Centre for Internet and Society

Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon for Mechanical Engineering students of Sagara

Ananth Subray — 2016-03-01T13:56:54Z

In Sagara, Karnataka, a Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon is being planned to be organised during January 26-27.

Kannada Wikipedia has turned 13 this year. Started in June 2003, the free Kannada-language online encyclopedia is one of the major resources in the language on the Internet. With over 19700 and even with many broader topics like art, literature, politics, science and culture covered in Kannada Wikipedia, there is significantly low content about Mechanical Engineering. Mechanical Engineering enthusiasts of the city are coming together to bridge this gap by creating and enhancing content in Kannada on the internet. Out of the three days, the whole day of the 25th is dedicated for clicking pictures of historical places of the city which will additionally contribute to articles related to the city. The event is being organised by the Kannada Wikimedia community that voluntarily contributes to grow Kannada Wikipedia and several other Kannada Wikimedia projects, and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge programme. The edit-a-thon will include demonstration and practice sessions of input in Kannada script, basics of Wikipedia editing and its policies and guidelines, searching for references from various journals and notable books, and translation of technical content, and is open to all. Anant Subray, Programme Associate who is the organiser of the event could be contacted at 9739811664 for more information.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-for-mechanical-engineering-students-of-sagara

A workshop to improve Telugu Wikipedia articles on Nobel laureates

Pavan Santhosh — 2016-09-12T15:01:15Z

Many articles about Nobel laureates are missing in the Telugu Wikipedia. Recently undergraduate students from four different disciplines of the Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada gathered to create and improve articles related to Nobel laureates.

Spanned for three days—from August 16 through 18—54 students from the department of Telugu, Botany, Statistics and Physics edited articles related to Nobel laureates, improved the content quality and inserted images that were already there in Wikimedia Commons. There was a great balance of equal participation in the number of female and male students. During this sprint 124 existing articles on Telugu Wikipedia were improved and 118 of them saw images being added. Though it was challenging for me to manage so many participants, I was partly successful in mentoring some of the students who in turn helped their friends with basic editing.

Apart from educating the students about editing Wikipedia, I demonstrated about digitising “Kavitvatattva Vicharam”, a book authored by by Kattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy in 1913 and is considered as the first modern literary criticism in Telugu literature, on Telugu Wikisource. Some of the students tried to proof-read the book for the first time.

There is a plan laid out to work with a small subset of these participating students again for different kind of academic-centric projects like the QRpedia project. To keep the activity more regular, the students are are creating the missing Botany-related articles. We are hoping to work with remaining students at least once in every quarter. A few recommendations for bettering the students’ understanding of Wikipedia and the community that Telugu Wikipedian User:Chaduvari had shared earlier came quite useful during this event. Based on his inputs I did my best elaborating the [Wikipedia] project structure and community dynamics to the new editors. Another long time Wikimedian Rajasekhar followed up on the Wikisource activity remotely. B. Manikantha, a students from the Arts department shares, “Until now I always had a notion that Wikipedia might be some sort of entertainment website where we can listen to music and play games. But after attending this workshop I could understand how great it is as a learning platform. Also I learnt about one of our professors Dr. Gumma Sambashivarao who is a noted author, and how the articles about more such authors could be made available online in our language.” “It was fun translating articles in my favourite subject—war. I’m hoping to continue my contributions further”, he adds.

More details in the event page on Telugu Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/a-workshop-to-improve-telugu-wikipedia-articles-on-nobel-laureates

ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ୍ ଲେଖିବା

subha — 2016-09-17T16:04:12Z

I authored a column on writing our code in our own hands for the editorial of Odia-language daily the "Samaja". The piece is about the philosophy of software freedom and how free and open source software is making a significant difference in our lives. I have also shared a little bit about how anyone can celebrate the Software Freedom Day today by contributing to and sharing about to FOSS.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/samaja-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-let-us-write-our-code-in-our-own-hands

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1)

ting — 2016-09-21T10:13:59Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

“Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors…. only 8.5% of editors are women.”

Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only 3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been silenced and forgotten?

What is the Wikipedia gender gap?

There are two main focus on the gender gap within Wikipedia – the editor demographic and the coverage of topics – which are essentially flip sides of a coin. With fewer female contributors, we are losing a more diverse knowledge platform for all. But the issue is far more complex than simply having less information about “friendship bracelets” than “baseball cards.”

Looking at the biography pages on Wikipedia, researchers found that not only is the number of female biographies much lower than males’ (due to historical factors, availability of firsthand sources, and editors’ interest), but the linguistic and topical bias within also presents a male-centered discourse. For example, on women’s biography pages, words related to one’s gender such as “women,” “female,” “lady” will be used more commonly than the counterpart words in men’s pages; and that a women’s biography will have more information about her marriage and family life than her male counterpart’s. Studies also found that female-related articles are more likely to be linked to male-related ones but not the other way around[1]. This demonstrates that the editing preference, styles, and content are closely related to the editors’ genders and how they see the world. In other words, language and knowledge cannot be separated from one’s gender – the Internet may be bodiless but it can never become genderless[2].

Wagner et al.’s paper[3] in early 2016 also confirmed the existence of a “glass ceiling” for female figures to be considered “notable” enough to have a Wikipedia bio page (or for the page not to be deleted). Who gets to decide what is “notable enough” becomes questionable when we understand the gender bias. As a matter of fact, while the difference in male and female biography numbers is narrower for globally known figures, a larger gender gap exists for “local hero(ine)s” because of the notability threshold applied. That is to say, many women and female-related topics are underrepresented (and underappreciated) on Wikipedia.

The danger and why it matters

Low awareness

The Wikipedia gender gap is problematic and deserves more attention than ever not only because gender imbalance should be tackled both online and offline, but also that this imbalance is so prevalent and has been taken for granted by most. Little do people consider, that with every single “click” on one’s google search, we can be provided with an answer from a single-gender narration. This imbalance and its problems are behind the scene – the share of male and female editors are never on the surface without a holistic survey. While gender balance has been pushed in our business, education, and government sectors, the online encyclopedia feeding billions of internet users (and over 300 million in India itself) is still constructed in a male-dominant culture with little questioning from the public.

Legacy and influence

There is the saying that Internet is changing the human default from “forgetting” into “remembering.” Wikipedia can serve as a great tool for digitization of knowledge and the preservation of languages. What is to be recorded now will become parts of (perhaps the most accessible) history in the future, and we cannot afford a history without women’s voices and knowledge. Hence, to include more women editors and women-related content is not simply out of a concern of diversity, it is to ensure that this time we can pass on the legacy in a better and more equitable fashion for the whole population.

The vicious circle

“We’ve to participate in meet ups and workshops, then question (from family members) arises like how many guys are there, is there any girl or not. In one sentence we're discouraged by our surrounding.”

– Female editor from local community

The urgency of this problem is that the lesser women are presented in the communities, the harder a motivation can be established for new female editors to join. Now that we have made this issue visible, the core mission we have is to ensure a change in the system and environment that helps women feel more welcomed and comfortable – even when they are aware that they are the minority.

In the next part of this blog series: Why is there a Gender Gap?

[1] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

Graells-Garrido, Lalmas, & Menczer, (2015). First women second sex: gender bias in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media (pp165).

Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

[2] Code, L. (2000). Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London: Routledge

[3] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-1

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 2)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:55:39Z

In the last part of the blog series, we examined the definition and danger of the Wikipedia gender gap. This issue has been puzzling for many – why is there such a wide gap globally?

Why is there a gender gap?

The reasons behind the Wikipedia gender gap are complex and culturally-sensitive. Two main types of barriers are discussed as “inside of Wikipedia (internal)” and “outside of Wikipedia (external).”

Internal	External
Challenges using Wiki mark-up and its interface	Limited access to internet and facilities
(rare in India) Challenges in getting help from community members	Lack of skills
(rare in India) Being discriminated as a newcomer	Lack of confidence
(rare in India) Experience of discriminative behavior/conflicts	Limited time
The fear of becoming “visible” as one of the few female in the community	Preference to more socially interactive online activities (Lack of interest)
	Awareness - not knowing Wikipedia is editable

(From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience)

India v.s. the World

Unfortunately, most studies have been done in English Wikipedia and rarely in other smaller language communities, despite the fact that these barriers can vary a lot in different cultural, political, and economic context. In India, practitioners and researchers have identified a few potential causes of low female participation rate on Wikipedia. Contrary to what was discovered in the English Wikipedia, researchers have found that Indian female Wikipedians are generally more active and willing to participate in both online and offline interactions compared to those in the English Wikipedia community. Reports of gender discrimination cases are also fewer than those in the Western context. A possible explanation to both phenomena is that Indian Wikipedian communities are rather small and close-knitted which encourage more interpersonal networking and prevent anonymous attacks[1].

Awareness

However, recruiting and keeping female Wikipedians in India do have its own barriers to overcome. “Awareness” is discovered as one of the very primary barriers for most to start editing Wikipedia. Many did not know that the online encyclopedia is easily editable, and even more have not heard of (or are unfamiliar with the use of) Wikipedia. Outreach events are important portals for both men and women to discover and join local Wikipedia communities. And this is where weakness can be turned into strength; as most newcomers are brought in through community outreach events or personal connection, it creates a strong bond within the members and a more welcoming culture featuring collectivism rather than individualism.

On the societal level?

Although the binary categorization of inside and outside of Wikipedia is widely used, it can easily lead us to believe that we can draw a clear line in between Wikipedia and the offline world, but neglect the big picture which shapes both sides of the table. Ignoring the fundamental (societal) level of the issue and its linkage to other factors poses the risk of nurturing a symptom-fixing solution instead of a system-questioning culture.

For example, societal factors such as expectation on women’s/girls’ role and priority in her family can prevent them from the access to required facilities, internet, training, and personal leisure time for joining (or continuing editing) Wikipedia. On the psychological experience side, some women reported that they do not feel comfortable when being so “visible” online and in the community[2]; and this has a lot to do with how our online (and offline) society has been constructed and conceptualized as an “unsafe” space for women.

In fact, Wagner et al. (2015)[3] have found that a nation’s Gender Inequality Index (GII) is associated to the country’s editor gender bias on Wikipedia. Although it was a study focusing on Global North samples, the logic behind is most likely applicable in India (which ranked 130 out of 188 countries’ GII in 2014) – as the more unequally women is treated in the society, the less likely that she can reach the pre-requisite to be a Wikipedian, or even be online. For example, in India there is a much lower literacy rate for female than male – 53.7% to 75.3% as reported in the 2011 Census. At the same time, population (above the age of 25) with at least some secondary education is 56.6% for male and only 27% for female in India based on the UN Human Development Report.

All these societal factors and nuances feed into the gaps we see today – in higher academic positions, in industries, and eventually in Wikipedia. It is definitely not easy to address the macro-scale problems, but what we can do is to change it from the community level to influence individuals and the society. Hence, we are not just battling against an online phenomenon created by individuals’ unwillingness to participate, but challenging and redressing the patriarchal power while transforming the traditions of how knowledge flows. After all, bridging the gender gap should not be merely a target of “We will reach X% female participation rate by Y years,” it has much greater potential and responsibility in the long run for our generations and societies.

In the next part of the blog series, we talk about: What has been done? & What’s more to be learned?

[1] From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience and from WCI 2016 presentation:

[2] Jadine, L., (2013). Same Gaps Different Experience

[3] Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-2

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 3.)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:54:47Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries in Wikipedia gender gap narrowing on both local (India) and global scales.

This is the third (last) part of the blog series, please see Part 1 and Part 2.

Responding to the Wikipedia gender gap problem, former WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner set a target in 2011 to raise the female editor percentage to 25% by 2015. In an interview in August 2014, Jimmy Wales declared that “we’ve completely failed,” Gardner also noted that the solutions should come from local Wikipedian communities rather than from the Foundation on a macro scale.

Although the target was not met, initiatives and reforms taken places globally and locally in the past five years are not fruitless. And as mentioned in Part 2, we should not define this movement as merely pursuing a goal towards certain percentage or number. As for now dialogue has been created to include the issue into more strategic plans; collectives are established to cumulate and share resources across communities. There has been abundance of learning (and definitely much more to learn) in the issue.

What has been done?

Be it ongoing or spontaneous, international or local, there have been many interventions trying to address the gender gap in Wikipedia.

Intervention events

In July 2015, WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was launched to “turn "redlinks (non-existing pages) into blue ones (existing pages).” The project encourages editors worldwide to create (or expand) female-related pages (biographies, women’s work, contribution, issues, etc.) that fit the notability criteria of Wikipedia. WiR also picks monthly and annual topics to feature. Currently in September, 2016, edit-a-thons on Women in nursing and women labour activists are happening online. And “Women scientists” edit-a-thon is a year-long featured topic for 2016. Although WiR is still primarily an English-WP project, some communities have expanded and localized it to local initiatives.

Coincidentally, in 2013, Indian Wikipedian communities have carried out one of the biggest and most well-known gender gap intervention – Lilavatis’ Daughters. “Lilavati’s Daughters” is a book of essay collections featuring nearly one hundred women scientists in Indian since the Victorian Era. The 2013 edit-a-thon was hence to create Wikipedia pages for these biographies in different Indian languages. Collaborating with institutions and colleges, the event was greeted with high popularity and success. Similar events were also carried out afterwards, including Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon which has been held annually since 2014; the last event was held in July, 2016 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Another significant initiative across the globe and in Indian communities is the annual Wikiwomen’s history month in March along with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8^th. The initiative started in 2012, edit-a-thons, photo-thons (updating photos onto Wikimedia Commons), and meetups have been held to raise the awareness of the gender gap online, create female-related content available on Wikipedia, and to strengthen the bonding between local Wikiwomen.

Recently, Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with the United Nations to launch the one-day Her Story project Edit-a-thon on August 12^th, 2016 to celebrate International Youth Day globally. Cities in India like Chennai and Delhi also held local edit-a-thons on the day of in response to the event. With the opportunity to work alongside the UN, it is a good sign that the Wikipedia gender gap issue is drawing global attention, not just in the Wikipedian community level, but also in global institution level.

Collaborative

The Wikiwomen’s Collaborative is a global platform for female Wikipedians to share projects, insights, and support. The Collaborative also encourages participants to write blog post on the Wikiwomen’s Blog to spread more words about the gender gap issue and initiatives. A Gender Gap Task Force (GGTF) was founded in 2013 aiming to challenge the patriarchal culture of knowledge and Wikipedia. GGTF tries to fix the encyclopedia’s imbalance power structure by initiating discussion and examination on its policies and editor interaction. It has also been a place to cumulate research studies and resources on the gender gap topic. A (global) gender gap mailing list is also created to spread the news and words with more communities.

Improvement in the Interface

Aside from events and collectives organized by respective communities, the Wikipedia platform itself has also been under constant transition in the last few years, trying to create a friendlier place for women and newcomers.

Since June 2012, the new prototype Visual Editor has become available in more and more language versions of Wikimedia projects – including most Indian languages. Visual Editor enables editor to contribute without learning the Wiki markups, as it creates the “write-as-how-you-will-see-it” feature requiring only basic typing skills. Nevertheless, Visual Editor does have several limitations comparing to the traditional edit source option, including slower speed, unavailable in talk and discussion namespaces, limited template editing options, and so on. While a research in 2013 on Visual Editor’s use in English Wikipedia showed low effectiveness of the new feature in attracting and encouraging new editors, more research should also be done in the non-English (especially Global South) context. Online tutorial resources about editing are also becoming available in Indian communities.

Traditional Wiki markup editing screenshot

Visual Editor screenshot

On the other hand, mobile apps of Wikipedia has been improved in its editing function. Although the apps are still in constant development to make the function smoother and easier for mobile users, it is a great breakthrough for those who do not have personal computers to contribute in small ways (or even in great ways – some have created pages and denied the statement that mobile editing is impractical).

What’s more to be learned?

There is no denying that our Indian language communities have been putting efforts to highlight and address the gender gap issue on Wikipedia. The Wikiconference India 2016 in August also had a panel responding to this topic where panelists from both outreach and research threads proposed localized perspective and strategies to fix the problem.

However, there are still much more to be learned. First of all, we need a more organized feedback loop (a cycle of planning-executing-evaluating-sharing learning) for local interventions to learn from our success and mistakes. Secondly, the issue has to become more “public” in a sense that we are not just promoting within our own circles. Awareness-building through media coverage and institutional collaboration can bring in greater public opinions and volunteers to help the online encyclopedia become a more inclusive place. The third point is a change of mindset: women's feeling and experience should be put forward into the central of our initiatives and interventions.

“We made it clear that we were focusing on the (female) participants and their experience, the content they created online are of course important too, but that’s just the by-product.” -Wikiconference Indian 2016 Gender Gap panel presenter

In other words, as we are engaging more and more women, the focus should not be numbers but the humans. At the same time, we should always encourage women to stand out and speak out. As mentioned in the previous part, gender discrimination cases have not yet been reported in our communities, but we also have to ensure if it does happen both the female editors and the community should have a certain level of awareness (what constitutes harassment/discrimination/sexism; when and how to call out) and a report and support mechanism to the problem.

The road to a real equalized knowledge system is not easy. As many have noticed and pointed out “This is not just a Wikipedia problem!” Indeed, similar gender imbalance exists in our academies, IT industries, free and open-source software (FOSS) workplace, to name a few. Nonetheless, with the flexibility and the strong bond that Indian Wikipedian communities possess, we can be one of the pioneers in positive changes. After all, the knowledge created and action taken today will shape what our tomorrow can be like.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-3

Tulu Wikipedia Conference in Mangaluru

praskrishna — 2016-09-22T23:50:18Z

A Tulu Wikipedia conference organized by the Times of Kudla (Tulu name for Mangaluru) newspaper was held at Malki, near Mangaluru on August 13 and 14, 2016. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a presentation on Tulu Wikipedia.

Prominent Tulu Wikipedians Dr. Vishwanatha Badikana and Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai also talked about their experiences of making Tulu Wikipedia live.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/tulu-wikipedia-conference-in-mangaluru

What Indian Language Wikipedias can do for Greater Open Access in India

subha — 2016-10-22T04:12:40Z

The number of internet users in India was expected to reach 460 million by 2015, as the growth in the previous year was 49 percent. The total number of users for Hindi content alone reached about 60 million last year.

This was published by Your Story on October 20, 2016.

State of Indian languages on the internet

Based on a study, Internet activist Anivar Aravind mentioned that in 2014, although 89 percent of Indian population used mobile phones, only 10 percent of the population used smartphones (contributing to 13 percent of total mobile users). This means we can safely assume that a large section of online activity in India is through mobile devices ‑ thanks to the declining data charges because of high competition. That said the mobile internet connectivity in rural India is growing at a fast pace and vernacular content plays an important role in this great journey. With over 90 percent of the users being comfortable in their own native languages, websites that are producing content in Indian languages are going to drive this bandwagon.

Why open access is important for Indian languages?

Open access, in a nutshell, would mean research outputs and other educational resources that are free from restriction of access and use. The former includes resources like journals that are not paywalled, and the latter is freedom from copyright restriction. Open access as a movement encourages license migration ‑ a process of migrating from several copyrighted license terms to Creative Commons licenses and several other licenses that provide freedom to use, share and remix. In a country like India where there are only a handful of research journals available in vernacular languages, the need for open content becomes much more important. The more the restricted content, the less will be the access to knowledge. Creating more vernacular content with open licenses is like digging a well in a dessert.

Indian language Wikipedias as open access journals

It’s been almost a decade since most largely spoken Indian languages started having a Wikipedia project of their own. Presently, there are 23 Indian language Wikipedias, including newest entrants like Konkani and Tulu. That said, these projects are growing with more and more encyclopedic content written with a neutral point of view, which any internet user will find useful. Wikipedia is considered as the people’s encyclopedia and hence can have quite contrasting content ‑ some being poor because some volunteer editors lack expertise in high quality articles written by professionals. A great example of creating very high quality content in one particular subject area is Open Textbook of Medicine ‑ an offline encyclopedia consisting of Wikipedia articles related to medicine that was created by a group of dedicated volunteer medical professionals that happened to be Wikipedia editors. There is enormous potential to grow Wikipedia in multiple languages with high quality content.

How to grow open access in Indian languages using Wikipedia as a tool

The list of challenges to grow Wikipedia-like projects with volunteer effort could be endless. And one of the biggest challenges is bringing self-motivated people who are willing to contribute as volunteers. Also, there are many such people who are not aware that they can contribute to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community has created an ecosystem by having several Wikimedia chapters and other affiliates that are run by both volunteers and paid staff ‑ the Wikimedia Foundation, a paid staff-run organisation that is responsible for fundraising, major technological and some community support. In India, Wikimedia India, Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program (CIS-A2K) and Punjabi Wikimedians are three such official affiliates that are working on catalysing the growth of the content and the communities. Where the affiliate Punjabi Wikimedians focuses on Punjabi language (in both Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts), both Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K focus on all the Indian languages. CIS-A2K also specially focuses on five languages; Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu. Indian language Wikipedia projects can only grow if people can edit their own language Wikipedias.

With the Open Access Week—a week dedicated for promoting Open Access globally—around the corner with “Open in Action” as the theme of the year, there is no better time for anyone who can read and write in their native Indian language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/your-story-subhashish-panigrahi-october-20-2016-what-indian-language-wikipedias-can-do-for-greater-open-access-in-india

How Open Access Content helps Fuel Growth in Indian-language Wikipedias

subha — 2016-10-25T01:39:42Z

Mobile Internet connectivity is growing rapidly in rural India, and because most Internet users are more comfortable in their native languages, websites producing content in Indian languages are going to drive this growth. In a country like India in which only a handful of journals are available in Indian languages, open access to research and educational resources is hugely important for populating content for the various Indian language Wikipedias.

This was published by Opensource.com on October 24, 2016.

Indian-language Wikipedias and open access

Most commonly spoken Indian languages have had Wikipedia projects for almost a decade. Languages like Konkani and Tulu are new entrants in the Wikipedia family, and currently there are 23 Indian language Wikipedias. One example of high-quality open access content is the Open Textbook of Medicine, an offline encyclopedia consisting of Wikipedia articles related to medicine, which was created by a group of dedicated volunteer medical professionals that happen to be Wikipedia editors. There is enormous potential to grow Wikipedia in multiple languages with high-quality, open content like this.

To help fuel the growth of Wikipedia and its various projects, such as the Indian-language Wikipedias, the Wikipedia community has created an ecosystem with Wikimedia chapters and other affiliates, which are run by both volunteers and paid staff from the Wikimedia Foundation, an organization responsible for fundraising, technical, and community support. In India, Wikimedia India, the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program (CIS-A2K), and Punjabi Wikimedians are three such official affiliates working on catalyzing the growth of the content and the communities.

Whereas Wikimedia India focuses on expanding all the Indian-languages content, Punjabi Wikimedians focus on Punjabi language content (in both Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts), and CIS-A2K focuses on five languages: Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu.

Indian-language Wikipedia projects can only grow with the help of volunteers editing their own language Wikipedias and adding missing information from a reliable sources, which is where open access content can help.

Open in action

The 2016 International Open Access Week will be held October 24-30, 2016. The theme this year is Open in Action. The announcement explains, "International Open Access Week has always been about action, and this year's theme encourages all stakeholders to take concrete steps to make their own work more openly available and encourage others to do the same. From posting preprints in a repository to supporting colleagues in making their work more accessible, this year’s Open Access Week will focus on moving from discussion to action in opening up our system for communicating research."

Indian contributors show the spirit of Open in Action as they help add content to the various Indian-languages Wikipedias. They depend on open access to research and other publications to help millions of people, including those living in rural areas, who are joining us online.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-october-24-2016-open-access-growth-indian-language-wikipedias

Using Kannada in technology made easier with smartphones

praskrishna — 2016-11-01T05:19:17Z

With the IT revolution, many believed that the younger generation would prefer to type and communicate in English than Kannada.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was interviewed by the New Indian Express. The article was published on November 1, 2016.

But U B Pavanaja, a member of Kannada Software Committee and a Kannada Wikipedia administrator, believes with latest technology, the use of Kannada has only been increasing. As the state celebrates Karnataka Rajyotsava today, Ashwini M Sripad spoke to Pavanaja on adapting Kannada language to the latest technology.

Where does Kannada stand when it comes to adopting technology?

Quite good. But not the best. Most tools needed to use Kannada in technology are available now. They are almost perfect.

Has there been any change in the use of Kannada in computer/mobile by youngsters in the last decade?

Yes. Due to the availability of Kannada input methods, and advent of smartphones, many youngsters are now using Kannada on their computers and smartphones. More people are typing in the Kannada script itself.

What should the state government do to popularise Kannada in technology?

A lot needs to be done. There was a committee to look into the standardisation and proper implementation of Kannada in technology. The committee submitted its report. The government implemented some parts of the report. After that nothing has been done. Now the committee does not exist. Standardisation is a continuous process. There must be a permanent committee to look into this. For example, domain names (website names) are available now in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, etc., but not in Kannada. This is due to the fact that no one represents Kannada in meetings of W3C India, an international community to develop web standards.

How is the response to Kannada Wikipedia?

A lot of awareness has been created among people about the existence of Kannada Wikipedia in the last three years. But more needs to be done.

What can be done to improve it further?

At present, the articles are written by enthusiastic Kannadigas who are not really writers. They are doing this out of passion for the language. But well-known Kannada writers don’t edit Kannada Wikipedia. Kannada has a good number science writers, but they are not editing Kannada Wikipedia, which is very badly needed at this time. Also, there is no comprehensive printed encyclopaedia in Kannada for science and technology. The last one came out 18 years ago. Therefore students in Kannada medium schools need a good Kannada encyclopaedia. This requirement can be met by Kannada Wikipedia. But the number and quality of articles is far from sufficient. Writing for Kannada Wikipedia could be made compulsory for degree and post-graduate students to bring in some well-researched articles. Such programmes already do exist in some colleges in the state but we need more.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-november-1-2016-using-kannada-in-technology-made-easier-with-smartphones

Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far

Ananth Subray — 2016-11-18T02:45:05Z

As you know we are working closely with Christ university in Bengaluru for the Education Programs in Kannada Wikipedia and Kannada Wikisource, we worked on redesigning the programme for this academic year 2016-17 based on the lessons learned from the earlier intervention.

Before beginning this programme, we provided training for campus ambassadors who in turn provided training to the faculty and fellow students. This new design of the programme allowed us to spend more time with the undergraduate students of various disciplines in Arts, Science and Commerce that are part of the programme. And this exercise resulted in improving the quality of the articles created by the students. So far, 218 second-year students in total have created 108 good quality articles in Kannada Wikipedia and 70 start class articles. The latter ones will need further work like adding images and citations. 20 of the articles are stub-start class articles, and 20 more are stubs of poor quality. The articles are still in the user sandboxes for the evaluation work and will soon be moved to the article namespace.

The freshman year students contributed in digitising books on Kannada Wikisource by proofreading about 2000 folios from four books.

How we did things differently this time?

Focus on multiple workshops that were conducted by multiple facilitators to ensure the series does not become monotonous. Facilitators included myself, some of the faculty and the Campus Ambassadors where the latter was useful for more peer-to-peer to learning.
Sessions were made more interactive and were spaced evenly that gave the students go through a learning curve.
Faculty support and engagement that was less last year was increased this year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-education-program-at-christ-university-work-so-far

Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages

Yashashwini Srinivas — 2022-10-21T13:03:20Z

This research study explores content production processes on gender and sexuality in Indian languages, its digital documentation and factors that affect its availability and use on open access platforms. The research was undertaken by Yashashwini Srinivas, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Torsha Sarkar. This research was part of short-term studies undertaken at the CIS-A2K programme 2021-22.

Read the report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

Introduction

Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian languages is a research project that studies the content production process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages and challenges it with its digital documentation. It examines the diverse nature of content creation on these topics, processes of its digitalisation and related challenges that contribute to the disparity in its availability and use on open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects, and potential strategies to address the same.

Through conversations with individuals and institutions working on gender, sexuality and allied topics like feminism, with a focus on women, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ related content, the study explores various aspects of content creation across multiple Indian languages, its access and use. Based on analysing this data and drawing on ongoing work within the mainstream discourse on gender and sexuality, the report offers a set of observations on ways to address challenges related to the gender gap in the content creation process on open knowledge platforms.

Context and Methods

Collaborative knowledge production platforms such as Wikimedia projects have recognised the existence of a gender gap and bias across its projects, understood largely as disparities in participation by and content related to women and, by extension, individuals across diverse gender and sexual identities. As observed in global literature as well as by work done by Indian language communities (with a focus largely on women Wikimedians), the gap is a result of various infrastructural and socio-cultural factors, including limited access to devices and the internet; balancing professional, domestic and volunteer work; lack of technical capacity-building and communication skills; limited presence in leadership positions, and the need for safe and healthy working environments among others. Several efforts have been made globally and in Indian language communities to address these challenges.

The issue of the gender gap, or indeed the challenges identified, are not unique to Wikimedia projects alone but are reflective of gender disparities in the public sphere and across the internet more broadly. Key learning from previous work in this space has been the need to connect these conversations and efforts to bridge the gender gap with the wider public discourse related to content creation on gender and sexuality online and in Indian languages. This study aimed to map such content with perspectives drawn from diverse gender and sexual identities. Importantly, it sought to understand better some of the infrastructural and cultural factors that shape creating such content and making it publicly available in diverse languages.

This study was done across four Indian languages - Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu (while English remained inevitable), focusing on content under two sub-themes– a. Cultural History and b. Feminist Production/Publication. The respondents in the study included organisations and individuals working in the areas of gender, sexuality and allied areas like feminist interventions and publishing, with a focus on writers, translators, artists, and multi-format content creators and curators. The study adopted a qualitative approach and comprised 19 semi-structured interviews (including four focused group discussions with organisations). Owing to the pandemic, all interactions for this study were done through telephonic conversation, email and virtual conferencing. These interactions have helped us understand the process of content creation in these areas. These problems manifest as gendered disparities in engagement with online platforms and potential solutions to address the same.

Key Research Areas

The three major thematic areas this research study focused on are as follows.

Nature of the Knowledge Produced
Content production on gender and sexuality in Indian languages spans several areas, including education, activism, advocacy and rights and justice, to name a few, given the location of much early writing in this space within the women’s rights and several other social movements in India. Important observations on the nature of this content by respondents include the emergence of a feminist critique across fields and disciplines, active interventions in the public discourse around gender and sexuality and the need for an intersectional approach to the process of content production. The growth of content in Indian languages and their increased availability on online platforms is also an important step towards addressing the predominance of Anglocentric and academic perspectives in these areas of research and work.

Digital Spaces, and movement of Content from Paper to Pixel
The cohort of the participants of this study has pointed out the evolution of the internet and digital tools from a luxury to a necessity but also acknowledged the widespread disparity in their access and use. However, the interesting outcome of this has been the transformation of traditional publishing methods and the emergence of cost-efficient space to produce content in various formats (like on social media) which fosters wider dissemination and engagement. However, increasing digital content production also comes with the need for advancements in digital literacy, resources and infrastructure. Digitalisation and open access to content on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is, therefore, a resource-intensive process, with related challenges such as copyright restrictions and technical limitations to access and use of Indian language content etc.

Indian Languages
The content creation process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is complex given the country's diversity. Still, socio-cultural factors continue to determine the growth and use of languages, often resulting from asymmetries of power amongst diverse communities. This includes the marginalisation of certain forms of language use and content production processes that are not seen as within the ambit of dominant languages. Further, the lack of a gender-neutral vocabulary across many Indian languages and the significant challenges in the translation are important issues that emerged in this space. While the translation of content on gender and sexuality into Indian languages from English and other foreign languages is challenging due to the lack of a gender-neutral and conceptual vocabulary, as noted earlier; the lack of reverse translations and limitations within publishing and wider circulation of content are some of the factors that continue to affect work in this space.

Learnings

The learnings from this study outline the many challenges in content production on gender and sexuality, especially in Indian languages and its availability in digital spaces. These include the need to recognise that gendered disparities result from asymmetries of power, thus calling for a more critical outlook and intersectional approach towards the processes of content production (and related work such as translation, digitisation and archiving). They also offer several strategies and best practices drawn from observations by the respondents to address some of these gaps in content creation and circulation to ensure sustainable knowledge production ecosystems.

These include the dire need to bridge technical and infrastructural gaps, facilitate visibility and engagement with content through collaborations with key institutions and individuals in this space, and capacity-building through developing pedagogy and tools. Further, there is a need to diversify the approach towards creating and sourcing content and creating safe working environments by developing redressal mechanisms for marginalised and vulnerable communities. As Wikimedia projects constitute a major part of the digital knowledge ecosystem and have been working towards more diversity and inclusion across their projects, a sustained approach to bridge these gaps may be adopted in the Indian context. This would contribute immensely to efforts to bridge the gender gap across Wikimedia projects and in the larger digital public sphere.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages

Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949

subodh — 2022-10-11T13:11:15Z

It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.

Context

The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and monuments in South Goa. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.

As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at Goa Central Public Library.

About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence

Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.

Partnerships

The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a series of discussions and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the project on Wikimedia Commons on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.

Media links

The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog in September 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat

Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949

subodh — 2022-10-11T14:53:58Z

The digitization project of O Bharat, a historic biweekly published between 1912 to 1949 in Goa was completed through collaboration of different organizations. The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust initiated the project in collaboration with Marathi department of Goa University, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha and Goa Central Library. The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme facilitated the project with technical and financial assistance. Two local students scanned 12000 pages in 8 days. The year wise volumes of O Bharat are now freely available on Wikimedia Commons in the form of archive.


Above: Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese	Above: Front page of O Bharat in Marathi

Context

About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence

Partnerships

Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons

Media links

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog in September 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat

Research Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21

sneha — 2022-10-21T12:59:55Z

This is a compilation of the final reports from a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2021, on an array of topics related to Indian language Wikimedia projects. The projects were undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, Ananth Subray, Satpal Dandiwal and Nitesh Gill, with research oversight and editorial support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and internal review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon.

See the full report on Wikimedia Commons here

Click to download the full report here

Wikipedia and its many sister projects have been rich sites of study for researchers across the world for many years now. The online encyclopedia presents a microcosm of the real world in terms of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, including content and infrastructure, and community interaction among many other things. Research about Wikimedia projects and platforms has been undertaken in various languages, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, as illustrated by the research index on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and several important publications over the last several years. Research on Indian languageWikimedia projects and platforms, and on topics related to the sub-continent have also emerged significantly over the last several years.However, as understood in the course of the studies in this compilation as well, awareness about such research within the communities itself remains limited. While there is a lot of important work being undertaken on topics relevant to Indian Wikimedia projects, often by researchers who are Wikimedians themselves, factors such as dissemination beyond academic spaces, and accessibility in terms of language and context seem to also affect their availability to the larger communities, and in terms of implementation of learnings and recommendations.

The six short-term research studies undertaken by the Access to Knowledge team over 2019–2021 were therefore initiated as a pilot, an initial foray into the space of research on Wikimedia projects in India. Based on the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation, this work was undertaken primarily to tap into new areas of work, while also drawing upon existing expertise at CIS, and in order to build the capacity of the team. With these broader motivations in mind, the research was structured with the following objectives to:

Identify knowledge gaps, challenges, and opportunities in different aspects of content creation and participation in Indian language Wikimedia projects.
Develop a better understanding of systemic issues such as gender bias in Indian language communities, access to and reuse of cultural content, open learning in multilingual classrooms, and specific experiences of content creation within Wikimedia communities in India and associated initiatives.
Develop recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.

The studies in this compilation therefore examine different aspects of Wikimedia platforms and projects in India, in close alignment with existing work in the programme. These include the gender gap in Indian Wikimedia communities, creating multilingual and open educational platforms and resources, focus on specific projects such as GLAM and Wikidata, and efforts and challenges with content creation, access and outreach in specific language communities.

Working on these studies has been a learning experience, especially given the diverse contexts in which the projects are located, and the capacities and interests of the researchers themselves. The design of the studies was also therefore developed and modified to build on existing capacities within the team, and its learnings from previous years of working with various language communities. Capacity-building for team members on research design, methods, fieldwork and documentation was mostly done through close individual supervision and collaborative work. The methods used were largely qualitative, and ranged from interviews, literature reviews, data visualisations, focused group discussions and comparative analyses. The effort was also to try and capture the scale and diversity of the nature of work being undertaken in different Indian language communities through these projects. There were several challenges as well, beginning with framing the research questions and project design in a way that they were accessible to a wider community of people who would be engaged in contributing their inputs towards the work. Process-related challenges, such as translation of interview questionnaires into Indian languages revealed several interesting gaps, such as the lack of technical terms related to digitization or open access in these languages. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to restrictions on field visits, thus effectively hampering in person conversations and easier access to community members.

There have been several learnings in the course of working on these studies, key among them being questions of awareness, relevance and impact. The lack of existing and easily accessible research (including those outside academic work) on several areas of Wikimedia in the Indian context has been a limitation in many ways, offering little in terms of available knowledge and best practices to work with. The limited awareness about, and imagined relevance of research in the regular work of communities has also been an impediment. As illustrated by learnings from a short research needs assessment carried out earlier this year, few community members were aware of research on Wikimedia projects being undertaken in India, and on a global scale. More importantly, there needs to be a conversation on its relevance to their own work, and to the larger movement. An effective communication strategy for research work, in different Indian languages, would perhaps address some of these gaps. A closely related question is also that of impact. The studies in this collection largely focus on short-term impact, through best practices and recommendations that may be developed through the research studies. While this is definitely a pragmatic approach, often the interest in a problem-solution design may look at research purely from an instrumental lens to identify quick solutions and their implementation, without a critical take on exploring and understanding larger, systemic or structural gaps that may be contributing to the problems itself. Going forward, it would be imperative therefore to identify areas of research, and build processes of research design that may address these challenges. Given the dynamic nature of Wikimedia, its platforms and communities, it is important to identify immediate gaps and possible solutions, but also to speak precisely to this aspect of long-term impact and relevance, to both current areas of work and the growth of the larger movement. We hope the studies in this compilation offer some insights towards these, and many more interesting questions related to research on Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects