Centre for Internet and Society

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

bhuvana — 2020-01-18T08:11:03Z

An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.

Hour of code event

The “Hour of Code” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of Grace Hopper, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 350 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were Wikimedia, Mozilla, Google Developers Groups, Facebook Devcircles, Women Tech Makers and School of AI where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.

Wiki Orientation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg

I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikipedia, Wikimedia commons and Wikimedia in Education program. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.

Bridging Gender Gap

After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg

The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.

Key observations/ learnings

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg

The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).
The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.
Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.
Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia.

Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai , The Covai mail news , Prime Time Tamil , Covai news and Updatenews360.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science-1

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

bhuvana — 2019-12-23T08:18:11Z

Hour of code event

The “Hour of Code” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of Grace Hopper, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 400-500 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were Wikimedia, Mozilla, Google Developers Groups, Facebook Devcircles, Women Tech Makers and School of AI where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.

Wiki Orientation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg

Bridging Gender Gap

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg

Key observations/ learnings

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg

The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).
The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.
Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.
Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia.

Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai , The Covai mail news , Prime Time Tamil , Covai news and Updatenews360.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

bhuvana — 2019-10-03T11:56:37Z

There is a need for research on how Open Source communities are trying to balance the gender ratio and how they provide the safe space environment to its contributors. With this in mind I have come up with this blog as I am an active contributor of Mozilla since 5 years and also got myself recently introduced to Wikimedia and its sister projects, have interacted with few Indian women contributors in both of these communities and came out with a few observations on how I see them in India and what could be improved in both communities.

Opening note

Wikipedia community

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of articles where many users can edit it freely and it has become so large that you run across it all the time in Google. It is so popular that it is now one of the Top 5 websites in the world! The reason behind the growth is because the articles are simple and useful.

Wikipedians are the contributors who do a communal work to improve the content by editing bits of text and cluster them to the large database. Beyond this there are other sister projects of Wikimedia which interest the audience on whichever they are expertise about. The main motivation for these contributors is their freedom to contribute in their own native language which they are more passionate about. This is a great social cause they are contributing towards.

Mozilla community

Mozilla makes browsers, apps, code and tools that put people before profit. In fact, there’s a non-profit Foundation at the heart of the enterprise.Their mission is to keep the internet open and accessible to all. Hope everyone uses or had at least at some point seen Firefox browser/logo, so this is the prime product of Mozilla. There are various projects to support the Firefox browser and they are mostly Open Source.

Mozillians are the volunteers who contribute in the improvement of these projects thus helping the world to access the internet and the Open web.Mozilla Volunteers are passionate to learn,collaborate and knowledge share among a large world-wide community and the crew is a mix of coder, non-coders, policy makers and anyone who supports Open Web. The point that drives everyone to contribute is that the community creates a vibe to contribute and to create a safe and better experience in accessing the digital world.

WikiProject Women

This a group of editors who aim to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women's topics. It brings Wikipedia users of all genders, sexual orientations, geographic locations, and personal backgrounds together to discuss and collaborate on coverage of women's content across Wikipedia.There are various streams in which women can be part of the larger mission for instance:

Art and Feminism

Women in Red

Wiki loves women

Womoz

Women & Mozilla ("WoMoz") a community composed of members from different Open Source projects.It is mainly dedicated to improving women's visibility and involvement in Free/Open Source and Mozilla, and to increase the number of women contributors. Anyone can participate in this project, regardless of sex, age, job, etc. We are united by the common goal of promoting women's visibility and involvement in open source communities. They also believe that the Internet, FLOSS projects and computing must remain open and participatory. This also means accessible in the same way to all - women and men alike.

It also believe solutions should continuously be proposed in order to improve the visibility of all minorities, who for various reasons might not have equal access to computers or the Internet. This project is an example of this, as it aims at ameliorating women's presence and participation in Mozilla and open source. But currently this group is not very active, except for a few regional contributors where they find massive necessity to focus on the women participation.

Overview of the strategies used for increasing women participation

Methodologies used

Both the communities are great supporters of the Free Softwares and licenses and so the methods that is used in addressing the gender gap issues is as follows:

Conduct gender neutral events like hack-a-thons/ edit-a-thons where the tutor is a woman or there is a large ratio of under represented community in the event.
Host monthly offline/online meetups.
Work on projects which are gender neutral based.
Following up special protocols like CoCs strictly at these events.
Days like “International Women’s Day” and on similar significant occasions some unique events will be hosted and contributors will be appreciated.

Impact on Indian communities

The WikiProject woman and WoMoz programs play a very important role among the Indian communities. Although I do not see a single or uniform progress there is always a good scale-up among the regional communities. For a country like India where there is still necessity for uplifting the presence and awareness of these type of FOSS programs I feel that most of these programs are extensively hosted in urban or developed phases of the country. Recently, the internet access has spread across but then the basic knowledge of contributing to Open Source is still abandoned. The end result and the what the contributors shall get on contributing to these communities must be emphasised more.

Closing note

My study and analysis on these two communities is drawn from personal interest and engagement with these communities since I have been contributing and interacting with the contributors for the last few years. The objective of this post is basically to bring about an awareness on the accessible resources on bridging the digital divide , and how these resources can be modified and taken further for a country like India. The efforts taken to improve the gender neutrality by the above communities is laudable but more light has to be thrown on improving the measures taken to sustain women contributors

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

http://www.womoz.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/analysis-on-the-strategies-of-mozilla-and-wiki-communities-on-gender-gap-aspects-1

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

bhuvana — 2019-08-28T13:27:08Z

Opening note

Wikipedia community

Mozilla community

WikiProject Women

Art and Feminism

Women in Red

Wiki loves women

Womoz

Overview of the strategies used for increasing women participation

Methodologies used

Both the communities are great supporters of the Free Softwares and licenses and so the methods that is used in addressing the gender gap issues is as follows:

Conduct gender neutral events like hack-a-thons/ edit-a-thons where the tutor is a woman or there is a large ratio of under represented community in the event.
Host monthly offline/online meetups.
Work on projects which are gender neutral based.
Following up special protocols like CoCs strictly at these events.
Days like “International Women’s Day” and on similar significant occasions some unique events will be hosted and contributors will be appreciated.

Impact on Indian communities

Closing note

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

http://www.womoz.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/analysis-on-the-strategies-of-mozilla-and-wiki-communities-on-gender-gap-aspects

Freeknowledgde

bhuvana — 2019-08-20T07:10:40Z

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

CIS-A2K logo

bhuvana — 2019-08-19T13:00:40Z

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

Call for joining the Free Knowledge movement #Wikipedia #Wikimedia

bhuvana — 2019-08-20T07:15:30Z

Every little drop makes a Mighty ocean! Join us in this Free Knowledge movement where your contributions will be used world-wide.

Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet and Society is the partner of the Wikimedia Foundations and the Wikimedia movement. Our work is to support Wikipedia/ Wikimedia projects in India. We conduct and support a series of skill building initiative such as workshops, meetups, photo walks, contest, edit-a-thon etc. We also attend to build sustainable partnerships with institutions, organizations, groups and communities which support the Wikimedia communities to build and improve the content in Wikipedia and other projects.

Are you an individual or do you represent any organisation, institution, groups or enterprises? You can actually help the ‘Free Knowledge’ movement by donating photos, media, content or archives. Let us tell you how.

Wikipedia is a widely read website in the current world. According to Alexa’s rating, Wikipedia is the 5th most highly rated in the world. Also certainly we can say that after searching your query on Google (or any other search engine you use) you should have found Wikipedia as a preferable suggestion or result. We find it astonishing that all content of Wikipedia and its sister projects are created, modified and maintained by volunteers, here we need your support. There are many articles on Wikipedia which are being read by thousands of people but do not have relevant images. The problem is simple there is not any free image available. On Wikimedia/Wikipedia we take copyright very seriously and cannot use any content unless it is on public domain/ under free license/ copyright owner donates it under free license.

For example, there is an article on 2019 Kerala floods which is read by 2000 unique readers at this moment but we do not have sufficient photo coverage. Similarly, we have an article on a famous writer say, Ruskin Bond here also we do not have many photos on him or his works.

Wikimedia community is an independent community. Community decides by itself the content, its style including the media files to be included after detailed instructions. Although we cannot instruct the community we can provide resources which will definitely be of help for the free knowledge movement.

This article is an open call to “YOU” to support the free knowledge movement and Wikimedia movement by donating useful content. The content might be video, useful photos, database and audio. The content you are donating must be under Creative Commons Share-like content. You must have the copyright of the content under CC licenses,a CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon the work that they (the author) have created. Attributions will be given under every file details.

Think of a world where your content can also be part of the larger free knowledge movement?

This is the overall idea in a nutshell. We are eager to discuss every aspect of the process and your questions in detail. Please feel free to contact Tito Dutta(tito@cis-india.org). Let's schedule a call or meet in person.

[Currently the A2K is conducting a content donation drive and awareness campaign. This blog post was written as a part of this initiative ]

Centre for Internet and Society

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

Freeknowledgde

CIS-A2K logo

Call for joining the Free Knowledge movement #Wikipedia #Wikimedia

See also