneswar City Wiki Community Turns 1

sailesh — 2017-02-27T01:42:11Z

The Odia Wikipedia’s WikiTungi is an attempt at building a community of Wikimedians at the city level.

The tungi, named after an ancient practice in Odia that involves passing on knowledge of the scriptures, is a city based Wikipedia community that helps Wikimedians around the city to meet and learn from their shared experiences. The Tungi meetups and events are organised with the help of the volunteers.

The Odia community's WikiTungi is based out of two cities, Puri and Bhubaneswar. While Wikimedians in Puri conduct meetups bi-monthly, Bhubaneswar Wikimedians meet once a month. In every meetup, Wikimedians exchange their resources with each other, helping address their doubts and queries regarding their problems and projects.

This February marks the first anniversary of the Bhubaneswar WikiTungi. The WikiTungi members from the city meet every second Sunday of the month. To commemorate the first anniversary of this novel effort, nine community members from the Bhubaneswar Tungi met for a celebratory dinner at a local restaurant on 9 February 2017 and toasted to the dedication of the volunteers.

The community discussed various ideas (listed below) and the ways in which they can be implemented in the regular WikiTungi meetups. Members of the community also showed their interest in organising the third edition of WikiConference India in Bhubaneswar to bring Wikipedia to more people across the state of Odisha. During the community meetup, Tungi members came up with few ideas to implement it as a best practice in the Wikipedia movement.

Some of them are listed here:

The Tungi members will invite one of the global community leaders for a Skype or hangout session.
Discuss the best practice from the global community and discuss them with the community.
Updating the minutes of the meeting and sharing them with the other community members.
Updating the Learning and Evaluation team about the new learning of the community every month.
The community will also send postcards as a souvenirs to the participants of the global community for the online sessions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikitungi-bhubaneswar-city-wiki-community-turns-1

"Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din" celebrations in Maharashtra

manasa@cis-india.org — 2017-03-10T05:36:48Z

Marathi Language Day was recently commemorated across the state of Maharashtra to celebrate the Marathi language, its literature and culture.

Last week, the state of Maharashtra commemorated Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din, a day to celebrate the Marathi language, its literature and culture. The celebrations mark the 105th birth anniversary of renowned Marathi poet and writer Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar who wrote under the pen name Kusumagraj. Most notably, the Maharashtra state government issued a circular, appealing to all educational institutions and government offices to edit one paragraph on Marathi Wikipedia on 27th February(Marathi Language Day). Asmita Pote, a Marathi Wikipedian, believes that this “small step of writing one paragraph on Marathi Wikipedia will give those learning about Wikipedia for the first time, an opportunity to explore further and contribute”.

There were Wikipedia awareness programs and cultural festivities organised across the state’s schools and colleges to mark the week long(27 February to 6 March) celebrations. The Gateway of India in Mumbai held a large-scale cultural program with performances from leading Marathi singers, dancers and poets portraying their cultural heritage through their art. The state government promoted the celebrations on television channels, radio stations and newspapers with interviews of eminent Marathi achievers from different walks of life. These interviews can be found here.

This year’s theme for Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din was ‘role of computer and internet in language’. The Minister for Education and Marathi Bhasha(among other portfolios), Mr. Vinod Tawde, encouraged citizens to edit on Wikipedia and urged the citizens to use unicode on their social media platforms to facilitate discussions in Marathi. Says Rahul Deshmukh, Marathi Wikipedia administrator, “this is the outcome of efforts channelled over two years. The government understood the need to take Wikipedia to the aam aadmi(common man) in Maharashtra in order to strengthen the language. The primary goal was to expose people to Wikipedia and raise awareness about Marathi Wikipedia.” In thanking the government officials who worked tirelessly for this initiative, he also appeals to other Indic language communities in India to see this as a role model. He believes that this initiative should be taken to other states and state governments as well.

The recent celebrations in Maharashtra have seen significant due to active government involvement. Priya Hiregange, a Marathi Wikipedian, says, “the government raised awareness not just in schools and colleges across the state but also in their own offices, giving training to government officials to write about their department or their organisation’s work on the free encyclopaedia.” The government circular appealing to citizens to edit on Wikipedia saw a great increase in the number of articles and editors. This goes to show that government involvement could immensely benefit the free knowledge movement in regional languages by creating awareness and exposure to these resources. It also sets a positive precedent for other state governments in India to emulate and promote their regional languages. Wikipedia is available in 23 Indic languages. A supportive government could go a long way to ensure the development of the free knowledge movement in India.

If you would like to contact Mr. Rahul Deshmukh for guidance on such initiatives for your language, please drop him a line here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-bhasha-gaurav-din-celebrations-in-maharashtra

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/గుంటూరు/అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయం - భాగస్వామ్య కార్యక్రమం జూలై 2018

Admin — 2018-08-11T00:43:35Z

CIS-A2K partnership activity in Annamayya Library, Guntur.

See the event details on Wikipedia page here

వికీపీడియా నుండి < వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం Jump to navigation Jump to search

2018 జూలై 10న గుంటూరు అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయంలో భాగస్వామ్య అవకాశాలను గురించి జరిపిన చర్చలు, చేసిన చిరు శిక్షణల సారాంశం.

వివరాలు

తేదీ-సమయం: 2018 జూలై 10న ఉదయం 11 నుంచి సాయంత్రం 4 వరకూ
ప్రదేశం: అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయం, వేంకటేశ్వరస్వామి ఆలయం ఎదురుగా, బృందావన కాలనీ, గుంటూరు

పాల్గొన్న వ్యక్తులు

వాడుకరి:Gopi.Mogili, అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయం
లంకా సూర్యనారాయణ, అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయ వ్యవస్థాపకుడు
పవన్ సంతోష్, సీఐఎస్-ఎ2కె.

చేపట్టిన పనులు, భాగస్వామ్య చర్చలు

అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయానికి సంబంధించిన లక్షా మూడువేల పుస్తకాల కేటలాగును ఇప్పటికే వికీపీడియాలోకి కొంతమేరకు విశ్వనాథ్ గారు, కొంతమేరకు సీఐఎస్-ఎ2కె వారు, రహ్మానుద్దీన్ ప్రభృతులు పూర్తిచేశారు. అయితే ఆపైన నిరంతరం పుస్తకాలు చేరుతూ జాబితా అప్‌డేట్ అవుతూండడాన ఆ పుస్తకాలు చేర్చడానికి గ్రంథాలయ సిబ్బందికి శిక్షణనివ్వాల్సిందిగా ఆహ్వానించారు.
గ్రంథాలయ సిబ్బందిలో ఒకరైన గోపి మొగిలికి స్ప్రెడ్‌షీట్లలోని కాటలాగ్ వికీ మార్కప్ కోడ్‌లోకి తీసుకురావడానికి ఉపకరించే వెబ్‌సైట్ చూపి శిక్షణను ఇచ్చాం. తద్వారా భావి గ్రంథాలయ సూచికలన్నీ వికీపీడియాలోకి వచ్చేందుకు వీలవుతుంది.
గ్రంథాలయ వ్యవస్థాపకుడు లంకా సూర్యనారాయణ వికీపీడియాలో తమ కాటలాగ్ డిజిటైజ్ చేసి, తద్వారా పరిశోధకులకు గ్రంథాల అందుబాటుకు వీలుకల్పించిన వికీపీడియా వాలంటీర్లను, పాల్గొన్న సంస్థల ఉద్యోగులను ప్రశంసిస్తూ తమ గ్రంథాలయం ద్వారా తెలుగు వికీపీడియా సముదాయ అభివృద్ధికి ఏయే కార్యకలాపాలు చేపట్టవచ్చో ఆలోచించి ప్రతిపాదించమని కోరారు.
ఈ నేపథ్యంలో గుంటూరు సమీపంలోని వీవీఐటీ కళాశాలలో వాడుకరి:KCVelaga పలు కార్యకలాపాలు చేపడతున్నందను, వారి భాగస్వామ్యంతో గుంటూరులో గ్రంథాలయంలో నెలవారీ సమావేశాలు నిర్వహించడం ప్రారంభిద్దామని, గ్రంథాలయంలోని గ్రంథాలు స్కాన్ చేయడంలో వీవీఐటీ వికీ క్లబ్ సభ్యులకు శిక్షణనిచ్చి కాపీహక్కులు లేని గ్రంథాలు కొన్ని వికీమీడియా కామన్స్‌లోకి తీసుకురావచ్చనీ ఆలోచిస్తూ ఆయా ప్రతిపాదనలు గ్రంథాలయం ముందుంచనున్నాం.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/partnership-activity-in-annamayya-library-guntur

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವಗಳು/ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವ ತುಮಕೂರು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾನಿಲಯ ೨೦೧೮

Admin — 2018-08-11T01:32:00Z

CIS-A2K team held a workshop in Tumakur University on 25 July 2018.

Read the full details on Wikipedia page

ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ವಿವರ

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಹೊಸಬರು: ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಪರಿಚಯ, ಖಾತೆ ತೆರೆಯುವುದು, ವಿಕಿ ಸಂಪಾದನೆ ಕಲಿಯುವುದು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸುವುದು.

ದಿನಾಂಕ ಮತ್ತು ಸ್ಥಳ

ದಿನಾಂಕ: ಜುಲೈ ೨೫, ೨೦೧೮, ಬುಧವಾರ
ಸಮಯ: ಬೆಳಿಗ್ಗೆ ೯:೩೦ ರಿಂದ ಸಾಯಂಕಾಲ ೫:೩೦ರ ತನಕ
ಸ್ಥಳ:ತುಮಕೂರು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯ ಪದವಿ ಕಾಲೇಜು ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ವಿಭಾಗ, ಗೂಗ್ಲ್ ಮ್ಯಾಪ್

ಸಂಪನ್ಮೂಲ ವ್ಯಕ್ತಿಗಳು

ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದವರು

--Mangalapandith (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೪೪, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Vanitha YH (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೪೭, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Mdshreedevidevaraju (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೪೭, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Shashikalashivanna1 (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೪೮, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Varshitha govindaraju (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೪೯, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Soumya ravish (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೪೯, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Ganmanj (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೫೦, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Sowmyalatha.s (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೫೨, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Bindu Umesh (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೫೩, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Shashirekha V N (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೭:೫೪, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Girish.Nagappa (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೮:೪೪, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)
--Lokeshbag (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೦೮:೪೮, ೨೫ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC)

ವರದಿ

ತುಮಕೂರು ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವ/ಕಾರ್ಯಾಗಾರ ೨೫ರಂದು ನಡೆಯಿತು. ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ತುಂಬಾ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ನಡೆಯಿತು. ಹೊಸ ೧೨ ಸದಸ್ಯರು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಖಾತೆ ಸೃಷ್ಠಿಸಿದರು. ಇದರಲ್ಲಿ ೧೦ ಜನ ಹುಡುಗಿಯರು ಮತ್ತು ೨ ಹುಡುಗರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದ್ದರು. ಇವರು ತುಮಕೂರು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದಯಾಲಯದ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ ವಿಭಾಗದ ಪದವಿ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳು. ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದವರಲ್ಲಿ ಎಲ್ಲರೂ ಆಸಕ್ತಿಯಿಂದ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದರು. ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದವರಿಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದ ತಳಮಟ್ಟದ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಟ್ಟೆವು. ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಅಲ್ಲದೇ ವಿಕಿಮೀಡಿಯ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್ ಬಗ್ಗೆಯೂ ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಟ್ಟೆವು. ಅದಲ್ಲದೇ ವಿಕಿಯ ಇತರ ಪ್ರಾಜೆಕ್ಟುಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆಯೂ ಹೇಳಿದೆವು. ಸಮುದಾಯದಿಂದ ಲೋಕೇಶ ಕುಂಚಡ್ಕರು ಭಾಗವಿಸಿದ್ದರು. ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದವರು ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳಾಗಿದ್ದರಿಂದ ಅವರಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಪಠ್ಯ ಲೇಖನಗಳು ಯೋಜನೆಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳಿಸಿ ಈ ಯೋಜನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸುವಂತೆ ಕೇಳಿಕೊಂಡೆವು. --ಗೋಪಾಲಕೃಷ್ಣ (ಚರ್ಚೆ) ೧೭:೦೪, ೨೯ ಜುಲೈ ೨೦೧೮ (UTC) ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಪಟ್ಟ dashboard link ಇಲ್ಲಿದೆ.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tumakur%20university-workshop

Wikisource Handbook for Indian Communities

Bodhisattwa Mandal and Ananth Subray P. V. — 2018-09-19T02:18:40Z

Wikisource is one of the trending Wikimedia projects. Many new editors and new books to Indic language Wikisource's get added over a period of time. However, new editors as well as existing editors face numerous problems while working with the content online. The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team, to help the editors, has created this Handbook. CIS invites feedback to the first draft of this Handbook. CIS-A2K will continue to work with the Wikipedia communities to improve their efforts towards developing Wikisource.

Preface

Currently, CIS-A2K is working with five Indian-languages Wikimedia communities (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu) and one focus project area (Wikisource with punjabi community). While working with the above mentioned Indic Wikimedia communities, we noticed that there are many similarities between the issues and challenges faced by these communities. So, we decided to create this “Wikisource Handbook for Indian Communities”.

At first, we went through the Wikisource of each language and noted the status. Then we talked to Indic Wikipedians to know more about the Wikisource related issues that they are facing. We also asked for the feedback on the first draft of this handbook. Our actual work will start after the release of this book, when we’ll work with the communities to improve their efforts towards developing Wikisource.

Click to download the Wikisource Handbook for Indian Communities co-authored by Bodhisattwa Mandal and Ananth Subray P V. with graphics support from Saumya Naidu.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wiki-source-handbook-for-indian-communities

South India Copyright Workshop

subodh — 2018-11-06T01:25:49Z

A workshop on Copyright was organized by CIS-A2K at Hotel Bhagini Icon in Bengaluru from 19th to 21st October 2018. Seventeen members from 5 language communities (Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Tulu) participated in the workshop. Yann Forget was the master trainer for the workshop.

Before the event participants listed their questions. The workshop participants’ queries covered all aspects of copyright on Commons.

The event began with ‘Lightning talk About Copyrights’ by master trainer Yann. He spoke about copyright, what works be copyrighted, and why doesn’t one gets copyright. The session covered important issues like originality, creativity, Default copyrights of Collective works, Compilation works, newspapers and magazines. Case studies of 2D & 3D works of art (paintings, sculptures), Texts, Pictures & videos were elaborated. Yann also elaborated on some critical cases like recordings of musical concerts, complex geometric figures, dictionary content, mathematical theorems and algorithms.

The workshop also threw light on what is free license, acceptable licenses, CC-BY-SA with attribution and ‘share alike’ license, etc. Various license tags and templates, non-copyright restrictions, etc. were also deliberated upon during the workshop. A hands-on session on translation of important templates in local languages and verifying files on Commons for description, source, categories, license and other details was also done. Participants were also introduced to uploading YouTube videos on Commons. Websites having copyright free content were also discussed.

Yann also discussed various aspects of GODL India license policies. A brief session on process of deletion, un-deletion and OTRS volunteers’ structure was also conducted. On Day 2, an exhaustive session on copyright of pictures from sources such as Flickr, Instagram, Pixabay, Bollywood Hungama, Newspaperarchive, NASA, Government websites etc. was conducted. Participants explored specific categories and found out treasures of free images on web. Important templates like PD-Art, PD-India, PD-1996, Not-PD-US-URAA, PD-UK unknown were explained with proper examples.

The final session was dedicated to Books on Commons. All participating communities were actively involved in digitization and uploading free content on Commons and Wikisource. Nationalization of books by Tamil Nadu state government was taken up for discussion. Tamil Wikipedians spoke about the licensing procedures and problems being faced by community on Commons. Yann stressed on importance of creating Wikidata items for files and categories in Commons with examples.

In the concluding session a follow-up plan was framed with active contribution of all members. The major tasks include - Creating a list of authors with death year details in the respective language to decide public domain/copyright free status in India (Works of Indian authors who died 60 years ago), Translation of important 10 policy pages, 8 templates and 2 category pages in local languages and Preparation of check list for users before uploading any content to Commons. Yann Forget played crucial role in developing clear understanding on important issues. The workshop has definitely created cohesive group of Indic Wikimedians striving to build free content on Commons.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/south-india-copyright-workshop

Van Bodh Workshop for content development on Forest Resources at Gadchiroli

Admin — 2018-11-06T01:36:39Z

CIS-A2K has collaborated with Tribal Research and Training Institute (TRTI) to facilitate development of Open knowledge resources on Community Forest Resource and content development in Wikimedia projects with community participation. These contents will become a part of "Van Bodh Knowledge repository".

Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, Bombay University has formulated and going to start a "Diploma course in Community Resource Management " with the support of TRTI, Pune from 2nd of oct 2018. This is a historic attempt to impart education of the level of a diploma to rural, especially tribal youth without any condition of academic qualification. The course was conducted at Mendha(Lekha) an hamlet in Dhanora taluk of Gadchiroli District. CIS-A2K has collaborated with TRTI to facilitate development of Open knowledge resources on Community Forest Resource and content development in Wikimedia projects with community participation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/van-bodh-workshop-for-content-development-on-forest-resources-at-gadchiroli

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

jayanta — 2018-12-10T15:08:56Z

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

Volunteers from various Indic Wikisource projects took part in a discussion organized by Centre for Internet and society: access to knowledge (CIS:A2K) in Kolkata recently. Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi participated in this consultation on behalf of the Assamese Wikisource which included other Indic languages like Bengali, Odia, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu and Sanskrit. It is worth mentioning here that Wikisource is another important project like Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc operated by Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone can contribute to this wikisource project which stores copyright-free books, plays, lyrics, speeches, translated works etc. Such works are first scanned and digitalized and then converted to unicode so that everything becomes searchable. Assamese Wikisource (as.wikisource.org), started in 2013, so far includes various literary works of Guru Sankardeva and Madhavdev, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Padmanath Gogain Baruah, Chandraprasad Agarwala, Amulya Barua, Dandinath Kalita etc. Measures to popularize Wikisource among masses, increasing numbers of readers and contributors, correct techniques to digitalize a book etc were discussed at the event in Kolkata.

Translated from Assamese by Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018-report-at-asomiya-pratidin-epaper-highest-circulated-assamese-daily

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018

jayanta — 2018-12-08T18:22:29Z

A group of Indian Wikisource leader from 12 different language communities gathered in Kolkata to attend the Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018

There was a long time required of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for Indic language computing. There was not at per OCR available in Indic languages before 2015. Most of the Indic subdomain was created in 2007 to 2011, but due to not availability of OCR, the Indic Wikisource Community used to type the whole book or import the Unicoded text from other non-reliable sources. In 2015 the after Google Drive OCR released Indic community relief from the typing era.

Later Shrinivasan T developed an OCR4wikisource script to use the Google Drive OCR as Bot. Since the implementation of the OCR, there has been a lot of progress in Indic Wikisource. But we have realized the there should be a common platform where we can share our knowledge. Then one-month planning we have organized Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018. in Kolkata. this is first such consultation at this scale, convened by the CIS A2K team.

The meeting had a representation of one volunteer from the Assamese, Bangla, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu, and Sanskrit language Wikisource communities. Ananth Subray (Kannada ) Bodhisattwa (Bengali) Hrishikes Sen (English ) Gurlal Maan (Punjabi ) Gitartha Bordoloi (Assamese ) Pooja Jadhav (Marathi ) Pankajmala Sarangi (Oriya ) Shubha (Sanskrit ) Sushant Savla (Gujurati ) Ranjith siji (Malayalam ) Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Hindi ) Ramesam54 (Telugu ) Jayprakash (Indic Tech team) Chinmayee Mishra (Oriya ) as well as Tito Dutta, Tanveer Hasan, Subodh Kulkarni and Jayanta Nath, four members of the Access to Knowledge Programme of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) .

The objectives of the consultation are:

Share views and preferences on the most effective ways to pursue our shared vision of creating and sharing free knowledge in India and in the Indian languages (including English) around the world through the Indic Wikisource Project.
Attempt to come to an agreement on a roadmap for a future where our resources are better utilized, our volunteers are better served, and progress on our mission is more steadily attained.

We have started our discussion on day zero with the agenda of the main aims of this consultation and what all participants want from this program. The discussion was started at 6 PM and ended at 10 PM night. After discussion, we have summarized and set-up for two days agenda which was actually coming from the participants. The CIS-A2K team arranged for the travel and stay of all participants, as well as a night stay for all participants between the zero and second day, to ensure that the programme started on time on.

Day one started with Introduction of Wikisource by me were introduce the workflow of Wikisource, adding text, finding the source, basic copyright checking, creating Index pages, OCRed the page, Proofreading, layout with typography, Validation, Transclusion and Finishing touch. Later on, Hrishikes Sen demonstrated each segment broadly. Bodhisattwa (Bengali) demonstrated Wikisource Tool, like IA-UPLOAD, Vicuna Uploader, URL2COMMONS, Fill index Gadget etc. And all participants implement hands-on. Bodhisatta showed the Bengali Wikisource promotional videos.

Day two was started with Google Drive OCR without using Bot solution developed by Jayprakash (Indic Tech team). Later on OTRS process by Jayanta Nath, Wikisource Roadmap by Tanveer Hasan, Institutional Partnership - by Subodh Kulkarni and Transclusion in Wikisource by Susant Salva presented. The most achievements of this meeting were the second day, Jayprakash leads the task myself to clear the Wikisource technical backlog.

There were also some ideas coming up by the session by Tanveer. This included awareness, outreach, followups, and evaluation. A report about this meeting was published at Asomiya Pratidin. Some feedback from the participants can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018

Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri, Odisha sparks creation of informal Wikipedia group WikiTungi

Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-01-12T05:28:14Z

The first ever Odia Wikipedia workshop in Odisha's historic town of Puri finally shaped in on this December 20. With 25 participants contributing to Odia Wikipedia this day, more Wikipedia outreach in the city were planned.

Organised at the Premier Institute of Computer Studies (PICS), this workshop saw many students from technical background including four female participants. The Google Local Guides group of Bhubaneswar collaborated with us in organising this workshop. Thanks to long time Odia Wikimedian Dr Subas Chandra Rout to spare time and taking pain in coming all the way from Bhubaneswar to mentor the new editors. Only 10-12 participants could sign up on the spot because of IP address throttle that we could not fix beforehand. Otherwise the event went well and after a week, many of the participants have turned out to be active on Odia Wikipedia which is pretty exciting.

We planned to organise a meetup once in two month at Puri with the focus on improving at least 20-25 articles related to to the city and district during the meetup. There was a three-minute coverage of the workshop on Odisha Television (OTV) and a brief report of the workshop was published on Odisha Reporter.

As part our effort in chronicling the voice of the Wikipedia community in the WikipediansSpeak series, we reached out to Wikimedians Dr. Subas Chandra Rout and Snehasish Nayak after the workshop. Dr Rout shares his interactions and future plans to expand the Odia Wikimedia community:

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Thank you so much for mentoring these new Wikimedians! How was your overall experience working with them?
Subas Chandra Rout (SRR): The participants were, indeed, very enthusiastic. They not just were good listeners when we were presenting but contributed well after we demonstrated.

SP: How often do you think we should come back here and work with the same set of participants?
SRR: I think one more visit to ensure that they feel more integrated with the larger Odia Wikimedia community and help them contribute more. Face-to-face interaction will also help them feel more comfortable to share the kind of problems they might have been facing.

SP: What kind of problems did they face during the workshop? How did you help them with those problems?
There were certain technical/logistics problems which kind of made us keep the workshop limited to more demonstration by us and less practice by them. Sailesh seems be following up with them as some of them have already started editing Wikipedia actively.

Snehasish Nayak, organiser of the event and a new active Wikimedian of the Odia community—it is worth mentioning that Snehasish has 360 edits on Odia Wikipedia already—shares more about himself, his interests and ideas for future projects:

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): How and when you got introduced to Odia Wikipedia? Did you know about it before or heard from someone before you formally got an orientation?
Snehasish Nayak (SN): The first time I got to know about Odia Wikipedia was during the Google I/O 2015 event. It was Sailesh Pattnaik who introduced me to Odia Wikipedia. My Wikipedia journey started in December 2015, when Sailesh asked me for some help to conduct a Odia Wikipedia in my hometown Puri.

SP: You graduated as an engineer. Many engineers in India do not even contribute much to language related work, especially the ones that are not paid for. What drives you to contribute so much that you have crossed 360 edits in just three weeks?
SN: From my school days, Wikipedia has been good friend to me. I don’t remember in how many projects Wikipedia has come to my rescue. And in return Wikipedia never asked for anything. I felt it would be the best platform to share free knowledge across the globe.Odia being my native language and it being a very old language needs contribution from the youth like me. In the era of digital revolution Odia Wikipedia has the potential of empowering every single Odia with the sum of the world's knowledge any time of in any place. If anyone asks me about what I am getting in return because of my contribution, my first answer would be "knowledge". I have learnt quite a lot after I started contributing to Odia Wikipedia. And after each contribution, it gives me a great feeling that I have done something useful for the world”. It inspires me to contribute more and more...

SP: You have recently started working and promoting about WikiTungi Puri. Can you share little more about it? What it will do? How it will benefit the Odia language?
SN: With the coming of our group, WikiTungi Puri, we are going to organize more workshops, meetups and other outreach programs in and around Puri. But the work will never be limited only to the city. We are always ready to collaborate with the global community. At Puri, We have plans to design thematic outreach activities in some of the educational institutions of Puri and we would like to invite them to be part of WikiTungi Puri. We have plans to bring the "Odia Wikiquote" live out of the Incubator wiki. We have started working on designing of training materials for the new editors. I have a great feeling that we are going to have more and more active contributors joining us in the near future.

From the place where see it from, Odia Wikipedia is becoming a pioneer of bringing digital technology for taking our language to a whole new level!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-takes-puri

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon Coverage in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:40:52Z

The article was published in Prajavani Mangal on December 10, 2015. A scanned version of the article is below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-prajavani-mangal

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:39:56Z

The article was published in Prajavani on December 13, 2015. A scanned version of the article is below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-prajavani

Odia Wikipedia Workshop to be organised in Puri

Sailesh Patnaik — 2015-12-29T11:55:12Z

In collaboration with the the Google Local guides group, the first ever Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri is being organised on this December 20.

This workshop aims at helping the participants learn about creating and improving the Odia Wikipedia articles about the local places, people, and culture of the historical town Puri and the district. Currently there is some presence of the town and the district on Odia Wikipedia but majority of the content are related only to Jagannath temple. The participants will be oriented with Wikipedia's basics, policy and guidelines of Odia Wikipedia, Odia-alphabet input. The event is free and open to everyone.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-workshop-to-be-organised-in-puri

Telugu Wikipedia Day 2015, Photo Walk

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:27:08Z

On December 13, 2015, Telugu Wikipedians conducted a historical photowalk in Dr.YSR state archeological museum to celebrate Telugu Wikipedia Day 2015. Pavan Santhosh attended the event as a CIS-A2K representative and facilitated media coverage for the programme.

One of the popular telugu news channel TV9 covered the event and telecasted the same. Eenadu published a special item on photowalk on December 13, 2015.

Andhra Jyoti published an article on photowalk on December 18:

Eenadu news report on photowalk on December 18:

Namaste Telangana on Photowalk on December 18:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/telugu-wikipedia-day-2015-photo-walk