Centre for Internet and Society

Christ (DU) students enrolls for 3rd Wikipedia certificate course

Ananth Subray — 2018-09-23T04:04:48Z

Students of Christ (Deemed to be University) enrolled themselves for the third Wikipedia certificate course for the academic year of 2018-19, to understand the usage of Wikimedia projects.

A group of 37 students from Christ University in Bengaluru (Bangalore) India have enrolled themselves for a Wikipedia certificate course for the academic year of 2018-19. As an active step towards enabling the awareness on content editing and contributing skills on Wikipedia in vernacular languages, Christ (Deemed to be University), in collaboration with the CIS-A2K started the certificate this course for students in 2016. The Wikipedia certificate course is conducted after normal working hours for a total of 45 hours and carries 2 credits for the academic records of the University.

The objective of this certificate course is to enable students to acquire skills working along with Wikimedia projects which involve both technically equipping and holistic through its instruction. The course consists of three major components, the first step is an introduction to the concept of Wikipedia, which incorporates the history of online encyclopedias and the evolution of Wikipedia as one of the largest online encyclopedias available on the Internet. It also involves looking for resources for drafting articles on User sandbox and moving articles to the main space. The second step teaches students on how to edit and publish articles on Wikimedia projects, also adding tables and references, and also includes introduction to common templates, wikification of articles, legal aspects, policies, and guidelines, and how to identify vandalism and tackle it. The third step discusses Wikipedia’s notability and social significance, which lets the students understand Wikipedia in a critical and evaluative manner, where topics such as its ethics, existence as a social community, existence as a democratic project, How Wikipedia is used by students, teachers librarians and journalists.

Learning outcomes of the course: Create and edit wiki articles of good quality, with references, illustrations and templates etc, Capacity to teach Wikipedia with peer groups, without any fear. Discuss what is a reasonable source critical approach for using Wikipedia as a reference. Outline the common criticism of Wikipedia's reliability and discuss how the reliability problems can be tackled.

The Wikipedia Certificate Course syllabus can be accessed here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-du-students-enrolls-for-3rd-wikipedia-certificate-course

Aditya 365

pavan — 2018-11-07T02:32:27Z

Telugu Wikimedian Aditya Pakide successfully completed 365 Wiki Commons Days. Aditya started contributing to project after a Facebook comment by A2K community advocate suggesting that the same picture would get more utilization in Commons and a brief training followed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/aditya-365

CIS Signs MoU with Odia Virtual Academy

sailesh — 2018-12-20T00:24:44Z

On October 26, 2018, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Odia Virtual Academy (OVA) to work on drafting an open content policy for the state, to promote use of Wikimedia projects by various user types and to ensure sustainability of Wikimedia projects, and to facilitate development of relevant free and open source software projects. This partnership between OVA and CIS will be carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, and we are sharing an overview of the activities and their objectives in this post.

The internet is increasingly significant as a knowledge repository today. Especially relevant in this context is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which contains information on almost every topic under the sun, across many languages spoken globally, and is used extensively all people to seek information and produce knowledge.

From past one year (since July 2017), The Government of Odisha has been actively participating in the open knowledge movement by publishing the content of their seven websites and eight social media accounts under Creative Commons 4.0 International license. This active collaboration with Government of Odisha and an active Odia Wikimedia community seeking to create and distribute knowledge in Odia language over the internet has resulted in improving 1,200 articles on different Wikimedia projects, and together has received a near about 16 Million page views. Further, the Government of Odisha adopting an open content policy will provide a significant boost in institutionalising creation, sharing, and re-use of open knowledge resources - including government documents, official statistics, open educational resources, and open cultural resources - in Odia language.

Odia Virtual Academy (OVA) is an organisation established by Government of Odisha for development, promotion and popularization of Odia language, literature, and lexicography for general use. It is an organised initiative to encourage expeditious evolution and popularisation of Odia books, magazines, journals, old songs, manuscripts, assembly speeches, and archival records by digitising and providing internet based resources and opportunities for all odia people living across the globe.

On October 26, 2018, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) signed a MoU with the Odia Virtual Academy to work on drafting an open content policy for the state, to promote use of Wikimedia projects by various user types and to ensure sustainability of Wikimedia projects, and to facilitate development of relevant free and open source software projects.

This partnership between OVA and CIS will be carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, and its activities are structured by the following objectives:

Open Content Policy for the Government of Odisha: The open content policy will include guidelines for the use of open licenses and open standards to enable the resource (text, resources or otherwise) publishing entity to share resources in a manner that it can be easily and freely be accessed, shared, and re-used by entities, without asking for prior permission, while ensuring that full attribution to the creator/publisher is provided and the resources are not misused, or the creator/publisher is not misrepresented in the process.
Developing Digital and Open Knowledge Resources in Odia Language: The CIS team will undertake awareness-building, training, and outreach activities to develop Odia language content on Wikimedia ecosystem, as well as to enable content creators from across institutions, with a focus on state government officials at district headquarters and college students. The broad mandate of the digital resource generation workshop is to introduce teachers, students, and interested citizens to tools of collaborative knowledge production on the internet and methods for generating new online content or reintroduce offline content in Odia language.
‘Revive Odia’ Activities: Odia as a language has a long tradition and has been medium of expression for the native speakers of Odisha. While Odia as a language of communication is not under any immediate threat, its role and responsibility as a language of Knowledge needs to be examined carefully. ‘Revive Odia’ activities have a simple objective: To bring Odia under limelight in the digital domain. Wikimedia projects in Odia language are working actively to increase the presence of Odia language on the Internet. If such projects can be supported new projects can be incubated, Odia will emerge as the language of knowledge production and distribution as well.
GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Partnerships: Wikimedia ecosystem offer several platforms for using the power and opportunities of internet to (digitally) preserve, enable access to, and creative re-use of historical, cultural, and social artefacts, and channel the expertise of local populations to build narratives around these artefacts. The CIS team is particularly interested in initiating engagement with public GLAM institutions at various locations and levels, and work with academic and research community to build scientific metadata of these objects. The metadata will be used to represent the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Odisha in projects such as Wikidata.
Building and Supporting FOSS for Odia Language: To promote and enable usage of Odia language on the web, the CIS team will facilitate development of an Odia font, an input tool, and a spell-check dictionary - all of which will be released as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) resources.

To undertake these activities, CIS will receive a grant of Rs 20,00,000 (~$28,000) from OVA.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-signs-mou-with-odia-virtual-academy

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Udupi

praskrishna — 2013-04-26T06:29:15Z

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

The workshop will cover the following topics:

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

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

Indian Language Wikipedia Statistics (September 2012 – April 2013)

T.Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi — 2013-08-23T01:48:16Z

The Access to Knowledge team carried out a quantitative analysis to identify trends and growth patterns in Indian Language Wikipedias over the time period from September 2012 to April 2013.

It is difficult for the CIS-A2K programme to either take direct credit for the growth or direct blame for the lack of it in the Indian language Wikimedia projects. However, we believe that we have been one of the factors — and sometimes a key factor — in impacting the growth of the Wikimedia projects and communities in India since the commencement of the project.

Though the A2K programme has done some amount of work with almost all Indian language Wikipedias, the A2K team has had relatively more involvement in 10 Indic languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi and Telugu.

In addition to this based on the various outreach work done by A2K we have attempted to present an analysis of direct new Wikipedia users that have emerged in languages impacted by the A2K programme, keeping in mind that community mobilisation will always be an autonomous activity to some extent.


Graph 1: Growth of Articles in Indian Language Wikipedias from September 2012 to April 2013

The growth momentum in Indian languages over the eight month period from September 2012 to April 2013 looks healthy.
Some language Wikipedias have been growing at a phenomenal rate than others in terms of percentage change since September 2012.
Assamese, Punjabi, Kannada and Odia Wikipedias have a growth rate of 58 per cent, 55 per cent, 30 per cent and 26 per cent respectively. These were the top four Indian language Wikipedia projects during the eight month period.
In terms of absolute number of articles, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi Wikipedias have grown by about 4,200; 3,600; 3,300; and 2,300 articles respectively.
However, given the small size of the Wikipedia communities in Assamese, Punjabi, Kannada and Odia (as given in Graph 2 below) the growth achieved by them is much commendable and all efforts have to be put to ensure that this momentum continues by strengthening these communities and also expanding them.


Graph 2: Active Editors in Indian Language Wikipedias from September 2012 to April 2013

There is a fluctuation in the number of active editors in majority of the Indian language Wikipedias, except for Punjabi Wikipedia, which has seen a consistent growth. Starting from July 2012, the Wikimedia India Programs Team began working with the Punjabi community, an activity which we have continued at the A2K programme.
The active editors on Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit Wikipedias have been consistently coming down, which is a cause of concern.
It is important to note that Kannada and Telugu Wikipedias where the number of Active Editors were in a declining trend as of September 2012 have shown a remarkable turnaround. The A2K programme has spent the last 3-4 months working closely with both the Kannada and Telugu communities.
Overall the active editors on Malayalam Wikipedia have crossed the 100 mark numerous times, making it the first Indian language Wikipedia to reach this benchmark.
Looking at the trends Tamil Wikipedia may soon reach the 100 active editor mark.
Even Bengali Wikipedia community could cross 100 active editors if concerted efforts are put in.
The Assamese Wikipedia, which received support from A2K programme until January 2013, had a consistent active editor population which was around 20 people. However, once the support from the A2K programme dwindled a declining trend (since February 2013) has set in. This is worrying as it gives rise to the possibility of building dependencies through the A2K programme. Going forward we need to address this and rectify by creating self-sustaining momentum in our outreach work that lasts beyond our involvement.


Graph 3: Monthly growth of New Editors on Indian Language Wikipedias from September 2012 to April 2013

On an average 96 new editors have joined Indian language Wikipedias every month.
Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil Wikipedias have consistently seen more than 10 new editors joining every month.
Assamese, Odia and Sanskrit Wikipedias did have many new editors joining.
A total of 673 new people have become editors for Indian language Wikipedia since September 2012.
However, the conversion rate of new editors into active editors is still a challenge across all Indian language Wikipedias.


Graph 4: Snapshot of “Page Views” of Indian Language Wikipedias in September 2012 & March 2013

Overall the “Page View” trends of Indian Language Wikipedias look positive.
Bengali, Odia and Punjabi Wikipedias have shown the highest percentage growth in page views since August 2012.
In absolute numbers Bengali Wikipedia has seen a spectacular growth of 14,00,000  page-views, Marathi and Tamil Wikipedias witnessed a growth of about 10,00,000 and 8,00,000 page-views respectively.
These clearly indicate the demand for knowledge and information in Indian languages on the internet.

In the below given Graph 5, we have also looked at the direct impact the A2K programme had in cultivating new editors on Indian language Wikipedias through various outreach programmes conducted during September 2012 to April 2013.

It should be noted that a total of 1,275 participants were reached out by the A2K programme. However, the username data for more than 700 participants could not be ascertained, due to inefficient data collection and input. This includes participants giving wrong usernames, trouble with the handwriting of some of the participants, etc. We have already taken note of this issue and have put in measures to efficiently capture the new user data. Hence, we have only presented an analysis of 558 participants, whose usernames are valid.

Of this it can be noted that more than 120 users have done more than 5 edits, which is 21 per cent of the participants. Further, 24 participants have done more than 100 edits on English and various Indian language Wikipedias, which constitutes 4 per cent of the total participants that the A2K programme has reached out to.


Graph 5: Snapshot of “New editors from outreach” of English & Indian Language Wikipedias in September 2012 and March 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-07-04T04:15:54Z

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has signed a MOU with the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Mumbai.

Institutional partnerships (especially in the higher education context) is a cross-cutting activity across A2K's various language plans and also the pilot project. A2K Team is happy to share with you an important outcome on this front.

CIS-A2K has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions. The objective is to enhance digital literacy in the Indian languages and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and free dissemination. A2K along with TISS will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this. Further, within TISS campuses we will endeavour to bring teaching-learning processes onto free and open digital platforms, including Indian language Wikipedias. The A2K team would like to acknowledge the pivotal role played by our Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana in buildig this collaboration.

We'll keep you posted as and when new developments shape up and would like to actively involve Mumbai Wikipedians in planning, designing and rolling out Wikipedia training programmes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-tiss-mou

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

Wikipedia Live Phone-in Programme on HMTV

praskrishna — 2013-06-18T05:54:01Z

Vishnu Vardhan took part in a one hour live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. This was telecasted in HMTV on June 1, 2013.

Dr. Rajasekar, Administrator on Telugu Wikipedia; Malladi Kameshwararao, Journalist and Telugu Wikipedian; Rahimanuddin Shaik, Telugu SIG, Wikimedia India Chapter; and T. Vishnu Vardhan Programme Director, CIS-A2K participated in a one-hour live phone-in programme on Telugu Wikipedia broadcast by HMTV (a Telugu News Channel) on June 1, 2013. This is probably for the first time a television news channel in India has done a live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. HMTV had also done a half-an-hour feature on Wikipedia which was broadcast on May 30 and May 31, 2013.

Videos

Part 1

Part 2

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-live-phone-in-programme

FDC recognition for the Centre for the Internet and Society

praskrishna — 2014-01-30T07:38:33Z

The Wikimedia Foundation Board has published a resolution declaring the Centre for Internet and Society as eligible for funding through the Annual Plan Grants program.

Click for the original published on the Wikimedia Foundation's website

The resolution was approved at the Board's November 2013 meeting.

Whereas, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and the Centre for the Internet and Society (CIS) have engaged in a working relationship in support of the mission goals of the Wikimedia movement in India since September 1, 2012;

Whereas, the Board would like to ensure that the activities and initiatives of CIS and its grants and payments received from WMF in support of the mission goals of the Wikimedia movement are subject to the review and recommendations of the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) to ensure the best consideration and use of donor monies;

Whereas, the Board recognizes that the work of CIS is comparable to that of other Wikimedia-affiliated entities in support of the mission goals of the Wikimedia movement;

Resolved, that, for purposes of eligibility to submit funding requests to the FDC, the FDC should treat the CIS as it would treat an eligible Wikimedia-affiliated entity for the limited term of CIS’ agreement with WMF.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/fdc-recognition-to-cis

Odia Wikipedia 10th anniversary at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal

praskrishna — 2014-01-30T12:06:21Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team along with the Odia Wikipedia community invite you to the 10th anniversary of Odia Wikipedia at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Dhenkanal on January 29, 2014 from 10.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ, ଅନଲାଇନରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ସର୍ବବୃହତ ମୁକ୍ତ ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷର ୧୦ମ ବାର୍ଷିକ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ୨୯ ଜାନୁଆରୀରେ ଢେଙ୍କାନାଳର ଭାରତୀୟ ଜନସଂଚାର ସଂସ୍ଥାନରେ ପୂର୍ବାହ୍ଣ ୧୧ ଘଟିକା ସମୟରେ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହେବାକୁ ଯାଉଛି । ଏହି ଅବସରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ପରିବାର ଆପଣମାନଙ୍କୁ ଏହି କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକ୍ରମରେ ଭାଗ ନେଇ ଏହାକୁ ସାଫଲ୍ୟମଣ୍ଡିତ କରିବାକୁ ଅନୁରୋଧ କରୁଛି ।

ଏଥିରେ ଆମେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ଉପଯୋଗୀତା, ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବହାର ଓ ଆପଣ କିପରି ଏଥିରେ ଭାଗ ନେଇପାରିବେ ଓ ଜ୍ଞାନ ବିତରଣର ଏହି ମହାପ୍ରବାହରେ ସାମିଲ ହୋଇପାରିବେ ସେ ବାବଦରେ ଜାଣିପାରିବେ ।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/odia-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-indian-institute-of-mass-communication-dhenkanal

‘With Internet in every pocket, power to the people’

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T06:05:48Z

Social media is set to grow in India in a big way with Google and Facebook gearing up to tap the regional languages market.

The interview was published in the Tribune on January 12, 2014.

The programme director of Access to Knowledge at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, T Vishnu Vardhan is leading the growth of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in Indian languages as part of grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. His experience spans across academics, industry (media) and not-for-profit sectors. He talks about the spread of the Internet and social media in India and their impact on the traditional media. Excerpts:

How powerful are the Internet and social media today?

One way to answer the question is to throw some data. There is 83 per cent of mobile connectivity, so and so per cent of Internet connectivity over computer in India, and so on. The data is important to understand the extent of penetration of digital technology in India, particularly through the mobile telephone rather than the PC-based or laptop-based access to the Internet.

When you say mobile phones, are you talking about smartphones?

These could be smartphones or feature-phones also. So many feature-phones are available in the market now. These phones do not cost much. Hardware, therefore, is not going to be anymore a deterrent for access to Internet. I have seen the elderly also getting accustomed to using computers so they can keep in touch with their children who live abroad.

What about social media and its power in India?

It is very powerful. At least it is believed to be powerful because right from political parties and politicians to small vendors, all are trying to leverage it. During the last five years, there has been a tectonic shift in this regard. It will be very interesting to see how the story unfolds in India.

What is unique about India?

Social media is set to become bigger and bigger in India with companies like Google and Facebook gearing up to tap the regional languages market.

Is English increasingly becoming strong and all pervasive in India?

I would believe it and get worried on that score. But the Internet is bringing in a lot of changes. Font problem has been solved too. The ramification of what takes place when this new regional language enabled market comes on board in social media platforms is still not very clear. But it is certainly going to be huge.

Whatever is happening in India now must be an old story in developed countries?

In the US and Europe, Internet penetration took place in the PC age. But we have bypassed the PC. Internet access in India through phone is growing rapidly. India is taking a completely new path for this.

Some social media websites are also trying to get into the news domain. Have you come across instances where news has been first broken in the social media?

There are many such instances. One of the Wikipedians, Kartik Naga, took some pictures of the Mumbai terror attack and posted on commons. These were available to the world much before the traditional journalists could capture images of the incident. Real-time information about tsunami also came from people.

In the West, some print publications — newspapers and magazines — have closed down because people have apparently switched over to the Internet.

The real issue here is whether traditional media wants to stick to a particular technology or it is ready to embrace a new technology for the production and dissemination of news, which is its core activity. If traditional media is averse to embracing the new technology, there will be all kinds of problems like the paper will shut down or some completely new random players will come and corner an old veteran and so on. But if the new technology is embraced, there will be new ways and means of benefiting from it. It depends on how a traditional media entity is looking at Internet and social media. In the last two or three years, we have also seen so many news stories that got made by social media. There is a buzz about social media, and traditional media picks it up and makes it even a bigger story. I do not agree with this drawing of lines between social and traditional media. I think it is a mixed media.

You mean to say there is no threat to traditional media from social media in the long run?

There is no threat. At the end of the day, production of news is not the business of people active on social media portals. Traditional media could actually thrive by the clever use of Internet and social media.

What about news that breaks in social media and is imaginary or based on rumours. What happens then?

These things do happen. People are working on finding out ways to verify news contents on social media. There are already people whose mission in life is to prevent rumour mongering on the Internet.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-tribune-january-12-2014-shubhadeep-chaudhary-with-internet-in-every-pocket-power-to-the-people

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

praskrishna — 2014-08-22T00:51:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai is organizing a two-day workshop for students at Jadavpur University on August 25 and 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

subha — 2016-05-28T06:52:53Z

On 15 January, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia celebrated its 15th birthday, meeting this milestone with 36 million articles in more than 290 languages (the English-language Wikipedia alone has crossed the 5-million article mark). But here I want to address some major questions that we need to ask as Indians.

This was published by Huffington Post on January 25, 2016. Also mirrored on Global Voices on February 26, 2016. The post was translated into Greek by Maria Souli. It was translated into Spanish by Daniela Diaz and into Russian by GV Russian

First, what is the state of Indian-language Wikipedia projects? What does India have to take from and give to Wikipedia?

With the growth of free and open source software in India, people are equipped with more freedom than ever. Especially with the recent federal policy-level changes, the nation is enjoying better collaboration with people of different cultures speaking different languages.

According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage.

However, there is a huge gap in the access to knowledge on the internet domain. Of a population of about 1.26 billion only about 15-18% people are connected online, largely from mobile devices. A tiny fraction of this population comprises the technical community. It would be useful to have a metric on the percentage of this community's contribution to grow the languages of this country and its cultural heritage.

Wikipedia as a family

Wikipedia is not just an encyclopaedia. It is also a "family" of several other Open Knowledge members. Wikipedia itself is available in over 290 languages, but it also has other multilingual sister projects such as Wikisource (an online library of many public domain and other important texts), Wikimedia Commons (the world's largest repository of media files and documents), Wikibooks (a free library of educational textbooks), Wikivoyage (a free and open travel guide) and Wiktionary (a database of various languages).

These projects don't just house millions of images, videos, documents and texts, but allow anyone to contribute their knowledge to this ever deepening pool of information. Four Indian languages made an early entry to the Wiki-world back in 2002 -- Assamese, Malayalam, Odia and Punjabi.

Language neutrality

According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage. It's quite shocking. In a blog post on content localisation, social entrepreneur Rajesh Ranjan asks if free and open source software can help save these dying languages. In the context of Wikipedia, there are already 23 South Asian-language projects. Out of these 20 are languages listed in the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India. Many might not have noticed that the "en" in the URL of Wikipedia that denotes the language code of English could be altered with "or" for Odia Wikipedia or "pa" for Punjabi Wikipedia.

Most Wikipedia projects in Indian language projects are relatively small compared to their counterparts. But the Wikimedia communities are thriving.

There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out there to access knowledge in their own languages.

When only parts of government websites are available in Hindi, the Hindi Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already. The Tamil and Malayalam Wikipedia communities have played a central part in implementing Wikipedia basics learning in the state-run school syllabus. Needless to say that these communities have played a significant role in implementing several free and open source software by pushing for policy-level change. Many Indian languages are in the pipeline to become active Wikipedia projects under the scope of the Wikimedia Incubator.

Maithili Wikipedia and Goan Konkani Wikipedia are the two Indian-language Wikipedias that have gone live in recent years. The world has seen how digital activism has brought a new life to the Hebrew language. There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out there to access knowledge in their own languages. Wikipedia could be a great tool for digital activism with openness and sharing.

Addressing gender bias in Wikipedia: Implications for India

India tops South Asia in the gender inequality index in the entire South Asia. The female literacy rate is an alarmingly low 65.46% as compared to 82.14% for men. This disparity is evident in many other sectors as well as in politics.

Digital India aims at digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages. This is closely aligned with the Wikimedia movement's goal....

But gender bias is not just a problem in India. The global free and open source software (FOSS) community has always been worried about the low presence of women contributors -- in the range of 2-5% range. Wikimedia Foundation's former executive director admitted that Wikipedia, like many other collaborative and open projects, does not have a conducive environment for women. But the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation are both working on improving this state of affairs. Indian-language Wikipedia projects are directly impacted by this global drive, be it the Women's History Month edit-a-thon where Wikipedia content largely related to women are improved every year or the Lilavati's Daughters project where biographies of Indian women scientists were created and enriched in Wikipedia projects.

Complementing Digital India

With a population of over 354 million netizens India still has a long way to go in increasing Indian language content on the web. The Government of India's new campaign Digital India aims at digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages. This is closely aligned with the Wikimedia movement's goal to provide free access to the sum of all human knowledge. In addition to Wikipedia, many other open educational resources and free knowledge projects that are not already a part of the Digital India campaign signal the need for the federal-run campaign to be more collaborative and open. Community-government collaborations like the NROER project to make NCERT books under Creative Commons licenses and IT@School project in the state of Kerala to provide education using free and open tools have gained massive traction and helped more Indian language content come online.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-subhashish-panigrahi-january-25-2016-why-its-essential-to-grow-indian-language-wikipedias

Wikipedia initiative - Celebrating legacy of Bangalore Blue grapes online

praskrishna — 2016-01-29T15:44:36Z

Black is beautiful, and it can go places if it is well researched. When HL Omshivaprakash wrote a Wikipedia article about Karnataka's bidriware, the metal handicraft where gleaming black bowls and hookahs are dotted with delicate silver strips, he didn't expect it to be picked up by the French and Swedes.

Read the article published in the Times of India here. Subhashish Panigrahi gave inputs.

His article has now been translated into their languages. Though it might not lead to more money for the struggling artists of Bidar, they might get an edge while marketing their wares, says Omshivaprakash. This is the advantage that a week-long editathon hopes to achieve. Editors of the online encyclopaedia are celebrating Republic Day by encouraging people to upgrade and contribute articles on those arts, crafts and goods unique to various parts of India. "People are already working on 15 products from Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal," says Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian and language activist.

India has 213 goods and crafts with geographical indication (GIs) tags. The GI mark is a kind of trademark, which indicates that a product's reputation is linked to its origins in a particular area. Of 213 GI tags, only 70 have English entries. So while intricacies of Muga silk-making in Assam and cultivating Bangalore Blue grapes are explained in detail in English, Alleppey coir has only a sketchy Malayalam entry.

"People should know the history of each item. For example, they should know how Kondapalli toys from near Vijayawada are made,"says Nageswara Rao Gullapalli.

Omshivaprakash, who created a signboard outside Bidar Fort last year, with a QR code that allows users to read the relevant wiki entry on their mobile phones, says a change in design can make a difference."The QR code was etched in bidri to create a socio-economic link between readers and artisans. Though the art is expensive, the artists are not paid well,"he says.

It is this desire to unearth new facts that will see Santosh Shinga, an IIT-B researcher, delving deep into Nagpur oranges, Nashik grapes and Mahabaleshwar strawberries. "I am from Nagpur and interested in fruits,"says Shinga, who knows a bit of orange farming.The only exception in his list is Puneri pagadi, the elaborate headgear recently spotted on actor Ranveer Singh in Bollywood movie 'Bajirao Mastani'.

Panigrahi hopes to finish the edits in English by January 30, right in time when the event wraps up by January 31. Karnataka, which tops the list with 30 GI goods, has only a handful of articles and images, says Panigrahi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-january-27-2016-wikipedia-initiative

Read Bengali, Malayalam classics online as free Wiki libraries grow

praskrishna — 2016-01-29T15:51:09Z

Content Includes Classics In Malayalam, Bengali.

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Times of India on January 10, 2016.

It was a hunt that took Shiju Alex to many places. Finally, his quest ended at Dharmaram College library in Bengaluru as Alex got hold of a copy of the firstever printed book in Malayalam. He scanned it promptly and volunteers uploaded the text on to Malayalam Wikisource, one of the free online libraries run by Wikipedia. Nasim Ali returned to Wikipedia editing only because fellow Odias were reaching out on social media to help upload the 13-volume Bhagavata Mahapuranam.Now, the entire work is available for free at Odia Wikisource.

Actions speak louder than words when it comes to preserving books in regional languages. Indian versions of Wikisource have more than 1 lakh pages of classic epics, philosophical tracts, and novels and poems in 10 languages. And the num bers are growing. “These are the books that we grow up with and connect emo tionally. Most of us would like to see them online,“ said Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian and programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society .

As Wikipedians come together in Bengaluru on Sunday to celebrate 15 years of editing and curating the encyclopedia in India, more such stories will be told. The growth has been tremendous in Indian language content creation, especially when it comes to setting up Wikisources, said A Ravishankar, programme director at the Wikimedia India chapter. Malayalam has 26,332 pages, including around 200 of the seminal books in the language. While Telugu has 29,039 pages, Bengali has around 11,000. Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati and Assamese libraries are also getting bigger. The content ranges from religious texts such as Ramayan and Bible to first-ever printed literary works.

“Most of these are books in the public domain or the ones relicensed with Creative Commons licences. This allows anyone to edit or make a copy of the work, making it reusable,“ said Panigrahi. Some of the relicensed works include the Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by University of Mysore.

It isn't easy to get works online. Alex finds it difficult to procure the original texts to create their PDF versions. “Every time I go to Kerala, I look for old books,“ said Alex, who uploads the PDFs on a public domain for others to upload them. Editors are also not easy to come by . Panigrahi took to social media to find a new set of editors when he was trying to upload the Bhagavatha volumes. “Wiki's volunteer-editors have their hands full. So we appealed on social media and many people signed up,“ he said.

But the effort is worth it, said Alex. Every time he unearths an old book and posts the link on his Facebook page, the reactions are full of surprise. “Many from the younger generation don't know that Samkshepa Vedartham (the first printed work in Malayalam) was printed in Rome. Also, researchers write to me saying they are happy to see the old books online,“ he said.

Students Pitch In

The Wikimedia Foundation has tied up with various colleges to help with typing and proof-reading. Around 120 students of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar typed stanzas from the Bhagavata while Christ University students from Bengaluru uploaded chunks of the Kannada Vishwakosha as part of their curriculum.

Tech Hurdle

Though the project started in 2006 with Malayalam Wikisource, it spread to other Indian languages around five years ago. The biggest hurdle remains technology as the open source optical character recognition (OCR) software isn't compatible with many Indian languages. “Google's OCR that was launched last year is much better as it works with most Indian languages,“ said Ravishankar. The new software “extracts text from images of any printed text -and sometimes even handwriting, which opens the door to old texts, manuscripts, and more,“ reads Panigrahi's blog post.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-times-of-india-january-10-2016-sandhya-soman-read-bengali-malayalam-classics-online-as-free-wiki-libraries-grow

Centre for Internet and Society

Christ (DU) students enrolls for 3rd Wikipedia certificate course

Aditya 365

CIS Signs MoU with Odia Virtual Academy

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Udupi

Indian Language Wikipedia Statistics (September 2012 – April 2013)

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Wikipedia Live Phone-in Programme on HMTV

Videos

Part 1

Part 2

FDC recognition for the Centre for the Internet and Society

Odia Wikipedia 10th anniversary at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal

‘With Internet in every pocket, power to the people’

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

Wikipedia as a family

Language neutrality

Addressing gender bias in Wikipedia: Implications for India

Complementing Digital India

Wikipedia initiative - Celebrating legacy of Bangalore Blue grapes online

Read Bengali, Malayalam classics online as free Wiki libraries grow

Students Pitch In

Tech Hurdle