Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Wikipedia's 10th anniversary at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar

praskrishna — 2014-01-30T12:01:22Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge along with the Odia Wikipedia community invite you to the tenth anniversary celebrations of Odia Wikipedia t Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar on January 28, 2014 from 10.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

କିଛି ଦିନ ତଳେ କଳିଙ୍ଗ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ସୋସିଆଲ ସାଇନ୍ସେସଠାରେ କର୍ମଶାଳା ଓ ସ‌ହବନ୍ଧନ ପରେ ସେଠାର କର୍ତ୍ତୃପକ୍ଷ ଓ ଶିକ୍ଷକ ତ‌ଥା ଛାତ୍ରମାନେ ଆମ ସମସ୍ତଙ୍କୁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ୧୦ମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ ପରିସରରେ କରିବା ପାଇଁ ଅନୁରୋଧ କରିଛନ୍ତି । ମୁଁ ଏଥିରେ କେତେଜଣ ବରିଷ୍ଠ ଭାଷା ଗବେଷକ ଓ ଭାଷାବିଦମାନଙ୍କୁ ଅନୁରୋଧ କରିଥିଲି । ଏଯାବତ ସେଣ୍ଟ୍ରାଲ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ଇଣ୍ଡିଆନ ଲାଙ୍ଗୁଏଜେସ (CIIL), ମହୀଶୂରର ପ୍ରତିଷ୍ଠାତା ଓ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାବିଦ ପଦ୍ମଶ୍ରୀ ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟୃନାୟକ, ଓଡ଼ିଆ ସାହିତ୍ୟ ଏକାଡେମୀର ଅବାହକ ଓ ଭାଷାବିଦ ଡ. ଗୌରହରି ଦାସ ତ‌ଥା ଭାଷା ଗବେଷକ ସୁବ୍ରତ ପୃଷ୍ଟି ସମ୍ମତି ପ୍ରଦାନ କରିଛନ୍ତି । ଦୟାକରି ସମସ୍ତେ ନିଜ ତରଫରୁ ମଧ୍ୟ ଅଧିକ ବରିଷ୍ଠ ଗବେହକମାନଙ୍କୁ ଅନୁରୋଧ କରିବା ସ‌ହିତ ଏଥିରେ ଅଂଶଗ୍ରହଣ କରି ଏହି ସାମୁହିକ ଉଦ୍ୟମକୁ ଫଳବତୀ କରାଇବାରେ ସ‌ହ‌ଯୋଗ କରିବେ ।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/odia-wikipedia-tenth-anniversary-kalinga-institute-of-social-sciences-bhubaneswar

Rise of the bot: all you need to know about the latest threat online

praskrishna — 2014-01-31T07:16:36Z

In the last week of December, 2013, former union railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal lodged a police complaint in Chandigarh after witnessing “an unusual rise in his online fan following”. The former minister told the police that his Facebook page had received more than 10,000 likes, within a span of 24 hours. While his allegation that the ‘likes’ were “fabricated” may be true, information technology experts believe a bot was at work.

The article by Danish Raza was published in the Hindustan Times on January 5, 2014. Snehashish Ghosh is quoted.

A bot is a software that mimics human behaviour on the Internet. Bots can be used to create artificial accounts on social media, provide numerous likes on a particular page, send tweets or visit various websites. All this is done without any human involvement.

Bots already constitute a significant percentage of Non Human Traffic (NHT) online, which has, according to some estimates, eclipsed human traffic. Comscore, a US-based Internet technology company noted on its blog that NHT, also known as Artificial Traffic, increased from approximately 6% of the total web traffic in 2011, to 36% in 2012. Last month, a report from Incapsula, a cloud-based security service, which aids the security and performance of websites, stated that more than 60% of web traffic was non-human in 2013. The figure was based on data collected from the 20,000 sites on Incapsula’s network .

Other than bots, NHT on the web includes traffic generated by Internet routers and back end services used by websites to communicate with third parties.

India is not immune to the problem. According to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report for 2012, there was a 280% increase in bot infections in India between 2011 and 2012. 17% of bot-infected computers, the highest in the world, are in India and 15% of global bot-net spam is generated here. The report also states that 69 Indian cities are prone to bot infections which includes Bhubaneswar, Surat, Cochin, Jaipur, Visakhapatnam, Indore, Kota, Ghaziabad and Mysore.

Bot spotting
How do you spot a bot? When a bot or its friend is at work, the browser directs you to sites other than the ones you intend to visit, you get full-page pop ups and pop unders, and when you quit the browser, it gets relaunched after a few minutes. Chances are your computer is part of a chain of online events which create NHT on the web, the purpose of which may be to attack a site or a server.

Why you should be wary
Malicious traffic, malware, hacking attempts, viruses slow down the Internet and delay legitimate traffic and services. Used to target systems or take down websites, NHT generates fake clicks on advertisements to increase website statistics.

One of the perils of ignoring artificial web traffic is that it gets counted for real impressions for which clients end up paying. For example, a website owner may hire the services of a digital marketing firm to publicise the site. In the guise of increasing page views, the marketing firm can produce a bill for fake impressions, supplementing actual human traffic to the page with bot usage.

“Unless there is a curb on this practice of malicious NHT, one stands at risk of being duped by marketers, agencies and even clients,” said Chiragh Cherian, director, online PR at Perfect Relations, a brand management firm. Recent studies have estimated bot traffic to be between 4 - 31% of total web traffic in the US, which translates to between $650 million and $4.7 billion in wasted marketing spend. According to Miaozhen Systems, a leading Chinese advertising technology company, NHT caused advertisers in China to lose approximately US$ 1.6 billion between July 2012 and June 2013.

How to combat Non-Human Traffic
Most servers have defence mechanisms to tackle spam and cyber attacks. Websites are also now developing mechanisms such as asking for human authentication which is difficult for a bot to execute. “But even personal computers should be equipped with strong Internet security applications such as anti-virus and anti-spyware to prevent hacking and phishing attempts and to prevent being used as slave machines for distributed cyber attacks,” said Chintu Cherian Abraham, a digital media professional. Figures show that we need to watch out where and how we go online. According to Norton Report, 2013, 61% Indians access their social network accounts from unsecured wi-fi connections, while 42% access bank accounts and 44% shop online using unsecured wi-fi connections.

Social media companies are gradually devising mechanisms to filter bots. “When a page and a fan connect on Facebook, we want to ensure that connection involves a real person interested in hearing from a specific page and engaging with that brand’s content. As such, we have recently increased our automated efforts to remove Likes on Pages that may have been gained by means that violate our terms,” mentions Facebook’s site integrity policy.

Agency-client intervention is necessary to ensure that artificial traffic is not presented as real. “It’s also important to make all agencies, advertisers and clients aware of their responsibility to keep the Internet free from malicious NHT,” said Chiragh Cherian.

Government involvement is also needed to control the problem of malicious bots. “A lot needs to be done from the government’s side to tackle bots which can be used to target the country’s critical infrastructure such as banking websites,” said Jiten Jain, a cyber security analyst, adding, “Last year, I highlighted the flaws in HDFC’s net banking website which have been rectified now. They could have been exploited to block the net-banking service.”

Until we have a robust mechanism to filter out bogus traffic from real, it will be difficult to say whether the social media followers of Bansal and other public figures are human or not.

Know your Bots
Not all bots are used with a negative intent. Some help in research and monitoring.

The Malicious
Bots can be effectively used to impersonate and to hack accounts leading to financial losses and intellectual property theft. “Theft of personal details, username and password to operate one’s bank account is a classic example of how bots can lead to financial losses. It is an organised cyber crime,” explained Commander (Retd) Mukesh Saini, former national information security coordinator, Government of India. In May 2013, cyber criminals broke into the Mumbai-based account of the RPG group and siphoned off `2.4 crore. Three people were arrested in the case.

“The rate at which NHT is increasing is alarming,” says Tinu Cherian Abraham. “Any computer connected to the Internet is vulnerable to such attacks. The user will not get to know about it unless he or she has installed an Internet security application.”

Besides bots, computers also generate other kinds of secondary activities, while the user is surfing the Internet. This activity remains in the background and is never seen by the user, unlike the bot-generated pop ups, observes Comscore. For example, your computer might be being used as a channel to reach a server with the intention of hacking it. And you will never know.

The Good
Not all NHT is bad, though. In fact, good bots such as scrapers can be effectively used to conduct research. “Wikipedia can be scraped to investigate the frequency of edits on a Wikipedia page and track the increase in the number of editors,” explained Snehashish Ghosh, policy associate at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society.

Good bots are also used by search engines to track content on websites and enhance their search results. Search bots and other good bots formed 31% of total bots, the Incapsula report noted.

The Social
Apart from malicious and good bots, there are social media bots too. “Extensive analysis is done on social media traffic for monitoring, business lead generation, as well as reputation management. This has amounted to a lot of automated or non-human traffic,” said Abraham.

According to Facebook’s filings published in a Forbes report in February 2012, around 83 million of its users are bogus. “It’s a violation of our policies to use a fake name or operate under a false identity, and we encourage people to report any user they suspect of doing this, either through the report links we provide on the site or through the contact forms in our help centre,” a Facebook spokesperson told HT.

Twitter bots have also made its presence felt on the platform. “Twitter has witnessed very interesting bots which have found appreciation from the community for being funny and creative. The microblogging site cracked down on some harmful bots, but still some of the advanced level bots slip through the net,” said Ghosh.

In August 2012, London-based firm Digital Evaluators, which evaluates social media presence of worldwide companies, released an analysis of Twitter followers of the US Presidential Election candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. 21.9% of Barack Obama’s 17.82 million Twitter followers were found to be bogus.

The Big Brother
Ghosh said that the increase in NHT related to the Internet of things, the concept which enables communication between two or more devices, results in privacy issues. “Take a situation where your mobile device is constantly tracking your location for the purpose of switching on the air conditioner at your home before you reach. Such applications produce huge amounts of personal data and there is no clarity whether this data is being stored,” he said.

“As the new networks link data from products, company assets, or the operating environment, they will generate better information and analysis, which can enhance decision making significantly. Some organisations are starting to deploy these applications in targeted areas, while more radical and demanding uses are still in the conceptual or experimental stages,” noted a McKinsey & Company report on Internet of things.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-january-5-2014-danish-raza-rise-of-the-bot

Introductory talk about "Wikipedia in Academics"

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T06:48:40Z

Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk on Wikipedia in Academics. Subhashish spoke about the use the Wikipedia in academics, students' role as contributors to Wikipedia to keep the facts correct and editing Wikipedia articles in Indic languages.

Prof.Parthosen Gupta, Professor-KIIT School of Management and Sucheta Priyabadini, Joint Registrar, KIIT were present during the event to talk about the KIIT - CIS-A2K partnership and forthcoming collaboration projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/talk-on-wikipedia-in-academics

Odisha: KISS to create tribal languages and heritage repository

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T08:33:08Z

World' largest tribal residential institute Kalinga Institute of Social Studies (KISS) is going to initiate a project in collaboration with Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program (CIS-A2K) to gather academic and research resources on tribal languages and diverse cultural heritage.

The report by Odisha Diary Bureau was published on January 20, 2014.

Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) is the largest tribal residential institution in the world. It is home to over 20,000 tribal students from 64 tribes living in Eastern and North-Eastern parts of India that not only provide them accommodation, food, and free education from kindergarten to post graduation but also provide them 24/7 health care in the in-house hospital and many vocational trainings to empower them as able citizens of this nation ensuring their successful future. UNICEF in association with KISS has established a Children Development Resource Centre (CDRC) as part of the larger UNICEF-KIIT University joint initiative for the Centre for Children Studies (CCS) that aims in promoting evidence-based policy making by building a knowledge base thorough research and other development programmes on children's issues focusing on the state of Odisha.

KISS in collaboration with Bernard van Leer Foundation is currently devising education systems in native tribal languages that even do not have scripts. With over 17 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)s and many more in process. KISS is bringing up a new stream of sustainable growth for tribals below poverty line by educating them and imparting knowledge in their own languages.

UNICEF, UNESCO, UNFPA, College of Charleson (USA), Bernard van Leer Foundation, Vedanta Foundation, NALCO Foundation, English Access Micro-Scholarship Program (Federal Govt.), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Oracle Educational Foundation, Intel Technology, CPU Joint Volunteers (South Korea) are some of the organisations that KISS is working in tandem with to take the Indian tribal cultural diversity and heritage to the outside world by giving the aboriginal natives their space in this world.

Centre for Internet and Society is a Bangalore based Non profit organization which works primarily in the broader domains ofinternet and policy research, accessibility, open knowledge and open education. Its Access To Knowledge program is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and works in fostering the volunteer Wikimedia community that contributes in enhancing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Its primary mandate is upbringing Wikipedia editors by outreach, creating primary resources for sources of reference in multiple ways that lead to enrich Wikipedia.

This collaboration will bring detailed research and multilingual documentation about several aspects of tribals of India and would work as an Open Education Resources (OER) for academicians and researchers. This event is organized on 11th January 2014 atKalinga Institute of Social Studies premises at 11 am. KIITUniversity's Founder-Chairman Dr. Achyuta Samanta is going to inaugurate this project formally on this occasion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-january-20-2014-kiss-to-create-tribal-languages-and-heritage-repository

Odia Wikipedia (Coverage in Sanchar)

praskrishna — 2014-02-04T07:38:30Z

Sanchar published about Odia Wikipedia in their edition on January 31. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odia-wikipedia-coverage-in-sanchar

Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses

Pavan Santhosh S. & Subhashish Panigrahi — 2016-09-20T12:43:29Z

This campaign was started on June 19 and copyright migration process is complete for 17 books so far. Once the copyright migration is over the books—ranging from historical figures and popular personalities to regional history—are going to be digitised on Wikisource.

List of books and their authors

Author: Gadam Gopala Swamy
Book: Paschima Godavari Jillalo Mahatmuni Sancharam, a historical account on Gandhi's travels and the way he spread his ideology in and around this area.
Significance: This can be used in improving articles related to the history of villages of the West Godavari district. Swamy is going to publish his magnum opus on the national movement in West Godavari along with another biographical work about the notable people of the district.

"I dedicate these works to all the people of the West Godavari district. All my efforts will be useful even if one person [from West Godavari] reads these works, learns what their ancestors lived for and died for [in the national independence movement] and tries to be responsibly contribute to the society. I find this could only be possible through placing it in digital platform like Wikisource."
- Dr. Gadam Gopala Swamy, historian, former professor

Author: Kanuri Badarinadh (Historian, Novelist and Journalist)
Books: Biographies, short biographies like Tanuku Talukulu, Yarra Narayana Swamy Jeevitha Charitra, Local Histories like Panara Vishayamu, Maa doothikapuramu, collection of articles on historical, cultural, social and art like Kasyapa Vyasalu, Antharvani, Badareenadheeyam, Lochoopu, Annavi anukonnavi, Vyasa Badarikam, historical fiction like Kavi garu, Koutilyuni Nireekshanam.
Priority: These Books can be used as resources to create articles about notable personalities of West Godavari district, several important persons and events in Andhra pradesh politics and history. Can improve articles related to West Godavari district, especially about the history sections in the village articles.

“I don't want these works to be in bookshelf and get wasted by termites. My wish as an author and researcher is to make these works available to future historians who can make use of it, so that our people get to know the local history”
- Kanuri Badarinadh, historian, novelist and journalist. Badarinadh has donated some of his books.

Author: Katta Srinivasa Rao, historian, Wikipedian and poet
Book: Ganapeswaralayam, a historical account of temples of historical importance that were built in Kusumanchi of Khammam district in Telangana. These temples flourished under the Kakatiya dynasty’s reign.
Priority: Katta Sriniavasa Rao is one of the first line Telangana historians who are working to rebuild Telangana’s History. This work is result of his research. It contains valuable content about Ganapeswara Temple and gives a glimpse of the sculpture, history and society under Kakatiya dynasty in Khammam.

Author: Vemuri Venkateswara Rao
Book: Ramanujan Nundi atu itu, a book about mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and his works in mathematics
Priority: Like many other Indian languages, Telugu also has a lower number of books related to science and mathematics especially in the contemporary context. This book is about Ramanujan Numbers, formulas and a few more works. It also has description about contemporary mathematics built upon Ramanujan's work. This can be used to improve mathematics related articles in Telugu Wikipedia.

Author: Yasaswi Sateesh Kumar
Books: Okkamata, contains brief poetic pen portraits that explains about contemporary Telugu poets, Tellakagitam is anthology of Telugu poet Yasaswi’s poetry.
Priority: Photos of many contemporary Telugu poets and brief descriptions about them are now under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. These can be used in Wikipedia articles about notable poets.

Author: Emma Rauschenbusch Clough
Translator: Vivina Murthy
Book: Cheppulu Kuduthu Kuduthu is a translation of Emma Rauschenbusch Clough’s English book “While sewing sandals”. The English book was released in 1899 and is in Public Domain. The Telugu book was translated by Vivina Murthy and was published in 2007 by Manasu Foundation. As the translator had rights on his translated work, he released it under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license to make it freely available to all on our request.
Priority: Historical record especially about Christianity in coastal Andhra Pradesh, dalits in 19th century.

Author: Gurajada Apparao
Book: Gurujadalu is a compilation of all the works Gurajada Apparao -- he is considered as one of the greatest literary figures of modern Telugu literature. The book was edited and published by the efforts of Manasu Foundation and its associates. Apparao’s works are under Public Domain already as per the Indian Copyright Law,. But the critical introduction and some of the translations included in the book were copyrighted by Manasu foundation which they released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. This move will help digitize them on Wikisource and make them freely available to Telugu people.
Priority: Even Though some of the works of Apparao got digitized on Wikisource, this can showcase his complete literary journey with bringing a vast set of reading for the Telugu readers.

All of these books were released or agreed to be released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license in June and July 2016. Some of these books were digitized on Wikisource, and the proofreading is going on currently. Some of the the remaining books being scanned and some are uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. The ones that have been uploaded on Commons are being indexed and digitized on Wikisource.

The news about all of these license migrated books was shared with the [Telugu Wikimedia] community, and also personally with some of the community members like Rajasekhar, Sri Ramamurthy, Gullapalli Nageswara Rao, Bhaskara Naidu, and a few others who supported in various stages of digitization like indexing, proofreading, etc.

"I wish this contribution will go forward in the same way and help making Telugu Wikisource number one in entire Indic Wikisources. I will support this work wherever you need and please ask my help whenever necessary. Definitely we can collaborate."
- User:Rajasekhar1961, Telugu Wikimedian

The list of the books can also be located on the Telugu Wikisource.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/campaign-for-relicensing-copyrighted-books-under-creative-commons-licenses

Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/The Centre for Internet and Society/Impact report form

hasan — 2016-10-09T14:40:36Z

This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year).

Read the original published on Wikimedia Blog here.

This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Global metrics overview - all programs

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success.

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Overall

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	157	CIS-A2K has been able to increase participation of female editors across its Focus Language Areas.
2. # of new editors	799	Our WEP initiatives have helped in introducing and retaining editors across FLA (except for Odia).
3. # of individuals involved	1200	Public events and anniversary celebrations held in Odia and Kannada have helped Wikimedia projects in reaching the general public as these events have been widely covered by media.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	2823	Photo-walks, WEP activities and image re-licensing efforts have helped the A2K team in achieving this metric.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	18998	Thematic edit-a-thons anchored by A2K and Collaborative edit-a-thons that have been supported by A2K have been a big hit during the last grant period amongst Indic Wikimedians.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	109.64 MB

Kannada

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	23	As of now the Kannada community is relatively small, A2K would like to expand the user and editor base by taking Wikimedia activities to various parts of the state.
2. # of new editors	609	These numbers include new editors from WEP initiative and editathons conducted as part of 13 Kannada Wikipedia anniversary.
3. # of individuals involved	700	Public event organised during the 13th Kannada Wikipedia anniversary has boosted our reach.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	1290	Due to the Photo walk organised as part of the 13th year Kannada Wikipedia anniversary celebrations.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	8132	Most of the articles created under WEP initiative are still under sandbox (as a quality enforcing measure), hence the number is low. The number also includes Wikisource folios.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	56.5 MB

Konkani

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	4	Activities in Konkani Wikipedia dipped after the project became live.
2. # of new editors	20	The new editors were introduced to Konkani Wikipedia with the help of Nirmala Institute of Education, Panjim an institutional partner of CIS-A2K.
3. # of individuals involved	50
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	34
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	1546	Konkani Wikipedians took the project of creating one article per village in Goa quite enthusiatically.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	8.11 MB

Marathi

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	64	Events conducted at Pune University, Pune and IIT-Bombay involved existing Wikipedians.
2. # of new editors	59	Activities conducted at SWERI, Pandharpur, TISS, Mumbai and IIT-Mumbai have contributed to this.
3. # of individuals involved	150	Involvement of Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited opened up new readership to get involved in Marathi Wikimedia projects.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	27	A2K team could not organise a dedicated photo walk or invest in image re-licensing activity.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	331	Although the number of the articles is low, many new female editors were introduced and have taken up editing on Marathi Wikipedia.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	2.64 MB

Odia

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	21	Wiki Tungi activities are lead by active Wikimedians from the Odia community.
2. # of new editors	56	Nabakalebara edit-a-thon gained a lot of currency on the social media platforms which in turn resulted in new editors for Odia Wikimedia projects.
3. # of individuals involved	120	Three events with Puri WikiTungi (Puri Workshop, 15th Anniversary celebration, and Mission Odisha event), Wikipedia workshop in Utkal University.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	601	Nabakalebara edit-a-thon had an in-built component of adding images related to the Rathayatra.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	1780	Only pages created in Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource are indicated and not article improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	9.56 MB

Telugu

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	30
2. # of new editors	45	Need to try getting more New users on to the board.
3. # of individuals involved	150
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	871
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	1342	Includes folios digitized in Wikisource.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	7.23 MB

Train-a-Wikipedian

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	15	Editors who have participated in at least one training session.
2. # of new editors	10	Editors who got beginners' training (includes account creation and basic Wikipedia training such as Wikiformatting, components of Wikipedia, article structure).
3. # of individuals involved	30	#1+#2 and the people who were involved during training sessions.
4. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	5867
5. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	25.6 MB

Telling your program stories - all programs

Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.

We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.

Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.

We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.

We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.

You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.

A2K key activities

During this grant period CIS-A2K has organized and supported a number of events in collaboration with Indic Wikimedia community members. Some of those are:

July 2015	August 2015	September 2015
Konkani Wikipedia goes live, (See more)	Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Annamacharya library Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore (See more)	Seminar on "Empowering Marathi Schools", Pune, Kannda Wikipedia meetup (See more)
October 2015	November 2015	December 2015
Konkani language book donation (See more)	4 Indic language communities IRC meeting, Community discussion for making Tulu Wikipedia live (See more)	Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, Initiative to bring 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi Wikipedia (See more)
January 2016	February 2016	March 2016
Konkani-language Edit-a-thon and English-Romi Konkani dictionary release, Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon (See more)	Digitisation sprint at Andhra Loyola College, Kannada Wikipedia's 13th anniversary (See more)	(See more) National Wikipedia Education review program, Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons (See more)
April 2016	May 2016	June 2016
Odia Wikipedia's 14th anniversary (See more)	Mini TTT and MWT in Pune, Advanced training for Kannada-language Wikimedians (See more)	Train the Trainer 2016, MediaWiki Training (See more)

Capacity building

Train the Trainer

Train the Trainer (or TTT in short) is a residential program that attempts to groom leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedians. Participating Wikimedians interact with A2K staff members and community leaders towards designing, implementing and documenting activities such as outreach, GLAM projects, edit-a-thons, etc. Various topics such as grants' structure, funding opportunities both with A2K and WMF, effective reporting and documentation, use of Global and other metrics, etc., are also covered.

After the first 2 iterations in 2013 and 2015, the third iteration of the training program was conducted in June 2016.

Diversity

In this iteration—

Language: 16 Wikimedians from 10 different language communities participated as shown in the pie chart below.

Participants of TTT 2016, representing different language communities

Gender: This year we had 5 female participants (out of 15 participants). After the 2013 iteration we felt we should try to encourage more female Wikipedians to participate in TTT. However, this does not mean that we had any different eligibility criteria set for the female Wikipedians.

Participants division by gender

Representation of Indic Wikimedia communities: We had participants from all over India. Although TTT is a national-level event, we also had participants from outside of India (Nepal and Sri Lanka).

Lessons learnt

TTT 2016 participants

After the 2015 version we found that a few participants faced difficulties to understand and work on the pre-event presentations. This year (2016), we have given more detailed instructions and were in touch with the participants while they were doing pre-event works.
By dovetailing TTT and MWT, A2K team was able to bring Indic Wikimedians working for outreach and on technical front together. This helped the participants to create a wishlist regarding tools, gadgets, and other technical help required to conduct effective outreach activities.

Based on participants' feedback and suggestions plus our own observations, while keeping Wikimedia Foundation's guidelines in mind, we make necessary changes to our program structure. In this year's TTT we made a number of changes‖

We encouraged more eligible female editors to participate.
We found that the objective and aims of the event remained unclear to a few participants in the earlier iterations. This year we have given more attention to explain the program's objectives, aims and expectations.

Challenges

We expected that the participants would be in touch with us while planning, conducting, and making reports of an event. After 2015 TTT^[1] we found a few participants did not respond to our emails or messages.
While TTT 2016 participants have shown active interest during WCI-related edit-a-thon, the same level of interest was not seen during regular monthly meetups.
Despite having communicated to the TTT 2015 participants that a mini TTT should be organized in their communities, however this was not taken up actively.

Mediawiki Training

Participants of MWT 2016, during the workshop

MediaWiki Training (MWT) is an annual residential training workshop that intends to bridge the prevalent gap between outreach volunteers and MediaWiki volunteers and developers. MWT attempts to create and groom 'tech' leaders from the existing Indian language Wikipedians. It aims to facilitate discussions around nurturing leadership regarding technical issues such as filing bugs that hinder the growth of Indian language Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. At the same time, it encourages active contribution towards improving the existing MediaWiki software from the participants to understand importance of utilizing technology for outreach activities.

The first iteration of the event was held on 24-27 June 2015. 14 editors from 8 Indic communities participated in this workshop. Some of the topics taught during the workshop were: Bugs -presentation, demo & case study, Bots - Pywiki & AWB, MediaWiki tools, TranslateWiki, Quarry, WikiMetrics, APIs, User scripts.

The second iteration of the workshop was conducted on 17-19 June 2016 in Bangalore. MWT 2016 was planned to facilitate an idea-exchange platform between outreach volunteers and MWT participants. 11 editors from 6 Indic Wikimedia communities recieved training during this workshop. Some of the topics discussed during the program were Wikidata, usage of Wikimedia labs tools, templates and infobox creation, as well as AutoWikiBrowser (AWB).

Lessons learnt

Ensure better logistics co-ordination thus guaranteeing involved participation from the participants.
Priority topics must be given more time.

Challenges

Scheduling follow-up events such as mini version of MWT across Indic Wikimedia communities.
To identify female Wikimedians and encourage them to participate in MWT.

Train-a-Wikipedian

Train-a-Wikipedian session in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016

Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) was started in December 2015 to identify enthusiastic Indic Wikipedians, to train and groom them to develop their editing skills. Inspired by the Adopt-a-User program of the English-language-Wikipedia, this initiative is working on encouraging new Wikimedians who nominate themselves to learn basic Wikimedia policies. Until 30 June 2016, more than 25 training sessions have been conducted.

The concept of Train-a-Wikipedian was appreciated by several Indic Wikimedians from different communities.
More than 25 Wikimedians signed up for this program.

Reflections

These are some of the reflections/feedback we received from Train-a-Wikipedian participants:

Username

	Community	Topics/Learnings	Feedback/Reflections
User:Nrgullapalli (Training page)	Telugu Wikipedia	Policy discussion such as civility, stub, How to search in a better way using operators etc on the web to get references Introduction to The Wikipedia Library / Resource exchange / CIS-A2K Resource exchange.	“ The training was helpful, I learned a couple of new tools. But I feel such trainings should be conducted on regular basis and follow-ups should be done. ”
User:Mouryan (Training page)	Bengali Wikipedia	Essentials of conducting local Wiki-event. Using special pages such as Special:UncategorizedPages,, Special:ShortPages etc., Google Books citation, Metrics.wikimedia.org	“ It was amazing and a quite enriching experience for me at a personal level sir. The things I learnt at Train-a-Wikipedian Hyderabad actually paid the results soon enough.and it enabled to successfully conduct my first offline Wikipedia Meetup in Kolkata just within one month's time. . . ”
User:Rajasekhar1961 (Training page)	Telugu Wikipedia	AdminTools such as MoreMenu, QuickWikiEditor, Citation making using Google Books citation tool, autofilling (from reftoolbar), DOI citation tool; Quick Page purging	“ I picked up some very useful skills & learnt good tools. But, I became a little inactive after that so could not utilize these learnings much. I hope to do so in future.

Lessons learnt

This initiative was inspired by English Wikipedia's program Adopt-a-user, however we found that we must make necessary changes to meet requirements of Indic Wikimedians.
Real-life training sessions left a deeper impact and motivated Wikimedians much more than online training modules.

Challenges

We failed to conduct sufficient number of offline training sessions.
Follow-ups have not been done for a couple of workshops, for example a TAW workshop was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May and was well-received, but no follow-up TAW workshop has been conducted since then in the city.
From A2K's side sometimes there were delays in connecting and co-ordinating with the signed-up participants. On the other hand sometimes, we did not got responses from the participants when we contacted them.

Policies and guidelines on Indic Wikipedias

Indic Wikipedia policy handbook

CIS-A2K started working on a project to support and encourage Indic Wikipedians to create and/or localize policies in their native languages. A survey was conducted and a policy handbook was also created.

Lessons learnt

Efforts must be taken to initiate discussion regarding creation, localisation of policies in events organized by A2K

Challenges

Although a few policy-discussion meetups have been conducted (such as this one), we faced difficulties finding volunteer translators to translate the handbook into Indic languages.

Play media

Dr. Soubhagyavathi talks about Kannada Wikipedia

Kannada

Kannada Wikipedia Edit-a-thon partcipants at DSERT in January 2016

Kannada Wikipedia has reached the 20,000 article mark during this year. Kananda community members collaboratively designed the plan for the 13th Kannada Wikipedia anniversary. This activity brought together Wikimedians from different parts of Karnataka. By applying for a PEG Kannada Wikipedians have interacted with global Wikipedians and WMF staff. This event resulted in new editors and outreach activities in various parts of Karnataka. A2K has appointed a Program Associate as per its revised strategy A2K 2.0 for Kannada Wikimedia projects.

Institutional partnership

Two new partnerships have been initiated during this grant period–

The Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT), Government of Karnataka and
Alva's Education Foundation at Moodabidri.

While Alva's Education Foundation is going to be a partner in implementing Wikipedia Education Program. DSERT is an institution that trains school teachers all across Karnataka state. A2K will be training the trainers about using and editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in the context of their classroom. However, the 3 other institutional partnerships - Karnataka Janapada University, Manjusha Museum, Dharmasthala, and Tumkur University, Tumkur- that were anticipated during the writing of workplan, could not materialize. This was due to the delay in recruiting a Program Associate for the Kannada Wikimedia projects.

A2K has successfully continued its earlier partnerships and has benefited from their advice regarding our WEP activities and workplan.

Awareness and Outreach

Both the DSERT partnership and the 13th anniversary helped raise awareness around thematic article writing which encouraged Kannada Wikipedians to engage in projects. Various editing projects on literature, science, engineering subjects were taken up actively by the community members. Approximately 225 articles were created exclusively as part of 13th year anniversary celebrations.

Offline versions of Kannada Wikipedia (using kiwix) were distributed through flash drives like this during 13th year Kannada Wikipedia anniversary

CIS-A2K also tried to engage in skill-building activities for the Kannada community members. As per the requests from volunteers, capacity building programs were arranged both in groups and in one-on-one settings to individual Wikimedians. Both TTT and MWT saw active participation from Kannada community. The results of these would be visible in the coming months.

In order to increase the offline readership of Kannada Wikipedia, offline versions of Kannada Wikipedia (using kiwix) were distributed through flash drives during 13th year Kannada Wikipedia anniversary held at Mangalore. 50 such flash drives have been distributed so far to those in need.

Lessons learnt

Kannada was not properly represented in terms of blogs and media coverage and we have been working on addressing this issue.
A better communication method would be devised with inputs from the community members.

Gating factors

A2K has not been successful towards re-releasing of textbooks published by the Government of Karnataka under CC-by-SA licences.

An orientation for Kananda bloggers, some of who could be potential Wikimedians, has not taken place.
Some community members have repeatedly emphasized on having better communication, documentation of activities taken up by the Program Associate.

Odia

Active editors in Odia Wikipedia during the period July 2015 to Feb 2016

Through the community building activities such as the formation of Puri WikiTungi and revival of Bhubaneswar WikiTungi, active editors of the Odia Wikipedia movement reached 30 editors (as of 30 June 2016). Regular follow-up with Wikimedians on-Wiki and via different social media channels along with monthly meetups has helped in editor retention. This has further encouraged Odia Wikimedians to participate in both on-Wiki and off-Wiki activities.

CIS-A2K has supported the community to celebrate the 14th Anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, which facilitated 30 Wikimedians to meet and discuss the future activities for Odia Wikimedia projects.

Formation of Puri WikiTungi

Play media

Adyasha Sahu a Wikimedian from Puri community sharing her journey in the Wikimedia movement.

Puri WikiTungi is a city-based editing group formed by Wikimedians from Puri to spread awareness about Odia Wikimedia projects in and around the city. This group was formed after the first Wikipedia workshop in Puri. Around 30 individuals attended the workshop. 14 participants from this workshop have emerged as active editors on Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource. They are also involved in conducting offline meet-ups, seminar and workshops.

Bridging the Gender gap

Gender diversity in Odia Wikimedia community during 2014-16. For this statistics Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource have been considered.

CIS-A2K has engaged with seven new female Wikipedians and this has resulted in their active participation on Odia Wikimedia projects. One of the female Wikmedians, Chinmayee Mishra has independently conducted a Wikipedia orientation workshop. This workshop has boosted participation of female Wikipedians. Their efforts have been discussed through blog posts and other social media platforms.

Lessons learnt

Two organizations are unofficially supporting Odia Wikimedia community by providing meetup space and internet access for Bhubaneswar and Puri WikiTungis. A2K must make official agreements with these institutions.

Gating factors

Failed to build a partnership with any institution for running Education program for Odia Wikimedia projects. Awareness about the importance of WEPs is required for achieving this.

Telugu

A2K team has been successfully collaborating with Telugu Wikipedia community to improve content quality on Telugu Wikipedia and strengthen the community by increasing its reader and editor base. The team also shares ideas by providing and extending support such as involving community members in discussions with potential partners and designing programs based on their suggestions. Such collaboration has strengthened communities to conduct many Edit-a-thons which have resulted in a wide variety of quality articles. A2K intends to continue such collaborative activities resulting in improvements of stub and poorly translated articles.

Activities and Events

CIS-A2K team has been involved in conducting (holding or co-ordinating) several edit-a-thons in Telugu Wikimedia community, while a few were anchored in Telugu, others were multi-lingual. Many initiatives of the last grant period (i.e. July 2014 to June 2015) have been continued. A2K and the community have collaboratively organised an of sharing resources has resulted in which focused on improving Telugu movie articles. Community members have expanded stubs with information, references and photos. For the edit-a-thon A2K provided resources and references and the community members developed stub articles and created new articles.

Capacity building activities have also been carried out with Telugu Wikipedians. A copyrights session was conducted to improve Telugu Wikimedians' understanding on the subject and clear doubts for Wikisource contributors. Community members, Meena Gayathri and T.Sujatha, attending CIS A2K's Train-a-Wikipedian session have expressed that they gained invaluable knowledge and skills in content translation. The two later initiated a project to improve the quality of Google Translated articles. More than 30 such articles have been improved through it.

Similarly, the Quick introduction sessions held in Hyderabad community meet-ups by CIS A2K helped explain some online tools usage and enabled Wikipedians to contribute better for Wikimedia projects. One of the most active Wikipedians, Swaralasika, said that he was able to make better citations after the sessions which has helped him improve his editing.

Institutional Partnership

With the institutional partnerships established between CIS A2K and Annamayya library, Telugu Wikisource community members have uploaded some of the missing pages in on Telugu Wikisource. Due to the attempts of the community members towards proofreading these books can be downloaded now. The Andhra Loyola College partnership has also cultivated new editors and engage in WEP activities.

Outreach and Media

Increased media coverage has helped the cause of Telugu Wikimedia projects. Hard work of several Telugu Wikipedians (such as Pranayraj and Viswanadh) has been recognized and highlighted. Pranayraj points out that the media coverage helped him reach more people who want to contribute to Wikipedia.

Lessons learnt

A2K team has been working to make Telugu Wikipedia more visible in popular Telugu media, especially in printed media such as off-wiki and on-wiki events coverage in major local newspapers like Eenadu, Sakshi, Andhra Jyothi
WEP activities at partner institutions need to be synchronized with their academic schedule.

Gating factors

Technical support requests from the community were delayed on our end. To overcome this, we are trying to find interns to assign technical tasks requested from communities.

Konkani

Play media

Darshan Kandolkar talks about Konkani Wikipedia

Having gone live since July 2015 after nine years of incubation, Goan Konkani Wikipedia has developed and expanded with the help of CIS A2K to draw more contributors and resources into the project. CIS-A2K has attempted to develop Konkani Wikipedia in all the three scripts (Romi, Devanagari, Kannada). Institutions such as Thomas Stephen Konkani Kendra (TSKK) for Romi script, Goa Konkani Sahitya Academy for Devanagari script, Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Academy for Kannada script have agreed to donate content.

Department of Computer Science, Goa University, had organized an edit-a-thon to include the villages of Goa state on Konkani Wikipedia.

Due to the discontinuation of the Program Associate for Konkani, several of our programmatic activities have not been accomplished during this grant period.

Partnership

In the past year, CIS-A2K had the honour to collaborate with Mannd Sobhaann and World Konkani Centre, organizations working with Konkani language and culture, to bring in more resources into Konkani Wikipedia. These two organizations work for popularization and conservation of Konkani culture and language. Mannd Sobhaan has donated three Konkani books under CC-BY-SA license which has provided great sources for citation and references. On the other hand, these organizations have also agreed to hold GLAM activities, while A2K would digitize their archives of audio, video and text resources to further expand resources available for Konkani Wikimedia projects.

Activities and Events

A one-day edit-a-thon was organized at Krishnadas Shama Central Library, Goa in January 2016. Members of CIS-A2K participated in this event to help mentor the participants. The event created 100 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia in a single day.

Lessons learnt

Increase editor base by engaging academicians and bloggers.
Increase readership by introducing Konkani Wikipedia in primary and higher primary schools.

Gating factors

Activity in the end of 2015 was low in Konkani Wikipedia that no new articles were created in November and December.
Non-availability of a Program Associate

Marathi

Partnership

Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) has re-licensed 1000 books on the culture, history, and literature under CC-by-SA 4.0 license in October, 2015. In December 2015, a discussion was initiated by CIS A2K at The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) to plan digitization and uploading of the books for Marathi Wikisource.

Events and Outreach

A two-day workshop was organised by the CIS A2K Program Associate in August 2015 at Srimati Savitribai Phule Pune University. This workshop was an attempt to bridge the gender gap on Marathi Wikipedia. The "Sau Dhuni Teen" project focused on creating Wikipedia articles on notable women, themes and works related to gender studies. This event attracted new editors and introduced to them input methods for Marathi methods and basic guidelines of contributing to Wikipedia. The event also served as an important initiative to utilize Wikipedia in generating Indian language annotations on academic sources in Women's Studies and the Social Sciences.

In May, 2016, CIS A2K organized a two-day mini version of Train-the-trainer (TTT) and Mediawiki Training (MWT) for Marathi Wikimedians in Pune. Topics covered in the Mediawiki training include Wikidata, bug triage, Mediawiki extensions, etc., while the TTT session focused on advanced editing skills, outreach planning, and grants structure introduction.

Lessons learnt

A strategy is required to utilize books donated by Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) as references on Marathi Wikipedia.
Spreading Marathi Wikipedia-related activities to different parts of Maharashtra .

Gating factors

Some participants of workshops reflect that unavailability of sandboxes in Marathi Wikipedia was a concern for new editor as they were unsure if the article might be changed during the time they edit.

General Support and Service to the Movement

Play media

Odia Wikisourcer Pankajmala Sarangi shares her experience and future plans to grow the community. Video by Pankajmala Sarangi (original video) and Subhashish Panigrahi (post production), CC BY-SA 4.0. Pankajmala recorded the video herself covering a few specific topics sent over email.

Partnership Summary

Growing partnerships in WEPs: A2K team has successfully continued all the partnerships form the previous grant period and has also been able to bring new partners onboard thus adding value to the Wikimedia movement. A2K conducted a review program for its WEP partners in Bangalore during the last grant period. This review program allowed the WEP partners across 3 different states to meet and discuss the salient features of the WEP initiative being run at their institutions. This review program helped A2K team to understand institutional expectations and challenges. The review meeting also helped us to generate inter institutional collaboration and sync A2K schedule with academic calendar of these institutions.
Book/Resource donation and digitization: A2K team is immensely happy to have partnered with Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha which has donated 1000 books about the Maratha administration, culture, history and social life. Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited, Pune has offered us in-kind support by digitising all these books and making them available to be uploaded on Marathi Wikisource.
Our collaboration with Manasu Foundation, Bangalore has also allowed us to digitise content donated to A2K for free. Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada now hosts a Digital Resource Lab that provides nevessary infrastructure (Computers, Internet access and printing facility) for all the Telugu Wikimedians.
Centurion University, Bhubhaneswar has expressed in digitising Odia publications from the copyright lapse period. With this partnership A2K expects to add close to 50000 folios to Odia Wikisource.
Goa University partnership and Indian village articles: After a brief lull in the activities of Konkani Wikipedia activities have spiked up again mainly because of the encouragement offered by Goa University. Prof. Madhav Gadgil with support from Goa University has launched a project of using the Census of India data to create articles on Villages of India. This activity has been eagerly taken up by the Konkani community members.Encouraged by the level of enthusiasm shown by the Konkani community members Telugu, Marathi and Odia community members have also been engaged in creating articles on villages of India in their respective languages.
Partnership in image re-licensing: Alva's Education Foundation have donated more than 15000 images under CC-BY_SA license. These images depict the folk art forms, famous personalities, cultural practices, tribal costumes and other areas regarding the social and cultural life of Karnataka in particular and South India in general.
Decision of focusing on existing partnerships: Many institutions that were indicated under the category 'To be explored' for a partnership during this plan year have not been approached as A2K team worked towards consolidating its work with the existing institutions rather than crowding our resources. This decision was taken in accordance with the suggestion of community members and FDC suggestion.
Partnership re-assessment: A further re-assessment of Institutional partnerships based on the parameters of RoI, contribution to Global Metrics and community support will be undertaken during the grant period July 2016- June 2017. Thus providing the A2K team opportunity to consolidate its work further and adopting course corrections (such as working with a different Wikimedia project, changing target group, conducting intensive summer/winter camps and if necessary exiting the partnership).

Outreach Strategies Development

Online and offline media outreach strategies: Stories related to Indian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects used to get less attention in the regional language media in India. There has been a hike in news articles and columns related to Indic-language Wikimedia projects both in print and electronic media. One of the most important reasons behind this is the establishment and growing relations with journalists and news editors that are responsible for specific genre of news. Actively writing opinion pieces to newspaper editorials and making blog posts on popular online portals are another reason.
Laying out strategies for recruiting new contributors using social media: Learning from our past initiative experiences such as the movement where new contributors on social media helped Odia Wikisource go live^[2], CIS-A2K has been helping communities with online outreach strategies. Some of the lessons learned can be found in this learning pattern.

Other Communication and Contribution

Balance of Focus Language Area (FLA) and non-FLA language: As CIS-A2K has been working primarily in five focus languages (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu, with Tulu and Santali as two additional languages), there has been more attention paid to the aforementioned seven languages and less on the remaining Indian languages. The same pattern also reflects in our media outreach. To balance this and to provide support in the larger Indic language community, CIS-A2K has made efforts in connecting non-FLA Wikimedians with global community leaders^[3] and writing about work accomplished in non-FLA communities.^[4]
Highlighting the' community-led projects and less-known languages: CIS-A2K has contributed and highlighting in promoting the projects that are primarily community-led^[5] that are not necessarily catalyzed by the CIS-A2K. Also, via public speaking and publications, CIS-A2K has attempted to promote indigenous and the less-known languages of India.^[6]

Challenges

Labor intensive WEP programs: WEP initiative at many of our institutions have proven to be labour intensive. A2K team has not been able to integrate its efforts with the community members. There has also been a perception that the participating Higher Education institutions are required to only provide infrastructure and carve time out of academic schedule. This leads to a situation where the A2K team is often forced to devote time and resources towards the evaluation of assignments.
Lack of institutional partnership in Odia community: Despite the A2K team's attempts to establish formal institutional partnership and further a WEP initiative in Odia language, we have not been successful. With the consent of the Odia community A2K team has approached Centurion University regarding setting up a Wikisource Learning Centre.

CIS-A2K request page

CIS-A2K has a request page intended for Wikimedian/s from India to place requests for support from CIS-A2K. Between 1 July 2015 and 30 June 2016, CIS-A2K has supported 21 such programs/initiatives. The communities supported by CIS-A2K include Odia, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali etc. Besides offering financial support to conduct events, CIS-A2K has also provided non-financial support such as SWAG material, and technical and documentaion support.

Some of the events/initiatives we have supported are

Odia Wikipedians conducting Nabakalebara edit-a-thon (July 2015), Odia Wikisource 1st anniversary celebration (October 2015), Wikipedia's 15th Birthday celebration (January 2016)
funding Bengali Wikipedia community to conduct a workshop (Wikiacademy) (August 2015), a meetup (October 2015), and an "in-depth Meet-up of Bengali Wikipedia editor community in Kolkata" (June 2016)
helping Malayalam Wikimedia community to organize a meet-up at Kozhikode, Kerala (July 2015), and Wikisangamotsavam 2015 (December)
support Telugu Wikipedians to conduct a photowalk and a joint Telugu-English Wikimedians’ meetup in Hyderabad (both in December)
supporting two-day workshop on Samskrit Wikisource - 2016

Lessons learnt

WMF grants opportunities should be discussed and promoted amongst Indic Wikimedia communities.
Wikimedia communities must be encouraged to optimize in-kind support such as event venue, internet connectivity.

Challenges

We have continuously informed communities that a request (specially if it is a large one) should come to us at least 3-4 weeks before the event date(s). However we have received requests at the last moment and hence faced difficulties (such as time-pressure) reviewing and process these requests in time.
We ask communities to submit expenditure details and narrative report of an event soon after its completion. However, we have faced difficulties collecting the said records in time.

Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

Provide exchange rate used:

1 USD = 61.88 INR

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.

Revenue source	Currency	Anticipated	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Cumulative	Anticipated ($US)*	Cumulative ($US)*	Explanation of variances from plan
GSMA	INR	263,783.00	263,783.00	-	-	-	263,783.00	4262.73	4262.73
Wikimedia Foundation	INR	12,000,000.00	6,997,845.00	-	4,998,082.00	-	11,995,927.00	193,923.72	193,857.90
Kusuma Foundation	INR	15,000,000.00	7,500,000.00	-	7,500,000.00	-	15,000,000.00	242,404.65	242,404.65
MacArthar Foundation	INR	6,593,625.00	6,593,625.00	-	-	-	6,593,625.00	106,555.03	106,555.03
Cybersteward Project	INR	495,100.00	495,100.00	-	-	-	495,100.00	8,000.97	8,000.97
Big Data MF	INR	4,578,734.00	-	4,578,734.00	-	-	4,578,734.00	73,993.76	73,993.76
Privacy International	INR	3,883,300.63	-	405,388.00	3,477,912.63	-	3,883,300.63	62,755.34	62,755.34
IDRC	INR	6,751,260.57	-	-	6,751,260.57	-	6,751,260.57	109,102.47	109,102.47
The Mozilla Corporation	INR	662,173.00	-	-	-	662,173.00	662,173.00	10,700.92	10,700.92

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

Grants	Explanation
GSMA	This fund is allocated to CIS for GSMA project undertaken in collaboration with Privacy International. The research has sought to understand different legal and regulatory aspects of security and surveillance in India.
Wikimedia Foundation	Wikimedia Foundation has given this grant, as part of their APG, to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand Wikimedia’s Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects and wider distribution of free knowledge within India.
Kusma Foundation Fund	Kusuma Foundation funds the core of CIS programmes.

Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)

Expense	Currency	Budgeted	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Cumulative	Budgeted ($US)*	Cumulative ($US)*	Percentage spent to date	Explanation of variances from plan
Staff Cost	INR	5,884,320.00	986,800.00	1,328,057.00	1,695,815.00	1,455,531.00	5,466,203.00	95,092.44	88,335.54	92.9	Slightly under spent
Staff Travel & Stay	INR	985,000.00	211,267.00	162,566.00	453,724.00	-	827,557.00	15,917.91	13,373.58	84.02	Due to inclusion of Program Associates presence staff travel has come down
Volunteer Support	INR	1,530,000.00	41,847.00	422,041.00	100,631.00	764,787.00	1,329,306.00	24,725.27	21,482.00	86.89	Increased activities with the intervention of Program Associates
Meetups	INR	895,000.00	84,285.00	4,679.00	151,904.00	114,825.00	355,693.00	14,463.48	5,748.11	39.74	A2K team has conducted Train-the-Trainer and Media Wiki Training during the last quarter of the grant period. These receipts will be updated in the final cumulative financial report
Digitization	INR	150,000.00	5,250.00	-	10,250.00	-	15,500.00	2,424.05	250.48	39.74	Purchase of scanners to assist communities towards digitisation has been done
Equipment	INR	80,000.00	-	170,000.00	362,430.00	122,660.00	655,090.00	1,292.82	10,586.46	819	Essential equipment such as laptops, video camera and hard disks purchased for newly hired Program Associates and A2K staff
Assistant/Intern	INR	110,000.00	20,000.00	30,000.00	110,000.00	-	160,000.00	1,777.63	2,585.65	145.45	Hiring of 3 Program Associates has resulted in over spending
Consumables (Printing, Statinery, Swag)	INR	460,000.00	-	-	-	-	0	7,433.74	0	0	A2K was unable to utilise these funds for publishing and distributing of Community Resources
Miscellaneous	INR	165,000.00	89,003.00	21,207.00	50,978.00	50,442.00	211,630.00	2,666.45	3,420.01	128	Unanticipated expenses regarding orientation of PA
Design/Documentation & Research	INR	50,000.00	-	20,950.00	-	16,508.00	37,458.00	808.02	605.33	75	Optimal spending
Program Advisor	INR	580,800.00	132,000.00	132,000.00	132,000.00	132,000.00	528,000.00	9,385.91	8,532.64	90.9	Optimal spending
TOTAL	INR	11,979,132.00	1,570,452.00	2,291,500.00	3,067,732.00	2,656,753.00	9,586,437.00	193,586.49	154,919.80	80	Final Financial report will have the cumulative details.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

Compliance

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

References

2016 TTT version was conducted between 15–17 June 2016, and in this impact report we are reporting only till 30 June 2016. Although we have seen positive impact after this year's TTT, we are not including these in this report.
Panigrahi, Subhashish. "More Than 40 Million People Await the Launch of Odia Wikisource". Wikimedia Blog (21 October 2014).
[ Roali], an IME for Assamese language that is quite popular in the Assamese speakers, came live after long time. CIS-A2K has worked closely with the developer of this IME, some of the Assamese Wikipedia community members and Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team in the entire process.
Broadening the scope of blogs CIS-A2K has contributed to the larger Indic communities has been a constant effort, though in a limited capacity. A few such blogs can be read here: 1, 2, and 3.
In this article, a community-led project for creating a script encoding converter for the Odia-language Wikimedia projects was highlighted. There were more publication in the Odia newspapers and the project was promoted on social media so that more people contribute using the Unicode standard. The latter will eventually help spread the language's reach on the Internet.
CIS-A2K and type designer Pooja Saxena submitted a paper and presented a paper titled "Bringing Ol Chiki to the digital world" at the Typoday 2016, an annual conference in India to bring type designers and script experts under one roof. The presentation is about CIS-A2K's work in bringing a freely-licensed typeface for the Ol Chiki script that is used to write Santali, an indigenous language spoken across several countries in South Asia.

Signature

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 17:01, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Resources

Resources to plan for measurement

Global metrics are an important starting point for grantees when it comes to measuring programmatic impact (Learning Patterns and Tutorial) but don’t stop there.
Logic Models provide a framework for mapping your pathway to impact through the cause and effect chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes. Develop a logic model to map out your theory of change and determine the metrics and measures for your programs.
Importantly, both qualitative and quantitative measures are important so consider both as you determine measures for your evaluation and be sure to ask the right questions to be sure to capture your program stories.

Resources for storytelling

WMF storytelling series and toolkit (DRAFT)
Online workshop on Storytelling. By Frameworks institute
- The origin of storytelling
- Story frames, with a focus on news-worthiness.
Reading guide: Storytelling and Social change. By Working Narratives
- The uses of the story.
- Case studies.
Blog: 3 Tips on telling stories that move people to action. By Paul VanDeCarr (Working Narratives), on Philanthropy.com
Building bridges using narrative techniques. By Sparknow.net
- Differences between a report and a story
- Question guides and exercises.
Guide: Tools for Knowledge and Learning. By Overseas Development Institute (UK).
- Developing a strategy
- Collaboration mechanisms
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Capturing and storing knowledge.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/grants-apg-proposals-2014-2015-round2-the-centre-for-internet-and-society-impact-report-form

Querying Wikipedia Data

pavanaja — 2016-10-21T14:51:01Z

Recently I wrote a blog about the stub article length of Wikipedia articles. I mentioned the difference in actual number of characters and the number of bytes used to define stub articles between English and Indian language Wikipedias. One can open any language Wikipedia, type Special:ShortPages in the search box to get the list of articles which have less than 2048 bytes.

Originally published blog can be accessed here.

However, as already mentioned in that blog, the number of bytes for Indian languages to be considered as stub should be actually 2048*3 = 6144 bytes employing the same criteria. How to find the list of articles fulfilling this condition?

This brings us to the topic of querying Wikipedia data. Wikimedia Foundation Labs has put up a website wherein one can run SQL queries on Wikimedia data. The URL of the website is quarry.wmflabs.org. When we open the website, we get a textbox wherein one can type the SQL query which will run on Wikimedia data. In this example I will consider Wikipedia only. But the queries can be run on the data of other Wikimedia projects like Wikisource, Wikidata, Wiktionary, etc.

One has to login with his/her Wikimedia login. After logging the SQL query can be typed in the textbox and the Submit Query button has to be clicked. The result of execution of the query on Wikimedia data will be displayed. In this blog I will throw more light on Kannada Wikipedia. The database for Kannada Wikipedia is called knwiki_p. Complete list of databases can be obtained by running the SQL query “show databases”.

To get the list of tables in Kannada Wikipedia, the following SQL queries have to be executed:

use knwiki_p;
show tables;

To know the scheme of any table, run the query desc <tablename>;. For example, to know the details of the table by name, issue the query desc page;. The fields which are of importance in the current case is page_title and page_len. The following query will list all articles in Kannada Wikipedia which are having less than 6144 bytes.

use knwiki_p;
select page_title, page_len
from page where page_len < ‘6144’ and page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect = 0 order by page_len ;

Some other useful queries are listed below:

Query	What it does
Select Count(*) from page where page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect =0;	Number of articles without redirect
Select Count(*) from page where page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect =0 and page_len < 6144;	Number of articles which are having bytes less than 6144
select * from user where user_name Like “P%”;	List all users whose username starts with letter “P”
select user_id, user_name, user_editcount from user where user_editcount >3000 order by user_editcount desc;	List all users with editcount more than 3000
SELECT page_namespace, page_title, page_len FROM page WHERE page_len > 175000 AND page_title NOT LIKE “%/%” ORDER BY page_namespace ASC;	List of long articles (articles having bytes more than 175000)
SELECT rc_title as title, rc_comment as comments, count(*) as Edits FROM recentchanges WHERE rc_namespace = 0 GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 3 DESC LIMIT 100;	Most edited 100 pages during past one month
SELECT log_title, COUNT() FROM logging WHERE log_type=”thanks” GROUP BY log_title ORDER BY COUNT() DESC LIMIT 100;	Who have been thanked most

Useful links -

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/querying-wikipedia-data

‘Entrepreneurship will become a common, respectable profession’ – 25 quotes from Indian startup journeys

praskrishna — 2016-10-25T00:40:09Z

From success to status, witness the memorable journey of Indian entrepreneurship in these excerpts and stories! StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 25 gems and insights from the week of October 16-22 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights!

The article by Madanmohan Rao was published by Your Story on October 23, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was quoted.

When it comes to e-commerce, IoT will exceed overall expectations. – Avinash K Gautam, Silvan Innovation Labs

Chat will play an important role in the future of communication for customer service. – Girish Mathrubootham, Freshdesk

The customer experience is important, especially when things go wrong. – Radhika Aggarwal, ShopClues

Organisations will have to prepare for a digital future and they will have to use technology skills that offer artificial intelligence and design thinking. – Vishal Sikka, Infosys

Design isn’t only about ‘wow’ features. Learn about user preferences and behaviour. – Jay Dutta, SAIF Partners

Overall, there are 30–40 million sarkari naukri aspirants in the country. - Konark Singhal, Sarkari.Jobs

The growth of energetic startups is sure to translate into growth for the agriculture sector if channelised appropriately. - Varun Khurana, Crofarm

Awareness with respect to organic food is on the rise. - Likhita Bhanu, Terra Greens

Almost 100 percent of adhoc transport still happens through truck stands or ‘nakas’. - Kausalya Nandakumar, SmartShift

The opportunities to build connected mobility and electric vehicles in India are immense. - Chetan Maini, Reva

We foresee a paradigm shift in corporate outlook towards on-site childcare. - Chirag Shah, Little Big World

There is need for collective action towards bolstering growth for our cottage industry. - Parul Mehta, Ishanya Foundation

India has more than 250 million students enrolled in government and private schools. Unfortunately, more than 70 percent of children never complete their education. - Anil Bhansali, Microsoft India

Sales this festive season have probably not changed too much over last festive season. - K.Vaitheeswaran, retail entrepreneur

India has become our largest market outside of the Chinese mainland. - Lei Jun, Xiaomi

There is no better time for anyone who can read and write in their native Indian language. - Subhashish Panigrahi, Centre for Internet and Society

Both men and women have to balance work and life, however, a woman is at the receiving end of prejudiced approaches more than men. - Shweta Jain, William Grant & Sons

Mistreating and disrespecting women doesn’t make a man cool, it makes him a monster. - Sunny Leone

Social crowdfunding is here to change the face of social activism. - Piyush Jain, Impact Guru

It’s beneficial that angel investing is considered sexy. - Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Babygogo

Future growth depends on empowering people. Innovation and globalisation have created opportunity the likes of which has never before existed. – Alec Ross, ‘The Industries of the Future’

Live in the present and be grateful for what you have in life. - Anni Sharma, SelfV Survivor

Follow your dream and passion consistently. - Shyamala Ramanand, Akanksha

Life’s not an easy journey. We live only once and we are responsible for own happiness. - Haritha Khandabattu

If you solve a real problem, you will do well. And God knows we have a lot of problems to solve. – Suveen Sinha, ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

Entrepreneurship should be a happy and joyous journey and a journey filled with purpose to be called truly successful. - Ashok Soota, Happiest Minds

Entrepreneurship will become a common, respectable profession. - Sanjay Padode, DaRT

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/your-story-madan-mohan-rao-october-23-2016-startup-journeys-quotes-respectable-profession

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November

tito — 2017-06-28T10:05:20Z

The second iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM), a month-long edit-a-thon to create and improve Asia-related articles on Wikipedia, is going to start on 1 November 2016. In this blog post we'll revisit the stats of the 2015 iteration of the event. We'll also talk to Addis Wang, an organizer of WAM, to know more about their progress and preparation.

Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM) is a month-long online edit-a-thon where the participants create or expand Asia-related articles on Wikipedia. The main rules of this initiative are: a) the articles must be created or expanded during the mentioned period (i. e. November), b) new articles must not be stubs and should be at least 3,000 bytes and around 300 words in length, c) the article must follow Wikipedia guidelines such as Neutral point of view, notability, verifiability, copyright etc.

The first iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month was conducted between 1-30 November 2015 and saw enthusiastic participation from Asian Wikipedia communities. These are some statistics from the last iteration of WAM:

1,286 editors from 43 different communities participated in 2015 edition of WAM. The following Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the challenge- Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
6,096 articles were created or expanded over-all, and of these 4,306 articles followed all the suggested rules.
During the Asian Month, 42,067,774 bytes were added on Wikipedia.
190 new editors participated in this challenge.

Now after the successful first iteration, the organizers of Wikipedia Asian Month are all set to kick off the second iteration of the event. This year's WAM edition will be organized between 1–30 November 2016. Before the beginning of this event, we have taken an interview of Addis Wang, a primary organizer of the event.

CIS-A2K: So, you are all set for another edition of Wikipedia Asian Month. Are you excited?

Addis Wang: Yes. I’m excited to see our Asian community collaborate together once again and looking forward to make more contributions in this years’ edition.

CIS-A2K: Tell us a few things you learnt during the last edition of WAM? Are you going to bring any changes this year?

Addis Wang: The most important thing we will change from the experience of last year is speeding up the postcard processing. We did not start collecting address until we had all the language communities finish the analysis of contributed articles. So this year, we will have multiple rounds of address collection to ensure most people receive their postcards by the end of the year. We will also ask local communities who are making the postcards to finish the process before the end of the November, and be prepared to send postcards in early December.

CIS-A2K: 2016 edition of WAM will start soon. How are the responses so far? Do you feel that this edition will be bigger than the earlier one?

Addis Wang: I think we will have a bigger Edit-a-thon in term of number of new articles, and number of editors participating. Supporting communities were comparatively less than the number of active editors during last WAM. Increasing the number of supporting communities is also one of our goals and we are working to get more communities involved.

CIS-A2K: That’s a good point. How are you going to support such communities?

Addis Wang: We provide easy set-up guideline so there is not much work needed to do to organize the Wikipedia Asian Month. We are also using Central Notice so there will be a good opportunity to get publicity, and opportunity to engage both old and new editors. Making and sending Wikimedia souvenirs could be difficult for many communities, but they can easily achieve these by joining the Wikipedia Asian Month.

CIS-A2K: Let’s talk about Indic Wikipedia communities. You saw very enthusiastic participation from Indic Wikipedia communities, is it not?

Addis Wang: Yes! As the one of the largest Wikimedia community in the Asia, and maybe the most diverse comunity in the world, Indic community is highly involved into the Wikipedia Asian Month since the idea was proposed during Wikimania 2015. In the last year edition, India is the country that received most postcards sent by Wikipedia Asian Month. Also, Wikipedian Asian Ambassadors of English Wikipedia, who created most articles during the Asian Month, are from India.

CIS-A2K: Thanks Addis for your time. We wish you all the best.

Addis Wang: Thank you.

Collaboration attribution: Tanveer Hasan

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/wikipedia-asian-month-2014-2016-iteration-starts-on-1-november

An Article on Kannada Wikipedia

pavanaja — 2014-12-05T01:22:53Z

I wrote an article on Kannada Wikipedia which was published in the Yojana magazine on November 2014 issue.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/yojana-november-2014-pavanaja-article-on-kannada-wikipedia

‘Tulu Wikipedia’ in incubation stage, 600 articles uploaded, says U.B. Pavanaja

praskrishna — 2014-12-07T03:21:11Z

In all, 600 articles have been uploaded to the Tulu Wikipedia which is still in its incubation stage, according to U.B. Pavanaja, Wikipedia representative and Programme Officer, The Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru.

The article by Ravi Prasad Kamila was published in the Hindu on November 26, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja gave his inputs.

Speaking at a workshop on writing articles in Tulu, using Kannada script, for Wikipedia at Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management here on Wednesday, he said that since 2007 till this January there were 135 Tulu articles. The remaining 465 articles were added in the last over nine months.

Workshops on writing articles in Tulu for Wikipedia organised in Udupi and Mangaluru had helped in adding more articles.

Mr. Pavananja, originally hailing from Sullia in Dakshina Kannada, said that if Tulu Wikipedia was to be kept alive at least 50 to 60 articles would have to be uploaded a month and it required at least 10 dedicated writers.

If one wants to write articles in Tulu, he or she would have to log on to bilty.com/tuluwiki and later register there like registering while creating a new e-mail id. Later one can write, edit or read articles written in Tulu using Kannada script.

Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy had organised the workshop as a prelude to the three-day ‘Vishwa Tuluvere Parba’ (Global Tulu Festival) scheduled at the college from December 12.

President of the academy M. Janaki Brahmavar requested the participants to write articles about Tulu language and culture and about the coming festival and upload.

One can contact Mr. Pavanaja through pavanaja@gmail.com.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-november-26-2014-ravi-prasad-kamila-tulu-wikipedia-in-incubation-stage

CPOV: Critical Point of View

nishant — 2009-07-13T09:07:42Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, Netherlands) seek to bring together ideas, experiences and scholarship about Wikipedia in a reader that charts out detailed user stories as well as empirical and analytical work to produce.. The organisations will jointly host two separate conferences aimed at building a Wikipedia Knowledge Network and charting scholarship and stories about The Wikipedia from around the world.

CPOV: Critical Point of View

Wikipedia and the Politics of Open Knowledge

Proposal for a research network, two conferences and a reader

Organized by Centre for Internet & Society (Bangalore, India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Introduction: It would be no exaggeration to state that Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference of dynamic knowledge. The highly visible clashes amongst opinion leaders, university professors, Web 2.0 ‘evangelists’ and publishers over accuracy, anonymity, trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of Wikipedia and its user base. In this respect, what does it mean to now say that Wikipedia has become “mainstream”?

The accelerated growth and scope of Wikipedia as a knowledge reference of universal ambition is unheard of. The Google search engine gives preferential treatment to Wikipedia in an attempt to beat search engine optimizers and to provide a more fruitful experience to its users. Apart from leaving its modern counterparts Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and breadth places Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty's Wen-hsien ta-ch' eng, and the key work of French Enlightenment, the Encyclopédie.

Wikipedia owns a whole set of characteristics – including number and automation (bots) of contributors, regularity of updates, fluidity, ease of search, number of languages, and growing user base. In doing so, this online encyclopedia might be cited as the most visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture. Those of us who believe in pluralism, and the possibility of another world have reason to celebrate and defend Wikipedia from intellectual- property-right-maximalists and promoters of proprietary models of knowledge production and dissemination. However, such celebration and defense should contain critical insights, informed by the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia project in particular.

The Wikimedia Foundation has recently employed its first research analyst and provides spaces for “Wikipediology”, including projects such as the Wiki Project on vandalism studies. Nonetheless, critical Wikipedia research should also be done outside the self-reflexivity of the Wikimedia Foundation and its community. There is an urgent need for quantitative and qualitative research from an Humanities and Arts perspective that could benefit both the wider user base and the active Wikipedia community itself.

More than this though, as one of the largest if not the largest self-contained general knowledge reference of our time, Wikipedia offers critical insights into the contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles, function, and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict resolution and power (re-)constitution. New strategic and tactical operations of knowledge/power are clearly at work. The concept of the open remains ambiguous in this formation, serving as both a rallying concept and masking new agonistic encounters.

By permanently (re)formulating the open and inclusive as the guiding Wikipedia principle being formulated by the community itself, one might also look at this norm as a narrative or even call it a founding myth. For example, the demographic profile of the Wikipedia editor as a white male geek with a limited mono-cultural worldview based on Western rationality remains a concern. However, the question of (non)diversity being formulated in Wikipedia discussions needs also to be posed beyond existing stereotypes and at the general level of discourse. The question of (post)identity and representation is not necessarily resolved via the discursive construction of 'inclusion', if such inclusion may require leaving competing knowledge histories and practices at the door and if it puts a culture of editing not next to a culture of listening/hearing.

In the most material and perceptional way, every new technology modifies conditions of possibility for knowledge. The logic of technologies bleeds into the very structures and organizing principles of knowledge and today, both medium and message may reflect the ideas of the (organized) network, multitude or the Deleuzian machine. It is through a selected mix of technological and normative conditions – the distributed architecture of the net, the Wiki software platform, commons-based property licenses and the FLOSS zeitgeist – that Wikipedia as the encyclopedia of the information age emerges, both continuing and transforming the Enlightenment encyclopedic impulse or will to know.

The authors of these proposal are aware of the seemingly conflicting overarching research agenda: At one level is a philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of knowledge artifacts and social, culture construction in terms of , authority and politics. At the other level the research agenda is an empirical, anecdotal, sociological investigation of the specific phenomenon of the Wikipedia. This has been done on purpose so that the learnings from theoretical research activities can inform practice oriented research and vice-versa.

Overall the conferences and reader may include the following areas inviting theoretical, empirical, practical and art-based contributions:

WikiTheory (opening session)
Wikipedia and Critique of Western Knowledge Production
Encyclopedia Models-- from 18th to 21th Century
Wiki Art
Designing Debate
Critique of Free and Open
Global Politics of Exclusion
The Place of Resistance
Wikipedia and Education
Wiki-analytics, Wikipedia as Platform and Software Studies
Wikipedia and Conditions of Knowledge Production

Descriptions of the Sessions/Fields of Interest

1. WikiTheory – Mining for Concepts (opening session)

Besides providing a general overview of the topics to come, and with an emphasis on diverse global approaches, the aim here is develop concepts that could be used in further research and that could fit into larger projects on Internet culture and the critique of the free and open. Is it possible to develop a counter-hegemony of critical practices that situates itself in the midst of technological cultures? What kind of critical lessons does Wikipedia provide in the face of overwhelming Web 2.0 hype and P2P utopianism? How can a radical Wikipedia critique be developed that does not present itself as the cynical ‘I told you so’ outsider or mimic the neo-conservatist position of Andrew Keen? What kind of insight can Wikipedia offer regarding the continuing tension between knowledge and information?

2. Wikipedia and Critical Histories of Western Knowledge Production

This session may include topics like: western vs. non/post-western knowledge production, textual vs. oral tradition, visual vs. textual knowledge, Wikipedia and language diversity, and indigenous knowledge.

The persistence of almost buried master-narratives: The Western tradition of Enlightenment tends to permeate both common and official understandings of knowledge on Wikipedia. Mirroring the Enlightenment itself, Wikipedia both offers a very particular type of knowledge and simultaneously makes claims upon the universal - e.g. in the formulation of visionary goals, structure of articles, author positions, writing style, categorization of entries, conflict resolution models and so on. The ways in which such ideals persist and continue to bear their mark on the present in often subtle ways requires further attention. Indeed, the 'grand narratives' of the Enlightenment that Jean-Francis Lyotard claimed had retreated with the emergence of 'computerized societies' continue to inform the popular imaginary in ways largely untouched by the deconstructive moment. Frederic Jameson once referred to this as the 'persistence of buried master-narratives', a 'political unconscious' that guides decisions irrespective of philosophical status. Likewise, this resonates with Foucault's urge 'to reveal a positive unconscious of knowledge' as that which performs the task of subjugation but operates beyond contention. What matters here is not truth or belief, but operation.

The predominance of textual or even linguistical cultures: The current system of Wikipedia citation prejudices textual systems of knowledge over oral and visual systems of knowledge. This under-values the knowledge systems of cultural memory and related technique such as mnemo techniques or oral poetry on the one hand, and illiterate populations on the other hand.

3. Encyclopedia Models-- from 18th to 21th Century

The word made durable: In this session we want to give an overview of various attempts to create a collection of global knowledge. In order to get a better understanding of the cultural specificity of the underlying code on which Wikipedia is built, this topic seeks to dig further into the histories of the encyclopedia. D' Alembert's Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie is often described as the most succinct statement of European Enlightenment, and the Encyclopedie itself as the material project of Enlightenment. It is through the Encyclopedie that the Enlightenment becomes durable, tangible and disseminated. What can be learned by examining such historical precedents?

Encyclopedias have been said to be sources of national images and stereotypes of the self and the other within Europe. In Wikipedia image construction tends to be both disembogue and masked in favor of a cosmopolitan, global self-understanding. This session might interrogate to what extent knowledge production’s construction of national images is shifted from a discursive to an automatic georeferencing system of construction.

As machines think (or maybe Knowing Machines or The Machinic Intellect): This session may also look to historical attempts to revolutionize knowledge through the creation of new technologies and to what extent these alternate histories resonate with Wikipedia specifically and the technologies of the Net as driven by knowledge imperatives more generally. Examples include the Mundaneum, the Memex, the Galactic Network and project Xanadu.

4. Wikipedia Art

Art at the gates: Wikipedia Art is understood both as artwork and intervention. Taking place largely on Wikipedia itself, the project Wikipedia Art was considered controversial and was quickly removed (see recent debate on nettime-l). What does this project reveal about this type of knowledge production? What is the threshold of legitimacy for this type of knowledge and how are the boundaries policed? What is at stake in the rejection of art?

5. Models of Disambiguation and Designing Debate

May include topics like: Dissent made visible, After Talk / Alerts / Mailing Lists, the role of forum software, technical opportunities for discontent, barnstars/award culture.

The paradox of neutrality: The Neutral Point of View policy of Wikipedia does not always accurately depict the state of debate on topics: The view held by a corporate lobby, using funded research, will find equal space as the opinions of thousands of disadvantaged persons who might be impacted by the actions of the corporate lobby. Would it make sense to replace the NPoV policy and think about Wikipedia as a space of open political agonality; as a battle for meaning underpinned by the desire for reason?

New crises of authenticity: As Wikipedia gains the status of default reference for other printed textual knowledge artifacts – there are emerging challenges of representation; longevity born digital references; digital manipulation of sources; and circular referencing. Shuddhabrata Sengupta of CSDS/Sarai says “Wikipedia encouraged in its community the active exercise of a critical and skeptical attitude towards any received form of knowledge”. In this context the evolving notions of authenticity has to be further interrogated given the rise of peer-produced knowledge and the diminishing cult of the expert.

6. Critique of Free and Open

May include topics like: the parasite model of free culture (“You work for free, others will make the money from your free labour.”), governance, the role of developers, economy of Wikipedia, the beliefs of the founders as the political foundation of Wikipedia, critical interrogation of knowledge in relation to 'the open'.

Vacuous collaboration: Master concepts like freedom and openness are at constant risk of remaining empty or constituting an ‘empty signifier’. The failure to fill such concepts has lead to many descriptions of Wikipedia as 'collaborations' or even 'ad hoc meritocracies' (Alex Bruns). Both these second-tier notions also tend to mask the reconfiguration of the political and new forms of closure.

Paid and voluntary community manipulation: Many Wikipedians hold strong opinions on range of sensitive areas including identity, religion, science, politics, culture, and use sophisticated techniques such as astro-turfing on Wikipedia. Additionally, some states, corporations and organized religious groups sometimes pay specialists to engage in astro-turfing in order to remove critical opinions and rewrite information from Wikipedia.

7. Global Politics of Exclusion

May include topics like: non-western, language, connectedness, oral histories, women, non-geeks.

Tyranny of the connected: In societies which are compounded by digital and participation divides, the connected usually always win over those who don't have access and time to spare.

Gendered Knowledge: While women are strongly represented among readers, globally, they are hardly represented among contributors. In offlist chats, women express that they do not feel comfortable when contributing to Wikipedia conversations. They even felt silenced by the perception of Wikipedia as a masculine tech culture. Some women have already created an alternative space of discussion at wikichix.org. Does the separation of discussion spaces and the marginalization of domestic issues and social impacts on Wikipedia turn back time?

Morality laundering: Moral standards that exist in one country are being exported to other countries via Wikipedia. For example, photo-realistic images of human bodies on pages dealing with sexuality and anatomy are being replaced with drawings. Does this type of common denominator approach undermine the pluralism of global sexuality? The call and eventual refusal of image censorship for the entry on Mohammad represents a similar scenario.

Language diversity: Despite the self-imposed normative claim of language diversity and the self-description of Wikipedia as a truly multi-lingual project, English is the Lingua Franca in translingual meta projects and policy discussions. Also, on the level of content, is the English Wikipedia the 'Leitmedium' in terms of (content) synchronization. In what other ways does the language divide operate on Wikipedia?

Global governance: Governance of Wikipedia has evolved and become increasingly sophisticated to match its phenomenal growth and the attention it has garnered. While these changes in governance have managed to sustain the growth of Wikipedia and prevent its credibility from being undermined, there is a need to understand the impact that various governance mechanisms have on the different incarnations of Wikipedia throughout the world. Such analysis should consider separately (and compare) different national chapters, plus extend beyond Wikipedia projects to the governance of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Form and format: As the Wikipedia becomes a standard of documentation and knowledge archive, it becomes important to focus on traditional, oral and ephemeral knowledges which might die because of the limitations of technologised platforms to capture them. Oral histories, community knowledges, incipient systems of documenting personal and collective memories, etc. start getting lost as the logo-centric, ‘objectively verifiable’ structures of knowledge production come into being. Rather than a critique of Wikipedia, analysis needs to concentrate on ways by which such knowledge systems are not lost and further tools which need to be developed in order to make them accessible and visible.

8. The Place of Resistance

Why do people resign from Wikipedia? Are critical voices silenced by the majority of the mass? Does the exclusion of the Wikipedia Art project reveal that within Wikipedia is no place for contesting forms, repertoires, styles that go beyond linguistic approaches? Rituals and mechanisms of exclusion offers critical insights into the contemporary status of resistance formation in an paradigmatic age of diversity and inclusion. Going beyond and extending the thinking of social movement scholars such as Touraine or Melucci the study of Wikipedia might inform culture and identity approaches of social movement studies and vice versa.

Can Wikipedia said to be a social movement and/or how do social movement actors appropriate the Wikipedia to built alternatives?

9. Media Literacy and Education

Knowing about knowing: While technologies like newspapers, television, radio and cinema have given birth to educational institutions that engage in media studies, thereby providing tools for the discerning citizen-consumer and future professional, there is still much work required to develop similar critical models for emerging projects like Wikipedia. The common institutional (non)response to warn against the ‘dangers’ of Wikipedia-like projects and discourage or ban their use seems grossly inadequate. The rise of 'prosumers' suggests a need for new 'production literacies' in addition to the traditional 'consumption literacy'. Furthermore, there is also a growing number of meta projects on Wikipedia that seek cooperation with schools and academia. But is the Wikimedia foundation and select national bodies the legitimate actors to teach media literacy or is this rather a public relations effort? What would Wikipedia literacy entail?

10. Wiki-analytics, Wikipedia as Platform and Software Studies

Possible Topics: Protocological Knowledge, Knowledge vs. Information, Cultural Analytics, Cybernetics in the present, (Un)dead labour and the posthuman bot.

Knowledge in the neighborhood of software: Can we start thinking of Wikipedia as an interplay of editors and technology, since software and notification systems are such an important part of the Wikipedia project? Indeed, whilst humans argue over knowledge statements, 'bots' do much of the dirty work and general knowledge housekeeping – a kind of (un)dead labour. The presumption here, of code as politics, is that the wiki principles themselves need to be debated from a perspective of software studies. To what extent has bot politics triumphed over vernacular expertise or lead to an empowerment of the e-tech geeks in knowledge projects? Related to this is the question of the cultural history of Wikipedia as a platform. What is the relation between policy formation and technical protocols? Is Wikipedia knowledge Cybernetic?

Wikipedia as a data set: Besides the automation participation in the form of the bot, Wikipedia is an information artifact through and through. What kind of data analysis techniques can contribute to a radical critique or illuminate network regularities beyond human interpretation? What additional anonymised data sets of edit and use history should be released by the Wikimedia Foundation to promote media literacy and education.

11. Wikipedia and Conditions of Knowledge Production

Possible Topics: Politics of knowledge production, question of authority, The fallacy of objectivity, Wikipedia and the Public Sphere.

The alarm that traditional bastions of knowledge production and consumption (like universities and publishing houses) raise against Wikipedia, brings into sharp relief, the fact that the Wikipedia is a part of a much larger knowledge production industry. With the Wikipedia’s integration into more ‘mainstream’ usage, it becomes necessary to focus on how the emergence of such a space (and the principles it embodies) also affects the much larger and global politics, aesthetics and mechanics of knowledge production. Wikipedia has substantially changed academic trends of publication, citation, classroom pedagogy and research. It has also been central to many debates about who produces knowledge and who has the ‘right’ to be an Authority on the knowledge thus produced.

Moving beyond the class-room and questions of plagiarism or teaching, there is need to investigate the pre-conditions and the contexts within which Wikipedia emerges, and the kind of questions it poses to processes of knowledge production, consumption and verification.

Production Details

Besides setting up a network for critical Wikipedia research with its own mailing list and organizing two events early 2010 in Bangalore and Amsterdam (to start with), the aim is to gather materials for a Wikipedia Research Reader that will be published in the INC Reader series around September-October 2010.

Research and editorial group: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam), Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne), Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nishant Shah (Bangalore).

Contact info:

Sunil Abraham: sunil@cis-india.org

Nishant Shah: Nishant@cis-india.org

For more information on how to apply to the Bangalore WikiWars conference, please click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/Wikiwars

Wikiwars: 12th, 13th January, Bangalore

nishant — 2012-03-13T10:43:09Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Institute of Network Cultures brought together a critical range of scholars, academicians, practitioners, artists and researchers to inquire into the new conditions which emerge with the rise of Wikipedia. The first of two events, WikiWars was the beginning of a knowledge network that shall contribute to a reader titled Critical Point of View, becoming the first resource tool to engage creatively and fruitfully with the diverse range of questions that surround Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia has emerged as the de facto global reference of dynamic knowledge. Different stakeholders – Wikipedians, users, academics, researchers, gurus of Web 2.0, publishing houses and governments have entered into fierce debates and discussions about what the rise of Wikipedia and Wiki cultures means and how they influence the information societies we live in. The Wikipedia itself has been at the centre of much controversy, pivoted around questions of accuracy, anonymity, vandalism, expertise and authority.

The first event, titled WikiWars is scheduled on the 12th and 13th of January 2010. This is the registration page for interested participants who want to join us in the discussions at the WikiWars.

For Event Details look here

For information on Programme, Panels, participants and presentation titles, look here (MS Office) or here (PDF document)

For more details on WikiWars and CPOV, look here

We have, apart from the 40 presenters, 45 seats available for interested participants to join the discussions.

There are no fees for registration, but the seats are limited, available only on first come first serve basis and not expandable.

To register, email us on : nishant@cis-india.org

Registrations closes: 10th January, 12:00 midnight, Indian Time.

Make sure you give us the following information in your registration request: Name, Email address, Cell phone/contact number, Institutional affiliation, Position/Designation, Areas of interest.

We will publish the final list of registered participants on the 11th of January 2010. Registered participants will be provided with a Registration kit and lunch & refreshments during the event.

Please Note: We might not be able to accommodate participants who turn up at the venue without prior registration due to logistical constraints.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wikwarsreg

WikiWars - A report

nishant — 2010-10-06T11:21:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, hosted WikiWars – an international event that brought together scholars, researchers, academics, artists and practitioners from various disciplines, to discuss the emergence and growth of Wikipedia and what it means for the information societies we inhabit. With participants from 15 countries making presentations about Wikipedia and the knowledge ecology within which it exists, the event saw a vigorous set of debates and discussions as questions about education, pedagogy, language, access, geography, resistance, art and subversion were raised by the presenters. The 2 day event marked the beginning of the process that hopes to produce the first critical reader – Critical Point of View (CPOV) - that collects key resources for research and inquiry around Wikipedia.

The debates around Wikipedia, the de facto dynamic knowledge production system online, are very fairly divided into two competing camps. There is a group of people who swear by Wikipedia – celebrating its democratic processes of knowledge production, ease of access, and the de-canonisation of knowledge to produce the ‘WikiWay’; And then there is a group of people who swear at Wikipedia – raising concerns over authenticity, reliability, vulgarisation of knowledge and the de-hierarchisation of knowledge systems that Wikipedia seems to embody. The debates between the two groups are often passionate and situated in wildly speculative and often personal interests and investments in Wikipedia and the Web 2.0 Information Revolution that it seems to be a symptom of. The debates also play out in various international locations, most of them relying on personal anecdotes, experiences and half hearted data that does not stand the tests of rigour.

WikiWars, then, concentrated on things which are about Wikipedia but also not about Wikipedia. In many ways, as Geert Lovink, the Director of INC suggested, WikiWars was a recognition of the fact that Wikipedia has come of age and can now be systematically and philosophically examined as a work in progress that has long-term implications about our future. It was the ambition of the Editorial team (consisting of Geert Lovink, Sabine Nerdeer, Nathaniel Tkacz, Johanna Niyesito, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah) to veer away from the recognised battle-lines drawn in, around and about Wikipedia, and instead examine the fault-lines that run under many of our assumptions, prejudices and imaginations of Wikipedia. And Wikiwars, through careful screening and invested interests, became one of the first platforms in the world to initiate a critical discourse on Wikipedia, seeking to engage with its histories, it contemporary manifestations and practices, and the futures that it seeks to inhabit.

The different presentations brought in located debates, theoretical and philosophical concepts and personal experiences to build frameworks that explain and contextualise Wikipedia as one of the most contested spaces online. The eight panels across two days dealt with four major thematic areas which need to be summarised in brief:

1. Education, Pedagogy and Knowledge: At the very basis of Wikipedia (and other structures like it) is the question of knowledge production, the possibility of using it as an educational tool and the potentials it has for introducing new pedagogies and learning practices in and outside of institutionalised education. Presenters from various disciplines engaged with these questions in interesting ways.

Usha Raman from Teacher Plus in Hyderabad, brought in the question of primary education, the need for teacher training programmes and the ways by which infrastructure development needs to be thought through when talking of Wikipedia and education in the Indian context. The necessity of locating Wikipedia in a much larger debates on learning were also echoed by Noopur Rawal and Srikeit Tadepalli, students from Christ University who brought their experience of Wikipedia and the expectations from classroom education and learning in their presentation.

In the same field, but from a different approach, a panel examined Wikipedia as a site to critique Western Knowledge production systems. Stian Haklev and Johanna Niyesito concentrated on the questions of language and knowledge production. Haklev made an impassioned argument deconstructing the utopian idea of Wikipedia’s multilingual dreams and instead made a call for recognising the black-holes when it comes to non-English production and consumption of knowledge on Wikipedia. He further explored the implications that linguistic imbalance has on the very governance structure of Wikipedia and its communities. Niyesito challenged the ‘global’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ image that Wikipedia has built for itself and posited the idea of Wikipedia as a translingual space where different languages and cultures negotiate common understandings and processes of producing knowledge. HanTeng Liao explored knowledge production through the market economy of key-words to see how the linguistic biases of search engines that harvest these keywords, determines the access and visibility of different Wikipedia pages.

Resistance, Diversity and Representation: While these questions were present as undercurrents to most of the presentations at WikWars, they were perhaps most fiercely present in the debates that followed the presentations by Eric Ilya Lee (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), YiPing Tsou (National Central University, Taiwan), William Beutler and Eric Zimmerman (IDC, Israel).

For Lee and Tsou, the responses to the Chinese language Wikipedia from popular media and personal experiences, were demonstrative of the fact that the lack of diverse means of representation and participation lead to a strong resistance of Wikipedia in Taiwan. Beutler looked at the heavily contested editorial space and policies of Wikipedia to make a point about how lack of effective governance systems based on mutual tolerance and diversity lead to stressful and often traumatic experiences for users who might not be represented through the mainstream ideas and ideologies of an English speaking populace.

Zimmerman took a startling position, calling for a regime of attribution and dissolving the pseudonymous structures of knowledge production in Wikipedia in order to build designs of trust and verification into the system, thus leading to better and more credible research tools and representations.

The tone of debates was altered with presentations by Mark Graham (Oxford Research Institute) and the team of artists Nathaniel Stern and Scott Kildal, the team responsible for the Wikipedia Art Project. Graham showed the complexity of visualising space and how the production of space (or physical geography) on Wikipedia often reflects the virtual density of access and presence online. Showing a nuanced set of images that help mapping these new geographies for a richer diversity and representation, Graham showed how systems like Wikipedia ‘cannot know what they cannot know’ despite the reliance on the wisdom of crowds.

Stern and Kildall, in giving an account of their project which used Wikipedia’s policies to undermine and challenge it, show how the institutionalisation of a space and its ‘canonisation’ can quickly lead to a new set of problems where the space becomes the very thing it had set itself against.

3. Politics of Free, Open and Exclusion: The rhetoric of free and open have been built into all popular discourses around Wikipedia. However, the presentations at WikiWars showed that these need to be taken with at least a pinch of salt and further examined for what they signify. Alok Nandi of Architempo made a dramatic and creative revisit of these guiding principles of Wikipedia. He showed how an inquiry into rituals of participation, distortion and access on Wikipedia can promote, not merely looking at the politics of exclusion but also at the politics of inclusion and the problems therein.

Dror Kamir’s evocative narrative of ‘Your side, my side and Wikipedia’ illustrated how the question of boundaries, of knowledges, of facts and truths get distorted as language, community, nationality, etc. come into play in recording and documenting knowledge on Wikipedia. Concentrating on conflict zones in the Middle East, he talked about the lack and perhaps the impossibility of producing neutrality the way in which Wikipedia demands of its users. These ideas resonated with the propositions that ShunLing Chen from Harvard had floated in the opening panel to explore the ‘boundary work’ of Wikipedia and how it defines and produces itself in relation to external forces and controversies. These discussions on the politics of presence, absence, inclusion and exclusion were further layered by presentations by Linda Gross, Elad Weider, Heather Ford and Nathaniel Tkacz who produced a critique of the Free and Open, taking a cautionary step away from accepting these as inherently good.

While Gross explored the structure of egalitarianism that Wikipedia builds for itself, Ford presented an analysis of the licensing regimes of the knowledge produced within Wikipedia and the problems they pose to traditional knowledges and non-mainstream information. Weider, trained as a lawyer, critiqued the neo-liberal discourse around Wikipedia and tried to correlate the communities with markets. Tkacz’s historical overview of Free and Open, resulted in a compelling inquiry into the very structures that inform the shape and functioning of objects like Wikipedia.

Twitter: #WikiWars http://twitter.com/wikiwars and www.twitter.com/jackerhack/wikiwars

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30479432@N03/sets/72157623193288710/

CPOV blog : http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/

The videos fom the Wikiwars event are embedded below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep