Centre for Internet and Society

Exercise to Correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins

praskrishna — 2016-05-01T10:37:12Z

It will go on till Saturday at the Ramakrishna pre-university college.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/exercise-to-correct-articles-in-tulu-wikipedia-begins

T’puram to host Wikipedia workshop on May 4, 5

praskrishna — 2016-05-01T14:01:24Z

The workshop will be led by Prof. Madav Gadgil and a team of experienced Wikipedia editors.

Thiruvananthapuram: The Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre jointly with the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikipedia fraternity of Kerala, is conducting a two-day workshop on Wikipedia from 4 to 5 May at the Vakkom Moulavi Foundation Trust Hall, Thekkinmoodu. The workshop will provide guidance as how to contribute contents on Kerala or to translate pages in English on Kerala in the Wikipedia encyclopaedia. The workshop will be led by Prof. Madhav Gadgil and a team of experienced Wikipedia editors.

This article was published in Mathrubhumi on May 1, 2016. Read the full article here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/mathrubhumi-may-1-2016-thiruvananthapuram-to-host-wikipedia-workshop-on-may-4-5

Tulu Wiki may go live soon as writers work day and night

praskrishna — 2016-05-03T02:17:10Z

An article about Tulu Wikipedia progress was published in the Times of India, Mangaluru edition on April 30, 2016.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/tulu-wiki-may-go-live-soon-as-writers-work-day-and-night

Tulu Wikipedia Editathon to Improve Quality of Articles in Tulu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2016-05-07T15:43:42Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) organized a Wikipedia editathon for improving Tulu Wikipedia. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the sessions.

Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai, Principal of Shri Ramakrishna PU College, who himself is an active Tulu and Kannada Wikipedian provided the lab for this activity. Any Wikipedian (Tulu/Kannada) can walk-in and make use of the lab to edit Wikipedia. He has also procured more than 100 Tulu books from Tulu Sahitya Academy which will be kept there for reference.

Agenda

Improve the quality of articles in Tulu Wikipedia
Increase the length of short articles
Add inter-wiki links
Add references
Add images
Add categories
Improve language

The event will continue in June. More details can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/tulu-wikipedia-editathon-to-improve-quality-of-articles-in-tulu-wikipedia

Stats for March 2016

rahim — 2016-06-07T04:06:03Z

CIS-A2K team closely works with 5 Indian languages, we call as focus language areas. Here are the stats for the month of March 2016.

We generate stats for each of our focus language area month on month, and it has been used for designing and modifying our strategies from time to time. Though these stats were never published publicly, as we get them at stats.wikimedia.org already and publishing here is just repeating it; it was felt that some more metrics can be added and published month on month here at CIS blog. Also, the data here would be for the last month, while it takes two months for data to get updated at stats.wikimedia.org.

Stub articles created :

Kannada - 3/131

Konkani - 9/38

Marathi - 50/176

Odia - 8/89

Telugu - 59/284

In Kannada Wikipedia, about 131 new articles were created and of these only 3 are stub class articles. This is because Kannada Wikipedia is implementing a strict policy on not allowing a stub class article. There is an abuse filter created by one of the admins, Harish MG, which does not allow an editor to submit a smaller article than 1000 bytes. While Konkani showed a good progress in creation of new articles and only 9 of these 38 articles were stub class articles.

Marathi and Odia had a 28% and 9% share of total articles created as stubs respectively, while Telugu has about 21% of total articles created as stubs.

Active editors count has gone up in Kannada with 133 active editors during March 2016 - this could be accounted to the post 13th anniversary activities. Four focused editathons were organised as part of the 13th anniversary celebrations. The number of active editors increased in Konkani too. While in Marathi, Odia and Telugu the number was consistent with the previous months' numbers.

Now. lets look at the editing activity.

Kannada had 3279 edits adding about 86.57 MB of data. Konkani Wikipedia saw 920 edits in all, adding 8.41 MB of data. Marathi Wikipedia had 2926 edits with 68.42 MB of data; Odia Wikipedia added 1106 edits and 15.28 MB of data and Telugu Wikipedia had 8559 edits with 122.17 MB of data.

Having a provision of local image upload, Telugu Wikipedia added 53 images to the project while Marathi, one image was added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/stats-for-march-2016

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles

tito — 2017-06-28T10:03:41Z

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar has completed 1500 Did you know articles. This is the second highest on English Wikipedia.

Indian English Wikipedian User:Nvvchar has completed 1500 Did you know (DYK) articles. DYK is a short piece of fact (hook) taken from Wikipedia's newest content and is showcased on the "Did you know" section on the Main Page. On English Wikipedia 18-24 hooks appear on the Main Page every day. Since mid-2012 Nvvchar has been diligently working on this DYK project and has created (or expanded) articles on a very wide range of subjects such as religion, history, geography, arts, literature, women's achievement, education etc.

On 27 July 2011 Nvvchar completed 500 DYK articles. On 23 August 2013 his 1000th DYK appeared on the Main Page. The DYK nomination and review process need a lot of effort and sometimes it takes weeks to fully finish the process. However after the 1000th DYK in August 2013, in just 2 years 8 months Nvvchar touched another milestone. On 26 April 2016, his 1500th DYK appeared on the Main Page of Wikipedia and the fact was from an article Rudra Mahalaya Temple, an ancient ruined temple located Sidhpur in the Patan district of Gujarat.

A few Wikipedians congratulated him for this achievement. User:Ijon, a Hebrew Wikipedian, appreciated him saying-

Thank you for the persistent and quiet work you do to contribute much-needed knowledge to Wikipedia!

User:Victuallers, an English Wikipedia administrator, wrote on Nvvchar's talk page-

Lets just guess that the average DYK gets read by 100 people - that means you have a readership of 150,000 people. I think its more like 1000 per DYK appearance so that means that your words have been read by over 1 million people and thats just on the first day of publication! There must be multi-millions of people who know a little more about Asian settlements, buildings, people and artefacts then they would have done without the efforts of Nvvchar. . . . . . Great respect for your efforts. Thanks from the Wiki and its many readers

As of 9 May 2016, Nvvchar has 1503 DYKs.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/nvvchar-1500-dyk

Cultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER

praskrishna — 2016-06-09T12:51:46Z

The OER conference was held in Edinburgh, Scotland on April 19 and 20, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk at the event organised by the University of Edinburg.

The vision for the conference was to focus on the value proposition of embedding open culture in the context of institutional strategies for learning, teaching and research. The conference was chaired by Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh, and Lorna Campbell, OER Liaison at the University of Edinburgh and EDINA Digital Education Manager. The OER 16 conference primarily focused on:

The strategic advantage of open and creating a culture of openness.
Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.
Hacking, making and sharing.
The reputational challenges of openwashing.
Openness and public engagement.
Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.

Subhashish Panigrahi - Cultural Institution aka GLAM for More OER (OER16, 19-20.04.2016) from The Centre for Internet and Society

Resources

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/cultural-institution-aka-glam-for-more-oer

Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: January iteration

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-15T17:47:50Z

The January iteration of the Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise took place online.

The Google-translated Telugu articles prioritization is an online exercise intended to prioritize and improve over 1,900 machine-translated articles on Telugu Wikipedia. This project began from 2009- 2011 when Google translation project took place on Telugu Wikipedia in several rounds. Jointly organised by the Telugu Wikipedia community and CIS-A2K, this exercise saw the participation of 1 female Wikipedian and 4 male Wikipedians.

12 machine translated articles were improved and 39 have been deleted due to their poor quality. In addition to this, 42 articles have been prioritised for further improvement. Says Telugu Wikipedian User:Meena gayathri.s, "people who wanted to improve Google-translated article waited [for a] long time to get a priority list of articles to be improved and in that aspect, this exercise is very useful."

Several such iterations are planned for the coming months. The meta page for the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/google-translated-telugu-articles-prioritisation-exercise-january-iteration

"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Vijayawada

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-16T10:38:22Z

"Free-license Wings To Your Books" event held at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada

Over the course of the last one year, CIS-A2K, with the help of Telugu Wikipedia community members, has been regularly conducting re-licensing events, scan-a-thons and digitization activities in and around Guntur and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh in order to raise awareness about free licensing books and content. Notable among these are the series of digitization and proofreading sprints conducted at Andhra Loyola College. The "Free-license Wings To Your Books" held on 8 February, 2017 was a culmination of these series of events in Vijayawada.

This event aimed to raise awareness about free-licensing in Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada. The awareness session was followed by community felicitations to writers Kanuri Badarinadh, Fr. Poodota Jojayya and Fr. Job Sudarsan who have released some their content into CC-BY-SA. Fr. Job Sudarsan announced at the event that all his works shall be re-licensed into CC-BY-SA. Later, certificates were distributed to student Wikipedians who contributed to the digitization of 3,500 pages in Wikisource by participating in the digitization sprint that took place at the event. Notable attendees at the event were Mandali Buddha Prasad, Deputy Speaker of Andhra Pradesh, Samala Ramesh Babu, Editor, Nadustunna Charitra and Fr. G.A.P. Kishore, Principal, Andhra Loyola.

The link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-license-wings-to-your-books-in-vijayawada

Orientation & Training session of Jalbiradari Activists

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T11:30:24Z

An Orientation & Training session of Jalbiradari Activists was held on 4 January, 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia orientation and training session was conducted for Jalbirdari activists on 4 January, 2017 at the Kokale District, Sangli, Cooperative Society Hall. The event was keeping in line with CIS-A2K's attempts at engaging with communities of interest. The Jalbiradari water conservationists were introduced to Wikipedia and its projects. They were given an orientation on Marathi Wikipedia as a knowledge resource and encouraged to write about their village, water and environmental issues on Marathi Wikipedia.

The participants were involved in an open interaction with the community on local issues and cultivation and preservation of local knowledge. With 30 members taking part in the three-hour-long event, four articles were created and edited on Marathi Wikipedia.

The meta page for the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/orientation-training-session-of-jalbiradari-activists

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Shivaji University, Kolhapur

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T13:47:44Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held at Shivaji University, Kolhapur on 19 January, 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted by CIS-A2K in collaboration with Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha at Shivaji Univeristy, Kolhapur on 19 January, 2017. This was similar in nature to the Wikipedia edit-a-thon conducted at Willingdon College in Sangli. The aim of the edit-a-thon was to introduce Wikipedia to the research and post-graduate students of the University.

The three-hour-long edit-a-thon conducted at the University's Marathi Language Computer Lab also focused on building resources in the field of linguistics on Marathi Wikipedia. In addition to equipping the participants with editing and categorisation skills, the workshop encouraged them to contribute to linguistics-related articles and biography articles of Marathi authors and litterateurs. With 50 participants overall, the event increased the reach of Marathi Wikipedia, introducing it to those previously unaware of its existence.

The link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-shivaji-university-kolhapur

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, Pune

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T14:31:46Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held at 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, Pune on 7th February 2017

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon conducted by CIS-A2K in partnership with 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee, an organisation working in the field of education and social work was held on 7 February, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to train participants from 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee on the basics of Wikipedia editing. The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on education and community development on Marathi Wikipedia. Six participants took part in the three hour workshop conducted at the 'Swa'-Roopwardhinee premises.

This edit-a-thon is part of CIS-A2K's ongoing effort to engage communities of interest to partner and collaborate on contributing to Wikipedia so as to utilize their domain knowledge on the free encyclopaedia. Five articles were created and edited by participants.

The link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-swa-roopwardhinee-pune

Orientation & Training session for Environmental Activists in Satara on 13th February 2017

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-16T14:43:25Z

A Marathi Wikipedia Orientation & Training session for Environmental Activists was held in Satara on 13 February, 2017

As part of the ongoing CIS-A2K effort to work and collaborate with communities of interest, a Marathi Wikipedia orientation and training session was held in Satara on 13 February, 2017. The workshop trained environmental activists on basic Wikipedia editing skills. The participants were introduced to Wikipedia as a knowledge resource and were encouraged to contribute to Wiki projects.

The theme of the workshop was to build resources in the areas of biodiversity and environmental issues on Marathi Wikipedia. The participants were also given orientation regarding contribution to the villages project where they could edit articles about their villages and towns. The three-hour workshop held at Sukale Studio in Satara saw six participants collaboratively creating and editing two articles. The participants were also trained in "smart editing" on their smartphones.

The link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/orientation-training-session-for-environmental-activists-in-satara-on-13th-february-2017

Imperial College Orientation Program, Bargarh

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-16T19:51:29Z

An Odia Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Imperial College, Bargarh on 12 February, 2017.

An Odia Wikipedia orientation workshop was conducted at Imperial College, an affiliate of Sambalpur University, on 12 February 2017 for 60 undergraduate students of the College. The aim of the workshop was to introduce students to Odia Wikipedia while also giving them a broad overview of the global free knowledge movement. This workshop was conducted as part of CIS-A2K's ongoing efforts to expand the reach of Odia Wikipedia in Western Odisha in conjunction with the Odia Wikipedia community members.

The students were also introduced to the process of digitisation and how digitisation was fundamental to the preservation of language and local knowledge. The students also showed an interest in the digitisation sprint for the Dadhivamana Temple's Pothi digitisation project, an ongoing effort to digitise 250 ancient palm leaf manuscripts from the Dadhivamana Temple in Bargarh.

The meta page for this event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/imperial-college-orientation-program-bargarh

Bargarh Manuscript Digitisation Project

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-16T20:08:04Z

The digitisation of temple manuscripts at the Dadhivamana Temple, Bargarh in Western Odisha followed by a workshop for the students of Imperial College took place between 11- 12 February, 2017.

Shri Dadhivamana Temple, also known as the Srikshetra(Puri) of Western Odisha is a 400-year-old temple in Bargarh, Odisha. The temple is among the most important religious sites in Western Odisha. The temple has a record room with 250 ancient palm leaf manuscripts in the Odia language, dating back to the 16th century. These palm leaf manuscripts tell the stories of the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Skanda Purana and the history of the temple itself.

Given the historical value of the temple, the temple administration and the Temple Trust have preserved the pothi(palm leaf manuscripts) with the help of various chemicals, including the indigenous usage of turmeric and camphor. The process of preservation of the manuscripts began a few years ago years with student volunteers from different colleges in Bhatli helping the temple administration by identifying and storing the manuscripts.

Minati Sahoo, a well known social activist in Bargarh and a few other journalists explained the importance of manuscript digitisation to the temple administration and took permission for digitising the manuscripts in the month of March. One of the pandas (temple priests), Pandit Shri Goura Chandra Ratha, released his book, Jay Shree Dadhibamana, under the Creative Commons 4.0 license. A three-day long digitisation camp will be organised in Bhatli for introducing the students to Wikipedia and the process of digitisation. The manuscripts will be digitised simultaneously during the workshop.

An orientation program was organised at Imperial College, Bargarh for introducing the students of the college to the digitisation process as well as to introduce the pothi digitisation which they would be partaking in. With over 60 participants, the workshop not only explained the idea of the global Wikimedia movement to them, but also taught them how they could use the digitisation skill for the preservation of language. This digitisation project will bring different manuscripts into Odia Wikipedia, while also helping to raise awareness about digitisation of language in western Odisha. After scanning the manuscripts, the Odia Wikipedia community will take help of the students for uploading, digitising and proofreading the same.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bargarh-manuscript-digitisation-project