Centre for Internet and Society

University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License

pavanaja — 2014-07-24T07:03:45Z

The University of Mysore and the Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the Open Knowledge Day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license.

Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by the University of Mysore can easily be termed as the best encyclopaedia in Kannada. It has been modelled after the famous Britannica encyclopaedia. Mysore University Vishwakosha has 14 volumes having a total of 13802 pages. The very first volume was brought out in the year 1969 and the final volume was released in 2004. Many famous Kannada authors, scientists, academicians and stalwarts from other fields have worked on creating this encyclopaedia. The print volumes of the first version of the encyclopaedia are out of stock now. Recently UoM has started revising and reprinting the encyclopaedia. So far 4 volumes have been revised, enhanced and published.

UoM believes in Open Access to Knowledge. It has put up the research outputs from its departments online for free access to the public. UoM has done these as a subscriber to the idea of Budapest Open Access Initiative. The Open Access Institutional Repository, of UoM, covers scholarly publications covering journal articles, conference papers, books, book reviews, presentations, reports and patents ever since UoM was established in 1916. Extending the philosophy of open knowledge to the Kannada encyclopaedia published by UoM becomes a natural extension. UoM is in the verge of celebrating its centenary soon and has taken many initiatives in that direction.

CIS-A2K has been in negotiations with UoM towards releasing of its high quality Kannada Vishwakosha (Kannada Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons license. CIS and UoM signed a MoU on February 22, 2014. Here is the relevant extract from the MoU: "They will work together to digitize all encyclopaedic publications for which the copyright is owned by UoM, and re-release them under the Creative Common license (CC-BY-SA 3.0). The digitized content will be made available for everyone through free content distribution platforms like Wikipedia and Wikisource. The digitization will be done employing the global standard Unicode so that the content has longevity, is universally portable and is easily searchable. Both parties have joined hands to undertake the above in order to enhance digital literacy in the Kannada language and facilitate collaborative production and free dissemination of knowledge in Kannada to the students, academics, researchers and the wider public. The parties also believe that by reintroducing the knowledge in digital and openly accessible formats could significantly enhance the production of knowledge in Kannada and give a new lease of life to Kannada language in the digital era. The parties will co-design and jointly implement relevant programmes to achieve this objective." As part of this MoU, UoM agreed to release the first six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under CC.

Volume numbers 1, 2, 4 and 6 of Kannada Vishwakosha of UoM have been revised and published recently. A project page has been created in Kannada Wikipedia for this project. Kannada Wikipedians joined hands in the project. The project involved extracting the text from the soft copies of the files, converting them into Unicode, extracting articles from these files and uploading them to Kannada Wikisource.

A team of interns from Christ University had a major role to play in this development. These were students from the Wikipedia in Education Program that was conducted in Christ University during the academic period of 2013-14. These students took active part in the current project and uploaded about 1200 articles so far (till July 21, 2014).

Media Coverage

The event attracted very good media coverage. Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be downloaded here.

Other Links:

UoM Kannada Vishwakosha conversion project page in Kannada Wikipedia - http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp
Articles from UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv
Category UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - http://bit.ly/mysoreunivws
For pictures from the Open Knowledge Day event in Mysore - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysore_University_Open_Knowledge_Day

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license

Understanding the Data Gaps on Wikidata Concerning Heritage Structures of West Bengal

Bodhisattwa Mandal — 2021-05-15T12:31:40Z

This is a short study on identifying the data gaps related to heritage structures in West Bengal on Wikidata, and potential strategies to address the same. The report is authored by Bodhisattwa Mandal, with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2020.

Wikidata is a free and open repository of structured and linked data, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, built collaboratively[1] by human volunteers and robots from all over the world[2]. This platform, with an initial intention to be used within Wikimedia projects as a high quality secondary database [3], first started by centrally linking Wikipedia articles about the same topics in different languages[4][5][6][7][8], but soon it started linking with external databases.

Introduction to Wikidata

Wikidata is designed to be structured as a Resource Description Framework or RDF model which describes statements in the form of triplets of subject–predicate–object. In Wikidata, subject–predicate–object is termed as item–property–value. Items on Wikidata can represent every possible object, concept or topic in human knowledge which passes a certain threshold of defined notability and are represented by unique Q numbers. The actual data of an item is called value, which is pre-defined by the data type, be it strings, numbers, dates, url links, coordinates, musical notations etc. or even other items. Properties, represented by unique P numbers, describe the data value of items. The items, properties and values are language independent and thus totally machine-readable, although for human comfort and understanding, one can describe items in their own languages by adding or translating labels, descriptions or aliases.

Due to the machine-readable triplet structure of Wikidata, the database can be easily queried to find answers, which might not be otherwise possible from a list of unstructured contents such as Wikipedia articles. To retrieve and manipulate RDF data formats in triplets, we require a semantic query language for RDF databases named SPARQL. Through Wikidata query service, one can use SPARQL and retrieve data and the prevailing gaps on Wikidata and visualize in different ways.

Wikidata in West Bengal, India

Massive imports of coordinates for places in West Bengal happened between October 2018 and May 2019 on Wikidata as reflected by the map generated using Resemble.js

Wikidata activities around India have been organized around India for almost 4 years under the WikiProject India umbrella. Targeted approaches to fill data gaps on different topics have been pursued through data-thons and campaigns in these years and community strength has been aimed to increase through workshops and skill sharing initiatives.

Being part of that initiative, the Indian state of West Bengal has seen a lot of activities around Wikidata in recent years. Under the WikiProject umbrella, Wikidata volunteers have been working together to build data on different topics related to the state, its demographics, culture, heritage, education, health, politics, language etc. As heritage has been the prime focus of the Wikimedia community members of West Bengal, in this essay, we will identify the data gaps related to the topic through SPARQL query and explore reasons for the same, if any, through interviews of active volunteers who have been working on this area for years.

Wikimedia community members have been working on documenting different forms of heritage since 2011, when they organized Wikipedia Takes Kolkata photo-walk for the first time. Since then, they have organized eight more Wikipedia Takes Kolkata photo-walks, 11 Wiki Exploration projects in 9 districts of the state, 2 editions of prestigious Wiki Loves Monuments in India 2018 and 2019 and several other documentation projects organized organically or single-handedly and by doing so they have uploaded several thousands of photographs related to heritage structures and GLAM collections on Wikimedia Commons.

In this essay, we will focus on the photo-walks and explorations which were conducted to document heritage structures of West Bengal. We will focus on two basic types of data which should be there in every dataset on heritage structures, i.e. a) location, and b) image, and we will find out if there is any significant gap there using SPARQL queries.

Photo-walks and Wiki Explorations in West Bengal

Map of KMC heritage buildings generated from Wikidata query https://w.wiki/Tir

Let’s start with the nine consecutive series of Wikipedia takes Kolkata photo-walks which aims to photo-document heritage buildings and structures of Kolkata. To understand the data gap related to the heritage buildings, we will examine the presence of graded heritage buildings and structures enlisted by Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Wikidata through different SPARQL queries. Wikidata now contains 923 heritage buildings and structures listed by KMC, but out of them 26.65% have images and only 18.53% have coordinates.

Although 81.47% of the items of the heritage structures were missing coordinates, but they gave fairly good idea about their location, all of the items had municipal wards and streets connected with them, utilizing which, photographers and travellers are expected to explore the sites easily. However, while testing the items of the wards, it was noticed that however all the 144 wards contain coordinates, but they all lack a crucial property which can denote their area of location i.e. the geoshape data. While coordinates can denote the exact location of certain parts of an area, it is misleading when it comes to a larger area, which requires geoshape to better describe the location. While testing the street data, it was found that both geoshape and coordinate data are lacking for the streets, which makes them extremely difficult to locate.

Map of temples in West Bengal generated from Wikidata query https://w.wiki/Tj7

For the last 3 years, Wikimedia volunteers from West Bengal have also been involved in Wiki Exploration projects to remote parts of the state documenting temples, mosques, sculptures etc., many of which have not been documented online before. Few hundreds of heritage structures in 9 districts of the state were documented and thousands of photographs under this project have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Now, if we test the Wikidata presence of the temples situated in West Bengal, it can be noticed that 435 temples have items, out of which only 196 items have images and only 79 have coordinates. however 302 of them have their location pin-pointed to the village, ward, town or city level. Similar to the previous case, although there are 40,359 items for villages located in West Bengal, only 0.017% have coordinates while none have geoshape data.

From the above two scenarios, it can be easily concluded from the SPARQL queries, that there has been a significant amount of data gap. Both the datasets contain significant lack of location data and images. The second scenario even lacks data on the temples itself.

Challenges of Contributing to Wikidata in/from West Bengal

Now, to understand why there are huge gaps in the data, we have interviewed four volunteers from West Bengal who are involved in these two kinds of projects, three of them are Wikimedia contributors for five-ten years and one of them is relatively new to the movement. They all upload heritage photographs to Wikimedia Commons and 2 of them contribute to Wikidata. All of them agreed that due to lack of suitable hardware, they could not document the exact coordinate data while photo-documenting heritage structures. GPS devices or full-frame cameras with built-in GPS are expensive and are not affordable to many. Interviewees have also pointed out that due to lack of proper training on how to document heritage structures properly, photographers and amaetur researchers miss out vital points of documentation and thus increase data gaps. Restricted access to private heritage structures like temples maintained by families or private heritage buildings and their documents, lack of proper existing documentation along with analogue and digital metadata, and rapid destruction of built heritage due to lack of maintenance or improper restoration procedures etc. are also the reasons for data gaps. While answering the question about why photographs are not converted fully into data, they point out that it might be a burden for photographers to learn about data entry in Wikidata, as this is out of their area of interest and workflow. As noted by an interviewee, ‘the nature of work for Wikidata does not match with photographers' workflow.’ However, they also stressed on the need to conduct training programmes on Wikidata for photographers and interested people involved in documentation to let them know the importance of structured data in the area of heritage documentation.

Recommendations

From the observations of this short study, it is recommended that volunteers working on heritage documentation in West Bengal should be supported with suitable hardware to document coordinates. Frequent training programs should be conducted, preferably by experts, for volunteers on how to document heritage structures in a professional way, so that data gaps remain minimal. Training on Wikidata should be conducted for photographers to let them understand the importance of structured data in the field of heritage documentation. It is also recommended to increase interaction among the Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons volunteers, to understand each other's work flow and strategically modify those to provide optimal results.

References

[1] Vrandečić, Denny (2012). "Wikidata: a new platform for collaborative data collection". Proceedings of the 21st international conference companion on World Wide Web - WWW '12 Companion. Lyon, France: ACM Press: 1063. doi:10.1145/2187980.2188242. ISBN 978-1-4503-1230-1.

[2] Vrandečić, Denny; Krötzsch, Markus (2014-09-23). "Wikidata: a free collaborative knowledgebase". Communications of the ACM. 57 (10): 78–85. doi:10.1145/2629489.

[3] Vrandečić, Denny (2012).

[4] Roth, Mathew (30 March 2012). "The Wikipedia data revolution". Wikimedia Foundation Blog.

[5] Pintscher, Lydia (14 January 2013). "First steps of Wikidata in the Hungarian Wikipedia". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

[6] Pintscher, Lydia (30 January 2013)."Wikidata coming to the next two Wikipedias". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

[7] Pintscher, Lydia (15 February 2013). "Wikidata live on the English Wikipedia". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

[8] Pintscher, Lydia (6 March 2013). "Wikidata now live on all Wikipedias". Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.

Notes

[1] The query results were generated during early 2020. The results may vary at the time of publication of this article.

[2] See Annexure I for the interview questionnaire.

[3] Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/understanding-the-data-gaps-on-wikidata-concerning-heritage-structures-of-west-bengal

Unable to read Odia on your android device? Don’t fret!

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T08:04:39Z

If you get only boxes in place of Odia fonts in your Android device then it does not support the language. So you need to install Odia font in your smart phone; one way is to root it, but it’s not without cons.

The article by Ruby Nanda was published in Odisha Sun Times on September 28, 2015. Subhashish Panigrahi was quoted.

Rooting means breaking and getting full rights into the entire operating system of your Android. If done right it can turn you into a super user and open a wealth of opportunities with your handheld device. But, rooting is a complex process and definitely not for a newbie, as rooting leads to loss of warranty, security issues and a wrong move can turn it into a paperweight.

“Rooting is not advisable as it is bit complicated and turns your phone warranty void”, says Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, an NGO. By far the easiest way to read Odia is by installing Firefox Browser for your android mobile, he added.

Nihar Kumar Dalai, IT professional, has found an easy hack and with Panigrahi, he has designed a free licensed tutorial by which one can easily read Odia language in their smart phones.

“Odia fonts are supported only in the latest android 5.1.1 update, but people using android devices with older version may not have Odia fonts and can see only the boxes. We see many people seeking help to resolve this problem on Twitter and Facebook. With missing Odia fonts, people may end up writing Odia in Roman script, said Dalai.

“There has been very positive response from people who have tried this method. I’m happy to play a very small part for this cause, the IT professional added.

So if you are unable to read or write Odia in your android handheld then no sweat, just try out these simple steps and enjoy the fun of reading and writing Odia in your mobile.

Install Mozilla Firefox browser for Android on your phone from Google Play.
Launch Firefox and go to the Oriya fonts package Add-Ons page and select “Add to Firefox”
Click on Install
Eureka! Now Odia fonts appear on your android device instead of unrecognizable boxes.

Click here to watch the tutorial:

https://or.wikipedia.org/s/ucf

Once you’re able to read and write Odia, you can use any online Odia transliteration service e.g. TypeOdia (on Firefox browser), iBUS on Linux, Microsoft’s Indic language Input Tool, Google Input Tool.

P.S: This method only works on Firefox Browser for Android and not on any other Apps. Android jellybean 4.3 version also supports Odia but there might be issues which are fixed by 5.1.1.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/odisha-sun-times-september-28-2015-ruby-nanda-unable-to-read-odia-on-your-android-device

Ubiquity, Mobility, Globality: Charting Directions in Mobile Phone Studies

praskrishna — 2014-12-04T16:27:26Z

Nehaa Chaudhari made a presentation at the Ubiquity, Mobility, Globality : Charting Directions in Mobile Phone Studies Conference. This was organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia on November 6 and 7, 2014. Nehaa was on a panel titled Mobile and its Effects on Global Markets and made a presentation on Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Workplace.

Nehaa Chaudhari's presentation can be downloaded here (PDF, 518 KB). Click here for the full programme. Download the agenda here.

Mobile phones are tools for activism and civic participation, surveillance and repression, market making and market disruption. In Ithiel de Sola Pool’s memorable phrase, there have been few “technologies of freedom” that match the consequences of these new instruments and the infrastructure that supports them. This conference examines dimensions of the social, political, and economic effects of the global ubiquity of mobile phones:

What are the affordances and limitations of mobile phones in development?
What is the impact of mobile phones on socio-political change?
How do mobile phones continue to shape our civil liberties?
What are the geo-political consequences of these mobilities?
How does mobile phone adoption challenge and support market innovation?

To tackle these questions, this conference brings together voices from the academy, civil society, and industry—all to examine the heterogeneous sources and consequences of mobility’s diffusion. The goal of this conference is to further interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to the understanding of the mobile phenomenon and to chart directions in mobile phone studies. The conference is funded by the Provost’s Global Engagement Fund, the Center for Global Communication Studies, and the Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication and the program reflects the input of several Schools at Penn, including the Annenberg School for Communication, Wharton, Law, and the School of Arts and Sciences.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/center-for-global-communication-studies-november-6-2014-ubiquity-mobility-globality-charting-directions-in-mobile-phone-studies

U.S. support sought for treaty to allow blind people access to copyrighted works

praskrishna — 2012-08-01T09:44:47Z

Advocates of visual disability groups from across the world urged the United States to get off the fence at the global copyright negotiations in Geneva this week and actively back a strong treaty that allows blind people access to copyrighted published works.

This article by Rama Lakshmi was published in the Washington Post on July 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The proposed treaty would make it obligatory for countries to allow copyrighted printed published works to be converted into an accessible format for people with visual and reading disabilities and shared around the world without seeking permission from the copyright holder.

The United States and European Union agree in principle to disability access but are not committed to a legally binding global treaty. Disability advocates at the ongoing negotiations of the United Nations agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization, say that if the U.S. backs their demand, the European Union will automatically fall in line.

“The American publishers industry, comprising of the publishing giants, does not want it to be a treaty and only want it to be a set of recommendations,” said James Love, director of the Washington-based nonprofit group Knowledge Ecology International that is part of the campaign in Geneva. “The U.S. has the biggest collection of accessible English language books. It all boils down to the American government’s will. Do you or do you not believe that the American libraries should cooperate with blind people in other parts of the world?”

But American publishers say they are opposed to a treaty that has the potential to set the stage for similar exceptions and limitations to the rights of copyright owners in other areas as well.

“We are not against allowing an exception for people with print disabilities, but our concern is that a treaty will establish a precedent that they will then apply in the other areas like educational uses, library and archives,” said Allan Adler, vice president of legal and government affairs at the Association of American Publishers in a telephone interview. “Generally, international treaties establish the minimal rights of the copyright owners first, and not the limitations and exceptions to those rights.”

Adler’s view was echoed in what a U.S. delegate, Justin Hughes, told negotiators in Geneva on Thursday: “We do not accept any form of linkage between the effort on behalf of the world’s print disabled people and any other project. To us, such a linkage between the print disabilities effort and an effort for business affairs would be unprincipled, it would be unethical, and the United States will not have any part of it.”

The U.S. government also is advocating a softer, nonbinding alternative to a legally binding treaty, delegates in Geneva say.

But many disability rights groups say mere recommendations place no obligations and would be toothless.

Disability advocates say that the needs of visually impaired people are being neglected in this battle over what legal shape the agreement ultimately takes.

“The lack of access to information and knowledge is central to the debate about exclusion of visually impaired people,” said George Abraham of Score Foundation, a New Delhi-based group that supports the campaign to produce a treaty.

Time is running out, advocates of the treaty say. The negotiations began as early as 1981 but have now reached a conclusive stage that could result in a treaty by next year. The Geneva discussions end Wednesday, and lack of consensus this week would put off the negotiations to 2014. By then, most negotiators would have moved on, treaty supporters say.

This urgency has driven developing nations like India to take a strong stand. While the exact number is uncertain, experts agree that India has a high proportion of the world’s blind population, with estimates ranging from one-quarter to one-half. G.R. Raghavender, who represents the Indian government at the negotiations, said the Indian delegation “will not return empty-handed.”

Earlier this year, India passed key amendments to its domestic copyrights law to permit people with visual disabilities to freely convert text material into an accessible format. But only a global treaty can allow visually disabled Indians to import and use accessible books without taking permission from the copyright-holder.

“The vast majority of visually disabled people live in poor, developing countries where very little money is spent on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere,” said Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer at the Center for Internet and Society. “The treaty would end the book famine that they currently face.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/us-support-sought-for-treaty-to-allow-blind-people-access-to-copyrighted

Typography Day 2016

praskrishna — 2016-04-24T15:16:04Z

Typography Day was organized for the 9th time at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore in collaboration with the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) with support from India Design Association (InDeAs) and Aksharaya.

Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker at the event. He along with Pooja Saxena made a presentation on Bringing Ol Chiki to the Digital World.

Typoday 2016: Presentation by Pooja Saxena and Subhashish Panigrahi from Subhashish Panigrahi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/typography-day-2016

Typing in Indic Languages from Mobiles made Easy!

subha — 2013-07-17T09:02:46Z

A new app is up for typing in Indic languages from mobile phones. This is is available online at: http://bitly.com/indictyping and supports on iOS. Android version is to be released soon.

"There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."
Phil Karlton

Yuvi Panda smiles saying this. Yuvi Panda, a former Wikimedia Foundation contractor and developer was here in our Delhi office and I had an opportunity to spend some time discussing some of the technical problems that we have been facing.

One of the major setback most people have with their phones is the lack of language support and lack of typing support for Indic languages. Fortunately most of the new generation phones support Indic languages. Three of the major operating systems used currently by most phones are Android, Windows, Blackberry and iOS. Android being an open source operating system has extensive community support and developments which is something we were primarily hopeful while starting this project. Windows phones also have a good number of user base in India and support for Indic languages on Windows is really good. Though iOS has good support for Indic display there is no support for typing. IOS, Windows and Blackberry all being proprietary have really less community support and any tool available on these app market would be proprietary. So, our idea was to start a cross platform app which will use the available jQuery ime used for Indic typing for Indic Wikipedias and sister projects.

Currently, most of the Indic language Wikipedias use a typing tool called Narayam ( "Narayam" is a Malayalam word which refers to a metal stylus that was used for writing on palm leaves and papyrus in ancient days). By default the typing scheme for most of the language wikipedias is set to transliteration or phonetic. An Indian mobile user would normally type his own language using Roman letters from a mobile. "और दोस्त सब ठीक है?" in Hindi would be typed as "Aur dost sab thik hai?" when someone pings a friend on facebook or sends a text message. Now with the new typing tool you need to type "aur dosta saba thiika hai?" to get the same text in Devanagari script. This typing scheme is almost same like the phonetic typing most people use for regional languages on mobile which is why typing won’t be much of difference. In terms of usability most people would use the typed text either for web search in regional languages, Facebook posts, tweeting or even sending mails and text messages.

The detailed procedure for typing using this tool is documented at: http://goo.gl/HdVJW. Indic typing tool is available at: http://bitly.com/indictyping

Scan the QR code below using your QR code application to go "Indic typing tool".

Developer speaks:

This is a simple tool that lets you type in your native language on mobile phones. Currently only iOS devices are supported.

The tool is a simple wrapper around Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering's jquery.ime project. It simply adds a much easier to use (on a mobile device) language selector, and makes it available offline (on iOS devices).

Quick links:

Source code: https://github.com/yuvipanda/indic-typing-tool
Test the app and report the bugs directly on GitHub or on Meta.
Credits: YuviPanda, Subhashish Panigrahi, Santhosh Thottingal

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/typing-in-indic-languages-from-mobiles

Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction

nitika — 2013-01-25T06:30:54Z

Last month, on December 12 and 13, 2012, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society along with Wikipedia community members organized a two-day workshop for M.A. and Ph.D. students at the Goa University. Nitika Tandon participated in the event and shares with us the developments.

All efforts invested in discussions and planning the workshop over multiple mail trails, conference calls, one-on-one calls paid off extremely well. Over 35 participants attended the two-days workshop and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.

Most of the participants had already created their usernames before the first session, as it was instructed to them earlier, though there were some participants who created their user accounts during the session. Despite creating a ticket for releasing the IP from the "seven accounts creation limit" we ran into an IP block. This was the second time we encountered such a problem. We will look more closely into this matter for smoother operations in future.

It was pre-decided by the organisers that the first session will be theoretical while the second session will be a complete hands-on-traning session. Hence, the first session started with a general introduction about Wikipedia, the five pillars, how Wikipedia works, a brief introduction about the Wikipedia community, and the state of Wikipedia in India.

The following day participants pre-selected articles that they wanted to edit during the course of the second session. They were taught how to do minor edits, add edit summary, add references, view history and page statistics, and also briefed about the importance of publishing articles, and user talk pages.

The two day long workshop came to an end with a meeting organized by all the participants to decide what should be their next steps. The workshop created a lot of enthusiasm in the participants. They got to know how individual researchers and professors build pages on Wikipedia, and they too can start by contributing one page at a time. They also showed keen interest to understand how monthly meet-ups are organised in other cities so that they could also organise meet-ups in Goa starting 2013 (the proposed date was January 16, 2013 — when Wikipedia's anniversary can be celebrated).

The feedback received from the participants was extremely positive. In the meanwhile there have been some discussion about forthcoming workshops — we have already received inquires from five more institutes to organize similar events in Goa. It seems like the initial seeds have been sown for a flourishing Wikipedia community in Goa.

A special thanks to Prof. Alito Siqueira from Department of Sociology Goa University, Harriet Vidyasagar from OLPC, Prof. Gopakumar from Goa University, Debanjan and Frederick from Wikipedia community and the CIS team for making this workshop a huge success.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university

Twitter weekly Curation WeAreWikipedia brings one Wikipedian Every Week

Diptiman Panigrahi — 2014-06-16T06:16:30Z

WeAreWikipedia is an initiative to bring in voices of Wikipedia contributors (known as Wikipedians). One Wikipedian curates the Twitter based handle for a week and tells interesting stories from his/her communities that are unheard to the rest of the globe. Started as a personal project by our program officer Subhashish Panigrahi it has brought 18 Wikipedians across the globe including 6 Indic language communities.

This post is written by Diptiman Panigrahi, an Odia Wikipedian who curated @WeAreWikipedia during the week when the Odia community was celebrating Odisha Dibasa 2014 in March.

Kjʊ (ə) ˈreɪt/ (curate)
Select, organize, and present (online content, merchandise, information, etc.), typically using professional or expert knowledge.

Luckily I also got a chance to curate WeAreWikipedia on Twitter. WeAreWikipedia is the official Twitter handle of wikipedians from different linguistic groups around the world, in which appointed Wikipedians tweet information, what is happening in Wikipedia of different languages, new services about Wikipedia and achievements of Wikipedia and Wikipedians across the globe.

During the last week of March 2014, I got a chance and responsibility to handle @WeAreWikipedia. I am a volunteer in Odia Wikipedia. Odia is an Indian classical language. Coincidentally Odia Wikipedia was celebrating the Statehood Day of Indian State Odisha and Classical Status to 2500 years old language Odia. The main motto of this celebration was “How can we use Odia language more and more in digital media?” Subhashish Panigrahi, program officer, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), told me to curate Wikipedia, for that week of the occasion. When I studied the rules and regulations for tweeting, I got to know that, it is not an easy job. I had to keep track on every tweet of whom the handle was following and who was following to that handle, related to Wikipedia. It was difficult to track Bangla Wikipedia because completion of every article was informed by a tweet by their volunteer. I have a Twitter account of my own but, I don’t frequently use this. So I didn’t know about tweeting technologies.

As the function was ahead, I have seen Subhasish Panigrahi and other active wikipedians tweeting frequently about what’s going on in function in every particular time interval, as per the program time-table. So, I asked them “How you guys are doing so much of tweeting and organizing the function at a time?” Then they told about tweetdeck technology, a tool to schedule you tweet for future for any time and any moment. After that the work became 50% easier for me. I added my personal account to WeAreWikipedia account on tweetdeck, scheduled the tweet as per time table of the program. Now, the only work was to keep in touch with tweets of wikipedians regarding Wikipedia and other related tweets about Wikipedia. During the function, I happened to tweet the updated pictures and extra information live from the venue. After that my friends asked me “Are you sure you are organizing the program? This was so since the tweets were coming in every half-an-hour. However, they didn’t know that I was travelling here and there during the program for emergency requirements.

It was a wonderful experience curating WeAreWikipedia without even much time. Meeting the entire Wikimedia global community was even more fun when I was telling happenings of my own community. I hope to take part in more of such collaborative global issues like this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/twitter-weekly-curation-wearewikipedia-brings-one-wikipedian-every-week

Tweak the Make in India Recipe

rohini — 2016-06-04T04:02:01Z

As an erstwhile journalist covering electronics technologies and IT a few years ago, I was privy to a litany of manufacturers' woes and their causes: Tangled tax laws and regulations, red tape, corruption, licence raj, unreliable infrastructure such as power and roads, and lack of skilled labour.

The article was published by Business Today on June 3, 2016.

Unlike China, which raked in profits by keeping margins low and volumes high, every entity in the supply and distribution chain in India wanted a 30 per cent cut. India, they said, was no country for manufacturers. The only real electronics manufacturing was that of low-end or low-precision products. Where the products were of higher quality, they were merely assembled in India, often with the intent of circumventing taxes and of employing cheap labour.

Walking around the IT and Electronics pavilion at the Make in India Week in Mumbai early this year, I could see that not much has changed. As if symbolic of the scenario, there was one Indian company. The rest were MNCs based in Taiwan, China, Sweden, Japan, the US, and Germany. The push for indigenous manufacturing is nevertheless apparent from the flurry of proposed incentives, large infrastructural investments, and facilities made available to manufacturers and new entrepreneurs by the government. The Make in India mix, however, needs more than subsidies, tax waivers, reimbursement of duties, or monetary grants.

A pet peeve of brand owners and manufacturers with large patent portfolios operating in India is that research and development (R&D) in the country largely happens only in public research institutions and universities. Indian firms don't invest in R&D and subsequently fill patents. A patenting landscaping exercise conducted by us at the Centre for Internet and Society last year showed that all Indian patents, nearly 4,000 in number, pertaining to mobile technologies are owned by non-Indian companies. Out of approximately 19,500 patent applications, a meagre 18 were filed by Indian companies.

India's premier educational institutions also apply for far less patents within the country and abroad than their foreign counterparts. For example, the National Academy of Inventors has published a list of "Top 100 worldwide universities granted US utility patents in 2013" and another in 2014. One Indian school features on these lists - the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) - with 21 patents in 2013. Within India, the IITs and IISc file up to 200 applications every year; MIT files nearly 4,000 in the US. Several large MNCs run R&D facilities in India, hiring some of the best talent in the country. The patents for their work are first registered to these companies abroad, contributing to royalty outflows. One way to correct the famine of locally owned intellectual property is for the government to urge top Indian companies and academic institutions to push the envelope in terms of R&D and patenting. A promising development is that the Indian government has pledged start-up funds. So have companies such as Qualcomm, which has committed $150 million to a strategic venture fund in India.

Another gripe is that the manufacturing units in India are in reality assembly lines that only put together imported parts and components and generally make copied products. While the government has provided sops to encourage actual manufacturing to truly reduce dependence on 'screwdriver technologies', it needs to incentivise foreign corporations operating in India to transfer their technology to Indian entities, instead of only assembling here using automated or human labour. Moreover, India-manufactured products are infamously substandard. These products need to pass quality checks if India aspires for an export market and leverage in asking for transfer of technology.

To benefit from the transfer of technology, the workforce needs to learn to use it and assimilate it in its work life. Despite the intake of students in engineering schools in India being more than that in the US and China put together, a major chunk of newly graduated engineers in India is unemployable. The repairmen at Nehru Place's electronics market learn the ropes through an informal education system comprising their friends, peers and employers in small-time garage shops. Rookie engineers who secure the holy grail of college placement are trained from scratch by their employers, such as Infosys with its plush training campus located in Mysore. In either case, the employer is saddled with training new recruits. There is little in terms of professional excellence that institutions of formal education seem to impart. Prime Minister Modi believes that Indias human power would be among its largest exports by 2030, but monikers such as "coding coolies" only point to low valuation of its services. Unless quality vocational education produces professionals in different rungs of the manufacturing ecosystem - from technicians to production personnel to designers to ideators - manufacturing in the country will stay deprived of the benefits of the newest technologies.

Next would come developing indigenous technologies (governed by technical standards and otherwise) in order to reduce dependence on technologies owned by foreign rights holders. India's remote sensing capabilities are among the best in the world. Like GPS developed by the US and GLONASS by Russia, NAVIC is Indias own satellite navigation system. Where GPS in India becomes spotty or inaccurate, NAVIC is likely to be much more reliable and accurate. Mobile handsets sold in India are not equipped yet with the receivers needed to work with NAVIC. When they are, it will be a fillip for both manufacturing and location-based services in the country. There is also a need for diffusion of these technologies. India's public research organisations produce several potentially life-changing inventions, which unfortunately, almost never reach mass implementation.

With the emergence of new technologies comes a greater need for access to patenting. A patent is a monopoly granted to its owner for 20 years in return for publicly disclosing an invention. Without the ability to enforce it, such a monopoly is not of much use. Patenting is also expensive and time-consuming, especially for an individual innovator without the backing of an employer that has the wherewithal for it. Many opt for filing patents via large companies while retaining their names as the inventors. The company thus owns the patent. Small manufacturers without the resources to apply for a patent prefer to zealously guard their inventions. Instead of risking their unpatented inventions being stolen, they limit their use to their own establishments, and sometimes take the inventions with them to the grave.

Make in India was unveiled at a time when manufacturing worldwide was starting to experience the ongoing slump. China, so difficult to beat at its own game, has been facing the heat. There is a tiny window of opportunity for India, which may be akin to the guns made by Indian Ordnance Factories (IoF). These guns - exorbitantly priced and of low build quality - are notorious for backfiring. In the truly Indian spirit of jugaad, they are taken to gunsmiths by their buyers for big and small tweaks that would prevent unfortunate endings. Like the IoF guns, the Make in India recipe needs its own set of tweaks.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/business-today-rohini-lakshane-june-3-2016-tweak-the-make-in-india-recipe

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop: Report in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T04:15:29Z

Prajavani published a report of the Tulu workshop on April 6, 2014. A scanned version is below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-april-6-2014-tulu-wikipedia-workshop

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop cum Editathon at Udupi

pavanaja — 2014-10-31T14:54:07Z

A three-day programme was held at Udupi from October 15 to 17, 2014 with an aim to increase the presence of Tulu in the online world. The first day comprised the inauguration programme and a workshop to understand the Wiki markup. The next two days were devoted to the edit-a-thon where participants added articles to Tulu Wikipedia.

The team comprised 18 girls from the Government PU College, Udupi and some other women. The event was organised by Tulu Sahitya Academy and sponsored by MGM College, Udupi and the Regional Research Centre, Udupi. Janaki Brahmavar, Chairperson of Tulu Sahitya Academy, presided over the function. She spoke about the efforts being made to add Tulu in Unicode. Jayakar Shetty, President Tulu Okkoota, expressed his happiness over the fact that it was a batch of about 20 girls who participated in the workshop cum edit-a-thon. There is a grouse that male editors far outnumber females in editing Wikipedia. This could be one instance where only female editors actively added articles to Tulu Wikipedia over three days. The programme was well covered by the print and television media. The good news is that the girls who participated in the edit-a-thon have continued adding articles. As on October 26, 2014, the total number of articles in Tulu Wikipedia has gone up to 574.

Tulu is one of the Dravidian languages spoken primarily by people from the south coast of Karnataka and north coast of Kerala[1]. As per the Census of 2001, there were 1,722,768 Tulu speakers [2]; figures of 2011 census are still not available. There are a lot of Tulu-speaking people residing outside Karnataka and Kerala in Mumbai, Goa and Gulf countries. It is estimated that the total number of Tulu-speaking people is more than 2.5 million. There has been a long-standing demand to include Tulu in the 8^th Schedule of the Constitution of India[3], [4]. Tulu had its own script long ago, it is not in use. Currently, Tulu is written in the Kannada script. Tulu has a vast vocal tradition, and there is a huge collection of knowledge that is transferred across generations orally. Efforts are being made to document this vocal tradition. The history of Tulu literature has already been documented in Kannada. Recently, the Karnataka government introduced Tulu as an optional language for schools in Mangalore and Udupi districts. However, these students don't have many books to read apart from the prescribed textbooks. There are some Tulu books in the creative writing domain, but there is hardly any book of an encyclopaedic nature in Tulu language which the students can refer to. This is where Tulu Wikipedia becomes extremely significant.

Tulu Wikipedia has been in incubation since 2007[5]. Some editing activities in Tulu Wikipedia were carried out during 2007-08. But the initial momentum gradually subsided, and most editors stopped editing. Tulu Wikipedia thereafter went into a dormant status. During the Alvas Vishwa Nudisiri Programme at Moodabidre in December 2013, Dr BA VivekaRai, former vice-chancellor of Kannada University, who was the President of the cultural and literary meet, dwelt at length on the importance of implementing Tulu language in technology. This was followed by a talk by Dr UB Pavanaja, a member of the CIS-A2K team. He continued from where Viveka Rai left off, and talked about bringing world knowledge in Tulu, rejuvenating Tulu Wikipedia, and pressuring the state and Union governments towards including Tulu in the 8^th Schedule of the Constitution.

Subsequently, a workshop on editing Tulu Wikipedia was held at Mangalore on January 19 this year under the leadership and initiative of Dr BA VivekaRai. This was followed by another edit-a-thon at Mangalore on April 5 and another workshop at Udupi on May 25. All these efforts have given a new impetus to Tulu Wikipedia. The number of articles in Tulu Wikipedia was 147 as in March 2014, which went up to 365 in July. The Tulu Sahitya Academy realised the importance and pitched into the effort of making it live.

[1] http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/dravidian

[2] http://www.censusindia.gov.in/%28S%28i4hlwuf0ltgmdnejdawhdr45%29%29/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/partb.aspx

[3] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/requests-to-include-38-languages-in-constitution-pending-govt/article58221.ece

[4] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mangalore/Include-Tulu-in-8th-Schedule-demands-forum/articleshow/38992142.cms

[5] http://tools.wmflabs.org/meta/catanalysis/?title=Wp%2Ftcy&cat=0&wiki=incubatorwiki#overview_edits

Media Coverage

http://www.mangaloretoday.com/newsbriefs/Wikipedia-can-establish-Tulu-in-a-wider-way.html

http://v4news.com/enliven-the-tulu-viki-fidia-first-and-then-add-tulu-to-the-8th-schedule-dr-ug-pavanaja-bangalore-rep-in-udupi/

http://www.mangaloretoday.com/newsbriefs/2-Day-Workshop-on-Tulu-in-internet.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/tulu-wikipedia-workshop-cum-editathon-at-udupi

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop at Udupi

praskrishna — 2014-06-02T08:11:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) and the Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi invites you to a workshop on Tulu Wikipedia in Udupi on May 25. Anyone interested in contributing to Tulu Wikipedia is welcome to join the workshop.

Tulu Wikipedia is in incubation stage. Pictures of the event can be downloaded here.


Above: Participants at the Tulu Wikipedia Workshop. Pictured by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja under CC-BY-3.0 Share Alike License

The venue was sponsored by Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja from CIS-A2K conducted the workshop. There were 13 participants for this workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/tulu-wikipedia-workshop-udupi

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T03:45:15Z

The CIS-A2K team is organizing a Tulu Wikipedia workshop at Balmatta Computer Centre in Mangalore on April 5, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is conducting the workshop.



















Participants from the Tulu Wikipedia workshop in Mangalore (by Pavanaja, CC-BY-3.0 License)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/tulu-wikipedia-workshop

Tulu Wikipedia Tutorial

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T07:50:52Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja trained the people involved in the creation of the videos.

Tutorial video on starting with Tulu Wikipedia which is in incubation:

Tutorial video explaining how to start with Tulu Wikipedia which is in incubator:

Tutorial video explaining how to add new article to Tulu Wikipedia:

Tutorial video explaining how to type in Tulu Wikipedia:

Tutorial video explaining how to format articles in Tulu Wikipedia:

The people behind these videos:

Prof. Vishwanatha Badikana for Script
Lasya Shetty for Voice
Abhishek Shetty, Saarang Community radio at St Aloysius College Mangaluru for Audio Recording
Soundarya Shetty for Mixing and Editing
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja for Conception, Direction, Mixing and Editing

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/tulu-wikipedia-tutorial