Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Wikipedia Workshop at VSSUT, Burla (Coverage in the Sambad)

praskrishna — 2013-08-19T08:51:59Z

An Odia Wikipedia workshop was organized on July 26 and 27, 2013 at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla. The Sambad (Sambalpur edition) covered the event.


Below is a scanned version of the news published in the Sambad on July 27, 2013:

Click below for more details:

Link to event page: http://bit.ly/14VdEdG (CIS has been credited for financial support).
Link to the report on mailing lists: http://bit.ly/1eWsKyl

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odia-wikipedia-workshop-at-vssut-coverage-in-sambad

4 tips for DIY makers

subha — 2016-11-22T02:36:39Z

I started learning stencil printing and hand lettering this year, and became quite enthralled with it. These age old techniques really add something special to postcards, which I usually send to myself, my wife, and my friends while traveling.

The article was published in Opensource.com on November 18, 2016

Of course, I started considering how I could make the artwork from these postcards open to others.

First, I take a picture of the postcard and upload it to Wikimedia Commons under a free license, usually Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 International. These two licenses allow anyone to use the image of my artwork for both non-commercial and commercial purposes, modify and remix them. And uploading to Wikimedia Commons puts my artwork in a place where many people will see it.

Sometimes, I capture the postcard-making process as well, and upload those images to Wikimedia Commons.

If you're considering making your DIY project open, here are four main considerations:

1. To share or not to share?

Deciding whether to share your craft project or image might be an easy "sure, why not?" but you may be wondering "but, is it useful to others?"

My opinion is that yes, everything you make could be interesting to others, so why not make it open? There is certainly something in every maker activity that is worth sharing publicly. When I was making a stamp that was quite special and personal, and I did not want the whole world to see it because it was personal, but I did capture the stamp carving process for others to see. You might want to ask around friends and other people in any maker community you are part of. Also, try asking yourself what really would matter to other people so that you can share only useful outcomes and tips rather than sharing everything.

2. Choosing a license

I wrote about three tips for sharing your work online. And there are many other resources out there, including Creative Commons and GitHub.

A simple rule of thumb is: Except content that clearly indicates the work is released under a free license, or that the copyright has lapsed and the work is in the Public Domain, you can assume content is not freely/liberally licensed.

3. Where to share

There is almost a platform to share anything these days. Most popular multimedia platforms support Creative Commons-licensed works, like YouTube and Vimeo for video, Flickr for images, Medium for writing, Jamendo for music, and many more. Wikimedia Commons, mentioned above, is a sister project of Wikipedia and the world's largest multimedia repository; it allows original works to be uploaded and shared by Copyright holders and others of works like images (.jpg, .png, .gif), presentations (.pdf), videos (.webm and .ogv), and audio files (.ogg).

Know of more places to share works? Let us know in the comments.

4. Meet birds of feather and exchange ideas

There are tons of global and local events that bring people of all maker interests under a single roof.

An event that I love is Mozilla's Maker Party. I have been to one in my city of Bengaluru, India and can guarantee it is lots of fun!

Events like this help connect you with other makers who live nearby.

Tell us about your experience

I hope these tips have helped. Do you have other tips to share? Leave us a comment.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/opensource-november-18-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-4-tips-for-diy-makers

Changing the typographic landscape of a country: one letter at a time

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:06:51Z

My interest in designing typefaces in Indian scripts grew out of years of disappointment with the way most Hindi books I came across looked. Apart from a few exceptions, they looked like poor cousins of English books. Whether it was a children’s story book or a novel or magazine, there was usually the same drab typeface.

The blog post by Pooja Saxena was published in Storyweaver on December 1, 2016.

Some letters didn’t look like what we were taught in school, on others the matras (vowel marks) didn’t arch at the right places. Overall, the books and the letters inside them had an air of neglect. They looked old and completely unexciting. When I first learned that designing typefaces was a real job, I thought here was the opportunity to change all that.

Cambay, Devanagari typeface designed by Pooja Saxena for Google Fonts

Changing the typographic landscape of a country as diverse as India is not a one-woman job, but every now and then a project comes by that has the potential to make a small difference. Two years ago, as a result of a conversation with Subhashish Panigrahi, the Access to Knowledge programme at the Centre for Internet and Society commissioned a Ol Chiki typeface family. The Ol Chiki script, about which I knew precious little at the time, is used to write the language Santali, which is spoken by over six million people in India and its neighbouring countries. At the time that we started working on this project, there was no Unicode compliant typeface available in the script, making it impossible for it to be used on computers and cellphones, and online in a consistent and future-proof way. We hoped to change that by designing a small, but useful typeface family (it comes in regular, bold and italics) along with input methods and keyboard layouts that would allow a person to type Ol Chiki text easily.

Guru Gomke, Ol Chiki typeface designed by Pooja Saxena with research inputs from Shubhashish Panigrahi,for the A2K Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society.

This project was especially challenging because not only was Ol Chiki a completely unfamiliar script to me and Subhashish, but there was limited material available for us to consult. While designing a typeface in a script one reads and/or writes, or is at least familiar with, one’s experience with those letters can act as a guide. By writing them and seeing them printed in different fonts, in many people’s handwriting — some good, some bad — and on hand painted signs, one develops an instinct for identifying which parts of a letter make it recognisable. That way we know what parts of the letter can be exaggerated, and what others can be played down without compromising legibility. For an unfamiliar script, this visual vocabulary and the traditionally correct way of writing letters must be learned. Manuscripts, printed documents, handwriting manuals and samples, metal type, linguistic information about the script, feedback from native readers — all form parts of a puzzle that needs to be put together to design a competent typeface.

The story of Ol Chiki script is fascinating. The script is less than a century old, and was devised by Pandit Raghunath Murmu, who wanted to create a script that could accommodate all the features of the Santali language — something that the scripts used to write Santali so far had failed to do. Legend has it that he based the design of the letters on objects commonly found in the everyday environment of the Santals. Even though the script was created between 1920 – 1940, the Santal community has many myths about how it was created. One says that the script came to be at the time when the Earth itself was created, another says that the script was given as a divine gift to a learned man, Pandit Raghunath Murmu. It is after Pandit Raghunath Murmu, who is reverentially called Guru Gomke, that the Ol Chiki typeface that I designed was named. You can find out more about the Ol Chiki typeface and input methods project here.

Custom lettering for the Tamil branding of the Coovum Art Festival, designed by Pooja Saxena

If you’re interested in Indian type design and le ering, consider following the work of these exceptional designers — Noopur Datye, one of the co-founders of type design collective, Ek Type, who has designed custom typefaces TV channels like LifeOK; Kimya Gandhi, who is partner at Mota Italic, and recently designed an inventive Devanagari handwriting font; or Lipi Raval, whose flamboyant Gujarati typeface Mogra is a complete head-turner.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/story-weaver-december-1-2016-pooja-saxena-changing-the-typographic-landscape-of-a-country

విజ్ఞాన నిధి వికీపీడియా..

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:38:48Z

The article about Telugu Wikipedia appeared in Namaste Telangana on December 11, 2016.

సిటీబ్యూరో:ప్రాపంచిక విషయాలను, చారిత్రక ఘట్టాలను, శాస్త్రీయ విషయాలను ప్రపంచానికి చేరువ చేస్తున్న విజ్ఞాన నిధి వికీపీడియా. ఆధునిక సాంకేతిక పద్ధతుల ఆధారంగా ఆన్‌లైన్‌తో ప్రపంచంలోని పలు ఆసక్తికరమైన విషయాలన్నింటనీ ప్రజలందరికీ చేరువ చేసే నేస్తం ఇది. అందరికీ ప్రవేశం, అందరికీ ఉచితంగా అందుబాటులో ఉండే ఈ ఎన్‌సైక్లోపెడియాలో మన చరిత్ర, మన సంస్కృతి మరెన్నో విషయాలను జోడించేందుకు సమాచార సైనికులతో వికీపీడియా డేను పురస్కరించుకొని గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్‌లో శనివారం ఓ కార్యశాలను నిర్వహించింది. విజ్ఞాన సమాచారం,భౌగోళిక, చారిత్రక అంశాలు, సాంస్కృతిక విషయాలను వికీపీడియాలో చొప్పించేందుకు చేపట్టాల్సిన కార్యక్రమాలను ఈ కార్యశాలలో చర్చించారు. వికీపీడియాలో అందరూ తమకు తెలిసిన ఆసక్తికరమైన అంశాలపై వ్యాసాలు రాయవచ్చని, ప్రపంచానికి కొత్త విషయాలను పరిచయం చేయవచ్చని ఆంగ్ల వికీపీడియన్ టిటో దత్తా అన్నారు. వికీ ట్రైనర్, ట్రైనర్ ద ట్రైనర్ కార్యక్రమంలో వికీపీడీయన్లు కశ్యప్, ప్రణయ్ పలు సాంకేతిక అంశాలను తెలుగు వికిపీడియన్లకు వివరించారు. చరిత్రకారుడు, కవి కట్టా శ్రీనివాస్ మాట్లాడుతూ గోల్కొండ వంటి పలు చారిత్రక ప్రదేశాల్లో ప్రజలకు తెలియని చారిత్రక, సాంకేతిక ప్రదేశాలు, ఆసక్తికరమైన అంశాలు ఉన్నాయని వాటన్నింటినీ సేకరించి, ప్రపంచానికి చేరవేయాల్సిన అవసరం ఉందన్నారు. ఈ కార్యక్రమాన్ని వికీపీడియన్లు చేపట్టి విజయవంతం చేయాలన్నారు. సీనియర్ జర్నలిస్ట్ బీవీ ప్రసాద్, మౌర్య, మీనా గాయత్రి పాల్గొన్నారు.

Link to the original in Namaste Telangana

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/namaste-telangana-december-11-2016-article-on-wikipedia

Ongoing Proof-reading Effort by ALC Student Wikimedians in Telugu Wikisource

Pavan Santosh & Ting-Yi Chang — 2016-12-30T11:00:09Z

Student Wikimedians at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada formatted and proof-read more than 1,900 folios in Telugu Wikisource during the last few weeks of November (2016). Each day, a group of twenty students uses the lab facility provided by the college after regular classes to make necessary formatting changes and fix spelling mistakes in the folios of books available in Telugu Wikisource. Till date, the student Wikipedians have proofread eight books.

The work was initiated and supported by CIS-A2K members who organized a proofreading workshop of the Bible Bhashya Samputavali Volume 06 on Telugu Wikisource in Andhra Loyola College during 18 to 20 November 2016. During the workshop, Telugu Wikimedian Gullapalli Nageswara Rao (User:Nrgullapalli), along with CIS-A2K community advocate Pavan Santhosh helped students to learn about the process of digitizing book in Telugu Wikisource and other formatting aspects involved. In this event, nearly twenty students picked up the skills required to proof-read a book as well as the formatting techniques in Telugu Wikisource. Some students had also started to proof-read three other books that are currently available in Telugu Wikisource.

This event also marked great effort and accomplishment of promoting gender balance and diversity in local community events — as the organizers and institution successfully assured a minimum 50% female participation rate throughout the three days. CIS-A2K member Ting-Yi Chang also gave a short introduction to the participants about the issue in Wikipedia (media) Gender Gap. Students who had previous Wikipedia editing experience at the ALC were also invited to the session, rendering around thirty female audience. The presentation included small brainstorm activities for students to discuss reasons behind the gender asymmetry online and on Wikipedia/media projects, as well as how we as community members can make a difference to help women feel more welcomed.

A follow-up Wikisource session was conducted on 25 and 26 November 2016 for students to learn about the remaining steps in digitization and the OCR tool. Thanks to encouragement and motivation given by Principal Rev. Fr., Dr. Peter Kishore, staff members Prof. Siva Kumari, and Dr. K. Sekhar, the student Wikipedians had started to contribute to Wikisource after class for at least a couple of hours every day. These events and accomplishments show remarkable efforts and dedication from both student Wikimedians and the institutional partner.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ongoing-proof-reading-effort-by-alc-student-wikimedians-in-telugu-wikisource

Community Digest—Estonians working on a new feedback system for Wikipedia articles

subha — 2016-02-27T06:30:41Z

Community digest is a weekly publication on Wikimedia Blog. This week, I have authored a section on the Kannada Wikipedia's 13th anniversary that is being celebrated today. It includes a small section from a longer interview with Kannada Wikipedian Vasanth S.N. The two blogs on creating Odia-language character encoding converters I had written before in the Huffington Post and the DNA are also featured in the digest.

Read the original published on Wikimedia Blog here.

Sites that rely on the cooperation of people need to be able to easily exchange information. When there are some problems with an article, you could always add some templates to specific places or point to them on talk page—but that can sometimes be painful and time consuming.

The problem can grow even greater when articles are written inside a Wikipedia Education Program. You may need to follow up with hundreds of students and provide them feedback so that they can easily understand what should they fix. This can be a rather tricky job when dealing with people who have never before written to Wikipedia.

For example, in Estonia we have a course called “Estonian Composition and Conversation” in the University of Tartu, where there are on average more than 200 students per year writing articles on Wikipedia. We are keenly interested in providing good quality feedback, but with that number of students and with the use of the usual wikisystem, that is hard to achieve.

So we needed a solution.

When using the usual method (the talk page), you need to point out where are all of the mistakes located and then express your concerns about them. With a lot of comments, that does get rather messy and it’s hard to understand where are those comments directed to; it’s not an ideal medium for feedback in massive scale and not that useful for neither the students nor the person giving feedback. So the goal was simple: to ease the process of giving feedback to students who write wikiarticles as their coursework.

What we did was to create a system called WikiComment.

What does it do? Well, at first it allows to add comments to exact letters/sentences/paragraphs to speed up the commenting process and make it easier to locate the issues. In addition to adding comments, it also provides various highlighting options and a possibility to strike through text. Secondly, it allows for better monitoring of the articles of interest. That means the wikiComment user has information about which pages have been modified and he or she can easily check if the changes have solved the marked questions.

We hope that this will make it easier to focus on text and to the quality of writing.

Obviously WikiComment could be used outside the education initiative and in many other ways as well, but that is just how it all started. For example we’ll soon add support for sites like Meta-Wiki, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikinews, and Wikiquote, among others. Having a discussion about some details in grant request or talking about local tourist sites may have just become easier. But to really optimize the system and to make it as good as possible we’ll need your feedback, so please go on and test that site—if you have any suggestions, just let us know.

Ivo Kruusamägi, Estonian Wikipedian

In brief

Kannada Wikipedia anniversary: The Kannada Wikipedia is all set to celebrate its 13th anniversary. The first ever edit on Kannada Wikipedia was made on 12 June 2003 with a message “Kannada Vishwa Koshakke Suswaagatha!” (meaning welcome to the Kannada encyclopedia in Kannada). However, it took over a year—on July 12, 2004 the first article about a city Shimoga was created. Over the last decade Kannada Wikipedia has been a great gamechanger for the Kannada language where the Wikipedians have played a great role in making it a household name—there were about 700,000 pageviews in December 2015. The annual average of active editors for last year was 48, 91 (February) being the highest and 22 (May) the lowest and 80 being the count in last December. The peaks and valleys also signify that major outreach like Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University Bengaluru could have boosted the total number of editors during the months when the program was being rolled out. Since its inception, the project has gone through many ups and downs over time, the major one being a small community to edit and curate such a high level task of creating new articles in Kannada, editing and enriching them with more information and citations, and cleaning up many articles.

The biggest hurdle, as explained by Wikimedian Hari Prasad Nadig, has been cleaning up the articles created by paid translations of Google when Kannada Wikipedia along with many other Indian language Wikipedias were used as testing grounds for improving Google Translate, a multilingual machine translation tool. Vasanth S.N., a Kannada Wikipedian who has cleaned up over 60 such articles prefers to use an existing good quality encyclopedia like the 16 volume Kannada Vishwakosha, published by Mysore University and relicensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 by the university, as a resource to create and improve articles. To celebrate the journey of the project and the community, Kannada Wikipedians are gathering at Saint Aloysius College Mangalore, Karnataka this 14th. The larger community, including long time Wikipedians and new members like the students faculty involved in Wikipedia Education Programs, will gather and participate in a day-long edit-a-thon and chalk out plans for the future.

Innovation and revolution in the Odia language: Wikimedian Subhashish Panigrahi has written two pieces recently. In dnaindia.com, he described a Unicode converter that in revolutionizing Internet access in the Odia language; in the Huffington Post, he wrote about why contributing and adding to Wikipedias in Indian language is so important.

Coming together across the divide: Saanjh (ਸਾਂਝ سانجھ), a Punjabi word which means collaboration, was an online edit-a-thon between the Gurmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia and Shahmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia in January 2016. The plan came together after two editors, one from each side, met at Wikimania 2015. Organized by the Punjabi Wikimedians User Group, 23 editors participated; you can read more about their story on Meta.

Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikimedian and Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K), Centre for Internet and Society
Ed Erhart, Editorial Associate, Wikimedia Foundation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-community-digest-estonians-working-on-new-feedback-system-for-wikipedia-articles

Bodh: a new tool for Wikidata lexicographical data

Bodhisattwa Mandal — 2021-06-28T01:19:11Z

We are happy to announce that a new tool, named Bodh, has been developed by Jay Prakash, as a CIS-A2K assignment, to add or modify statements for lexemes, senses and forms.

This tool presents lexicographical data in tabular format generated from SPARQL queries or from manual lists. Users can switch whether to work on lexeme proper, sense or form and add or modify statements there.

The idea of this tool was inspired by the one and only Magnus Manske's Tabernacle which helps editors to add or modify statements, labels, descriptions and aliases for Wikidata's entity data.

The tool is going to be documented here. Users of this tool can request for more features or report for bugs using this phabricator project profile.

Happy editing!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bodh-a-new-tool-for-wikidata-lexicographical-data

Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia

Nitika Tandon — 2012-09-29T12:13:04Z

Nitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps.

What is Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia?

Editor Growth & Contribution Program is an online outreach program that will help raise the number of active editors on Telugu Wikipedia. The program will provide an entrance point for newcomers to Wikipedia, enabling them to contribute to its contents and share the knowledge they possess, while participating and communicating with existing Wikipedia community members. Such a program will serve as a compliment to off-wiki outreach activities already underway.

Some of the Telugu Wikipedians like Arjuna, Dr. Rajshekhar, Sujatha are in the initial stage of discussing the possibility and ways of running an Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia.

How will the program run?

The idea is to run outreach banners using the local site notice on Telugu Wikipedia for three consecutive months. These banners will be in the form of short bios/stories of Telugu Wikipedians who agree to be featured in the editor campaign. Most Wikipedia visitors are unaware of the fact that regular folks write articles on Wikipedia and not scholars or paid writers. These personal stories from active Wikipedians could feature their motivation to contribute, their passion for building and developing Wikipedia, their early experience with Wikipedia as an editor, their invitation to site visitors to become Wikipedia editors, etc. Such personal stories will add a human touch to Wikipedia and will help new visitors related to real life stories.

Each of these banners will link to a landing page. The landing page will start with a question at its top saying “What would you like to do in Wikipedia?” followed by six buttons each listing an answer to this question, and linking to the corresponding tutorial page. These six buttons will be: create your username, create your userpage, edit an existing article (fix a typo), add a reference, create a new article, and send a message.

Landing page will be designed in a simple way to avoid any visual distraction for the visitor. Each button will provide a detailed graphical explanation on how to perform each of those actions. To understand the workings of the program in greater detail please click here (this program design is just a rough draft and may change as required).

Why Telugu Wikipedia?

As per Wikimedia Stats Telugu speaking population is around 8 crore. Telugu Wikipedia has about 18 lakh page views per month and 21 active editors (5+ edits in a month). In a community with such large numbers of speakers but extremely low number of Wikipedia editors, there seems to be a lot of scope and opportunity to increase Wikipedia's reach and awareness amongst Telugu speaking population and more so amongst reader of Telugu Wikipedia to start improving and expanding Wikipedia articles and foster the growth of Telugu Wikipedia community.

Telugu Wikipedia at a glance July 2012

Number of speakers of other Dravidian languages like Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil is relatively low but have higher number of page views and active editors as compared to Telugu as seen in the table on the right. KA, ML and TA Wikipedia communities have run different programs over time to increase it's reach, spread more awareness and invite new editors. Some of these programs were TamilWiki Media Contest, Tamil Wikipedia Contribution Campaign, Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program, Kannada Medical Project, etc. Telugu Wikipedia requires a similar high impact project that can help them grow their community.

Comparison of Telugu Wikipedia with other langauge Wikipedias.

Cross pollinating ideas

Tamil and Arabic Wikipedia communities have already experimented with Editor Growth & Contribution Program and have produced amazing results. Ravi from Tamil Wikipedia and Haitham from Arabic Wikipedia were actively involved in running the contribution programs on their respective language Wikipedias and have offered help to run similar project on Telugu Wikipedia and provide regular guidance and support.

Next steps ahead

Strong community support will be required to run such a program. The larger Telugu Wikipedia community will plan a meet up sometime in October in Hyderabad to take this program forward. Special thanks to Dr. Rajshekhar who has offered to organise this meet-up.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia

Indian Women in Science Wiki edit-a-thon

praskrishna — 2014-10-13T06:17:56Z

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon is being held at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on October 11, 2014 from 10.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. The event is being organized by IndiaBioScience in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team.

CIS-A2K will conduct the first three edit-a-thons.

In India, Science as a discipline is subject to many of the same gender issues as it is worldwide - women scientists are fewer in number than men, they occupy fewer positions of power, and face distinct issues by virtue of their gender and the accompanying societal pressures. Women Scientists in India also tend to be less visible than their male counterparts, and public awareness of Indian Women Scientists is low.

IndiaBioScience will be organising a series of public events to raise the profile of women scientists on one of the most-popular online encyclopaedias - Wikipedia. At these events, participants will be encouraged to create and complete profiles of Indian Women in Science.

To participate sign up below or click here (http://www.indiabioscience.org/content/women-science-wiki-edit-thon

Contact the IndiaBioScience Team for more details: www.indiabioscience.org & team@indiabioscience.org

At the venue, the events will begin with a short, hands-on introduction to Wiki editing. Participants can then go on to pick the scientist they would like to work on. There will be an interaction session with a guest Woman Scientist around lunch, with a discussion of issues commonly faced by women in science. In the afternoon session, participants can continue working on the Wiki pages, with a break for tea. Participants are requested to bring their laptops. We have a few desktops available at Saturday's venue for those who cannot do so.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/india-women-in-science-wiki-edit-a-thon

Wikipedia can establish Tulu in a wider way

praskrishna — 2014-10-24T16:01:07Z

In his predential address after inaugurating the three-day workshop on ‘The use of internet for promotion of Tulu language,’ organised by Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy President Janki M Brahmavar opined that internet media, especially Wikipedia, can contribute to a large extent towards the promotion of Tulu language. The president said there was a need for the effective use of Unicode for the digital interpretation of Tulu.

This was published in Mangalore Today on October 17, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja gave his inputs.

Delivering a talk on the occasion, Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore) Indian Languages Programme Coordinator and Wikipedia representative Dr U B Pavanaja said that Tulu Wikipedia is in the process of getting life. He said that minimal work has taken place in Tulu language and that too, is not up to the mark, to be considered for the inclusion of the language to the 8th schedule. There is a need for Unicode, which would enable the language to acquire wide recognition, though it positively qualifies as a classical language of ancient times.

There should at least be 500-600 articles in Wikipedia to consider it as live. At least 8-10 articles should be uploaded every month. He added that only eight people had updated their Tulu articles into Wikipedia, during previous year, when the workshop was held at Mangalore. At present the number has gone up to 320. Until March, the number of articles uploaded was 137. The government should work towards it. Dr Pavanaja added that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, and is in 287 languages across the world. Anyone who is interested can update his or her articles into the encyclopedia. There are nearly 6000 languages across the world. The people who avail the internet facilities at home can also work on some articles and upload their write ups into Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalore-today-october-17-2014-wikipedia-can-establish-tulu-in-a-wider-way

Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-11-01T13:23:54Z

The Wikipedia India Community Consultation 2014 was organized by the Wiki Media Foundation (WMF) and Wikipedia India Chapter in collaboration with Centre for Internet Society (CIS A2K) Bangalore on The venue was Movenpick Hotel and scheduled for October 4th and 5th here.

The article was published in the Siasat Daily on October 24, 2014.

The objectives of the meet up according to the organizers are “to share views and preferences on the most effective ways to pursue our shared vision of creating and sharing free knowledge in India and in the Indian languages, and to arrive at an agreement on a road map for a future where its resources are better utilized, its volunteers are better served and progress on its mission is more steadily attained. “

I reached Bangalore on 3rd October and invited Urdu speaking people and the Urdu media from Bangalore for a general meet up. Mr. Azeez Belgaumi a renowned Urdu Poet & writer and Mr. Syed Tanveer Ahmed, as senior Journalist heading “Karnataka Muslims” News portal approached me and we had a good conversation to know more about Urdu Wikipedia. They appreciated Wikipedia and promised to extend their support to the Urdu Wikipedia.

Mr. Syed Tanveer Ahmed and Mr. Azeez Belgaumi promised to take up the initiative to conduct some Wiki workshops in collaboration with Salam foundation and CIS A2K. Mr. Vishnu the Project Director CIS has also agreed to extend his best support to organize the outreach programmes in Bengaluru and other parts of India to develop Urdu Wikipedia.

An introductory meeting was held in the evening of 3rd October in which members of WMF and the Wikipedians representing languages viz. English, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Assamese, Kannada, Konkani, Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, and Gujarati attended.

On 4th October after noon the scheduled meet up was conducted wherein WMF Senior Director Grantmaking Mrs. Anasuya Sengupta from US, Head of Wikimedia Grants & Global South Partnerships Mr. Asaf Bartov from US, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Garfiled Byrd from France and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees Mr. Petricio Lorente from Argentina Trustee Bishakha Datta participated. Mr. Gagan Sethi from Counterviews Gujarat facilitated the programme.

The Indic language bureaucrats, sysops and representatives participated actively and focused on the topic how to improve the Wikipedia in Indic languages. This session gone up to 7 p.m. and in the night too, the delegates had the get together to discuss on various issued related to Wikimedia programmes in India.

On the 5th October morning the work shop continued with dignified discussions. Various user groups from different languages took part and presented their views and successes. The discussions focused on wiki tools, various practical problems, do’s and don’ts. It’s a fabulous meet to take part, comprehend, and show the spirit of volunteerism towards Wikipedia.

During discussion on Urdu language, Mr. Asaf appreciated the contributions of Mr. Muhammad Shuaib. Mr. Nisar Ahmed Syed administrator in Telugu Wikipedia represented Urdu Wikipedia too as he is a contributor to Urdu Wikipedia. He discussed issues and stressed the need of outreach and developmental activities for Urdu Wikipedia in India. Mr. Muzammil Ahmed from Hindi and Urdu Wikipedia advocated its importance.

Ms. Anasuya and Mr. Asaf Bartov accepted the need of Urdu Wiki development programmes in India and they said they are ready to prepare a road map for the same.

Finally with the initiations of Mr. Nisar Ahmed Syed and with the kind cooperation of Mr. Asaf Bartov and Mrs. Anasuya Sengupta, an Urdu user group was set and introduced. The user group initially was gathered by backing of Mr. Asaf Bartov. The group has Mr. Syed Nisar Ahmed (Pune), Mr. Muzammil Ahmed (Hyderabad), Mr. Azeez Belgaumi (Bengaluru) and Mr. Satdeep Gil (Punjab).

The contributions of Muzammil Ahmed and Nisar Ahmed to Urdu Wikipedia were appreciated. The WMF team thanked all the Urdu users from India who rendered their best contributions.

Emphasis was laid to improve the Urdu Wikipedia India group.

As WMF intends to focus on the online encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA in the Indian languages Urdu users too expressed willingness to work for the mother tongue Urdu by enriching Urdu Wikipedia.

Mr. Nisar Ahmed said, “It is true that the awareness among the Urdu speaking community about Urdu Wikipedia is very less.” He emphasized the need to take a small step to lead to a large extent to bring awareness by means of outreach programmes, meet ups, seminars. It was accepted and appreciated to initiate outreach work among the Urdu speaking states and clusters in India.

In India about 450 newspapers and magazines are being published in Urdu language. And it is an amazing fact that many of the Urdu newspapers are using the Wikipedia as their source material from English Wikipedia as it has a large and authentic content, but they are not aware about the need to enrich Urdu Wikipedia. It should be known that everyone can edit, resource and enrich it. Hence it is decided to start a user group for Urdu Wikipedia India and to bring the same message to the masses.

“Bring Urdu Wikipedia from budding stage to a blooming stage.”Courtesy:Karnataka Muslims

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/siasat-daily-october-24-2014-wiki-media-foundation-keen-on-developing-urdu-wikipedia

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Enadu

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T11:32:16Z

Eenadu covered the event on June 25, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik are quoted.

A scanned version of the event published in the district edition is below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/eenadu-june-25-2014-coverage-of-vijaywada-event

Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era: Coverage in Sakshi

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T11:31:57Z

Sakshi covered the Vijaywada event on June 25, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik gave their inputs.

Given below is a scanned version of the coverage published in the district edition:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/coverage-of-event-in-vijaywada-june-25-2014-sakshi

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — May 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T05:30:05Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of May 2014:

We from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) thank you all for your support and collaboration. We bring you the details of our work for the month of May 2014:

CIS Signs MoU with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College

CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College to introduce “Indian Language Wikipedias in the Indian Under Graduate and Post Graduate Classroom”. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU. The signing event took place earlier on April 21, 2014.

Articles

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, May 2, 2014).
GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects (by Subhashish Panigrahi, OpenGLAM, May 27, 2014).
Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Open Education Working Group, May 27, 2014).

Blog Entry

Community led Konkani Wikipedia Outreach (by Nitika Tandon, May 16, 2014)

Event Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop at Udupi (co-organized by CIS-A2K and the Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi, May 25, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Wikipedia in UG Education program at Christ University (Prajavani, May 15, 2014).
Subhashish Panigrahi joins Open GLAM Working Group Subhashish recently joined the OpenGLAM Working Group (a global network of people who work to open up cultural data and content.) as a member and OpenGLAM Local (a local affiliate of OKFN's OpenGLAM project) as an ambassador for India. Both the positions will be voluntary.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Rahmanuddin Shaikh. One team member Nitika Tandon is based in Delhi. We also have one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana working with us. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here. Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-may-2014

150 Rare Books Get New Lease of Life Online, Courtesy Students

praskrishna — 2014-07-18T06:12:31Z

You might have heard about Samkshepa Vedartham by Clement Pianius, the first book printed in Malayalam but might not have got a chance to read it.

The article by Anila Backer was published in the New Indian Express on July 15, 2014. The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) supported this Malayalam community event.

Now, you can read the book published in 1772 online through the Malayalam Wiki library (Wiki grandhasala). More than 150 such rare books have been digitised and uploaded by the school students across the state and a few members of the public as part of the digitisation contest jointly hosted by Malayalam Wikipedia community, IT@School, Kerala Sahitya Akademi , Centre for Internet and Society and Swathanthra Malayalam computing.

More than 1,000 students from 137 schools and 234 participants from the public uploaded more than 13,000 pages of rare books such as Hasthalakshana Deepika (1892) by Kadathanattu Udayavarma Thampuran, Madamahee Shashathakam Manipravalam (1908) by Kottaratil Shankunni, Malayazhmayude Vyakaranam (1863) by Rev George Mathan and Divan Shankunni Menon (1922) by C Achutha Menon as part of the competition held during January and February.

Besides, you can also acquire information on the social scenario during different time periods, like the matrilineal system of inheritance, ‘Marumakkathayam’ through the various volumes of old magazines digitised by the students. Magazines such as Mangalodayam and Rasikaranjini are also available in the wiki library. “Books that were not available in Malayalam and those existed only in the German and French libraries were digitised with the contest. The contest was organised to provide the public access to these rare collections,” says IT@School Wayanad district coordinator V J Thomas.

“It also allows one to search for a particular word or topic as well as to copy the content of the book for a research work or other purposes that cannot be done with a scanned copy of a book,” he adds.

“Moreover, it also aims at developing an interest among the students towards Malayalam computing and to make them effectively utilise the scope of Internet, besides improving their reading habit,” he added.

“It has also improved the typing speed of the students and they get familiar with the old fonts in the language also,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-july-15-2014-anila-backer-150-rare-books-get-new-lease-of-life-online-courtesy-students