The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 111 to 125.
Digital Humanities in India?
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india
<b>An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken during the last year. Provocatively called 'mapping digital humanities in India', this enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. Instead of importing this term to describe practices taking place in this country - especially when the term itself is relatively unstable and undefined even in the Anglo-American context - what I chose to do was to take a few steps back, and outline a few questions/conflicts that the digital practitioners in arts and humanities disciplines are grappling with. The final report of this study will be published serially. This is the first among seven sections.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Sections</h2>
<p>01. <strong>Digital Humanities in India?</strong></p>
<p>02. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/a-question-of-digital-humanities">A Question of Digital Humanities</a></p>
<p>03. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text">Reading from a Distance – Data as Text</a></p>
<p>04. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities</a></p>
<p>05. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">Living in the Archival Moment</a></p>
<p>06. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/new-modes-and-sites-of-humanities-practice">New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice</a></p>
<p>07. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts">Digital Humanities in India – Concluding Thoughts</a></p>
<hr />
<h2>Background</h2>
<p>It has only been a couple of years since I began hearing the term Digital Humanities (henceforth, DH) being uttered quite prominently, though mostly in academic circles. For the uninitiated, it almost sounds like an oxymoron. After all, for most practical purposes the digital and humanities have always been seen almost as contradictory terms, existing in distinct silos. A couple of workshops and conferences, one national-level consultation, three new centres, and two academic courses later the term still needs a definition in India, if not also in other parts of the world. But what was by then, and even now, is interesting is the emergence of pockets of work in India either claiming to be DH or even remotely related to it, and the interest in the term, either as one full of a seemingly diverse, innovative, and generative potential for interdisciplinary work in academia and practice, or as something that is just a reinvention of old questions that have been the focus of humanistic enquiry for several decades now.</p>
<p>The enquiry for this mapping began with the term itself, as a 'found' name for which I needed to excavate some meaning, context and location in India at the present moment. A consultation on Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education organised in Bangalore in July 2013 <strong>[1]</strong> and a proposed short course in ‘Digital Humanities and Cultural Informatics’ <strong>[2]</strong> at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, were some of the early prominent instances of the use of the term. I later learnt from one of the people interviewed for this study that DH was already discussed in academic workshops as early as 2010 <strong>[3]</strong>. The general interest in the term has steadily picked up in the last couple of years however, albeit in specific pockets of the country, and it would be safe to say that it has been approached in markedly different ways by several institutions.</p>
<p>The source of the term itself is the history and body of literature around humanities computing in the UK and US, which essentially explores the use of computational methods in humanities research and practice. Roberto A. Busa (2010) describes it as “… precisely the automation of every possible analysis of human expression (therefore, it is exquisitely a "humanistic" activity), in the widest sense of the word, from music to the theater, from design and painting to phonetics, but whose nucleus remains the discourse of written texts”. However, locating such a history in India seems not only to be a difficult project, but largely a futile one. It seemed irrelevant to import a concept or discourse that in itself was (and still is to some extent) relatively unstable and undefined even in the Anglo-American context, and then try to locate it here. Instead, what I chose to do was to take a few steps back - firstly to outline a couple of questions/conflicts that seemed to be troubling about this concept to begin with:</p>
<ol>
<li>Are ‘digital’ and ‘humanities’ really two contradictory terms that are being bridged together? Is this a reiteration of the ‘two cultures’ (Snow 1990) debate?<br /><br /></li>
<li>What are the changes in the object(s) of enquiry in humanities disciplines due to the advent of the internet and digital technologies?<br /><br /></li>
<li>What methods are to be used to study and work with digital objects? How are these affecting the traditional methods of the humanities?<br /><br /></li>
<li>Is DH a fringe academic phenomena, and can it be related to academic disciplines only? With several groups of practitioners engaging with questions and methods akin to DH outside universities, how do we define its institutional boundaries?<br /><br /></li>
<li>What are the new skills and tools emerging with, and in turn defining, DH practices in India?</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<h2>Context</h2>
<p>An immediate context for the growth of DH has been the steady debate around a ‘crisis’ of the disciplines, the humanities in particular, and how DH in a strange paradox, seemed to be both the phenomenon posing this question and offering an answer to it. Particularly in the Anglo-American context, while there has been a sustained decline in funding for the arts, especially post the global recession in the late 1990s, the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and other disciplines in natural sciences still seem to be on a steady footing. The ‘crisis’ here exists here at several levels - budgetary cuts across universities for liberal arts and humanities programmes, a steep fall in gainful employment for graduates (whose numbers are much more than the jobs available in the market, the adjunct system that has become popular in the US, which has resulted in reduced full-time employment and poor compensation for faculty, and in general a lack of opportunities and resources for research in the arts and humanities. The problem however, of which these are only the symptoms, lies much deeper, at the heart of what is seen as the lack of interest due to the diminishing practical value of the humanities, which further makes them seem most dispensable in a moment of economic crisis. Martha Nussbaum calls this a ‘silent crisis’, spurred by the growth of a profit-driven model of education, which has led to an increased focus on science and technology programmes, and emphasized the fostering of certain specific skills in these domains much to the detriment of arts and humanities programmes at every level of formal education, thus also doing away with “cultivated capacities of critical thinking and reflection, which are crucial in keeping democracies alive and wide awake.”</p>
<p>Gary Gutting on the other hand sees this definition of crisis in terms of numbers itself as misleading, but proposes that this decline also as a result of a cultural and economic system that is inhospitable to the humanities in general, and the ‘cultural middle class’ in particular. He writes:</p>
<blockquote>Our economic system works well for those who find meaning in economic competition and the material rewards it brings. To a lesser but still significant extent, our system provides meaningful work in service professions (like health and social work) for those fulfilled by helping people in great need. But for those with humanistic and artistic life interests, our economic system has almost nothing to offer. Or rather, it has a great deal to offer but only for a privileged elite (the cultural parallel to our economic upper class) who have had the ability and luck to reach the highest levels of humanistic achievement. If you have (in Pierre Bourdieu’s useful term) the “cultural capital” to gain a tenured professorship at a university, play regularly in a major symphony orchestra or write mega bestsellers, you can earn an excellent living doing what you love. Short of that, you must pursue your passion on the side. (Gutting 2013)</blockquote>
<p>Paul Jay and Gerald Graff locate the problem within the notion of the humanities as being inherently averse to a market-driven, utilitarian form of education, which emphasises only credentials, thus rendering the field esoteric and lacking when it comes to solving problems in the ‘real world’. Instead they favour the approach of humanities students developing diverse skill sets, in addition to traditional skills of their disciplines, and being open to engage with opportunities in the larger marketplace outside of academy as well. As the essay states:</p>
<blockquote>We believe it is time to stop the ritualized lamentation over the crisis in the humanities and get on with the task of making them relevant in the 21st century. Such lamentation only reveals the inability of many humanists to break free of a 19th-century vision of education that sees the humanities as an escape from the world of business and science. As Cathy Davidson has forcefully argued in her new book, Now You See It, this outmoded way of thinking about the humanities as a realm of high-minded cultivation and pleasure in which students contemplate the meaning of life is a relic of the industrial revolution with its crude dualism of lofty spiritual art vs. mechanized smoking factories, a way of thinking that will serve students poorly in meeting the challenges of the 21st century. (Jay and Duff 2002)</blockquote>
<p>While many of the traditional humanities scholars may still look at this as the result of a certain techno capitalistic impulse - wherein a new research regime based on knowledge creation to fulfil corporate interests emerges – it is prudent to examine how and why fields like the digital humanities have now emerged around the time of such a crisis, as they seemingly fit well within this nebulous space, and what are their implications for the humanities, education and research at large.</p>
<p>In the India, the context is a rather chequered one – with most conversations around the internet and digital technologies located within the domain of the development of Information and Communication technologies for Development (ICT4D), in sectors ranging from education to governance. The introduction to the digital has been in multifarious ways for countries in the global south, largely through rhetoric about its potential to address and even resolve social and economic problems, so much so that, as several of the people interviewed in this study also mentioned, now anything digital automatically translates to ‘good’ and ‘beneficial’. Addressing the digital divide has been a mandate of all stakeholders, whether the state and policy-makers, private organisations, NGOs or academia. With around 300 million internet users and counting, India has the second largest internet user base in the world. However, the conditions and quality of access to the internet and other digital technologies, and who is using these and for what purposes continue to remain a bone of contention. The ambitious Digital India initiative of the current government is the latest in a slew of measures undertaken to address some of these concerns in the last several years, and it proposes to do so by tackling three key areas – digital infrastructure, governance and services on demand, and empowerment of citizens through increased digital literacy <strong>[4]</strong>. As such it seeks to resolve some of the challenges of last mile connectivity that have forever been an issue with many ICT4D initiatives, particularly with countries in the Global South. The advent of a techno-democracy or a model of governance that successfully integrates technology within a framework of rights and social development seems to be larger vision of these proposed initiatives.</p>
<p>The ICT-fication of education has been a major objective and challenge within this larger vision, specifically with respect to the problem of access, and more importantly quality of access which stands out as pertinent, again a problem attributed to the lack of last mile connectivity. In 2009, the MHRD launched the ambitious National Mission in Education and Information and Communication Technologies (NMEICT) programme <strong>[5]</strong>, which along with the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill <strong>[6]</strong> and the recommendations of the Yashpal Committee report <strong>[7]</strong>, was expected to address some long-standing concerns in making higher education more accessible and hospitable to students, particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds. Ashish Rajadhyaksha (2011) argues that the last-mile problem is a more of a conceptual or cultural problem than merely a technological one. This is illustrated in the manner of implementation of several projects under the NMEICT, particularly in the imagination, as Rajadhyaksha says, of technology as neutral and therefore capable of addressing issues of democratisation within higher education.</p>
<p>Following the NMEICT, several initiatives such as the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) <strong>[8]</strong> programme, and the use of low-cost devices such as the Aakash tablets <strong>[9]</strong> were also field tested to get a better understanding of how digital technologies could be integrated seamlessly into classroom instruction. The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) <strong>[10]</strong> and Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) <strong>[11]</strong>, and more recently the National Knowledge Network (NKN) <strong>[12]</strong> are some of the more established efforts in distance education and open courseware. Digitisation initiatives were also launched on a large scale in the last decade, some notable ones being National Mission for Manuscripts <strong>[13]</strong>, Digital Library of India <strong>[14]</strong>, and National Library of India <strong>[15]</strong>, among many others. There is also a growing number of closed/commercial archives, some examples being the South Asia Archive <strong>[16]</strong> and Asia Art Archive <strong>[17]</strong>. Digitisation, while being taken up in the interest of preservation and record, also brought with it a number of challenges, particularly with respect to the manner in which the projects were implemented. Whether with regard to preservation of the original material, problems with copyright or defining metadata standards, digitisation has never been an easy process. The Google Books library project is an example of this, where many books were damaged and had to be discarded in the process of digitisation, and the project itself came under criticism for several copyright violations, errors produced due to conversion of scanned texts using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software and incorrect or unavailable metadata.</p>
<p>The move towards digitisation also provided the much needed impetus for archival practice to make a transition to the digital space, this has been an inevitable but rather fraught endeavour to begin with, as some of the observations made in the later chapters will illustrate. The emergence of independent, private online archives, often seen as a fallout of the hegemony of state-funded archives is an important development of this time. An influx of funding from government and private donors, has led to a lot of work in media and communication technologies getting concentrated in so-called ‘alternative’ spaces outside the university. The growth of these in between spaces has been an interesting phenomenon, particularly with respect to the possibilities offered for different kinds of research and other creative practices that are often unable to find a space within the confines of a university or other large, established knowledge institutions.</p>
<p>In the last decade or so, DH seems to have become one of the most highly funded areas in humanities research and practice. While this has seemingly helped to either save and/or reinvent some the humanities programmes, a lot of traditional humanists also view the field and the term with scepticism – as a threat to more traditional forms of humanities pedagogy and practice. Whether such a context exists in India and is still a matter of question, and hinges largely on how we understand the digital itself - as an object, concept or space. For that seems to be where the questions about the field, its emergence and its epistemological concerns lie.</p>
<p>This report, therefore, takes a slightly broader look, somewhat like a scoping exercise to see what some present concerns are and what could be the possibilities of DH in India. The areas of focus are few – the notion of crisis, and disciplines, the archive and so forth which form the crux of the debate in India. It also looks at changes that have come about, and are imminent with the ‘digital turn’, from the perspective of selected disciplines, and practices of knowledge-making. More importantly, it tries to extrapolate, from the common issues and conflicts traced across several conversations, larger questions of a conflict of authority that disciplines in the humanities have come to undergo, and whether the digital has amplified of tried to resolve the same. The conflict is tied to questions of ownership/authorship and authenticity that emerge with new collaborative modes of knowledge production, and the politics of circulation. It is reflected in the shift from more traditional spaces of knowledge-making to newer methods, objects, figures and processes in the online world, which seem to at one level replace older ones. This perceived threat of irrelevance or obsolescence is one of the manifestations of this conflict of authority. The Wikipedia is one example of this conflict, wherein the authenticity and authority of its content and recognition as scholarship has been intensely debated owing to, among other things, the fact that it cannot be attributed to any single author. In the ways in which the digital now mediates such activities, what has become the space and understanding of the digital in our lives, in the ways we consume and produce information and knowledge, and increasingly become uneven stakeholders in a dynamic knowledge economy, are some of the questions explored therein.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Methodology</h2>
<p>With few 'digital humanists' (a term many DH scholars in India have consciously chosen to stay away from) and DH centres around, and the discourse being far from stable in India, the best way to explore this supposedly new phenomenon then seemed to be to understand some of the immediate problems and questions with the notion of the ‘digital’ itself. This approach was not just the result of constraints of the immediate context, but also turned out to be a productive methodological gesture, as it widened the scope of this mapping exercise to include several proto/perhaps-DH initiatives that have come up around the same time, or been in existence for a while and have been trying to work around similar questions. The mapping did not begin with an assumption of a field called DH as being extant in India, and therefore as an examination of its challenges and possibilities, but rather to understand how DH-like practices have evolved and converged at the moment under what appears to be like a place-holder term, and the implications of this for research and learning. Being located in India, it also provided a good vantage point to reflect on some of the literature and discourse around the term being produced in the Anglo-American context.
The consultation on Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education held in July 2013 was helpful in bringing together a number of people and key questions of what was then understood as something of a field. It is largely from the discussions at this consultation that this report approaches the term and what it may offer for humanities and related interdisciplinary research in India; somewhere it also hopes to serve as a point of departure. A major concern then was the lack of a proper definition of the field, and its instability, which continued to be a recurrent topic in my discussions with people as part of this exercise. However, the merits of embarking upon an exercise to ‘define DH in India’ were highly contentious, so the mapping took a more descriptive route, and did a discursive analysis of work in DH and allied fields and what people were saying about it in India. What I found were a range of views, some informed by practice and scholarship, others based on conjecture and some purely non-committal. As one of the people interviewed for this mapping pointed out, there is something provisional about which, if I may add, also inhibits us from saying anything definitive about it, just yet.</p>
<p>Given that the lack of a definition of the field remained one of the main issues, I went into conducting the mapping with a working definition/assumption that DH ‘is an interdisciplinary area of research, practice and pedagogy that looks at the interaction of digital tools, methods and spaces with core concerns of humanistic enquiry’. This definition was developed based on a review of existing literature in the Anglo-American context on DH, and deliberately made expansive enough to include within its fold, the different kinds of practices that had already chosen to adopt the term, and others which seemed to be inclined towards similar theoretical and practical concerns. Another useful definition, from the Digital Humanities Quarterly useful was the following:</p>
<blockquote>Digital humanities is a diverse and still emerging field that encompasses the practice of humanities research in and through information technology, and the exploration of how the humanities may evolve through their engagement with technology, media, and computational methods. (Digital Humanities Quarterly 2010)</blockquote>
<p>Deliberating on the interaction between humanities and technology, Susan Schreibman, in one the earliest books on DH describes the 'field' as follows:</p>
<blockquote>The digital humanities, then, and their interdisciplinary core found in the field of humanities computing, have a long and dynamic history best illustrated by examination of the locations at which specific disciplinary practices intersect with computation. (Schreibman et al 2004)</blockquote>
<p>One of the popular and most quoted definitions, however, is an early one that appeared in the Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 (Institute for the Future of the Book 2009). This describes DH as <em>an array of convergent practices</em>, and is also reproduced in the book <em>Digital Humanities</em> (Burdick et al 2012):</p>
<blockquote>Digital Humanities refers to new modes of scholarship and institutional units for collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publication. Digital Humanities is less a unified field than an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which print is no longer the primary medium in which knowledge is produced and disseminated. (Ibid., 122)</blockquote>
<p>The notion that DH is a “less a unified field than an array of convergent practices” seems to be the most useful way to describe the observations and more so the conditions that led to this mapping exercise, which also seeks to outline some kind of a trajectory of practices that converge at this contemporary moment to engender new meanings of and around the digital, rather than produce a conceptual history of the term in the Indian context or even imagine an extant field of some sort. This notion of a convergence, as stated in the last definition, although not apparent or expressed by anyone in India, seems to be the best possible way to describe the manner in which certain practices and a discourse has grown around the intersection of humanities and digital technologies in India. This rather organic growth of DH projects, practices and coursework in the absence of a meta-theory that would drive its epistemological concerns is an important conceptual question for the field itself, and a challenge for the study. Thus while the broader conversation around DH spans everything from instructional technology, new media and art practices, integrated science education to cultural analytics, the core concerns often remain the same, that of the intersection of previously separate domains of knowledge that are now coming together, and the crucial role played by the internet and digital technologies in bringing them together.</p>
<p>Further, three immediate experiences in engaging with digital technologies and questions of knowledge production in India shaped the intellectual concerns of this study. The first of these is the series of monographs produced as part of the ‘Histories of Internets in India’ project at the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme in CIS, during 2008-2011. A key point foregrounded in these monographs was the critical need to approach the internet, as a plural technology, available in and actualised through different forms, practices, and experiences. The second one was the collaborative project on the quality of access to higher education in undergraduate educational institutions at the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications programme at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore.The project was conducted in nine undergraduate institutions across three states in India, and included interaction with students and teachers through workshops and campus projects.The experience of working with students – who ranged from those who could barely use a computer to students proficient with the latest software, multimedia tools and internet applications – led to many insightful learnings about the teaching-learning environment, and prevalence of digital technologies and the internet in these spaces. The third one, of course, is the consultation on DH held in Bangalore, which provided an immediate set of questions and a network of people to begin the mapping with.</p>
<p>In this study, the fieldwork consisted of in-depth and semi-structured interviews with key people involved in the DH-like initiatives in India, and allied areas such as media, archives, art, and higher education. The sample size being small, the conversations were by no means exhaustive, but they were insightful in terms of the present nature of practice and the questions that they further pointed towards. The interviews were largely open-ended conversations focussing on, where possible, questions about DH: its emergence, theory, practice and pedagogy, but emphasising the notion of the ‘digital’ and is diverse perception and formulations. With respondents who were not from an academic space or not involved with DH directly, the questions were more related to the nature of changes that the digital has brought about in their practice, specifically the shifts in content and method. The crisis of disciplines and the move away from more traditional concerns of humanistic enquiry were also discussed. Issues of access, exclusivity and the move towards collaborative spaces of knowledge production and the democratic potential of the internet and digital technologies also came up quite prominently as points of discussion.</p>
<p>The fieldwork tried to cover not just a range of people from different disciplines and areas of practice, but also institutions: Prof. Amlan Dasgupta, Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri and Purbasha Auddy, (School of Cultural Texts and Records and Dept. of English), Dr. Moinak Biswas and Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee (Media lab and Dept. of Film Studies); Dr. Abhijit Roy (School of Communication and Culture) at Jadavpur University, Kolkata; Dr. Souvik Mukherjee (Dept. of English) and Dr. Milinda Banerjee (Dept. of History) at Presidency University, Kolkata; Abhijit Bhattacharya (Media Archives) at Centre for the Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata; Dr. Ravi Sundaram (the Sarai Programme) at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi; Dr. Indira Chowdhury and Dr. Padmini Ray-Murray (Centre for Public History) at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore; Dr. C. S Lakshmi at the Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women, Mumbai; Shaina Anand, Namita Malhotra, Lawrence Liang, Jan Gerber, Sebastian Lutgert and Ashish Rajadhyaksha, who have all worked with CAMP, Mumbai and are part of the team behind Indiancine.ma and Pad.ma; Vikram Vincent at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and S.V. Srinivas, Azim Premji University, who was previously associated with the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society. The individuals and institutions mentioned here have been engaged with these concerns within their respective fields of research and practice. Three institutions - Jadavpur University, Presidency University and the Centre for Public History – have actively adopted the term DH for some of the work they have been doing, whereas the remaining have been working with digital technologies as part of research, pedagogy, and practice. The report presents some part of these conversations and in doing so provides a snapshot of the operational context of the term ‘DH’ in India as well. The attempt was to understand the nature of existing and possible institutional investment in the term, as well as digital technologies (beyond tools, platforms and processes) and their stake in taking these questions further.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> This one-day event was organized by the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) programme at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, in collaboration with the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, and other institutions. See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/digital-humanities-for-indian-higher-education" target="_blank">http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/digital-humanities-for-indian-higher-education</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="https://sctrdhci.wordpress.com/">https://sctrdhci.wordpress.com/</a></p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.tezu.ernet.in/notices/ResearchMethodology.pdf">http://www.tezu.ernet.in/notices/ResearchMethodology.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/">http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.nmeict.ac.in/">http://www.nmeict.ac.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> See <a href="http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/Higher%20education/Legislative%20Brief%20-%20Higher%20Education%20and%20Research%20Bill.pdf">http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/Higher%20education/Legislative%20Brief%20-%20Higher%20Education%20and%20Research%20Bill.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> See: <a href="http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/document-reports/YPC-Report.pdf">http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/document-reports/YPC-Report.pdf</a></p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> See: <a href="http://nptel.ac.in/">http://nptel.ac.in/</a></p>
<p><strong>[9]</strong> See: <a href="http://gadgets.ndtv.com/tablets/news/government-for-providing-aakash-tablet-at-rs-1500-329578">http://gadgets.ndtv.com/tablets/news/government-for-providing-aakash-tablet-at-rs-1500-329578</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[10]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.ignou.ac.in/">http://www.ignou.ac.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[11]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/">http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[12]</strong> See: <a href="http://nkn.in/">http://nkn.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[13]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.namami.org/">http://www.namami.org/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[14]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.dli.ernet.in/">http://www.dli.ernet.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[15]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.nationallibrary.gov.in/">http://www.nationallibrary.gov.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[16]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.southasiaarchive.com/">http://www.southasiaarchive.com/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[17]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.aaa.org.hk/">http://www.aaa.org.hk/</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Burdick, Anne, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunefeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp, Digital_Humanities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2012, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digitalhumanities">https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digitalhumanities</a>.</p>
<p>Digital Humanities Quarterly, "About DHQ," 2010, <a href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/about/about.html">http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/about/about.html</a></p>
<p>Gutting, Gary. "The Real Humanities Crisis," The New York Times, November 30, 2013, accessed July 14, 2015. <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/the-real-humanities-crisis/
">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/the-real-humanities-crisis/</a>.</p>
<p>Institute for the Future of the Book, "The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0," 2009, <a href="http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2009/05/29/the-digital-humanities-manifesto-20/">http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2009/05/29/the-digital-humanities-manifesto-20/</a></p>
<p>Jay, Paul, and Gerald Duff, "The Fear of Being Useful," Inside Higher Ed. January 5. 2012. Accessed September 22, 2015. <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/01/05/essay-new-approach-defend-value-humanities">https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/01/05/essay-new-approach-defend-value-humanities</a>.</p>
<p>Schreibman, Susan, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, "The Digital Humanities and Humanities Computing: An Introduction," A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, <a href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/">http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/</a>.</p>
<p>Snow, C.P. "The Two Cultures," Leonardo, Vol. 23, No. 2/3, New Foundations: Classroom Lessons in Art/Science/Technology for the 1990s. 1990. Pp. 169-173.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppDigital KnowledgeMapping Digital Humanities in IndiaResearchFeaturedDigital HumanitiesResearchers at Work2016-06-30T05:05:29ZBlog EntryOpen Government Data Study
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study
<b>CIS produced a report on the state of open government data in India, looking at policy, infrastructure, and particular case studies, as well as emerging concerns, future strategies and recommendations. The report is authored by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, and Nishant Shah. We are grateful to the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for providing generous funding for this report.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>Cross-posted from the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.transparency-initiative.org/reports/open-government-data-study-india">Transparency and Accountability Initiative website</a>.</p>
<h2>Open Government Data Study: India</h2>
<p>India provides one of the most fascinating examples of the use of open government data in a developing country context. It has one of the best right to information laws in the world and the government’s approach to open data builds on this legacy of making open data relevant to Indian citizens. An estimated 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day and a key issue for India, and other developing countries, is how open data can be accessible to them.</p>
<p>This paper reviews the progress being made towards open government data in India. Using case studies, it examines some of the pressing challenges facing the adoption of OGD in India. These include infrastructural problems, privacy concerns and the power imbalances that improved transparency can unwittingly create. It also examines government attitudes towards open data and related policies and reviews the relationships between open government data, the media and civil society.</p>
<p>The authors argue that the Indian Government’s responsibility should not stop short at just providing information, but also extend to making it available and accessible in a way that facilitates analysis and enhances offline usability – and ultimately makes it accessible to the poorest.</p>
<p>The paper concludes by suggesting technical and policy strategies to develop, promote, implement and maintain a robust open government data policy in India.</p>
<p>Download the <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-government.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Open Government Data">report</a> [PDF, 1.03 MB]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen DataFeaturedPublicationsOpenness2015-09-03T08:08:22ZBlog EntryCall for Comments for Report on the Online Video Environment in India
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-online-video-report
<b>The Open Video Alliance, the Centre for Internet and Society and iCommons are pleased to announce a public call for comments on version 1 of "Online Video Environment in India: A Survey Report".</b>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/online-video-india-survey-v1" class="internal-link" title="The Online Video Environment in India: A Survey Report">This report</a> is an outcome of <a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/open-video-research" class="external-link">a research</a> <a class="external-link" href="http://openvideoalliance.org/2010/04/research-with-centre-for-internet-society-bangalore/?l=en">project</a> that seeks to survey the online video environment in India and the opportunities this new medium presents for creative expression and civic engagement. This report by Siddharth Chadha, Ben Moskowitz, and Pranesh Prakash seeks to define key issues in the Indian context and begins to develop a short-term policy framework to address them.</p>
<p>The basic assumption of this paper is that the online video medium should support creative and technical innovation, competition, and public participation, and that open source technology can help develop these traits. These assumptions are not elaborated upon here. Instead, this report looks at questions of “openness” that are not strictly technological and legal; that are specific to video in India; and that provide points of entry to a simple policy framework.</p>
<p>Please do write in to Ben Moskowitz (ben at openvideoalliance.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh at cis-india.org) with any suggestions, criticisms, or general comments that you have by January 20, 2011.</p>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/online-video-india-survey-v1" class="internal-link" title="The Online Video Environment in India: A Survey Report">Download the paper</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-online-video-report'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-online-video-report</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpennessFeaturedOpen Video2012-12-14T12:12:14ZBlog EntryCall for Comments for Report on Open Government Data in India
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-report
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society is pleased to announce a public call for comments on the Report on Open Government Data in India prepared by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This report situates the current move towards open government data in India in the context of the country’s growingly sophisticated information and communications technology (ICT) practices as well as the Right to Information Act. It relies primarily on conversations—both on the record and off—with government officials, businesses, civil society organizations, and individual activists. For background it relies on a review of the literature relevant to OGD and RTI generally, to present a snapshot of where India stands now in respect to OGD, and to predict where it is likely to go in the near future. It seeks to understand what “open government data” means in an Indian context, and what effects institutionalized open data practices and ideas might have on Indian society. Finally, it suggests certain technical and policy strategies for developing, promoting, and implementing, and maintaining a robust open government data policy in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Please do write in to Pranesh Prakash (pranesh at cis-india.org) with any suggestions, criticisms, or general comments that you have by 30 January 2011.</p>
<p>Download the complete report <a class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/openness/publications/ogd-report" title="Open Government Data Report">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-report'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-report</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen DataFeaturedOpenness2013-03-01T05:50:49ZBlog EntryOpen Government Data in India (v2)
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments
<b>The first draft of the second version of the Open Government Data Report is now online. Nisha Thompson worked on updating the first version of the report. This updated version of the report on open government data in India includes additional case studies as well as a potential policy (National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy) that would create a central government data portal. The report was distributed for peer review and public feedback.</b>
<p>There are additional government case studies regarding e-governance and how they are changing the way data is collected and distributed. The report also looks at the issues around open data at the city and panchayat level and profiles new projects that are working to fill that void. It also includes a deeper account account of the global perspective on open government data and how India's experience with open data will be different from what the west is doing. Please do let us know what you think are deficiencies in the report, corrections that should be made, or even just general comments. Drop in a word even if you just find it useful. Please do write in to pranesh[at]cis-india.org by Friday, September 2, 2011. <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/ogd-draft-v2/" class="external-link">Download the [draft report]</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshCall for CommentsOpen DataFeaturedOpennesse-governance2012-12-14T10:25:25ZBlog EntryKnow your Users, Match their Needs!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users
<b>As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. The following post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society.</b>
<p></p>
<p>Almost ten years have passed since the Montreal Declaration on
Free Access to Law (FAL) was signed by eight legal information institutes and other
FAL initiatives. Today, the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is growing with over 30 initiatives having signed onto the Declaration and providing free, online
access to legal information. While the movement continues to gain momentum, the
big question no longer remains <em>why</em> we need
free access to law, but instead <em>how</em> FAL initiatives can continue to do so sustainably in the long-term. The principles of access
and justice underpinning the FALM have been well-argued and few would dispute the
notion that citizens ought to have access to the laws under which they are
governed. As the Montreal Declaration states: "Public legal information from
all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of
humanity…Maximizing access to his information promotes justice and the rule of
law" (2002).</p>
<p>Regardless of legal system or political context, the
importance of securing free online access to the law has been recognized from a
variety of perspectives. Whether FAL is considered a critical democratic
function or simply an essential efficiency within any legal system, it is
difficult to contest that the internet has increased the accessibility of and
ease with which legal information is being published and shared online. Setting
the ideological and practical foundations of the movement aside, effectively
demonstrating the impact of FAL initiatives and to secure their sustainability in
the long-term remains the next big challenge for the FALM. Today, there is a
growing necessity for grounded and realistic indicators that can validate some
of the long-held assumptions around the impacts and outcomes of FAL initiatives.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, there is also a need for a more
nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the sustainability of FAL
initiatives— particularly in resource-scarce and often nebulous legal systems of
the Global South.</p>
<p>This blog post provides some insight into the questions
above through a brief summary of the results of the study <a class="external-link" href="http://crdi.org/ar/ev-139395-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html">Free Access to Law—Is
it Here to Stay?</a> This global comparative study was carried out by LexUM (Canada)
and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for
Internet and Society. The project set out to begin providing answers to some of
these critical questions around the impacts and sustainability of the FALM. It
was initially hypothesized in the study that the sustainability of a FAL
initiative rests upon a particular string of contingent factors. To begin, a particular
condition would incentivize the creation of the FAL initiative — more often than
not meeting the unmet needs of those requiring access to legal information. Next, if the FAL initiative is able to provide
the service within a favourable context, it was suspected that it would produce
favourable outcomes for both users and society at large. In turn, if the FAL
initiative was able to provide benefits to users, it was theorized that these benefits
would then stimulate reinvestment into the FAL initiative — forming a positive
and sustainable feedback loop. </p>
<p>As the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/Best%20Practices%20Hand%20Book_03sept11.pdf">Good Practices Handbook</a> highlights, the research
hypothesis provided an accurate reading of what the sustainability chain of a
FAL initiative might look like in<em> practice</em>.
If unable to keep up with the evolving information requirements of their users,
this study suggests that FAL initiatives run the risk of FAL becoming outdated
and even outperformed by either government-based or private sector
initiatives. This is why FAL initiatives
must continue to be innovative and find new ways to meet users’ needs. Approaches take my include keeping their
collections up to date, fine-tuning their services or even reinventing
themselves through the provision of value-added services. Gathered from the
experiences of the eleven countries across Africa and Asia examined in this
study, the following is a brief summary of the nine “Good Practices” that emerging
FAL initiatives can consider:</p>
<ol><li><strong>The FAL initiative
should establish clear objectives</strong>: Before doing anything, the FAL initiative
should decide what exactly it’s setting out to do…critical components such as
content selection, targeted audience, expected reach, search functionalities
and other website features help determine priorities and evaluate capacity to
achieve these objectives.</li><li><strong>How to be small and
do big things</strong>: Most of the FAL initiatives studied as part of this project
were formed of small teams (often less than five individuals). Initially, this may
appear to pose a risk for sustainability. However, we saw a number of ways in
which small teams have proven to be innovative, flexible, and able to thrive in
environments of scarcity. However, as much as small teams can be seen as a
source of innovation, they may also pose a risk in the medium to long-term. </li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
require expertise in both IT and legal information</strong>: Legal information management
experts understand how the law is applied, how different texts and parts of
texts speak to one another, and how these documents are used. IT experts can
imagine a variety of ways to address these needs. If both forms of expertise is
not available within the team of a FAL initiative, institutional partnerships
provide promising sites for collaborative support. For example, the FALM
constitutes a rich source of expertise and has proven to be a site of
collaboration between established and emerging FAL initiatives. Further,
universities have proven to be a significant source of human and financial
resources for several FAL initiatives.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should look to where they are headed (but not too far ahead)</strong>: Because the
purpose of a FAL initiative is to provide free online access to the law, it
must secure access to this data for regular publication. How will legal
information be received and organized by the initiative? In what format will it
be published in? Early on, FAL initiatives need to develop both internal and
external workflow processes to ensure that the initiative is able to provide regular
access to updated information. Furthermore, an important finding of the study
suggests that context plays a much larger role in a project’s sustainability. Consideration
should be given to a country’s ICT infrastructure, the transparency of a
government and their access to information regimes, and the nature of the legal
information market when designing the workflows of an FAL initiative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should work with the ICT infrastructure in place</strong>: The quality and
consistency of internet access varies across countries in the Global South. FAL
initiatives should remain aware of how stakeholders and users are accessing the
internet and develop their service accordingly. Considering the often
intermittent nature of internet connectivity in the Global South, providing
users with offline access to databases is a practical alternative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should use Free and Open Source Software</strong>: FAL initiatives should maximise
their use of FLOSS. All FAL initiatives use FLOSS to some extent and without
these flexible and cost-effective alternatives, it would be safe to infer that
the FALM would have grown as quickly as it has.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should be sensitive to culture</strong>: FAL initiatives rely on stakeholders and
communities of users. Staying mindful of the professional and organizational
cultures within a country may provide the initiative with a source of community
support which may become a sustainability strategy. Further, integrated or parallel social
networking platforms can play an essential role in community-building around
the FAL initiatives and can also serve as another source of content in
resource-scarce environments.</li><li><strong>Find your users,
match their needs</strong>: Project goals and appropriate strategies should be based
on an in-depth understanding of the needs of those using the FAL initiative. As
the sustainability chain suggests, when FAL initiatives produce positive
outputs and outcomes, stakeholders will reinvest in the initiative to ensure
its sustainability. If a user’s needs are effectively met by an FAL initiative,
this group can provide either the resources or impetus for its continued
success. Identifying who your users are and staying aware of their needs is a
good way to secure reinvestment into the project.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should diversify funding sources</strong>: This may be easier said than
done — reinvestment can be the most challenging aspect of sustaining a FAL
initiative. Early on, initiatives that receive donor-based funding benefit
substantially upon investment. However, these initiatives are put at
significant risk once initial seed funding has been depleted. Similarly, FAL
initiatives that partnerships with other during their start up phase face
similar fates as securing long-term service delivery can become a challenge.
Possible funding sources included throughout the study include, among others:
government, international development agencies or NGOs, the judiciary, law
societies and the sale of value-added services.</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>In addition to these good practices, this study has emphasized
the role the that the FALM has played in helping redefine online legal information as a public good. Each
of the case studies demonstrates in a unique way the value openness plays in a
legal information ecosystem, and how a robust digital legal information commons can be of
benefit to users. Traditionally, the legal information market has been dominated by a select
number of commercial players. In response, the FALM has created an important
transnational space within which conversations around the provision of and
access to legal information as a political right <em>rather</em> than a commodity to be bought and sold
can take place. Encouragingly, governments in the Global South are catching and FAL initiatives from the South have proven to be immense sources of innovation in their own right. In Indonesia, for example, FAL initiatives have laid the
groundwork for emerging government initiatives that are now prioritizing the provision of free, online access to legal and other government information. Today, I believe that we are witnessing an important paradigm
shift as governments are beginning to recognize that “access” to legal information is a
right to be held by the public.</p>
<p>Despite such headway, it is needless to say that FAL initiatives in the Global South
continue to face immense sustainability challenges. However, it is hoped that this
study can provide some practical insights for emerging initiatives
and partnerships. However, as more FAL initiatives begin entering into the next
stage of maturity and growth, it is more important than ever that they are
able to adapt to adverse environmental changes and form
long-lasting partnerships with information sources within government. Most
importantly, FAL initiatives must remain dynamic and responsive to users’
needs. To do so, they must be able to tailor and expand their services, offerings
and user-base. To secure their sustainability and relevance in the long term, they must also be continuously strengthening their ties and maintain open communication flows with
users. If FAL initiatives are able to successfully make the
transition from being supply side initiatives to becoming demand driven services,
the FALM will be well-positioned for another decade of sustainable growth. </p>
<p>Download the collection below:</p>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/good-practices.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Good Practices Handbook">Good Practices
Handbook </a>(426 kb)<br /><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/environmental-scan.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Environmental Scan Report">Environmental Scan Report</a> (860 kb)<br /><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/local-researchers-methodology-guide.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Local Researcher's Methodology Guide">Local Researcher's Methodology Guide</a> (1225 kb)</p>
<p>The full collection of case studies and the Good Practices
Handbook was originally published on the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/cij/acces-libre-au-droit/resultats">Project Website</a>. The Centre for Internet and Society oversaw the following case studies: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indiafinaljul11.pdf">India</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/hongkongfinaljul11.pdf">Hong Kong</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indonesiafinaljul11.pdf">Indonesia</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/Berne_Final_2011_July.pdf">Philippines</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users</a>
</p>
No publisherrebeccaResearchFeaturedOpen AccessOpennessPublications2012-02-27T15:06:14ZBlog EntryNon Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode
<b>Odia Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar has designed a new tool which can convert non Unicode ISCII text to Odia Unicode text. A majority of the digitized text and web content of newspapers and books are in non unicode text which now could be used for Wikipedia and other Odia Wiki projects. This opens a new arena for digitized free license books in Odia language.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Akruti Sarala is a known name in Odisha. Every single DTP operator who knows typing uses this font. Until now thousands of books have been created using this font. Even today many mainstream newspapers and magazines use this font for typing. Sadly, no one ever realized the content they are creating would be useless when it comes to sharing and reusing, especially on internet. Because, internet accepts a universal standard called "Unicode" for all the languages. When a book is limited only for printing purpose then use of non Unicode font is absolutely of no problem. But, when one copies text from an e-book created using non Unicode fonts (e.g. Sarala) and pastes it elsewhere strange characters gets displayed instead of Odia characters. This is the same situation for all other non-Latin languages.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Why this happens?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Non Unicode fonts use a funny technique. English/Roman characters are removed and Indian (or any other Non-Latin language) language characters are inserted instead of English characters. So, when you type any key from your keyboard the corresponding Indian language character displays instead of the English character. When you have a particular non Unicode font installed this technique works effectively. But, imagine when you don't have the font in your computer! By default it will show the English characters.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How Unicode fonts work?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unicode fonts contain Indian language characters along with English characters. There is no character/glyph displacement. It is a global standard and fixed by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unicode.org/charts/">The Unicode Consortium</a> for all the languages. When one text is typed in an Indian language it displays the same character on Ubuntu, Windows or Mac operating system. As most of the operating systems come with Unicode fonts included there is nothing to be worried for installing them again.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How it got started?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Manoj Sahukar, a third year mechanical engineering student who is very enthusiast about the Odia science articles found <a class="external-link" href="https://or.wikipedia.org">Odia Wikipedia</a> and realized that the volunteers are working so hard to write content which could actually be simplified rather than merely writing the same content. There are many science articles which he wanted to read on Wikipedia were not there. Then he realized the gap of the the non availability of Unicode content. This is also one more reason Google doesn't have a button for Odia unlike some of the other Indian languages. "Nothing could be such open and great platform like Odia Wikiepdia if one is searching content in Odia language. My tool is dedicated to the Odia Wikipedians who have been working hard for my language", expressed Manoj in the release note. He shared his interest and ideas with Odia Wikipedian <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%80:Jnanaranjan_sahu">Jnanaranjan Sahu</a> and started working on building a tool which could convert the available science articles of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissabigyanacademy.nic.in/%28S%28zndhkk55ka1ev545zqv5iy55%29%29/publication.aspx">Bigyana Diganta</a> (a sciene magazine published in Odia language by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissabigyanacademy.nic.in">Orissa Bigyana Academy</a>) into Unicode. There are many articles which could be used for reference and some of the free content for WikiSource or WikiBooks. Finally he released his tool on internet on 12.12.12, the last one of the repeating dates of this century. It is still in its beta stage and Manoj is working on making it more user friendly. He is also keen on organizing technical events which will bring more individuals to create such open source tools. "My next target is developing OCR (<a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">Optical character recognition</a>) software in Odia", says an excited Manoj.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">What this tool does?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This tool could be used to convert text typed in non Unicode ISCII fonts to Odia Unicode text. The detailed procedure for using this tool and Unicode conversion is explained in a <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:%E0%AC%93%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86_%E0%AD%9F%E0%AD%81%E0%AC%A8%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%95%E0%AD%8B%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC_%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%A8%E0%AC%AD%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%8D%E0%AC%9F%E0%AC%B0#Procedure">tutorial on Odia Wikipedia</a>. The tool is released under GFDL license and is <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/odiaconverter/files/OR-TTsaralaUnicodeConverter.exe/download">available for download</a> on <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter">SourceForge</a>.</p>
<table class="plain" style="text-align: center; " summary="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/NonUnicodetextbeingcopiedfromaPDF.png" title="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF" height="520" width="609" alt="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><span class="contenttype-image">Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF<br /><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/Unicodefontafterconversion.png/@@images/a9b54863-8ec4-4ed9-b68d-1b61a376c0e9.png" title="Unicode font after conversion" height="117" width="613" alt="Unicode font after conversion" class="image-inline" /></span><br />Unicode font after conversion</p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 style="text-align: left; ">Quick links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Download from <a class="external-link" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/odiaconverter/files/OR-TTsaralaUnicodeConverter.exe/download">here</a></li>
<li>Project page on SourceForge: <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter">https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter</a></li>
<li>Tutorial and technical description on Odia Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cvm">http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cvm</a></li>
<li>Odia Unicode standard: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0B00.pdf">Odia Unicode code chart</a></li>
</ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center; ">Manoj Sahukar talks about his ideas about the usability of Odia Unicode Converter tool<br /> <iframe frameborder="0" height="23" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversation_with_Manoj_Sahukar_regarding_Odia_Unicode_Converter_tool.ogg?embedplayer=yes" width="300"></iframe> </th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2012-12-21T09:59:18ZBlog EntryIndic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012
<b>I have compiled the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012. As usual, in this report, my aim is to provide my perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(The period of analysis is editor contributions between December 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012. December to December data is taken to account for the seasonal variations). Read the <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">2011 report here</a> and the <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/indian-language-wikipedias-2010-statistical-report/" target="_blank">2010 report here</a>. The data for this report and analysis is based on the statistical data published at <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>. A special thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here is my executive summary after analyzing the data for 2012 and my experince with building some wiki communities:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Steady and sustainable growth is available for communities which focus on community building.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Small languages with guidance and support are making huge progress than many big languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Lack of support from proper channels at the much needed time had affected the community growth of some communities.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Even though many outreach programs had happened across country, that is not showing up in terms of number of active editors.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Still many language communities (especially big languages) are not open to the idea of reaching out to the speakers of the respective language.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Pageviews of Indic projects continues to increase.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This report is presented in the following sequence. This is done so because I believe that community is central to the Wikimedia movement. Community will give us content which will drive readership.</p>
<ul>
<li>Community</li>
<li>Content</li>
<li>Readership</li>
</ul>
<h2>Community</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As mentioned above, according to me, community is the backbone of Wikimedia movement. But still many communities are not understanding the importance of this. It is important that all language wiki communities give adequate importance to community building to build the free knowledge repository in their language. The following table gives information based on two important parameters about the community. The first parameter shows the highly active editors (more than 100 edits per month) in wiki. The second parameter shows the active editors (more than 5 edits per month).</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Report.png" alt="Indic Language Statistical Report" class="image-inline" title="Indic Language Statistical Report" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Like last year, Malayalam continues to show an upward growth in terms of the number of active users. It has close to 120 active editors now. The <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryML.htm">graphical summary shows that mean number</a> of editors is around 100. Malayalam is the biggest wiki community among Indic languages even though Malayalam is only the 11th biggest spoken language in India. The sincere efforts put by Malayalam wikipedians to build its community is the only reason for this. The programs like Malayalam Wiki conference, Education program, CD project, wiki workshops, photo events, Wikimeetups, and many other outreach events started showing its result. If the community continues with these type of efforts then I am sure that the community strength in Malayalam Wikipedia will cross 150 in 2013. Apart from Wikipedia, the importance given to Malayalam Wikisource, Wiktionary, and more recently to Wikivoyage (in incubator) will attract more Malayalam speakers to the Malayalam wiki projects.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil comes second with close to 80 active editors. However, the number of active editors has gone down from last year. The <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryTA.htm">graphical summary</a> shows that number of active users was around 70-75 especially during the last two quarters.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Bengali comes third with around 60 active editors. This is a slight increase from the last year’s number of active editors. The involvement of editors from India in Bengali Wikipedia is less. That needs to be changed. Bangladeshi wikipedians are having many outreach programs to build Bengali wiki community. It will be nice if they extend their support to Indian Bengali speakers also as Indian Bengali wikipedians are not growing.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Telugu, Urdu, Gujarati, and Punjabi are the wikipedia languages that show notable increase in the number of active editors. But it will be be a mistake from my part if I am not mentioning that these numbers are not encouraging and the current number of active users is not showing justice to the number of speakers these languages have. This statement is more significant when we consider the fact that some smaller languages are showing a better progress.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">We have seen that <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">last year (2011)</a> the success stories were Odia and Assamese wikipedias. In 2012, the shining star is <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org" target="_blank"><b>Punjabi</b></a>. The community has grown from one active editor from last year to almost 15 active editors now. As mentioned in my blog posts (<a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/the-first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop/">post 1</a>, <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala/">post 2</a>, <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar/">post 3</a>, and <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/building-community-for-punjabi-wikipedia-my-experience/">post 4</a>) about building Punjabi wikipedia community, the task of building community for Punjabi was very challenging. Initiated in 2002 along with Assamese, Punjabi is one of the first Indic language wikipedia. But nothing much had happened in that wiki until deliberate efforts to build community initiated. The news is now we have an active community in <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org" target="_blank">Punjabi Wikipedia</a>. From the just one person last year (<a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guglani" target="_blank">Guglani</a> – who took lots of pain to travel to multiple locations to introduce Punjabi wikipedia), now Punjabi wikipedia has close to 15 active editors. Unlike Odia and Assamese, I have faced so many issues during Punjabi wikipedia community building (mostly conflicts between editors). But I am happy to see that community is slowly coming out of all that. The technical team has <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43730">fixed some of the bugs</a> related to typing tool which was very important for Punjabi wikipedia. Punjabi wikipedians require lot support from other wikipedians to sustain the current momentum and grow the community further. My best wishes to Punjabi wikipedians.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Gujarati and Urdu are the two other communities that made considerable progress in community growth. The efforts put by Gujarati wikipedians to reach out to Gujarati speakers started showing the results. I am sure with the significant attention also given to Gujarati Wikisource (<a href="http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-gu/2012-March/000095.html">which was created last year</a>), more Gujarati speakers will be attracted to Gujarati wiki projects. The involvement of Indians in Urdu Wikipedia is very less. But it is good to notice that Urdu wiki community slowly started growing. May be Wikipedia is one place where Indians and Pakistanis can work together.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The wikipedia languages that haven't shown significant change in number of active editors are Marathi, Odia, Assamese, and Nepali. The respective communities need to start putting efforts to build community by taking lessons from other Indic language wiki communities.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The languages that have considerable reduction in number of editors are Hindi, Kannada, and Sanskrit. Among this, except Sanskrit, all are spoken by at least five crore people. It is not good to see that speakers of these languages are not giving any attention to the wiki projects in their respective language. The case of Hindi is very strange considering the fact that it has support of the central government and many state governments of India.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The dormant language communities are Sindhi, Bhojpuri, Kashmiri, and some other small languages. Considering the fact that Odia, Assamese, and Punjabi were also dormant two years before, I am sure if someone is putting effort to build communities for these now dormant communities, these language wiki communities will also grow like it happened for Odia, Assamese, and Punjabi. Now there are multiple entities to support wikimedia movement in India and I hope that someone will take care of this apart from concentrating on the bigger languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In short, the point I want to emphasis is, conscious efforts are required from different stakeholders to grow communities and to sustain that growth for all Indic language wikipedias.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Content</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Number of articles is an important parameter, but it has misguided some wiki communities in the past. Fortunately that trend is coming down.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/SpeakersArticles.png" alt="Language, Speakers & Articles" class="image-inline" title="Language, Speakers & Articles" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">With more than 1,04,000 articles, Hindi continues to be the biggest Indic language wikipedia in terms of the number of articles. Almost 3500 articles were added to Hindi wikipedia in the year 2013.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil and Malayalam had added around 7000 articles which is the "biggest growth" in terms of number of articles. Urdu and Nepali added close to 5000 articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">If we consider percentage of increase then Assamese language has shown more than 100 per cent increase in the number of articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the important milestones are, Tamil and Telugu crossing 50,000 articles, Malayalam crossing 25,000 articles, and Assamese crossing 1,000 article milestones.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The languages that have shown very slow growth in terms of number of articles are Gujarati, Telugu and Kannada. I assume at least for few of these languages the focus went into enhancing the existing articles and building the community rather than creating thousands of stub articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">As mentioned in the past reports, communities don’t need to worry about the number of articles. Also the examples of Bishnupriya Manipuri and Newari Wikipedias shows the after effect of increasing the article count without focusing on building the community.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Readership (page views)</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unlike the number of editors, the number of page views in wiki is showing an upward trend irrespective of the language.(Please note that the information available in the below table is the total visits (page views) for a language wikipedia for a month from all the platforms combined. It includes visits by readers and editors. This is NOT the list of Number of Unique Visitors to the website).</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/SpeakersReaders.png" alt="Speakers & Readers" class="image-inline" title="Speakers & Readers" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> This is the one parameter where the figures are showing relative justice to the number of speakers.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Hindi with 78 lakh page views is in the top position.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The page views for Tamil had increased by more than 50 per cent.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Assamese has more than 100 per cent growth in page views.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Since the support for Indic languages is increasing for smart phone operating systems, I am sure the page views are going to increase further.</li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Conclusion</h2>
<p>I am concluding this report with the following thoughts:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Being the biggest language (or number of speakers) does not automatically build community for an Indic language wikipedia. Efforts from respective language speakers are necessary to build community.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Most Indians who have access to internet and computer still don’t know their respective language typing. This is the biggest road block to build Indic language wiki community.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Do not get obsessed by article counts or readership. These are natural outcomes of community building.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on community building through community interaction (through meetups, talk pages, village pumps, and mailing lists).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on community building through community collaboration (WikiProjects or planning outreach efforts or advocacy).</li>
<li>Focus on community building through doing more outreach, better outreach, and being supportive of newbies.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Stay away from bots and translation tools for article creation as they do more harm than good. Use bots in such a way that it is not affecting the growth of the community.</li>
</ul>
<p>Wishing all of you a wonderful wiki year 2013.</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012</a>
</p>
No publishershijuOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2013-02-03T02:40:48ZBlog EntryCelebrating Odia Wikipedia's Ninth Anniversary
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-odia-wikipedias-ninth-anniversary
<b>Odia Wikipedia saw its first edit on January 29, 2004. After a dormancy of many years it got revived in 2011. To commemorate the effort of many volunteer wikipedians, a celebratory event was organized on January 29, 2013 in Bhubaneswar. Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/">Odia Wikipedia</a> recently has celebrated its <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:ମେଳଣ/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର୪">9</a><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:ମେଳଣ/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର୪"><sup>th</sup></a><a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:ମେଳଣ/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର୪"> anniversary</a>. January 29 is considered to be that day when someone made a first edit on it. Communities from Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Nalconagar joined hands to celebrate this event with a panel discussion on "Application of Odia language in e-media". The discussion was coordinated by Nilambar Rath, Director of Academy for Media Learning. The event was organized by the Odia Wiki Community with support from <a href="https://cis-india.org/">The Centre for Internet and Society</a> in collaboration with <a href="http://www.aml.edu.in/">Academy for Media Learning</a>. Panelists who took part in the discussion were Prasanna Kumar Mohanty, Director of "Odia Bhasa Pratisthan", Dr. Prafulla Tripathy, Odia linguist and writer, Dr. Dhanada Mishra, Academician and Director-Academics, <a href="http://www.kmbb.in/">KMBB College of Engineering</a>, Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, Centre for Internet and Society, Jatindra Das, Senior journalist and founder, <a href="http://Odisha.com/">Odisha.com</a> and Subhransu Panda, Senior journalist, <a href="http://www.orissasambad.com/">Sambad</a>. Wikipedians, students and journalists took active part in the discussion.</p>
<p>To celebrate the success of Odia Wikipedia, wikipedians joined the guest to cut a “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhena_Poda">Chhenapoda</a>” and light Deepam as an integral part of the Odia culture.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The discussion began with Nilambar Rath speaking briefly about the agenda of the meeting and about the current scenario of the use of Odia language in media especially in the web. Prasanna Kumar Mohanty spoke about how the true form of the language should be taken to public via media. He also emphasized about the need to sacrifice our conventional way of approach and adopt new technologies like Wikipedia. Many such efforts are not rewarded because of the lack of support from the government even though funding is available for such development. Odia linguist Prafulla Tripathy explained about the lack of public interest to pledge for declaring Odia as a classical language even though Odia holds the 31<sup>st</sup> position among 6500 world languages. "The language of our personal lives, social interaction and verbal communication never gets documented. The confusion among various linguists is another obstacle to take Odia to a global level. If the script grammar is kept in focus and script and eventually the fonts are simplified then they would be easier to be used online", he expressed. Dr. Tripathy also shared his experience of his interaction with other Indian language experts at places where he worked such as on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">OCR (Optical character reading)</a> software which could be a great tool to digitize many precious resources. He offered his support for helping with OCR in Odia. Few other aspects of simpler approaches of scripts discussed were glossary, Odia-English and English-Odia lexicon, spell check feature for typing and interactive e-learning which could boost the effort of the wikipedians.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Dhanada Mishra took the audience through the free and open source culture and Linux and future role of Odia Wikipedia to tackle the problems of primary education. He thanked the wikipedians for their noble effort and showed his interest in promoting it more in academics. Subhashish Panigrahi discussed about the role of Odia Wikipedia in documenting various resources in Odia Wikipedia. He brought various technical problems that common men face while typing, contributing to Wikipedia and how they could be handled. He also proposed a plan for bringing more language experts and museum curators to the community which would increase the spectrum of resource and capacity for the Odia Wikimedia community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Jatindra Das, founder of the first online Odia newspaper Odisha.com discussed about the hurdles of using Odia Unicode and acceptance level in the society for it. Senior journalist Subhransu Panda discussed about the usage of various fonts and how adopting Unicode could bring a lot of information to the public.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nilambar Rath, Director, Academy for Media Learning talked about the future efforts of Odia Wikipedia community. He elaborated how media could be used as an essential tool for taking Wikipedia to more people. Mrutyunjaya Kar, one of the very active Wikipedians closed the ceremony with a brief talk about the achievements, education program and impact of Odia Wikipedia in the recent past and community building plans.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a press meet in the afternoon. Wikipedians interacted with the media about future prospects of Odia Wikipedia and its current state.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OdiaWikipediansbeingfelicitated.JPG/@@images/dda743db-d287-4a02-9525-7376d44934f1.jpeg" title="Odia Wikipedians being felicitated" height="204" width="622" alt="Odia Wikipedians being felicitated" class="image-inline" /></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; "><i>Odia wikipedians being felicitated by the guests</i></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center; ">Few glimpses of the event<br /><iframe frameborder="0" height="253" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bhubaneswar_Odia_Meetup_2013Jan29-32.webm?embedplayer=yes" width="450"></iframe><br />Audio Podcast<br /><iframe frameborder="0" height="23" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prafulla_Tripathy_on_Odia_script_and_Odia_Wikipedia.ogg?embedplayer=yes" width="300"></iframe></th>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p><b><br />Press coverage:</b></p>
<ul>
<li><span></span><span><b>ଓଡ଼ିଶାନ୍:</b></span><a href="http://odishan.com/?p=2534"><span><span><span><b> </b>ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ନବମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ଅବସରରେ କର୍ମଶାଳା</span></span></span></a><a href="http://odishan.com/?p=2534"><span><span><span>: </span></span></span></a><a href="http://odishan.com/?p=2534"><span><span><span>ଇମିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ରୟୋଗ</span></span></span></a><span><span>.</span></span><span><b> </b></span><span><b></b></span></li>
<li> <span><b>ସମ୍ବାଦ:</b></span><a href="http://sambadepaper.com/Details.aspx?id=36615&boxid=23625437"><span><i><span><b> </b>ଲିପି ବ୍ୟାକରଣ ଓ ମାନକ ଭାଷାର ପ୍ରୟୋଗ ଜରୁରୀ</span></i></span></a><span><span>.</span></span><span><b> </b></span></li>
<li> <span>eindiadiary.com:</span><a href="http://www.eindiadiary.com/content/odisha-workshop-organized-9th-anniversary-odia-language-application-odia-language-e-media"><span><span>Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media</span></span></a><span><span>.</span></span></li>
<li> <span>Fullorissa.com:</span><a href="http://news.fullorissa.com/odia-wikipedias-9th-anniversary/"><span> Odia Wikipedia’s 9th anniversary</span></a><span><b>. </b></span><span>Fullorissa.com</span></li>
<li> <span>orissadiary.com:</span><a href="http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=3924"><span><span>Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media</span></span></a><span><span>.</span></span></li>
<li> <span><span>In</span></span><span>diaeducationdiary.in:</span><a href="http://indiaeducationdiary.in/Orissa/Shownews.asp?newsid=19485"><span><span>Odisha: Workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia language: Application of Odia language in e-media</span></span></a><span><span>. </span></span><span></span></li>
<li> <span>Odishaviews.com:</span><a href="http://www.odishaviews.com/odia-language-workshop-organized-on-9th-anniversary-of-odia-wikipedia-application-of-odia-language-in-e-media/">Odia language workshop organized on 9th Anniversary of Odia Wikipedia: Application of Odia language in e-media</a><i>. </i>Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.<i><br /></i></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-odia-wikipedias-ninth-anniversary'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-odia-wikipedias-ninth-anniversary</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2013-02-28T04:32:29ZBlog EntryWiki Women's Day in Goa
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-womens-day-in-goa
<b>International Women's Day (IWD), also called International Working Women's Day, is celebrated on March 8, every year. There were a series of Wikipedia events organised this year with the aim of increasing participation of women contributing to Wikipedia. One such event was organised by the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikimedia India Chapter at the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College in Panaji, Goa on March 8, 2013.</b>
<p align="JUSTIFY">NIE is a respected institution providing pre- and in-service teacher education to thousands of teachers and about a 100 of them (99 per cent of the participants being women) joined in to learn Wikipedia editing and increase women related content on Wikipedia.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Rohini Lakshane from the Wikimedia India Chapter and Nitika Tandon from Access to Knowledge, CIS lead the session jointly. The session began with the introduction of Wikipedia, Wikipedia volunteers, the five pillars, motivation of volunteers to contribute to Wikipedia tirelessly and a brief of different activities that are being organised to strengthen the Wikimedia movement in India. Most of the students and faculty members were curious about two main things:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">How to integrate the new community of editors in Goa with the larger Indian and global community?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">How can teachers and students use Wikipedia to advance students' knowledge and add useful content to Wikipedia?</li>
</ol>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/NethasVideo.png/@@images/7c6006be-6dee-4a10-b4bf-982ca38cf478.png" title="Netha's Video" height="247" width="330" alt="Netha's Video" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Participants watching Netha's video</p>
</th>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>To answer the first part, participants were informed about regular Wiki meet ups in different cities, several city based and language based Wikipedia mailing lists where one can find volunteer friends, active use of user talk pages and village pumps, Wikimedia India Facebook page amongst many others.</p>
<p>To address the second part there was also a brief discussion about wiki project classroom coordination with specific examples from universities around the world. The teachers and faculty members will be sent a detailed outline of the program, list of universities with on-going projects, list of teachers who have used Wikipedia as a teaching tool and are willing to serve as a contact to help others set up a similar teaching courses.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The session was planned to go on until late evening with hands on editing in the computer lab. But unfortunately, we (Rohini and Nitika) were informed that the session will have to close before the scheduled closing time as participants had to leave. Except for two or three participants coming on stage and making their user accounts and another 3-4 article edits, we couldn't include more editing as a part of the outreach session, primarily due to time constraint. We're hoping that at a small percentage of participants would try actual editing at home and contribute to women related articles and some of them will be successful in using Wikipedia as a teacher's tool. We have their contact details and we'll try and monitor their on Wiki activities and provide them support whenever needed.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/NIEWikipediaWorkshop.png" alt="NIE Wikipedia Workshop" class="image-inline" title="NIE Wikipedia Workshop" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">A picture of participants doing Wiki editing at the NIE workshop in Goa</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-womens-day-in-goa'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-womens-day-in-goa</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedWorkshopOpenness2013-03-19T06:32:25ZBlog EntryIndic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #1: Visualising Basic Parameters
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-basic-parameters
<b>Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay bring you a visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedia in this first post on Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project. In doing so, the authors look into the different aspects of the past and present activities of Indic Wikipedias, and divide the visualisation into three different focus areas.</b>
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Understanding how the Indic or the Indian language Wikipedia projects are growing is something that we have been interested in for quite sometime. We were delighted to come across this opportunity from the <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">Centre</a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/"> </a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">for</a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/"> </a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">Internet</a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/"> </a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">and</a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/"> </a><a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">Society</a> (CIS) and <a href="http://www.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia</a><a href="http://www.wikimedia.org/"> </a><a href="http://www.wikimedia.org/">Foundation</a>. We divided our analyses into three focus areas: (1) basic parameters, (2) geographic patterns of edits, and (3) exploring the topics that receives the greatest number of edits. The existing infographics and data visualisations that we found about Indic Wikipedias mostly engaged on the first area, and also emphasised on yearly aggregates. We thought a more granular, that is monthly, understanding and a focus on the geographic and thematic spread of the edits would be very helpful to further appreciate the activities.</p>
<p>We began by collecting data about the following basic parameters:</p>
<ol>
<li>Number of Editors</li>
<li>Number of Articles</li>
<li>Page Views</li>
<li>Number of Active Editors</li>
<li>Number of New Articles</li>
<li>Number of New Editors</li>
<li>Edit Size</li>
</ol>
<h3>Acquiring the data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We explored the <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API">MediaWiki</a><a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API"> </a><a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API">API</a>, <a href="http://toolserver.org/">ToolServer</a> and the <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia</a><a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/"> </a><a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/">Statistics</a><a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/"> </a><a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/">Portal</a>. These are several ways of obtaining data about Wikipedia in general. Depending on the use case, such as the quantity of data required or the need for customised/selective data scraping, any one or more of these methods of data gathering can be chosen. The API had limitations in terms of how much data you can access, and it is meant to be used to access actual Wikipedia entries. We, however, were looking for metadata about the entries/articles (such as when it was first created, when and how many times it was edited, etc.) and not the actual entries/articles, that is the actual contents of Indic Wikipedias. ToolServer is an excellent way of running custom scripts. Although, this takes for granted that user (of ToolServer) has substantial command over the back-end infrastructures and processes that Wikipedia runs on. We wrote a few scrapers to extract metadata about Indic Wikipedia projects from the ToolServer but not exactly being experts in the Wikipedia back-end systems, we found scraping from ToolServer rather time-and effort-intensive. The statistics portal is a well organised and an accessible place for collecting data for analyses. However, we came across several missing parameters and projects, that is the statistic portal did not have all the parameters and Wikipedia projects we were interested in. In our search for Indic Wikipedia datasets so far, we realised that the Wikimedia Analytics Team (WAT) puts a lot of effort in writing scripts and collecting various data at different levels. Wikimedia developer Yuvi Panda and the Access to Knowledge team at CIS, aware of our difficulty in obtaining the data, also pointed us towards the WAT. While we were already scraping data on some of the parameters, we approached the WAT whose prompt and very supportive response much accelerated our work process. The fantastic Wikimedia developers, especially Evan Rosen (a big ‘thank you’ for him) shared the needed data, which we cleaned up and archived at the <a class="external-link" href="https://github.com/geohacker/indicwiki">Github repository</a> for the project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We obtained data for the period from January 2001 to December 2012. It appears that the Indic Wikipedia projects began their activities around 2005. A big part of cleaning the data involved identifying when each of the projects started and dropping data. There are <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Indic_Languages">20 </a><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Indic_Languages">Indic</a><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Indic_Languages"> </a><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Indic_Languages">Wikipedia</a> projects with 4,98,964 articles, 5,689 editors and over 3,35,49,102 readers.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Deciding upon chart types</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We spent quite some time discussing different methods of visualising the data. The major difficulty is that there are too many entities to be plotted. As each language must be plotted as a separate entity — point, line, circle, etc. — the chart has a tendency to become cluttered and illegible. Even if we take only one variable — say New Editors — there will still be 20 points or lines to be plotted. Hence, using any of the conventional charts becomes difficult. For example, if we chose a line chart with New Editors on the Y-axis and months on the X-axis, there will be 20 lines each of a different colour, representing different languages. Also, the five-six year monthly timeline translates into 60-72 temporal data points.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We have adopted two strategies, and related chart types, to address this difficulty.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Firstly, we used a monthly calendar-like heatmap chart that limits the temporal spread of data to one year for each section of the chart and uses a positionally uniform set of columns for each language so as to make reading the chart easier. Limiting each chart section to 12 months allow the user to focus on more granular movements of the variable concerned, say the number of New Editors per month. By representing each languages on an unique column, and not by an upwards-and-downwards moving line as in a line chart, makes it easier for the user to follow movements in each language (where movement is shown by the intensity of colour, as characteristic of heatmaps) without the need to have a separate coloured entity — point, line, circle — for each language.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Secondly, we used a motion chart, as made famous by Dr. Hans Rosling, that removes the temporal axis from X- and Y-axes of the chart and uses animated transition to represent temporal change. Motion chart has the unique ability to handle as many as five variables in an organised manner, using the following visual elements: X-axis, Y-axis, Z-axis (animated temporal transitions), size of bubbles, and colour of bubbles. It is, however, recommended that represented variables be limited to a maximum of four for easier legibility. In our case, we have used the X- and Y-axes to plot various related variables (which can be selected by the user) such as New Editors and New Articles, the Z-axis to represent time, and the colour of the bubbles to represent a third optional variable (also can be selected by the user). Since different Indian language Wikipedia projects often take a wide range of values for most variables, using the size of the bubble to represent any of those variables is avoidable. Further, the motion chart gives the user a lot of controls to explore the various projects and variables according to their interest and especially to compare particular projects and variables to each other.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Discussing the chart types with the Access to Knowledge team, we decided to use simpler line charts — emphasising upon single Indic Wikipedia projects — on the language-specific pages that we will be creating next.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Calendar charts</h3>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/indicwiki_calendar_chart.png" alt="Indic Wikipedia Language Chart" class="image-inline" title="Indic Wikipedia Language Chart" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">Calendar heatmap chart of New Editors across Indic Wikipedia projects, 2008-2011. Source: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/XDb3fa">http://bit.ly/XDb3fa</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We visualised three parameters using the calendar heatmap strategy: (1) <a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/new-articles">New</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/new-articles"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/new-articles">Articles</a>, (2) <a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/new-editors">New</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/new-editors"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/new-editors">Editors</a>, (3) <a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/active-editors">Active</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/active-editors"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/active-editors">Editors</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The New Articles Calendar shows new articles posted on every Indic Wikipedias for every month since 2004. It was interesting to note the few number of articles in 2012 for all the languages. The first language to have the most number of new articles is Bengali. Hindi picks up around same time with fewer number of articles. Except Urdu and Nepali, every other language dropped in the number of new articles. However, we should remember that a lower number of new articles does not necessarily indicate at low overall activity in the project concerned.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Like the new articles, we wanted to explore the patterns in the number of new editors across all of the Indic Wikipedia projects. As you run through the new editors calendar chart, it is evident that there is consistent growth in the editor base for few projects like Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. If one takes a step back and compares this with the number of new articles chart, something is not very clear -- in some of the projects, there is a growth in the number of editors but not many new articles are posted. We are very keen to understand why this has happened.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If we look at the active editors calendar, Tamil started with 2 active editors in January 2004 and with few ups and downs grew to about 115 active editors in December 2012. Malayalam started slow in late 2004 with 2 editors and grew to 155 active editors in December 2012. We are sure the viewers should be able to find out more patterns by studying the charts closely and comparatively.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Motion chart</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We developed <a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html">a</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html">motion</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html">chart</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html">comparing</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html">five</a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html"> </a><a href="http://geohacker.github.com/indicwiki/motion_chart.html">variables</a>: (1) Active Editors (> 5 edits per month), (2) New Editors, (3) Total Editors, (4) New Articles, and (5) Total Articles. When the visualisation is opened, Total Editors is plotted on the X-axis, Total Articles is plotted on the Y-axis, the colour of the bubbles indicate the Active Editors (Blue is low and Red is high) and the sizes of the bubbles are kept the same for easier comparison.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The user can click on the drop down menus at the X- and Y-axes, and next to the size and colour variables, and make them represent different variables.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We chose to configure the X- and Y-axes to show the data in logarithmic scales and not in linear scales. Since most projects experience small increments over time and there exists a wide difference between the most and the least popular/active projects, the logarithmic scale is better suited to represent the changes in the given data. The user has the option to select linear scale at the end of both X- and Y-axes (click on "Log").</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As evident in the visualisation, the Newari project and the Hindi-Malayalam project cluster show very interesting contrasting dynamics — while both achieve similar Total Articles numbers, the latter is much more editor-heavy. This suggests a smaller but more active editor community for the Newari project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Please click on the image of the motion chart below to open the interactive version in a separate window. The code can be accessed at the project repository on <a class="external-link" href="https://github.com/geohacker/indicwiki">Github</a>.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/indicwiki_motion_chart.png" alt="Indic Wiki Motion Chart" class="image-inline" title="Indic Wiki Motion Chart" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Motion chart comparing multiple variables across Indic Wikipedia projects, 2001-2011. Source: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Yw4Wzq">http://bit.ly/Yw4Wzq</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://sajjad.in/">Sajjad Anwar</a> is a programmer based in Bangalore. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ajantriks.net/">Sumandro Chattapdhyay</a> is a researcher based in Delhi. They often work together.</p>
<hr />
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-basic-parameters'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-basic-parameters</a>
</p>
No publisherSajjad Anwar and Sumandro ChattapadhyayAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedOpenness2013-03-26T10:04:43ZBlog EntryIndic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #2: Visualising Page Views and Project Pages
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-page-views-and-project-pages
<b>In this blog post, we bring you a visualisation of the page views statistics and the project specific pages that we created last month. The page views indicate the number of unique visits the Wikipedia project concerned has received in one month.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unlike the <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-basic-parameters" target="_blank">basic parameters</a> that we discussed last month, we received the Page Views data only from January 2008 onwards. The project-specific pages allow the user to see all the different variables related to a Indic language Wikipedia project in one page, thus giving a general overview of the activities in that project and their inter-relationships. Instead of comparing multiple projectsn, as in the calendar charts and motion chart discussed in the last post, the project-specific pages focus on understanding one Wikipedia project in detail.</p>
<h3>Page Views</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The data came in a structure that is useful for human-readability of the data but not so much for visualisation. The first column contained the date value (01/01/2008, 01/02/2008, and so on), followed by a column for each Indic Wikipedia project (Assamese, Bhojpuri, and so on) and one for the total Page Views across projects for the month concerned. The original data file can be <a href="https://github.com/geohacker/indicwiki/blob/master/data/page_views.csv" target="_blank">accessed here</a>. We re-formatted this data to the following column structure: the first column gives the date value, the second column gives the language of the Wikipedia project, and the third column gives the Page Views value. Further, the Page Views file contained data for 2013 that are not available for any other variables (like Total Articles, Total Editors etc.). So we decided to remove the 2013 values from the Page Views file for easier comparison with other variables. The data file that we finally used for the visualisation can be <a href="https://github.com/geohacker/indicwiki/blob/master/data/page_views_2.csv" target="_blank">accessed here</a>.</p>
<h3>Calendar (Heatmap) Chart</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first chart that we created was the calendar (heatmap) chart discussed in detail in the <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-basic-parameters" target="_blank">last post</a>. For the Page View variable we only had data form 2008. We plotted it as calendar-like heatmap to allow quick cross-project comparisons of trends in readership. The chart can be <a href="http://geohacker.github.io/indicwiki/page-views" target="_blank">accessed here</a>.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/indicwiki_02_calendar.png/@@images/dc012a58-33ec-4fed-9852-b07beba5dcb6.png" alt="Indic Wiki Calendar" class="image-inline" title="Indic Wiki Calendar" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<h3>Project Pages</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So far, we have been visualising the data from an overall perspective, constantly asking the question: "How does project A compare to project B?". <a href="http://geohacker.github.io/indicwiki/projects" target="_blank"> The Project pages</a> sheds light from a different angle: "How did project A get to this point?". Each of the projects are visualised in isolation around the basic parameters to understand how they have changed/evolved over the years. We wanted to keep this as simple as possible and decided to use straight forward line charts. This also ensures that the patterns are clearly evident. On the right corner of the navigation bar is the project selector. You can search or pick a project and the page will load the charts specific to that project. Each project has a different page, this makes it easier for you to share the project that you are interested in. The chart employs filtering and dynamic scales. Dynamic scales are important because not all the projects have the same rate of growth.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/indicwiki_02_project.png/@@images/e515d083-dbf8-443e-956e-f386b092f68d.png" alt="Indic Wiki Projects" class="image-inline" title="Indic Wiki Projects" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Readership Dashboard</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We were not satisfied with creating only the calendar heatmap chart for Page Views. Being a very important variable for anybody trying to understand activities on Indic Wikipedia projects, we wanted to create a more detailed visualisation for the variable. While the project-specific pages do allow for comparing Page Views for a certain Indic Wikipedia with its other variables (such as Total Articles), we wanted to make that comparison even easier. Hence we decided to make a chart combining a line graph showing the movement of Page View for a project across the years and bar graphs showing a separate variable for the same project. Thus we created the <a href="http://geohacker.github.io/indicwiki/readers" target="_blank">Readership Dashboard</a>. The dashboard has two controls: project selector and the parameter selector buttons. Selecting a project from the dropdown will update the line chart showing the movement of page views. Hover over the line graph points to see the date of observation and the corresponding value. The bars behind the line represent the selected parameters. Click on the parameter buttons to load different parameters as the background bar graph. Hover over the bars to see the date and the value. The bar graph is carefully aligned to the line chart such that the visualisation reflects the relation in movement of both. However, please note that the vertical scale of the line graph and the bar graphs are not the same.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/indicwiki_02_readership.png/@@images/81f12c6d-e0be-4067-8f6c-0f3a2e3c7d60.png" alt="Indic Wiki Readership" class="image-inline" title="Indic Wiki Readership" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://sajjad.in/">Sajjad Anwar</a> is a programmer based in Bangalore. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ajantriks.net/">Sumandro Chattapadhyay</a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.ajantriks.net/"></a> is a researcher based in Delhi. They often work together.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-page-views-and-project-pages'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-wikipedia-visualisation-project-visualising-page-views-and-project-pages</a>
</p>
No publisherSajjad Anwar and Sumandro ChattapadhyayAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedOpenness2013-04-22T13:37:08ZBlog EntryComments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-draft-icar-open-access-policy
<b>The following comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research on May 23, 2013. </b>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society,<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1] </a>is is a not-for-profit research organization. Our substantive areas of work include openness (including openness of government data, open access to scholarly literature, open standards, free and open source software, open educational resources, and open video) access to knowledge and IPR reform, freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, digital humanities and digital natives.<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a>It is our belief that openness and collaboration are the agents of innovation and creativity, and the advent of the internet has radically redefined the meaning and practice of openness and collaboration. Pursuant to our vision, we have been actively involved in the area of Openness and the promotion of open access.<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Key research and highlights of our work in these areas are as under:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Comments on the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase 1), submitted to the Department of Information and Technology.<a href="#fn4" name="fr4">[4]</a></li>
<li>A Status Report on Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India.<a href="#fn5" name="fr5">[5]</a></li>
<li>A Survey Report on the Online Video Environment in India.<a href="#fn6" name="fr6">[6]</a></li>
<li>A Report on Open Government Data in India.<a href="#fn7" name="fr7">[7]</a></li>
<li>An Open Government Data Study.<a href="#fn8" name="fr8">[8]</a></li>
<li>Publication of multiple blog posts and the conduction of various events including workshops and seminars around Openness and Open Access.<a href="#fn9" name="fr9">[9]</a></li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We hope that our commitment to Open Access and Openness, substantiated with our work in these areas leads you to consider our comments to your Draft Open Access Policy favourably.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">The Structure of the Report</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This report will deal provide feedback on the structure of the policy, various clauses of the policy, what clauses may be omitted (if any) and other clauses that may be included. Additionally, possible challenges that might require to be addressed in the implementation of this policy have also been indicated.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Overview</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is felt that the ICAR Draft Policy on Open Access is fairly comprehensive, covering most areas associated with its implementation, detailed, embodies the principles of openness and open access, and is a step in the right direction towards achieving open access to scientific and scholarly literature, acting as an example for other communities to do the same.<a href="#fn10" name="fr10">[10]</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Structural Feedback</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the policy be structured along the lines of the UNESCO Library Open Access Policy, with headings including <i>Introduction, the Objectives/Mission Statement of the Policy, Applicability, Repository, Roles and Obligations of various participants, Intellectual Property Law Issues and Implementation</i>.<a href="#fn11" name="fr11">[11]</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Feedback on Existing Clauses</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The decision of the ICAR to implement an Open Access Policy is commendable, and an encouragement to other institutions to follow suit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The adoption of OAI-MHP standard will ensure interoperability, given that it is seen as the cornerstone in open access to institutional research output, and failure to utilize this standard would reduce accessibility and therefore the impact of materials, since they are invisible to each other.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The provisions of the content to be made a part of the repository, and the implementation are comprehensive and detailed. <i>Inter alia, </i>measures involving encouragement to publish in journals that allow for open access through archiving, workshops for advocacy and capacity building, adoption of the CC-NC-SA license are appreciated.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Suggested Changes</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the Policy include provisions on information to be made available in accessible formats. In pursuance of the same, it is particularly suggested that the ICAR adopt measures to publish literature that is made available through this Open Access mechanism in formats accessible for visually impaired/print disabled persons, to truly realise the underlying aims of Open Access.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that in addition to class/lecture notes already included under the content, ‘course content’ developed for any class/seminar/lecture in any university/college/educational institution be made a separate category of material to be included for open access.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the following sentence in the proposed policy be further clarified: <i>“Scientists are advised to mention the ICAR’s Open Access policy while signing the copyright agreements with the publishers”</i>- A clarification is required regarding the application of this sentence and its applicability. Would the policy apply to both those cases where the scientists have copyright over their work, and where the institute has copyright, or to only one of these scenarios?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the ICAR participate in the development and promote the building of cross institutional services (cross repository services) to further the aims of Open Access,<a href="#fn12" name="fr12">[12]</a> and the same be reflected in the forthcoming policy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the forthcoming policy include an explicit provision on long term digital preservation<a href="#fn13" name="fr13">[13]</a> of the collected information, including possible measures that the ICAR may adopt to this end.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the forthcoming policy include a specific provision that requires contributing scientists/researchers etc. to explicitly declare that they have the copyright for and have obtained the necessary permissions to post and contribute to the Open Access Project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the ICAR take steps for aiding the development of Open Access Journals. In furtherance of the same, the ICAR could have links of the websites of these Journals on its own repository, such that the link to the articles on the websites of these Journals leads directly to the ICAR Repository. Such a move would incentivise authors to contribute, since their effort would be recognised, and researchers would have a persistent source to cite from an archive. This effort would also be in consonance with the broader aims of Open Access that the ICAR is keen to achieve through its proposed policy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that the policy also include measures to encourage persons not members of the ICAR to contribute to the Repository.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is suggested that as regards the implementation aspects of the creation of this repository, the ICAR would also have to ensure the creation of digital document identifiers for all content to be contributed to and housed on the repository. Additionally, the policy ought to also lay down standards of training and development of the staff and authors to submit content to the repository, and to be able to efficiently utilize the same. It is also suggested that the policy encompass the development of a framework for feedback for users and feedback from users, where the former would provide current statistics and details about articles and contributions to users, and the latter would be a mechanism for users to comment on their experience in utilising the repository.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Concluding Observations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society deeply appreciates the effort undertaken by the ICAR to bring about Open Access in its area of work, which is definitely a welcome step in the right direction. CIS hopes that given its commitment to Open Access and strong tradition of work in this area, the ICAR would give due regard to the observations made out in this report.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>]. Hereafter referred to as CIS.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>]. <i>See </i><a href="https://cis-india.org/about">http://cis-india.org/about</a> for more details.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>]. <i>See </i><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/">http://cis-india.org/openness</a> for our work on Openness.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>]. <i>Available at </i><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-ifeg-phase-1">http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/comments-ifeg-phase-1</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr5" name="fn5">5</a>]. <i>Available at </i><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature">http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-access-to-scholarly-literature</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr6" name="fn6">6</a>]. <i>Available at </i><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india">http://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr7" name="fn7">7</a>]. <i>Available at</i> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments">http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr8" name="fn8">8</a>]. <i>Available at</i> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study">http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-government-data-study</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr9" name="fn9">9</a>]. <i>See </i><a href="https://cis-india.org/@@search?SearchableText=open+access">http://cis-india.org/@@search?SearchableText=open+access</a> for details of our posts and events on Open Access.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr10" name="fn10">10</a>]. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, <i>Open Access Policy Concerning UNESCO Publications, </i>available at <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ERI/pdf/oa_policy_en_2.pdf">http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ERI/pdf/oa_policy_en_2.pdf</a> (last accessed 22 May, 2013).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr11" name="fn11">11</a>]. Id.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr12" name="fn12">12</a>]. Gerard van Westrienen and Clifford A. Lynch, <i>Academic Institutional Repositories: Deployment Status in 13 Nations as of Mid 2005, </i>available at <a href="http://dlib.org/dlib/september05/westrienen/09westrienen.html">http://dlib.org/dlib/september05/westrienen/09westrienen.html</a> (last accessed 22 May, 2013).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr13" name="fn13">13</a>]. Leslie Chan, <i>Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age: The Role of Open Access Institutional Repositories</i> , Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 29 (3&4), 277, 282.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-draft-icar-open-access-policy'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-draft-icar-open-access-policy</a>
</p>
No publishernehaaOpennessFeatured2013-05-28T06:44:45ZBlog EntryKonkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days
<b>There has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.</b>
<hr />
<p>The original details posted on the meta page can be <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Konkani_Wikipedia_workshop_21-24_August2013#Phase_2_.28Day_3_and_Day_4.29">viewed here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Introduction</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are 30 lakh <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_language">Konkani speakers</a> spread across the Konkani belt of <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_language">Goa</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka_Konkani">Karnataka</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_in_Karnataka_and_Kerala">Kerala</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkan">Maharashtra</a>. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia">English Wikipedia</a>, which has 4.3 million articles. However, <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Programme_Plan">CIS-A2K</a> teams effort in Goa to strengthen <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_languages">Konkani Wikipedia</a> project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Highlights of the Workshop</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A total of 38 students from the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unigoa.ac.in/department.php?adepid=7&mdepid=1">Konkani Department</a> took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.</li>
</ul>
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/KonkaniWikiLearning.png" alt="Konkani Wiki Learning" class="image-inline" title="Konkani Wiki Learning" /><br /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; "><i>Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unigoa.ac.in/department.php?adepid=7&mdepid=1">Goa University</a>. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi</i></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Articles and Participants</h3>
<p><b>Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)</b></p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%A7%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B" title="incubator:Wp/gom/धालो">धालो</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Varsha_kavlekar">Varsha Kavlekar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A6_%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%97" title="incubator:Wp/gom/केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग">केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mona_rodrigues">Mona Rodrigues</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%96%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80" title="incubator:Wp/gom/देखणी">देखणी</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fernandes_Sandra" title="incubator:User:Fernandes Sandra">Fernandes Sandra</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%8B" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोयच्यों परबो">गोयच्यों परबो</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Komal_dhuri">Komal Dhuri</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D" title="incubator:Wp/gom/जागर्">जागर्</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cliffa_fernandes">Cliffa Fernandes</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>6</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%95_%E0%A4%B5%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%AF" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय">गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Abigail_dias">Abigail Dias</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%96%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B2_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%A3" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण">गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Effa_Dias">Effa Dias</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>8</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%A5" title="incubator:Wp/gom/चवथ">चवथ</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shanta_Gaundalkar" title="incubator:User:Shanta Gaundalkar">Shanta Gaundalkar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B3%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B3%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B3" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ">कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dias_neves">Dias Neves</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87_%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A1" title="incubator:Wp/gom/राणेचे बंड">राणेचे बंड</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fay_Fernandes" title="incubator:User:Fay Fernandes">Fay Fernandes</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B3%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0" title="incubator:Wp/gom/रविंद्र केळेकार">रविंद्र केळेकार</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gaurisha_phal_desai">Gaurisha Phal Desai</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%95_%E0%A4%96%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B3" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ">गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Safira_Ferns" title="incubator:User:Safira Ferns">Safira Ferns</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>13</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%88_%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%AC" title="incubator:Wp/gom/शणै गोयबाब">शणै गोयबाब</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pratima_Fal_Desai" title="incubator:User:Pratima Fal Desai">Pratima Fal Desai</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A1%E0%A5%8B" title="incubator:Wp/gom/मांडो">मांडो</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anisha_gad">Anisha Gad</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%A4" title="incubator:Wp/gom/संगीत">संगीत</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Santoshi_kole">Santoshi Kole</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80,%E0%A4%93%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80" title="incubator:Wp/gom/म्हणी,ओपारी">म्हणी,ओपारी</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pooja_kavlekar">Pooja Kavlekar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>17</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B0_%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A6-_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%A3_%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B0" title="incubator:Wp/gom/मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर">मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sukhada_Daikar" title="incubator:User:Sukhada Daikar">Sukhada Daikar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>18</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां">कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Konknni_mogi_24">Konknni mogi 24</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>19</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A3%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8B" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणी लोककाणयो">कोंकणी लोककाणयो</a>, <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BE" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणी सिनेमा">कोंकणी सिनेमा</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Supriya_kankumbikar">Supriya Kankumbikar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>20</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%80" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी">गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी</a>, <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%AD%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A1%E0%A4%B3" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ">कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vaishali_Parab" title="incubator:User:Vaishali Parab">Vaishali Parab</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>21</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9F%E0%A4%95" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणी नाटक">कोंकणी नाटक</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Darshan_kandolkar">Darshan Kandolkar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>22</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B5_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0" title="incubator:Wp/gom/विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र">विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:John_Noronha" title="incubator:User:John Noronha">John Noronha</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)</b></p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%95_%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयचें लोक नाच">गोंयचें लोक नाच</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pooja_tople">Pooja Tople</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%AF_%E0%A4%B5%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A5%E0%A4%BE" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था">गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था</a>, <a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF_%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%89%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%8B_%E0%A4%87%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B8" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास">गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Priyanka_kudaskar">Priyanka Kudaskar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B3%E0%A5%80" title="incubator:Wp/gom/दिवाळी">दिवाळी</a>,<a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE" title="incubator:Wp/gom/शिरगांवची जात्रा">शिरगांवची जात्रा</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pritam_barve">Pritam Barve</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयची लोकगितां">गोंयची लोकगितां</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rusita_paryekar">Rusita Paryekar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%A3%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%B8" title="incubator:Wp/gom/हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस">हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gauri_Prabhugaonkar" title="incubator:User:Gauri Prabhugaonkar">Gauri Prabhugaonkar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>6</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BC%E0%A4%BE" title="incubator:Wp/gom/लोकवादय़ा">लोकवादय़ा</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Suma_parab_gaonkarr">Suma Parab Gaonkarr</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गाराणें">गाराणें</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Darshana_mandrekar">Darshana Mandrekar</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>8</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A8" title="incubator:Wp/gom/तुळशीलग्न">तुळशीलग्न</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Heefza">Heefza</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8B" title="incubator:Wp/gom/बारसो">बारसो</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nikita_Prabhu" title="incubator:User:Nikita Prabhu">Nikita Prabhu</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A5%E0%A4%BE" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणी कथा">कोंकणी कथा</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Marizma_mascarenhas">Marizma Mascarenhas</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां">गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Linette_saldanha">Linette Saldanha</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95" title="incubator:Wp/gom/बेबींक">बेबींक</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frania_pereira">Frania Pereira</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>13</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0" title="incubator:Wp/gom/तियात्र">तियात्र</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rhakee_Santos" title="incubator:User:Rhakee Santos">Rhakee Santos</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%87_%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4" title="incubator:Wp/gom/गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त">गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pereira_Goreti" title="incubator:User:Pereira Goreti">Pereira Goreti</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%80_%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8B_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%8B" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो">कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो</a></td>
<td><a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rubiya_komarpant">Rubiya Komarpant</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16</td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gom/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82_%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%AA" title="incubator:Wp/gom/कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप">कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप</a></td>
<td><a class="extiw" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Savidha_Talekar" title="incubator:User:Savidha Talekar">Savidha Talekar</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thegoan.net/Goa/Goenkar/Wikipedia-writes-a-new-script/05585.html">Wikipedia writes a new script</a> (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.epaperoheraldo.in/Details.aspx?id=10641&boxid=155915750&uid=&dat=8%2f25%2f2013">Konkani Wikipedia makes headway</a> (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Learnings<b> </b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Pre-course work : </b>Participants were asked to do <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf">pre-course work</a> before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_brochure_EN.pdf">to read beforehand</a>. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.<b> </b></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Limiting number of participants: </b>We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.<b> </b></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Longer duration workshop: </b>Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Bite size chunks:</b> The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Konkani_%28Devanagari%29_keyboard_layout_and_typing.pdf">typing in Devanagari</a> and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Energizers :</b> Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Student co-ordinators: </b>A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Varied sources of information: </b>We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (<a class="external-link" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/WWC-Netha-Hussain.ogv">Netha's</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tojUFx6VdNs">Poongothai's</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIdMVOhduSk">Sriket and Noopur's</a>, and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tZpg-FEqUg">Ganesh's</a> videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with <a class="external-link" href="http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome2WP_English_Flap_081810.pdf">handouts</a>, presentations, <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Konkani_%28Devanagari%29_keyboard_layout_and_typing.pdf">cheat sheets for typing</a>, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="MailOutline">
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Challenges</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhavi_Sardesai">Madhavi Sardesai</a> and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unigoa.ac.in/department.php?adepid=7&mdepid=1">professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University</a> to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
<ul>
<li>Browse through <a class="external-link" href="http://incubator.wikimedia.org/">incubator.wikimedia.org</a> to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/">en.wikipedia.org</a>. </li>
<li>Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work. </li>
<li>Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants. </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?</li>
</ul>
<table class="grid listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/KonkaniWikiEditing.png" style="float: left; " title="Konkani Wiki Editing" height="336" width="508" alt="Konkani Wiki Editing" class="image-inline" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><i>Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Acknowledgements</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unigoa.ac.in/contentarticledisp.php?id=3"> Dr. Satish Shetye</a> (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; <a class="extiw" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhavi_Sardesai" title="w:Madhavi Sardesai">Prof. Madhavi Sardesai</a>; <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unigoa.ac.in/academic_staff.php?staffid=40&adepid=7&mdepid=1">Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar</a>; and <a class="external-link" href="http://library.unigoa.ac.in/?q=node/7">Dr. Gopa Kumar</a>. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and <a class="extiw" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Nooronha" title="w:Frederick Nooronha">Frederick Nooronha</a>. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th></th><th></th><th></th><th> <br /></th><th><iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedians_speak_-_Konkani_Wikipedian_Frania_Pereira.webm?embedplayer=yes" width="534"></iframe></th><th></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td>Konkani Wikipedia editor <a class="external-link" href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frania_pereira">Frania Pereira</a> speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia. (by <i>Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0</i>)<br /></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>What's Next?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia Commons</a>. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.</p>
<hr />
<p><b>Additional Info</b>:</p>
<ol>
<li>Konkani Department, Goa University: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/14S87Ci">http://bit.ly/14S87Ci</a></li>
<li>Central State Library, Goa: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1dzHmao">http://bit.ly/1dzHmao</a></li>
<li>Konkani Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL">http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL</a></li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedWorkshopVideoOpenness2013-09-03T10:37:15ZBlog EntryTrain the Trainer Program
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program
<b>Wikipedians, about 20 of them, from 10 different cities, speaking 8 different languages, joined together for the first ever four days "Train the Trainer Program" organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in Bangalore from October 3 to 6, 2013. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/TTT">Read the original published on the Wikipedia meta page</a></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Programme_Plan">CIS-A2K</a> organised the residency training program to build capacities amongst different language Wikimedia communities. A good diversity of Wikipedians from various language communities such as Bengali, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Odia, came over for the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K identified two prominent reasons for organizing the event: (1) Limitations of a virtual sphere, and (2) Limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>Limitations of a virtual sphere</b></span><br />Most open source communities face problem of a lack of time and space for sharing ideas in a non-virtual sphere. Similary Wikipedians, who are voluntary contributors and authors of the articles posted on Wikipedia merely get time and opportunity to meet fellow editors because of the limitations of a virtual platform on which Wikipedia is built. There are twelve active Indian language Wikimedia communities that are spread across the world and moving the bandwagon of collaborating with each other and carving their historic mark of compiling the world's largest encyclopaedia and its other sister projects. To keep this movement alive there is a need of cross-sharing ideas of working together for a common goal and strengthening the leaders of these communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>Limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities<br /> </b></span>Only a handful of Wikipedians devote their time in leading outreach activities and bringing new blood to the community. Indian language Wikimedia communities are in need of empowering Wikipedians who would lead outreach sessions in order to expand their editor community and strengthen their language projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The inception of this program began with the discussion of organizing a training program for the Wikipedians who are willing to conduct more activities in their home cities. Finally on October 3, 2013, Bangalore heard the voices of prominent Wikipedians from Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Wikipedians delivered presentations on various topics such as — why Wikipedia is needed for the society, why Wikipedia in Indian languages, importance of starting new Wiki projects and so on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Their presentation delivery skills were judged by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Visdaviva">Vishnu Vardhan</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nitika.t">Nitika Tandon</a> and all other community members present. They gave individual assessments and feedback for improvement towards the end of the day. Personal trainer Sachin Nagarajappa spent time with Wikipedians discussing mistakes that trainers do while conducting workshops and gradual improvement techniques for impactful outreach. Wikipedia is built on the concept of crowdsourcing and Malayalam Wikimedian <a href="https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Viswaprabha">Viswanathan Prabhakaran</a> carried out a session about “Crowd Sourcing from the Future” explaining the various layers of crowdsourced projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first day ended with a task where different language Wikipedians formed groups to prepare presentations for the following day.</p>
<hr />
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_TraintheTrainer.png" alt="Train the Trainer 1" class="image-inline" title="Train the Trainer 1" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above: Wikipedians Satdeep Gill, Shyamal Lakshminarayan and Shubha during at the CIS-A2K Train-the-Trainer Program (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Groups were given a challenge of imagining the audience as new wikipedians. Five groups presented on the second day. Sachin conducted an advanced presentation skill improvement workshop based on the inputs from the participants and the assessment of the group presentations. Veteran Wikipedian <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಸದಸ್ಯ:HPNadig">Hari Prasad Nadig</a> shared learnings from Challenges & Opportunities in building an Indian Language Community online. Open source activist and CIS's Executive Director <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Sunil Abraham</a> conducted two sessions — a spectrogram based activity to simplify the "Criticality of Neutral Point of View" and an interactive session called “Speed Geeking” on offline and online outreach followed by a one-on-one discussion on the presentation skill improvement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Typing in Indian languages is not easy especially when it comes to multiple typing layout standards followed in the public and private sectors in India. <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pavanaja">Dr. U.B.Pavanaja</a> conducted a session on Unicode standard for Indian languages and its usefulness with a brief context on the fonts and their different operating systems. Social media expert and Wikimedian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tinucherian">Tinu Cherian</a> shared the secrets of popularizing Indian language Wikipedias and bringing outstanding contributors to the limelight, how media played an important role in showcasing initiatives for free encyclopaedic content contribution in India and tips of social media. With fun activities <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Visdaviva">Vishnu Vardhan</a> shared case studies of making Wikipedia workshops interesting. Wikimedia Foundation board member and writer <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Aprabhala">Achal Prabhala</a> shared stories of documenting Oral traditions in Kerala and South Africa for Wikipedia referencing and how copyright laws evolved in the context of copyright issues that Wikipedia contributors face. Achal also threw light on content donation on WikiSource and other platforms that would be useful for people to consume for knowledge production on diverse platforms where Wikipedia could play a central role. Viswanathan and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> demonstrated how to set up a handheld digital camera based prop to easily digitize books without using any scanner and then create electronic books.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The most vital part of Wikipedia articles is referencing. Wikimedian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal">Shyamal Lakshminarayan</a> demonstrated how finding sources of references and citing them for the facts on Wikipedia could be made easier through detailed research and by using several tools available. <a href="https://wiki.wikimedia.in/">Wikimedia India</a>'s founding member and veteran Telugu Wikipedian <a href="https://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/వాడుకరి:Arjunaraoc">Arjuna Rao Chavala</a> gave a talk about the history and future plans of Wikimedia India. Wikipedians then went to M.G. Road boulevard to see the weaving work by Gandhians, Philately exhibition on Gandhi and spent some time with Namma Metro's staff to know about the metro operation. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Kannada Wikipedian <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಸದಸ್ಯ:Omshivaprakash">Om Shivaprakash</a> guided Wikipedians to the office of Deccan Herald Prajavani where they got to see the entire newspaper production and spent time with the technical staff to learn about the use of Kannada Unicode fonts for newspaper printing. Editors and staff at Prajavani got to know about the use of WikiCommons as a free image repository.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The four action filled days involved learning new concepts, training on presentation skills, collaborating to create outreach documents, sharing stories from different language communities, understanding new mediums of outreach, meeting Wikipedians from different cities and also having lots of fun. Wikipedians left Bangalore city with happy faces and we hope to cultivate new editors in their communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>List of Participants</b></span></p>
<ul>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:AbhiSuryawanshi" title="en:user:AbhiSuryawanshi">Abhishek Suryawanshi</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:AnkitaS" title="en:user:AnkitaS">Ankita Sinha</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Charan_Gill" title="en:user:Charan Gill">Charan Gill</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:jayantanth" title="en:user:jayantanth">Jayanta Nath</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Kasyap" title="en:user:Kasyap">Kasyap</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Niraj_Suryawanshi" title="en:user:Niraj Suryawanshi">Niraj Suryawanshi</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:pranayraj1985" title="te:user:pranayraj1985">pranayraj vangari</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Satdeep_gill" title="en:user:Satdeep gill">Satdeep Gill</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://sa.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:shubha">Shubha</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Rangilo_Gujarati" title="en:user:Rangilo Gujarati">Rangilo Gujarati</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Manojk" title="ml:User:Manojk">Manoj K</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MKar" title="en:User:MKar">Mrutyunjaya Kar</a> (<a class="extiw" href="https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MKar" title="or:User:MKar">Odia Wiki</a>)</li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Subas_Chandra_Rout" title="or:User:Subas Chandra Rout">Subas Chandra Rout</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Nikhil.kawale" title="en:user:Nikhil.kawale">Nikhil Kawale</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%B6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%A8%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A7%E0%B1%8D.%E0%B0%AC%E0%B0%BF.%E0%B0%95%E0%B1%86." title="te:వాడుకరి:విశ్వనాధ్.బి.కె.">Viswanadh.b.k</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Hindustanilanguage" title="hi:user:Hindustanilanguage">Muzammil</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:John_Noronha" title="en:user:John Noronha">John Noronha</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedOpennessHomepage2013-11-18T07:52:26ZBlog Entry