Centre for Internet and Society

Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:59:43Z

A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was held at the J.P. Naik Centre for Education and Development in Pune recently.

A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was conducted in conjunction with VIgyan Ashram, a social work organization on 9 May, 2017. This was held at the J.P. Naik Centre for Education and Development. Vigyan Ashram conducts courses on Introduction to Basic Technology (IBT) or Multi Skill Foundation Course in various schools for integrating socially useful productive work with school curriculum. The goal of Wikipedia edit-a-thon was to attempt to integrate these objectives with Wikipedia Education Program and develop long term strategies. It also aims to build resources in the field of appropriate rural technologies on Marathi Wikipedia and equip its participants with the skills necessary to contribute to Wikipedia.

A total of 23 IBT coordinators from 18 schools(of 9 districts) participated in the workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/thematic-edit-a-thon-at-j-p-naik-centre-for-education-development-pune

Project Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate

A2K — 2020-09-23T23:40:44Z

Project Tiger 2.0 utilisation certificate

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-0-utilisation-certificate

Project Tiger 2.0

Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill — 2019-11-24T09:18:00Z

If you think that Indian languages are as important as international languages, like English, then, you are on the same page with this article. If not, then, let me explain, why it is a significant and much bigger issue than you think.

The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.

Every day, millions of users try to access information from the internet. In India, the number of users who try to access information in their own language (native/Indic language) is mind-boggling. Study says that by the year 2021, the number of Hindi users will surpass that of the English users and a few other indic languages which together form 30% of the Indian languages internet user base. Research also says that 68% of internet users consider local language content to be more reliable than English content.

Despite all these facts, one major reason that is limiting users from accessing information in Indian Languages, is the huge knowledge gap that is found online. When Google’s research team analyzed the results of most searched yet missing topics on the internet in Indian Languages, they decided to partner with the Wikimedia Foundation and started a pilot program called Project Tiger, also known as Supporting Indian language Wikipedias in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge in 2017 to support Indic Wikimedians in generating high quality content in their local language Wikipedias. Read More.

Project Tiger, as the name suggests, is inspired by, and named after, an environmental project in India, to save tigers. Similarly, Wikipedia’s project Tiger, aims at nurturing locally relevant content on Indic language Wikipedias. This project happens in two phases:The first phase during early 2018 is when Google provided 50 Acer Laptops and 100 Internet stipends to experienced and promising Wikimedians, who needed infrastructure support to increase contributions. Once the distribution is done, communities start creating articles from the list provided by Google. Read More

In the first iteration of Project Tiger held in 2018, 12 Indic communities came forward and took part in the 3 month article writing contest during March-May and created over 4,466 articles with total page views of 1,65,774! Every article is reviewed by the corresponding language jury member against several parameters. Only if an article meets all the criteria, it gets accepted. The Punjabi community won the contest with a whopping 1320 articles followed by the Tamil community with 1241 articles. Read More

Besides the monthly prizes given to the top three contributors from each community, the winner and the runner up communities had a 3-day training session at Amritsar, Punjab. This session was lead by User:Asaf (WMF) where he taught the participants on writing articles with encyclopedic value and also introduced Wikidata and tools used in it. Read More

After witnessing the humongous success of Project Tiger in 2018, the second iteration has been rolled out which is called Project Tiger 2.0 or GLOW (Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia). This is being run in four more countries apart from India for the first time. In addition to the 12 language communities that participated previously, Santali, Punjabi(Shanmukhi script) and Sanskrit also have agreed to join the contest this year. Communities have also come up with their own set of articles to write on, along with the list given by Google. This year, the project aims at articles with high quality and communities are committed to doing the same.

If you are interested in joining, please visit this page.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/suswetha-kolluru-and-nitesh-gill-november-22-2019-project-tiger-2

Project Tiger 2.0

Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill — 2019-11-24T09:13:03Z

The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.

ਜੇਕਰ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਸੋਚਦੇ ਹੋ ਕਿ ਮੂਲ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਵੀ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਵਰਗੀਆਂ ਅੰਤਰਰਾਸ਼ਟਰੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਜਿੰਨੀਆਂ ਮਹੱਤਵਪੂਰਣ ਹਨ, ਤਾਂ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਇਸ ਪੋਸਟ ਨੂੰ ਜ਼ਰੂਰ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ। ਜੇ ਤੁਹਾਨੂੰ ਇਸ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ ਨਹੀਂ ਲੱਗਦਾ ਹੈ, ਤਾਂ ਤੁਹਾਨੂੰ ਸੰਖੇਪ ਵਿਚ ਦੱਸ ਦਈਏ ਕਿ ਇਹ ਇੱਕ ਮਹੱਤਵਪੂਰਣ ਅਤੇ ਵੱਡਾ ਮੁੱਦਾ ਕਿਉਂ ਹੈ। ਹਰ ਰੋਜ਼, ਲੱਖਾਂ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਤੋਂ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤ ਕਰਨ ਦੀ ਕੋਸ਼ਿਸ਼ ਕਰਦੇ ਹਨ। ਭਾਰਤ ਵਿੱਚ, ਆਪਣੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ (ਮੂਲ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ) ਵਿੱਚ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤ ਕਰਨ ਦੀ ਕੋਸ਼ਿਸ਼ ਕਰਨ ਵਾਲਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਬਹੁਤਾਤ ਹੈ। ਅੰਕੜੇ ਕਹਿੰਦੇ ਹਨ ਕਿ ਸਾਲ 2021 ਤੱਕ, ਹਿੰਦੀ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾਵਾਂ ਦੀ ਗਿਣਤੀ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾਵਾਂ ਦੀ ਗਿਣਤੀ ਨੂੰ ਪਾਰ ਕਰ ਦੇਵੇਗੀ ਅਤੇ ਕੁਝ ਹੋਰ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਮਿਲਕੇ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਦੇ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾ ਅਧਾਰ ਦਾ 30% ਬਣਦੀਆਂ ਹਨ। ਖੋਜ ਇਹ ਵੀ ਕਹਿੰਦੀ ਹੈ ਕਿ 68% ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨਾਲੋਂ ਵਧੇਰੇ ਭਰੋਸੇਮੰਦ ਮੰਨਦੇ ਹਨ।

ਇਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਸਾਰੇ ਤੱਥਾਂ ਦੇ ਬਾਵਜੂਦ, ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਦੇ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਉਪਭੋਗਤਾਵਾਂ ਲਈ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਤੱਕ ਪਹੁੰਚ ਕਰਨ ਦਾ ਦਾਇਰਾ ਭੂਤ ਸੀਮਤ ਹੈ ਜਿਸ ਦਾ ਮੁੱਖ ਕਾਰਨ ਆਨਲਾਈਨ ਮੌਜੂਦਾ ਗਿਆਨ ਦਾ ਵੱਡਾ ਪਾੜਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਸਮੱਸਿਆ ਨੂੰ ਪਛਾਣਦਿਆਂ, ਗੂਗਲ ਨੇ ਪਾਇਆ ਕਿ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਵਿਚ ਸਮਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਉਪਲਬਧ ਕਰਵਾਉਣਾ ਜ਼ਰੂਰੀ ਹੈ ਤਾਂ ਗੂਗਲ ਨੇ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਆ ਨਾਲ ਮਿਲ ਕੇ ਕੰਮ ਕਰਨ ਦਾ ਫੈਸਲਾ ਕੀਤਾ। ਗੂਗਲ ਅਤੇ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਆ ਫਾਉਂਡੇਸ਼ਨ ਨੇ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਨਾਮਕ ਇੱਕ ਪਾਇਲਟ ਪ੍ਰੋਗਰਾਮ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕੀਤਾ। ਇਸ ਨੂੰ, ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਦੇ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ ਦਾ ਸਮਰਥਨ (Supporting Indian language Wikipedias) ਵਜੋਂ ਵੀ ਜਾਣਿਆ ਜਾਂਦਾ ਹੈ, 2017 ਵਿਚ ਸੈਂਟਰ ਫਾਰ ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਐਂਡ ਸੁਸਾਇਟੀ - ਐਕਸੈਸ ਟੂ ਨੋਲਜ ਦੇ ਮਾਧਿਅਮ ਰਾਹੀਂ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਅਨਜ਼ ਦੇ ਸਹਿਯੋਗ ਨਾਲ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਦੇ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ 'ਤੇ ਉੱਚ ਪੱਧਰੀ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਤਿਆਰ ਕਰਨਾ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕੀਤਾ।https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program

ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਦਾ ਨਾਂ, ਭਾਰਤ ਦੇ ਵਿਚ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਹੋਏ 'Save Tiger' ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਤੋਂ ਪ੍ਰੇਰਿਤ ਹੋ ਕੇ ਰੱਖਿਆ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਦਾ ਮਕਸਦ ਚਿੱਤਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਬਚਾਉਣਾ ਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਦਾ ਉਦੇਸ਼ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਬਚਾਉਣਾ ਤੇ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ 'ਤੇ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ 'ਚ ਸਮੱਗਰੀ ਨੂੰ ਤਿਆਰ ਕਰਨਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ ਨੂੰ ਦੋ ਪੜਾਵਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਵਿਭਾਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ। ਪਹਿਲੇ ਪੜਾਅ ਵਿਚ 2018 ਵਿਚ ਗੂਗਲ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਅਨੁਭਵੀ ਅਤੇ ਸਰਗਰਮ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਅਨਾਂ ਨੂੰ 50 ਕ੍ਰਾਮਬੁੱਕ ਅਤੇ 100 ਇੰਟਰਨੈਟ ਸੁਵਿਧਾਵਾਂ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕੀਤੀਆਂ ਜਾਂਦੀਆਂ ਹਨ। ਜਦੋਂ ਇੱਕ ਵਾਰ ਚੁਨਿੰਦਾ ਵਿਕੀਮੀਡੀਅਨਜ਼ ਨੂੰ ਤਕਨਾਲੋਜੀ ਸੰਬੰਧੀ ਸੁਵਿਧਾਵਾਂ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕਰ ਦਿੱਤੀਆਂ ਜਾਂਦੀਆਂ ਹਨ ਤਾਂ ਇਸ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਦੇ ਭਾਗੀਦਾਰ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਗੂਗਲ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕੀਤੀ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ ਅਤੇ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਬਣਾਈ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਲੇਖ ਬਣਾਉਣੇ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕੀਤੇ।

ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਨੂੰ ਪਹਿਲੀ ਵਾਰ 2018 ਵਿੱਚ ਆਯੋਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਸੀ ਜਿਸ ਵਿਚ 12 ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੇ ਭਾਗ ਲਿਆ ਸੀ। ਇਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੇ ਮਾਰਚ ਤੋਂ ਮਈ ਦੇ ਦੌਰਾਨ 3 ਮਹੀਨੇ ਦੇ ਲੇਖ ਲਿਖਣ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿੱਚ ਆਪਣਾ ਯੋਗਦਾਨ ਪਾਇਆ ਅਤੇ 4,466 ਨਵੇਂ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦਾ ਵਾਧਾ ਕੀਤਾ। ਹਰੇਕ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਦੀ ਆਪਣੀ ਜਿਊਰੀ ਚੁਣੀ ਗਈ ਸੀ ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੇ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਮਾਪਦੰਡਾਂ ਅਨੁਸਾਰ ਸਮੀਖਿਆ ਕੀਤੀ। ਜੇਕਰ ਕੋਈ ਲੇਖ ਸਾਰੇ ਮਾਪਦੰਡਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਪੂਰਾ ਕਰਦਾ ਸੀ, ਤਾਂ ਉਸ ਨੂੰ ਸਵੀਕਾਰ ਕਰ ਇੱਕ ਪੁਆਇੰਟ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਜਾਂਦਾ ਸੀ। ਇਸ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿਚ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਨੇ ਕੁਲ 1320 ਲੇਖਾਂ ਨਾਲ ਮੁਕਾਬਲਾ ਜਿੱਤਿਆ, ਜਦਕਿ ਤਾਮਿਲ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਨੇ 1241 ਲੇਖਾਂ ਨਾਲ ਦੂਜਾ ਸਥਾਨ ਹਾਸਿਲ ਕੀਤਾ।

ਹਰੇਕ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਚੋਟੀ ਦੇ ਤਿੰਨ ਭਾਗੀਦਾਰਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਮਾਸਿਕ ਇਨਾਮ ਦੇਣ ਤੋਂ ਇਲਾਵਾ, ਜੇਤੂ ਅਤੇ ਉਪ-ਜੇਤੂ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਇਨਾਮ ਵਜੋਂ 3 ਦਿਨਾਂ ਦੀ ਵਿਕੀ ਸੰਬੰਧੀ ਸਿਖਲਾਈ ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ, ਪੰਜਾਬ ਵਿਖੇ ਦਿੱਤੀ ਗਈ। ਇਸ ਦੀ ਅਗਵਾਈ User:Asaf (WMF) ਦੁਆਰਾ ਕੀਤੀ ਗਈ ਜਿੱਥੇ ਉਸਨੇ ਭਾਗੀਦਾਰਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਲੇਖ ਲਿਖਣ ਦੇ ਨਿਯਮਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਜਾਣੂ ਕਰਵਾਇਆ ਅਤੇ ਵਿਕੀਡਾਟਾ ਬਾਰੇ ਤੇ ਇਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਵਰਤੇ ਜਾਣ ਵਾਲੇ ਟੂਲਾਂ ਦੀ ਵਰਤੋਂ ਕਰਨੀ ਆਦਿ ਦੀ ਸਿਖਲਾਈ ਦਿੱਤੀ।

2018 ਵਿੱਚ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਦੀ ਬੇਮਿਸਾਲ ਸਫਲਤਾ ਵੇਖਣ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਅਦ, ਦੂਸਰੀ ਵਾਰ ਵੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ ਆਯੋਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ ਜਿਸ ਨੂੰ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ ਟਾਈਗਰ 2.0 ਜਾਂ ਗਲੋਅ (GLOW -Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia) ਦਾ ਨਾਂ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ। ਇਹ ਪਹਿਲੀ ਵਾਰ ਭਾਰਤ ਤੋਂ ਇਲਾਵਾ ਦੋ ਹੋਰ ਦੇਸ਼ਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਆਯੋਜਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ। ਇਸ ਵਿਚ ਪਿਛਲੀ ਵਾਰ 12 ਭਾਸ਼ਾਈ ਭਾਈਚਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੇ ਭਾਗ ਲਿਆ ਸੀ, ਇਸ ਤੋਂ ਇਲਾਵਾ, ਇਸ ਸਾਲ ਸੰਥਾਲੀ ਅਤੇ ਸੰਸਕ੍ਰਿਤ ਵੀ ਇਸ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿਚ ਸ਼ਾਮਲ ਹੋਣ ਲਈ ਰਜ਼ਾਮੰਦ ਹੋਏ ਹਨ। ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਗੂਗਲ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਪ੍ਰਦਾਨ ਕੀਤੀ ਲੇਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ ਅਤੇ ਆਪਣੇ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਬਣਾਈ ਸਥਾਨਕ ਸੂਚੀ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਲੇਖ ਬਣਾਉਣਾ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕਰਣਗੇ। ਇਸ ਸਾਲ, ਪ੍ਰਾਜੈਕਟ ਦਾ ਉਦੇਸ਼ ਉੱਚ ਗੁਣਵੱਤਾ ਵਾਲੇ ਲੇਖ ਹਨ ਅਤੇ ਭਾਈਚਾਰੇ ਵੀ ਅਜਿਹਾ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ ਵਚਨਬੱਧ ਹਨ।

ਜੇ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਵਿੱਚ ਸ਼ਾਮਲ ਹੋਣਾ ਚਾਹੁੰਦੇ ਹੋ, ਤਾਂ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਕਰਕੇ ਇੱਥੇ ਦੇਖੋ।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-punjabi

Project Tiger 2.0

Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill — 2019-11-24T09:15:06Z

The blog post by Suswetha Kolluru and Nitesh Gill is in multiple languages: English, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu.

अगर आप सोचते हैं कि मूल भाषाएँ भी अंग्रेजी जैसी अंतरराष्ट्रीय भाषाओं जितनी ही महत्वपूर्ण है, तो इस पोस्ट को ज़रूर पढ़िए। यदि आपको ऐसा नही लगता, तो आइए आपको संक्षेप में बताएँ कि यह एक जरूरी और बड़ा मुद्दा है। हर दिन, लाखों उपभोगकर्ता इंटरनेट से जानकारी प्राप्त करने की कोशिश करते हैं। भारत में, बहु-गिनती अपनी मूल भाषा में जानकारी प्राप्त करने वालों की है। आंकड़े बताते हैं कि साल 2021 तक, हिन्दी उपभोगकर्ताओं की गिनती अंग्रेजी उपभोगकर्ताओं की गिनती को पार कर देगी और कुछ ओर भारती भाषाएँ मिलकर भारती भाषा के इंटरनेट उपभोग-कर्ता आधार का 30% बनती है। खोज अनुसार 68% इंटरनेट उपभोगकर्ता स्थानीय सामग्री को अंग्रेजी से ज्यादा भरोसेमंद मानता है।

इन सब तथ्यों के बावजूद, भारतीय भाषा के इंटरनेट उपभोगकर्ताओं के लिए जानकारी प्राप्त करने का दायरा बहुत सीमित है जिस का मुख्य कारण ऑनलाइन मौजूदा ज्ञान की कमी है। इस समस्या का समाधान करने के लिए, गूगल ने विकीमीडिया फ़ाउंडेशन के साथ मिलकर काम का फैसला लिया। गूगल और विकीमीडिया ने मिलकर एक पायलट प्रोजेक्ट शुरू किया जिस का नाम प्राजैकट टाइगर रखा रखा। इस प्रोजेक्ट को भारतीय भाषाओं के विकिपीडियाओं का समर्थन (Supporting Indian language Wikipedias) के नाम से भी जाना जाता है। 2017 में सैंटर फार इंटरनेट एंड सोसाइटी- एक्सिस टू नॉलेज के माध्यम से भारती विकीमिडीअनस के सहयोग के साथ स्थानीय भाषाओं के विकीपीडिया पर उच्च गुणवत्ता की सामग्री को तैयार करना शुरू किया गया।

प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का नाम भारत में शुरू किए गए 'Save Tiger' प्रोजेक्ट से प्रेरित है। Save Tiger परियोजना का उद्देश्य टाइगर की रक्षा करना था और प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का लक्ष्य भारतीय भाषाओं को संरक्षित करना और स्थानीय विकिपीडिया पर मूल भाषा में सामग्री तैयार करना है। इस परियोजना को दो चरणों में विभाजित किया गया है। पहले चरण में, गूगल ने 2018 में अनुभवी और सक्रिय विकीमीडिया को 50 क्रामबुक और 100 इंटरनेट सुविधाएँ प्रदान की थी। चयनित विकिमेडियनों को प्रौद्योगिकी सुविधाएँ प्रदान करने के बाद, प्रतियोगिता के लिए गूगल द्वारा उपलब्ध कराए गए लेखों की सूची से और समुदाय द्वारा उत्पादित स्थानीय लेखों की सूची से लेख बनाना शुरू किया।

प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर पहली बार 2018 में आयोजित किया गया था, जिसमें 12 भारतीय समुदाय शामिल थे। इन समुदायों ने मार्च से मई तक 3 महीने के लेख लेखन प्रतियोगिता में अपना योगदान दिया और 4,466 नए लेख बनाए। प्रत्येक समुदाय द्वारा अपनी स्वयं की जूरी चुनी गई थी, जिन्होंने मानदंडों के अनुसार बनाए गए लेखों की समीक्षा की थी। यदि कोई लेख सभी मापदंडों को पूरा करता है, तो उसे स्वीकार किया गया और एक अंक दिया गया। इस प्रतियोगिता में पंजाबी समुदाय ने कुल 1,320 लेखों के साथ प्रतियोगिता में जीत हासिल की, जबकि तमिल समुदाय 1,241 लेखों के साथ दूसरे स्थान पर रहा।

प्रत्येक समुदाय के प्रथम तीन प्रतिभागियों को मासिक पुरस्कार देने के अलावा, विजेता और उप-विजेता समुदायों को अमृतसर, पंजाब में तीन दिन का विकी प्रशिक्षण दिया गया था। इसका नेतृत्व User: Asaf (WMF) द्वारा किया गया जहां उन्होने प्रतिभागियों को लेख लिखने के लिए नियमों से परिचित कराया और विकीडाटा के बारे में बताने के साथ-साथ इसमें इस्तेमाल किए गए टूलों का उपयोग करना भी सिखाया गया।

2018 में प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर की उत्कृष्ट सफलता को देखने के बाद, दूसरी बार प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर का आयोजन किया जा रहा है, जिसका नाम प्रोजेक्ट टाइगर 2.0 या GLOW (GLOW-Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia) है। यह भारत के अलावा पहली बार दो ओर देशों में आयोजित किया जा रहा है। पिछली बार 12 भाषाई समुदायों ने इसमें भाग लिया था। इसके अलावा, इस वर्ष संथाली और संस्कृत भी इस प्रतियोगिता में भाग लेने के लिए सहमत हो गए हैं। समुदाय, जल्द ही, गूगल द्वारा उपलब्ध कराए गए लेखों की सूची और उनके द्वारा बनाई गई स्थानीय सूचियों से लेख बनाना शुरू करेंगे। इस वर्ष, इस परियोजना का उद्देश्य उच्च गुणवत्ता वाले लेख हैं और समुदाय ऐसा करने के लिए प्रतिबद्ध हैं।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/project-tiger-2-hindi

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

bhuvana — 2019-12-23T08:18:11Z

An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.

Hour of code event

The “Hour of Code” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of Grace Hopper, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 400-500 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were Wikimedia, Mozilla, Google Developers Groups, Facebook Devcircles, Women Tech Makers and School of AI where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.

Wiki Orientation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg

I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikipedia, Wikimedia commons and Wikimedia in Education program. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.

Bridging Gender Gap

After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg

The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.

Key observations/ learnings

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg

The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).
The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.
Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.
Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia.

Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai , The Covai mail news , Prime Time Tamil , Covai news and Updatenews360.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science

Konkani Wikipedia next?

praskrishna — 2013-08-01T08:32:37Z

A quarter of the world’s Konkani speakers live in Goa. Which is why it should cheer us up to know that a Konkani Wikipedia is being shaped up. But unless more and more of us contribute, the project might never go online.

This article by Diana Fernandes was published in OHeraldO, the largest circulated English daily in Goa, on July 27, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

Konkani has never had its own Wikipedia site like Hindi (hi.wikipedia.org) or Sanskrit (sn.wikipedia.org). So the good news is that efforts are underway since 2006, the bad news is it hasn’t made any progress in the last seven years.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is however hoping to change this. As part of the project being funded by the Wikipedia Foundation, San Francisco, CIS through their Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme plan to bring to life a full fledged Konkani Wikipedia site with the Devanagari script.

But Vishnu Vardhan, programme director, is quick to add, "This is no way trying to resolve the script issue. We are simply creating a place where people from the Konkani speaking community can contribute as well as read Konkani online."

Considering the complexity of the language, which is also written in Kannada, Malayalam and Perso Arabic, Konkani has many obstacles to over come before this project reaches fruition.

A balanced and practical approach of developing the content on the Konkani Wikipedia will be focused upon, say the organisers. For this, the A2K will look at generating content and build a community around the official Konkani script — Devanagari. Though they will also accept any other script, which will either be translated into the Devanagari script or remain as it is.

Speaking about the workshop, Vardhan says Goa was the perfect launch pad for the project. Among the 24 lakh Konkani speaking population around the world, Goa accounts for 6 lakh, the highest.

The CIS plans to have free lectures around the state to any interested group of people to spread the news of contributing articles related to famous personality, place, a cultural aspect, religion, history or sociology. But then comes the task of which script do people contribute in.

The current incubator has 52 Devanagari, 32 Romi and 2 Kannada articles. The project received its maximum number of edits in 2007 08 and has been reducing over the subsequent years.

The aim of the project is to get more articles. "Presently, we are telling people to simply contribute articles, whether in Devanagari or Romi. But since Devanagari is the state approved script, it is preferred in that script."

Vardhan believes that removing it from the incubation stage and having a live Wikipedia site will be a start. But for which he says, a community is necessary.

"Wikipedia is a community website and without one, there would be no exchange of information," he says. At present, the incubator has 86 articles but the aim is to increase this number with as many articles as possible.

Once armed with enough articles to go live, Vardhan says, the engineering department at Wikipedia can be approached about creating a multiple script converter that converts any of the scripts into any other desired one. The problem however is that there isn’t enough motivation and interest in the language itself.

"Only if the team at Wikipedia (US) sees the demand for different scripts in Konkani will they consider the multiple script converters," says Vardhan.

A similar challenge was faced by other wikis, like the Kashmiri Wikipedia, which used Pashto, Sharada and Devanagari scripts. Punjabi had the Gurmukhi script used in India and the Shahmukhi script that’s used in Pakistan. Solutions to them included an automatic converter, multiple writing system and creating separate wikis for each script.

CIS has also organised a Kannada workshop in Udupi for a Kannada Wikipedia. The other languages that the Wikipedia Foundation has asked them to work on are Telugu, Odia, and Bengali.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/oheraldo-july-27-2013-diana-fernandes-konkani-wikipedia-next

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Sagara

pavanaja — 2014-03-25T08:51:36Z

On Sunday, July 28, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Sagara, Shimoga Dist, Karnataka by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. In this post, I share with you the happenings from the workshop.

Video

Some months ago, I got a phone call from Chinmaya M Rao from Sagara, Shimoga District requesting me to conduct a Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Sagara. He informed me that there are quite a good number of writers in that area who are interested in adding content to Kannada Wikipedia but don't know how to. Many telephonic discussions followed, many dates were considered, changed, iterated and finally the workshop was organised on Sunday, July 28, 2013. The programme was inaugurated by Shri Kagodu Thimmappa, Speaker of the current Legislative Assembly of Karnataka. Famous Kannada writer Naa D'Souza was the chief guest. Shri G.T. Shridhar Sharma, President of Kannada Times Media World, presided over the function. The programme was jointly organised by CIS and Kannada Times Media World, Sagara.

	Speaking after inaugurating the workshop, Shri Kagodu Thimmappa said "the basic knowledge of technology has become important as one could get ample, accurate information on various topics, and current affairs of the world in a minute all languages, including Kannada. It is the onus of the people of the sate to preserve and promote the use of Kannada language." (Deccan Herald, Shimaga edition, July 30, 2013). Naa D'Souza mentioned how earlier knowledge was the monopoly of some particular sections of the society and how technology has transformed knowledge into an asset of all the people irrespective of caste, race, religion, region and financial status.
Seen above is a picture of Shri Kagodu Thimmappa inagurating the workshop

I then gave a brief introduction to Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia. There are many encylopaedias in Kannada but very few are regularly updated. They are seldom digitised. People who add content to Kannada Wikipedia are in search of authentic information. These are available in many encylopaedias brought in by various academies, associations and universities funded by the Government of Karnataka. People of the state have a right on these content. I requested Shri Kagodu Thimmappa to bring them under the Creative Commons License so that the active Kannada Wikipedians can make use of them to add content into Kannada Wikipedia. Shri Kagodu Thimmappa promised to look into this.

After the inauguration, the actual presentation by me started at a cybercafe run by Istam Computers. It was raining heavily. Participants walked for 5 minutes in heavy rain to reach the venue. The presentation went on till lunch time. The place was very congested. One participant, B. V. Ravindranath, who is a practicing Chartered Accountant at Sagara, offered his place to conduct the hands-on workshop. Hence, all participants went to the new venue which was quite comfortable. Participants did the hands-on editing of Wikipedia till 7.30 p.m. Eleven persons participated in the workshop and edited actively. Some were seen editing Kannada Wikipedia regularly after the workshop.
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is seen sharing a light moment with participants from the workshop in the above picture.

After the inauguration, the actual presentation by me started at a cybercafe run by Istam Computers. It was raining heavily. Participants walked for 5 minutes in heavy rain to reach the venue. The presentation went on till lunch time. The place was very congested. One participant, B. V. Ravindranath, who is a practicing Chartered Accountant at Sagara, offered his place to conduct the hands-on workshop. Hence, all participants went to the new venue which was quite comfortable. Participants did the hands-on editing of Wikipedia till 7.30 p.m. Eleven persons participated in the workshop and edited actively. Some were seen editing Kannada Wikipedia regularly after the workshop.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is seen sharing a light moment with participants from the workshop in the above picture.

An active Kannada Wikipedian, B S Chandrashekhar from Sagara, who has more than 4500 edits on Kannada Wikipedia to his credit was felicitated during the inauguration function. He is 79 years old. Despite his old age, he actively paticipated in the workshop till the end and learnt many intricacies which he was otherwise unaware of.

In the end, I would like to personally thank Chinmay Rao and G. T. Shridhar Sharma of Kannada Times who toiled a lot in organising the wokrshop. Also thanks to B. V. Ravindranath, CA, who provided the venue for the hands-on workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-at-sagara

Wikipedia edit-a-thon in mind? Kindly start here

tito — 2018-05-11T08:15:56Z

Are you thinking to conduct a Wikipedia edit-a-thon? You may use this document as an initial guide. Please note: this article is written keeping specially organisations, institutions, and individuals in mind, who are new to Wikipedia world. We are starting this post with some basic questions. Please feel free to ask questions by mailing tito "at" cis-india.org

Are you thinking to conduct a Wikipedia edit-a-thon? That's great. In this article I'll explain a few thinks, which might help to plan your ediit-a-thon your better?

First thing first, a few questions:

Do you want to contribute to Wikipedia or other projects? Other than Wikipedia, there are a few other interesting projects such as Wikisource, Wikidata, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons.
Do you want to contribute to other language Wikipedias/projects such as Tamil Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Telugu Wikisource, Bengali Wikisource etc., other than the same old English Wikipedia?

If you are planning to do an English Wikipedia edit-a-thon, it is comparatively more difficult, and needs much more preparation. I'll explain some of these things below.

Now let's talk about edit-a-thon structure:

Do you want to do it an offline edit-a-thon? Or is it going to be an online edit-a-thon?
What is the duration?
How many people are going to participate? Are they already Wikipedians or new to Wikipedia?

Help pages: Getting started with Wikipedia

Let's start by gathering a few help pages' link which will help to get started with Wikipedia:

Introduction to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction
CheatSheet: learn how to write using Wikicode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Cheatsheet

Policies and guidelines

It is really important to know about a few policies before you start editing Wikipedia. Please explain these policies and guidelines to edit-a-thon participants as well.

Notability: we have "notability" policy. What are the topics we can write about? Please read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability Now, these are "General Notability Guidelines or in short we call it GNG (please read the "General notability guideline" in the page). Now, we have detailed explanation pages on different notability topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Notability_guide, please read the pages you need such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people). Now in every guideline page you'll get something called "basic criteria", and/or "additional criteria". These are the guidelines you need to pass. A good argument goes like this: "The article meets Wikipedia notability because it meets "this", "this", "this", and "this" (or #1, #3, #4, and #5) of the mentioned notability guideline.
Verifiability: The next important policy is Verifiability. Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability. Please also read, what are reliable references or how to identify reliable sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediaa:Identifying_reliable_sources. There is a fine list of references such as forum posts, personal blogs, eCommerce websites, press releases, user-generated content etc. etc. we should not use as references on Wikipedia.
Neutral point of view: Neutral point of view is absolutely important. Please read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

Frequently asked questions

Question: I do not have references, can I create pages or add information?

Answer: No, references are important. Specially, on English Wikipedia, where content are reviewed more, reliable secondary references are absolutely needed.

Question: But, I am writing the "truth".

Answer: Wikipedia works with :verifiability, and not truth. Please read: Verifiability, not truth

Question: I can not provide the things you are asking, but I am working for a cause. Can't you help?

Answer: That's a good question. A2K cares about bridging gender gap, knowledge revolution, and diversity. However, please note, it is a standard practice Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion, and Wikipedia is also not a place to do advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind. If you really want to advocated about your cause, why not try your own website, blog, or some forums?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-mind-kindly-start-here

Exploring Wikimedia platforms in Dialogue on the Urban Rivers of Maharashtra

subodh — 2018-05-07T16:25:11Z

INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) and SANDRP (South Asian Network of Dams, Rivers and People) organized “A Dialogue on the Urban Rivers of Maharashtra” on 20-21 April 2018 from 9:00am-5:30pm at Yashada, Pune.

In the last year, we have developed good rapport with organisations and citizen science groups working on water related issues. Thematic workshops and awareness sessions were conducted with some of them. We have started discussing about 'Wiki Meets/Takes River' Campaign with these networks. INTACH and SANDRP are two potential groups which work on rivers across India with commitment. We have opportunity to collaborate in other states also.

We gave inputs on 'Exploring Wikimedia platforms for spreading knowledge about Water, Dams & Rivers'.

Outcome

The river dialogue was very meaningful and action oriented. Last month, we were able to launch process to build knowledge repository called - Van Bodh - related to biodiversity, forest and tribals with Tribal Research & Training Institute & other thematic groups. Through this dialogue, various thematic groups & Govt organisations formed consensus on evolving - Jal Bodh - a knowledge repository on Water related issues. Prof Madhav Gadgil and myself prepared a concept note for further discussions and process development. Yashada will be nodal agency to execute the project.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/exploring-wikimedia-platforms-in-dialogue-on-the-urban-rivers-of-maharashtra

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021/Report

Nitesh Gill and Tito Dutta — 2021-08-20T14:01:55Z

In March 2020, the whole world came to a standstill. What many deemed as a regular ‘flu’ turned out to be the pandemic that brought everyone to their knees. The things that we always did, we could no longer do them. We were all confined to our homes with no choice but to work online. Hanging out with friends, attending weddings, and being a part of the conferences and seminars suddenly became a part of the past. We started using the word unprecedented a lot.

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change!”

- Wayne Dyer

For the last many months, we have been getting used to this new ‘normal’. Students and teachers are getting accustomed to the classes and tests happening online. What people thought was impossible, has now become possible. No one could have guessed that birthday parties, gatherings, even marriages would be conducted online. We have now got used to being part of webinars, sessions, and conferences online. A2K is not an exception to this. We planned and conducted a national meet named ‘Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021’.

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success!”

- Henry Ford

Background: We, at A2K, have organised many such training sessions and conferences like Train the Trainer, Media Wiki Training, Advanced Wiki Training. But due to COVID restrictions it was not possible to organise such an event offline this year. So this year, we decided to organise a virtual meet for the Wikimedians of India. This meet was planned and conducted especially for the Wikimedians who are already working or are interested in working on Wikimedia projects that deal with Indian content.

Our main objectives behind organising this meet were to celebrate the work done by Wikimedians of India, to provide an online platform for wiki-learning and skill-share, to support discussions and interactions, to give training on important and relevant topics, and explore the medium of online training and wiki-event for future use.

After all the planning, our three-day event of Wikimedia Wikimeet took place from 19 February to 21 February, 2021.

Community Engagement: We decided to organise this meet as there seemed to be a scarcity in volunteer’s and user’s contribution. Moreover, we have always believed in giving back to the community. So, we took an initiative to keep the community engaged. Our goal was to encourage volunteers and users to come forward and take lead in Wikimedia activities. To make it easy for our volunteers and the users to select their area of interest, we started Request for Comments and Community Engagement. It is a forum where open discussions can take place about and where participants can share their knowledge, expertise, and experience. The tasks that were conducted under this were Logo Design, Translation, and Knowledge on Hybrid / Blended Learning Model.

Modes of Promotion: This event would not have been a success if not for our participants. We began promoting the event by using our India Mailing list. Our next step was to publicise the event on our social media channels and pages and also in messenger groups. We sent bulk messages on Indic Village Pumps announcing that the Wikimedia Wikimeet was about to take place. Our next step was to start a fortnightly newsletter about the event. It was started to notify the people of updates. We encouraged our users to sign up for the newsletter so they would get immediate updates. This way, our volunteers and users knew what was happening with regard to the event and they also came to know what was about to happen in the coming 15 days.

Another thing we did was to put up a blogpost on Diff about our event. Our blogpost stated the importance of organising such an event. We have also discussed the background ideas in the same post. Our next blogpost dealt with the ‘how’ of our event. In it, we discussed the ideas of designing the event. Total 5 blogposts were written and put up. Another article named Wikimedia Wikimeet and Beyond: Ideas and Opinions was written and posted a few months later.

Organisation Methodology: Every great journey begins with one step. With that in mind, we first decided on the organisation methodology. The team tried its best to maintain transparency from planning and organisation till the execution and the end of the meet. This was the first ever large scale meet that we were planning to organise. Thus, some of the resources came in handy in our planning stage. To mention a few, we took inspiration and guidance from Celtic Knot Conference, LD4 Conference, Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting, Creative Commons Global Summit, Italy Wiki Conference, Wikicite Virtual Conference, and Wikimedia Strategy Global Conversation.

Next step the core team took was to appoint a program committee. The main function of this program committee was to select important submissions and presentations. Following are the 5 members of our program committee:

Kiril Simeonovski: He is the founding member of Wikimedia Macedonia and Shared Knowledge and has been the president of Shared Knowledge since 2014.

Netha Hussain: She has been a volunteer in the Wikimedia Movement since 2010. Nowadays she mostly works in English WIkipedia and Wikidata, but she is also active in Commons, Metawiki, and Malayalam Wikipedia.

Shyamal: He is interested in the natural history of India, environmental consciousness in general, and history of science, especially biology.

Mahir256: He is an administrator on Wikidata, an administrator on Bengali Wikisource, and has a native understanding of English language.

Bodhisattwa: He has been a volunteer editor in different Wikimedia projects since 2012. He is mostly active on Bengali Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. He is also a part-time coordinator at the Center for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge.

It was necessary for the participants of this event to register prior to the event. A registration form was open and made available for the duration of a month. After the deadline of this registration form, another special registration form with criteria was given to the participants. The participants were then selected according to the criteria.

The event took place on Zoom. We used the official Zoom account of the Center for Internet and Society. The main reason behind registrations was to avoid zoom-bombing. The eligible participants were given the link to join the event.

Wikimedia Wikimeet was a three - day long event. We tried our best to accommodate all the presenters, moderators, attendees, and participants. Time was set according to them. This was a national level event but we were able to involve a few experienced international experts. So we had to take the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) as well as the Indian Standard Time (IST) into consideration so that the volunteers, participants, and experts could all attend all the sessions and could engage in fruitful discussions.

Selection of Presentations and Sessions: We received 44 submissions for this event and eventually after discussions 29 were selected to be featured in the event. A committee was given the task to select the submissions based on the topics that are crucial to Indic editors. We also had willing participants from the Wikimedia Foundation as presenters to acquaint the members of Indian community and volunteers with the important topics and issues.

We also invited international guests and experts to speak to our Indian Wikimedian community about the topics that are relevant currently and would be crucial for Indic writers and editors in future. We invited the experts from France to talk about their Lingua Libre project. We also invited the team to talk about Strategy. Our keynote speakers were also invited for this event.

Event: After taking all the submissions into consideration, our program committee made a program schedule for the three-day event. The tracks that were selected by the program committee for the presentations were: Growth of Wikimedia communities and partnerships, Information on technical Aspects and tools, Strategy of Wikimedia movement, GLAM & Content copyrights, etc.

Other than that, we tried to follow the Friendly Space Policy completely. All the rules of the said policy were cleared before the event. The team tried its best to remove the language barrier for our Non-English speakers. We urged the Wikimedians to translate their content in their language for their respective communities. This practice was followed by quite a few Indic Wikimedians.

30 sessions were planned in all. Every session had a separate Etherpad link. As this was a virtual event, this facility was provided for the participants as well as the experts to interact during and after the session. Due to shortage of time, the notes and questions were made on the Etherpad. Experts and presenters wrote their answers on the Etherpad as well. All the sessions and presentations were recorded and are now available to everyone on the Commons under the name Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021.

During this three-day event, around 200 participants joined in at different times. Out of the 30 presentations, 18 presenters were from India and the remaining were international presenters.

Day 1 (Friday, 19 February, 2021):

There were 9 presentations on Day 1 of the event. After the introduction by Tito Dutta, the keynote speech was delivered by Asaf Bartov (Ijon). This was attended by 86 participants.

After the keynote speech, Dipantshu Das shed a light on ‘Attracting experts to contribute to Wikimedia’. He highlighted that it was the need of the hour. And this work would greatly help communities in India. He talked about urging academicians to contribute to Wikipedia more openly.

Next presentation was made by Sudhanshu Gautam and Angie Muigai. They talked about ‘Growing Wikipedia’s reach in India with a new Wikipedia app’ in their presentation, they talked about the importance of making Wikipedia mobile friendly with the increase of internet users in India. They mentioned that there was an opportunity to provide ideas to increase the readership.

The next two presentations under the growth track were: ‘Help your community grow’ and ‘Introducing newcomers from Wikisource to Wikipedia: A case study from Hindi Wikipedia’. The first session was a 20 minutes long presentation followed by a conversation and it was beneficial to welcome and retain new users to Wikipedia and also increase the quality of new users’ edits. The second presentation shed some light on how to retain the new users and volunteers once they join the community after attending sessions and workshops.

On day 1, there were three presentations about the partnerships: ‘Engaging with partners in the movement! WMF's approach’, ‘GLAM Mapping leads to Wikimedian in Residence’, and ‘Discover Structured Data on Commons for you and your partners’.

In the first presentation, Praveen Das underlined the importance of working with various partners from different fields for mutual growth.

Next presenter Arya Joshi talked about the GLAM mapping research conducted by CIS - A2K and her work with Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, Pune. She talked about offline and online documentation of work and creating new opportunities for research.

The final presentation of the day was Discover Structured Data on Commons for you and your partners by Alicia Fagerving. In this session, the presenter gave recommendations to make optimum use of the Structured Data on Commons (SDC) to improve workflow. This presentation was followed by a workshop where the participants edited SDC and then there was a discussion.

Day 2 (Saturday, 20 February, 2021):

Day 2 began with a special morning session and keynote speech by Katherine Maher and Amanda Keton. In her speech, Katherine highlighted how Indian community is important to the Wikimedia movement. She also talked about the growth of emerging communities. Groups and Wikimedians who have been doing good work were also recognised. She talked about relaunching the Grant strategy. It was a fruitful session with comments and question - answers.

After the keynote address, there were 3 presentations that dealt with the technical aspect and issues.

The first talk was about Gadgets and tools for a Wikipedia Editor by Ranjith Siji. He introduced and explained different kinds of scripts and tools required to edit and browse Wikipedia.

The second session was a 60 minute long workshop followed by a conversation about Transforming Data from the Web with OpenRefine. It was conducted by Gnoeee and Ranjith Siji. This was a basic level training given to the new users of OpenRefine.

The last technical presentation was Writing UserScripts and gadgets by Jay Prakash. In his session, the presenter imparted basic to intermediate level training on writing user scripts and explaining how to use it as a gadget on Wiki.

The last 4 sessions of the day dealt with Strategy. The first presentation ‘An update from the Sustainability Initiative’ in this category was made by Gnom from Germany. He gave an update on the Sustainability Initiative. His talk consisted of an update on current developments around environmental sustainability in the Wikimedia movement.

Next presentation named ‘Grants in 2021 - What is the process?’ was by Tanveer Hasan. As a part of the Community Resources team, the presenter shared a process update and gathered feedback on how to improve the strategy relaunch process.

Next presentation titled ‘Movement Strategy and South Asia’ was done by Anna Torres, Hillun Vilayl Napis, Kayode Yussuf, Tanveer Hassan, Mehrdad Pourzaki, Ryan Merkley, and Kaarel Vaidla. In this session, all the presenters talked about the initiatives that are most relevant and important in 2021 in communities of South Asia.

The last session of the day was ‘Distributed leadership and global decision-making - the Interim Global Council’. It was delivered by Mehrdad Pourzaki, Ryan Merkley, and Kaarel Vaidla. They talked about global decision making and distributed leadership. Their aim was to acquaint the South Asian communities to the conversations, possibilities, and updates.

Day 3 (Sunday, 21 February, 2021):

The last day of the event was dedicated to ‘International Mother Language Day’. The day began with 2 consecutive sessions by Dipantshu Das named ‘Copyright, Copyleft, and Wikimedia movement’ and ‘Building a diamond open access journal on Wikimedia platform’. In the first session, the presenter talked about the importance of intellectual property rights and copyright to the Wikimedia movement. In the second session, the presenter talked about the importance of having diamond open access journals especially in India as the article processing charges for open access journals can be very high in India due to conversion rates.

Next session was a workshop conducted by Jayanta Nath on Wikisource. Another workshop was conducted at the same time by Rangan Datta on Wikivoyage.

Next 4 presentations on Day 3 were community based. The first presentation in this series was titled ‘Internship Program in Tamil Wiki Projects’ and was delivered by Neechalkaran. It was a knowledge sharing session on the internship program for college students.

The second presentation was made by Subodh Kulkarni and the title was ‘Re-licensing and Digitisation process in Maharashtra’. The presenter explained the relicensing process taking place in Maharashtra Marathi community, authors, copyright holders, and organisations.

The third session was conducted by Ziko and was named ‘Rules that every wiki needs’. In this session, the presenter introduced the topic ‘law and rules every wiki needs’.

The last session in the Community category was ‘100wikidays’ and it was conducted by Sangram Senapati. In this session, the presenter shared his story of writing an article for Wiki each and every day for 100 days.

The last four presentations of the day were dedicated to language. In the session titled ‘Servants Of Knowledge initiative for Digital Archiving Kannada & other Indic language content’, Omshivprakash talked about the impact of digitisation of art, history, and culture on language preservation. He primarily talked about the Kannada language.

Next session was on ‘Spell4Wiki - Audio upload tool for Wikimedia commons & Multilingual dictionary based on Wiktionary’ by Manimaran. In this presentation, he introduced the Spell4wiki app. He also described the features and benefits of using the said app.

Next session was conducted by invited guest experts from France. The session was about ‘Lingua Libre - record your language’ and ‘Lingua Libre bot and recording wizard’. It was conducted by Adélaïde Calais, Poslovitch, and Yug. Lingua Libre is a website created by Wikimedia France to record vocabulary. Its aim is to build a collaborative and multilingual bank. In the session, the two tools used in the Lingua Libre project, the Record Wizard and the Lingua Libre Bot, were also introduced.

The last session before the closing keynote speech was ‘Section Translation: New Ways to Contribute on Mobile Devices’. It was presented by Amir Aharoni, NGkountas, and Pau Giner. The presenters talked about the content translation extension. Further, they talked about two new features that are to be deployed that can be used by more people in many countries and languages.

The closing keynote speech was given by Tarunno. He spoke about ‘International Mother Language Day - The love for Language and a sound of silence’ The event ended with a closing session by Tito Dutta.

Hurdles we faced: At the beginning, we found it difficult to form a team to organise the event. Due to the pandemic, we were unsure about approaching the wikimedians and were also worried about the participation. As it was a virtual event, the internet was the most important factor in it. Many participants and volunteers faced problems due to low internet connectivity.

Our achievements: This was the first ever national level virtual event conducted in India by A2K. We were able to create a platform for the wikimedians to interact. Though it was initially a national event, we were able to get international guests as well.

We received positive feedback and precious suggestions from the participants. Following are some quotes:

“Productive, helpful sessions. Was very helpful to me personally. Good effort by all involved. If I were to suggest improvements, Would have liked slots for conversations, and networking sessions. A "state of nation" like updates by projects would have helped too. “

“Thanks a lot again, this was a very good event.

Online events are not the same as physical ones but it was still very interesting and useful.”

“I was a presenter and presented a workshop on Wikivoyage. It was a nice program and I'm looking forward to more such virtual and physical events.”

We also received some feedback videos that were an appreciation for A2K. Following are a couple of links:

Manavpreet Kaur

Mehrdad Pourzaki

We also received audio feedback from Ashwin Bandur.

What’s next?!: After all the stumbles and hurdles and achievements we had in Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, we have already started planning for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2022. Tito Dutta has written about the planning for next year’s meet.

“It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.”

- Carl Friedrich Gauss

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-report

Wikipedia assignments workshop for Post Graduate students in PAH Solapur University

subodh — 2019-06-22T03:21:39Z

On May 3, 2019, Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) along with PAH Solapur University conducted a Wikipedia workshop for students from the post-graduate stream in PAH Solapur University. Ten students from Mass Communication department and three faculty members participated in the workshop. Prof. Ravindra Chincholkar and Subodh Kulkarni were the facilitators for the workshop.

CIS-A2K is working in collaboration with PAH Solapur University, Solapur in Maharashtra on Wikimedia projects. The Mass Communication and Journalism departments are involved in content generation on Marathi Wikipedia & Commons for the last two years. In 2019, the department has given assignment in the form of Wikipedia articles for Post graduate course. The primary objectives of the workshop were:

To review the articles by students. The articles are given as assignment by Mass Communication department.
IPWT sessions for potential students for quality improvement and retention

The Mass Communication department has involved students in Marathi Day and Independence Struggle edit-a-thons conducted by Marathi Wiki community. After this experience of Wikimedia projects, the faculty decided to give assignments on the theme - Newspapers & notable editors in pre-independence era. The students explored offline & online references for the content. They first prepared the articles in Word document, which were verified by faculty and A2K representative. The manual of style, using citoid for references and Wikipedia pillars were explained. After the verification of content, the articles were uploaded on Marathi Wikipedia. About 40 articles were created by 10 students and two faculty members. As the stories of editors and journalists in the British period were full of sacrifice & adventure, the students got inspiration also. The faculty reviewed the assignment completion process with the stakeholders in the last session. The department has decided to plan the process more systematically in the next academic year. It has also decided to replicate this methodology for other departments in the university.

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-may-3-2019-wikipedia-assignments-workshop-for-pg-students-pah-solapur-university

Wikisource Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal

subodh — 2019-06-23T03:26:53Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) organized a workshop in collaboration with Vigyan Ashram, Pabal on May 25-26, 2019 at Pabal. Total 12 participants attended sessions during this two days workshop. The basic skills in digitisation, uploading on Commons and Wikisource process were imparted in the workshop. Jayanta Nath was the facilitator.

Active members of Wikisource at Vigyan Ashram have expressed their interest in learning advanced skills on VP. Previously, they have scanned & uploaded 50+ books on Commons, OCR'd 10,000+ pages and proofread few pages. This team wants to learn advanced skills in processing scanned books, metadata linking with Wikidata, Wikisource - proofreading & layout skills, tools etc. The institution has also planned to integrate proofreading activity with the Unicode/FOSS training courses, so that the students will be involved in next academic year. The primary objectives of the workshop were:

To impart :

Basic orientation to Wikisource
Understanding of Wikisource work flow
Skills required from scanning to OCR of book
skills for Proof-reading, transclusion methods

Agenda

Introduction to Wikisource - features, scope and future potential
Wikisource work flow - explanation of different stages
Upload tools and Copyrights
OCR4Wikisource and Indic OCR
Proofreading methods and Tools required
Wikisource tools, gadgets
Transclusion methods
Wikidata linkage

Day 1

Day one started with training on Scanning and post processing methods. The expert trainer explained various programmes to clean files & make the pdf of book. He also reviewed the previous work done at Vigyan Ashram and gave important suggestions. All the participants scanned 20 pages and processed them for practise. Then copyright issues and various licenses were discussed with some examples on Commons. The big size books were uploaded by chunkedupload tool. This will be useful in future as it reduces time and space also. After the uploading session, the basics of Wikisource project were explained by Jayanta Nath. He demonstrated proof-reading methods and the related tools, gadgets required. Some scripts for proof-reading are not imported in Marathi Wikisource. The need analysis was done to identify basic minimum templates and gadgets.

The participants learned to make their common.js pages to install the scripts. The hands-on activity was done by distributing the pages of one book for all the members. Day one started with training on Scanning and post processing methods. The expert trainer explained various programmes to clean files & make the pdf of book. He also reviewed the previous work done at Vigyan Ashram and gave important suggestions. All the participants scanned 20 pages and processed them for practise. Then copyright issues and various licenses were discussed with some examples on Commons.

The big size books were uploaded by chunkedupload tool. This will be useful in future as it reduces time and space also.After the uploading session, the basics of Wikisource project were explained by Jayanta Nath. He demonstrated proof-reading methods and the related tools, gadgets required. Some scripts for proof-reading are not imported in Marathi Wikisource. The need analysis was done to identify basic minimum templates and gadgets. The participants learned to make their common.js pages to install the scripts. The hands-on activity was done by distributing the pages of one book for all the members.

Day 2

On the second day, three active Wikimedians and one new member from Pune joined group at Vigyan Ashram. After the recap of first day activity, the review of status of Marathi Wikisource was taken. The practise session for proof-reading & layout of pages continued till lunch break. In the second half, final process of transclusion was explained in detail. The participants also learnt about the various methods for different forms of books. The final layout for reading the books on Wikisource and formats for downloading the books were also discussed.

In the last session, the future plan of Wikisource activity was discussed. The organisation has decided to involve all the trainees in this activity to enhance the skills as well as knowledge. The active community members have planned to spread the awareness about the Wikisource in the society for more content donation and increasing editor base.

Follow-up

Consistent activity for the new trainees is planned with trained team at the institute. Scanning of rare and re-licensed books from libraries is in progress. This activity will be scaled up in near future.

The blog post was originally published on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-may-26-2019-wikisource-workshop-at-vigyan-ashram

Access to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka

praskrishna — 2012-12-19T07:20:31Z

The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Metawing Technologies (P) Ltd. is organizing a Wikipedia workshop at NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka on December 21, 2012, from 9.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.

Over 100 students are expected to participate in this workshop. The primary aim of the workshop is to educate them about Wikipedia in Indian languages and tell them how they can contribute to Wikipedia.

CIS is willing to bear the travelling expense for upto two wikipedians to and from Bangalore (or any other place in Karnataka that is close to Karkala).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాదు/మిసిమి పత్రిక భాగస్వామ్య సమావేశం, జూలై 2018

Admin — 2018-08-11T00:37:13Z

On 24 July 2018, CIS-A2K team held partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu monthly magazine.

Full details on Wikipedia page here

వికీపీడియా నుండి < వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం‎ | హైదరాబాదు Jump to navigation Jump to search

2018 జూలై 24న మిసిమి కార్యాలయ గ్రంథాలయంలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధి కోసం భాగస్వామ్య అవకాశాలను గురించి జరిపిన చర్చల సారాంశం.

వివరాలు

తేదీ-సమయం: 2018 జూలై 24న మధ్యాహ్నం 12 నుంచి 2.30 వరకూ
ప్రదేశం: మిసిమి కార్యాలయ గ్రంథాలయం, ఆర్టీసీ క్రాస్ రోడ్స్ వద్ద, ముషీరాబాద్, హైదరాబాద్

పాల్గొన్న వ్యక్తులు

వల్లభనేని అశ్వినీ కుమార్, సంపాదకుడు, మిసిమి పత్రిక
కాండ్రేగుల నాగేశ్వరరావు, సహ సంపాదకుడు, మిసిమి పత్రిక
పవన్ సంతోష్, సీఐఎస్-ఎ2కె.

చర్చించిన అంశాలు

హైదరాబాద్ ఆర్టీసీ క్రాస్ రోడ్స్ వద్ద ఉన్న మిసిమి కార్యాలయ గ్రంథాలయంలో మన నెలవారీ సమావేశాలు నిర్వహించుకోవచ్చనీ, అక్కడే పుస్తకాలు తీసుకుని చదివి సమాచారం అభివృద్ధి చేసేలాంటి ఎడిటథాన్లు నిర్వహించుకోవచ్చని వారు అవకాశం ఇచ్చారు.
వచ్చే నెల అటువంటి కార్యక్రమం నిర్వహించుకుంటే పత్రిక రచయితలను ఆహ్వానిస్తానని పేర్కొన్నారు. తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో అభివృద్ధి చేయదలిచిన కొన్ని ప్రధానమైన అంశాలు (తెలుగు ప్రముఖులు, తెలుగు గ్రామాలు, భారతదేశ చరిత్ర, వగైరా) తీసుకుని తెవికీపీడియన్లు, మిసిమి రచయితలూ కలిసి ఆయా అంశాల్లో అత్యంత ప్రామాణికమని ఎంచే పుస్తకాలను (ఓ 50-100) జాబితా వేస్తే ఆ జాబితా భవిష్యత్తులో మనం తెలుగు వికీపీడియన్లకు అందుబాటులోకి తీసుకురావడం, వికీసోర్సు పునర్విడుదలలో ప్రాధాన్యత ఇవ్వడం వంటి కార్యక్రమాలకు స్వీకరించేందుకు వీలుంటుంది.
మిసిమి పత్రికలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియా నిర్మాణం, అది ఎదుర్కొంటున్న సమస్యలు, సభ్యులు దాన్ని అధిగమించడానికి చేస్తున్న ప్రయత్నాలు వంటి అంశాలను కలిపి తెవికీపీడియన్లు వ్యాసం రాయవచ్చు, తద్వారా అత్యంత సీరియస్, పాండిత్య, పరిశోధన ప్రధానమైన మిసిమి పత్రికను చదివే పాఠకులకు తెవికీపీడియా గురించి విజ్ఞప్తి చేసినట్టవుతుంది.
పత్రికను కేవలం లాభాపేక్ష కోసం కాక ఉన్నతమైన లక్ష్యాల కోసం నడుపుతున్నట్టు కాబట్టి కాపీహక్కుల మీద తమకు పట్టింపులేదనీ, పత్రికలోని నాణ్యమైన సాహిత్యం ప్రజలకు చేరువ కావడం ముఖ్యమనీ వారు తెలిపారు. పత్రికలోని పలు వ్యాసాలను కానీ, సంచికలను కానీ ప్రస్తుతం పత్రికల కాపీహక్కుల పునర్విడుదల విషయమై ఉన్న సాంకేతిక సమస్యలు అధిగమించి ఎలా సీసీ-బై-ఎస్‌ఎలోకి తీసుకురావచ్చన్నది ఆలోచించాలి.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/partnership-discussions-with-misimi-telugu-monthly-magazine