Centre for Internet and Society

Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far

Ananth Subray — 2016-11-18T02:45:05Z

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

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

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

How we did things differently this time?

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

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

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Vijayavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:34:46Z

The article was published in Vijayavani on December 11, 2015. A scanned version of the article is given below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijayavani

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Vijaya Karnataka

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:35:13Z

The article was published in Vijaya Karnataka on December 11, 2015. A scanned version of the article is below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijaya-karnataka

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Udayavani Coverage

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:36:53Z

The article was published in Udayavani on December 7, 2015. A scanned version of the article is below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-udayavani-coverage

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Prajavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:40:23Z

The article was published in Prajavani Mangal on December 11, 2015. A scanned version of the article is given below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-prajavani-mangal

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:39:56Z

The article was published in Prajavani on December 13, 2015. A scanned version of the article is below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-prajavani

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Mangalore: Udayavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:36:24Z

The article was published in Udayavani on December 11, 2015. A scanned version of the article is given below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-mangalore-udayavani

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon Coverage in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2016-01-05T06:40:52Z

The article was published in Prajavani Mangal on December 10, 2015. A scanned version of the article is below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-prajavani-mangal

Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon organised at Sagara, Karnataka

Ananth Subray — 2016-08-22T10:58:40Z

A two-day-long Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised at Sagara, Karnataka during January 26-27. A photowalk was also organised on the 25th to cover places of encyclopedic importance.

The theme of this edit-a-thon was Mechanical Engineering. 12 editors including seven new editors participated in this event. 20 articles were created/improved and four media files were uploaded. This was first of its kinds of edit-a-thon in Sagara and was useful to improve articles related to the field of mechanical engineering in Kannada Wikipedia which otherwise did not much content nor many editors to contribute in this domain. Six full fledged articles were created during the event. It was planned to organise more such events at Sagara in the future to gather people interested in the same subject area and expand the reach of mechanical engineering in Kannada language.

A day before the edit-a-thon, four active Kannada Wikimedians and I went on a photowalk and clicked about 100 images of places that are important and could be used for Wikipedia articles.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-sagara

Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon in St. Agnes College, Mangaluru to bridge gender gap in Wikipedia

pavanaja — 2016-01-12T11:22:25Z

As part of a series of workshops to mark the 13th anniversary, Kannada Wikipedia, a Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised during this 10th-12th in St. Agnes College, Mangaluru to address the issue of gender gap in Wikipedia.

Totally 24 female students Wikimedians participated in this edit-a-thon. Three female Wikipedia editors from the institution also joined as facilitators. Vishwanatha Badikana, Kannada professor of the institution who is also a Kannada and Tulu Wikipedian inaugurated the event as chief guest. The first day was spent in demonstrating about the Wiki markup. During the following two days the participants created articles about notable writers and other notable women of coastal Karnataka. 25 new articles were created by the participants on the second day. By the end of the last day, 25 more articles were created in sandboxes on the last day by lunch time. They will soon work on the articles and improve before moving them to the article namespace so they become live articles. From the three day long edit-a-thon about 75 new articles are expected to come on Kannada Wikipedia. More details about the edit-a-thon could be read on Kannada Wikipedia event page.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-st-agnes-college-mangaluru-to-bridge-gender-gap-in-wikipedia

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

Ananth Subray — 2016-03-01T13:56:54Z

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

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

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

JP Das's Books to be Made Available Free on Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T08:18:51Z

Noted Odia-language author and art historian Jagannath Prasad Das's works will be available on Wikipedia for free.

A scanned version of the article published on October 16, 2015 is below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/jp-dass-books-to-be-made-available-free-on-wikipedia

Introducing Odia Wikipedia to students of Utkal University, Bhubaneswar

Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-05-20T10:52:41Z

A four-hour-long workshop was organised at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha on February 25, 2016 for the students of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) and Master in Arts, Department of Odia-language.

70 participants consisting of 35 male and 25 female students from the two departments joined in this workshop. Three active Wikimedians; Mrutyunjaya Kar, Subas Chandra Rout and Jnanaranjan Sahu supported in mentoring the new editors. Two other Wikimedians; Chinmayee Mishra and Rajalaxmi Mishra, who are students in the university, organized the event.

During the introductory session, we introduced the students about Odia Wikipedia, the Wikimedia community, and the Bhubaneswar WikiTungi, a local user collaborative in the city of Bhubaneswar. Mrutyunjaya Kar, administrator of Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource presented about the Odia Wikimedia projects, how the students enhance their skills while contributing to these projects and introduced the Wikipedia policies to the new editors. “Even though we announced that students can leave by 2 pm, most students stayed back over an hour. Even in a conservative expectation, there will at least be 3-4 students who will be actively contributing in the future. As Chinmayee is associated with us from before, she could lead the local activities in the university”, he adds. Jnanaranjan Sahu who has been active in building several tools and software for Odia Wikimedia projects introduced about Mediawiki and the Optical Character Recognition and its application in growing Odia Wikisource. He also suggests for regular follow-up outreach in the university so that the new editors get constant support and this enthusiasm does not stop here.

Out of the 70 participants, more than 50 participants managed to create their accounts and even made more than 200 edits during the workshop. They selected articles of their own interest and edited. Four faculty members from the MCA department participated in the workshop and were eager to learn how Wikipedia editing works. Rajalaxmi Mishra, who always wanted to edit but never edited Odia Wikipedia made her debut edit this day. She elaborates, “Chinmayee being a batchmate and a good friend always talked about Odia Wikipedia but I personally never did much beyond reading the English Wikipedia article. This workshop was more of a real starting point for me and I started writing about many renowned women like Annie Besant, Kalpana Chawla and Sudha Chandran. Being a student of Computer Science, I am also planning to write more articles in my own subject area. I have just finished writing about a popular bird of Odisha Chinmayee is my batchmate, was helping her”.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/introducing-odia-wikipedia-to-students-of-utkal-university-bhubaneswar

International Mother Language Day

praskrishna — 2016-02-27T06:17:37Z

On 21 February 2016, Eenadu published a special story on the occasion of International Mother language day in Hyderabad edition. The special story covered Wikipedians effort to develop Encyclopedic content online and also about multi-lingual (English-Telugu) Wikipedians meetup organized in December 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eenadu-february-21-2016-international-mother-language-day

Indic Wikisource Speak: Sushant Savla

jayanta — 2019-04-17T20:09:09Z

Future is bright -- Sushant Savla (User:Sushant_savla) from Gujarati Wikisource community, share his experience & journey.

CIS : Tell us about yourself, When did you join Wikimedia movement? And What are the projects you are involved in?Dr Hrishikesh Sen at IWCC2018

Sushant Savla: Sushant Savla (User Name: Sushant_savla) I joined Wikimedia Movement in around 2008. I am associated with Gujarati Wikipedia, Gujarati WikiSource, Graphics Lab on Commons (Illustrations SVG)

CIS : What are the methods or workflow you follow to contribute to your language Wikisource?

Sushant Savla: We take up a book and work on it till it completes. AS we have limited members and all are having good understanding all work on same project and complete it to the level of Validation. A book is chosen, Scanning is done, If not copyright free OTRS is executed, Index is prepared, OCR is done, Page number allotment is kept on Discussion page of Index page and as per the availability of time the Users take up pages and proofreading starts, Experienced Librarians or Manager of the project carries out validation simultaneously. While this work goes on other team parallely stats scanning other book for next project.

CIS : How is the awareness about Wikisource in your language Wikimedia community?

Sushant Savla: In the small commmunity of ours all knows about wikisource. However among common people awareness is low.

CIS : We see there’s a growth in Indic Wikisource movement (showing Amir’s stats), what kind of help does the community need to grow?

Sushant Savla: Major challenge now is technical support, in conversion of PDF, mobi etc.The Second challenge is Outreach. The third challenge is lack of time in arranging Contest etc. More technical , automated result giving systems are required to hold competition on grand level. The delay in getting OTRS approved is another challenges. Till the time OTRS is approved the enthusiasm of a doner writter fuses off. Speedy process is required. OTRS approver should have time limit.

CIS : What are the challenges do you face while contributing to the project? Or social challenges while reaching out to authors or publishers.

Sushant Savla: As such nothing. But a letter of appreciation sort of thing to author would help. we can print that in certificate format and give them.

CIS : How would you describe the future of Wikisource? What are your personal goals for it?

Sushant Savla: Future is bright, Person Goals : more books , more material, More contributors, Keeping them live on project. Need to motivate users by some interesting events.In wikiconference please increase the number of participants.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/indic-wikisource-speak-sushant-savla