Centre for Internet and Society

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

Ananth Subray — 2016-03-01T13:56:54Z

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

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

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

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

Indic Wikisource Speak: J. Balaji

jayanta — 2019-04-25T15:21:57Z

To perfectly proofread the content with matching styles it takes a lot of effort. Patience is the key. The formatting methods are in wikisource are different from Wikipedia. So wikipedians are finding it difficult to edit in wikisource without an introduction.The young generation are accessing the internet through Mobile. They don’t use laptops and computers much. Though mobile is good medium for creating multimedia content, they are poor in creating text. It is difficult to proofread wikisource using a mobile phone. The challenge is bringing the next generation proofreaders - Wiki-librarian J. Balaji share his experience.

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

A: My name is J. Balaji. I am from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. I edit in wikis with the username Balajijagadesh. I am geoscientist by profession.

I joined in Wikipedia in 2009 though was using the Wikipedia from 2006. I remember how costly the books (encyclopaedias) back then. Even in libraries the encyclopaedias can only be read there itself. They don’t allow encyclopaedias for lending. Accessing knowing was costly and hassle. Suddenly I found Wikipedia which was free for anyone. Anyone can contribute too. I was fascinated by this idea. Wanted to make sure people in the future shouldn’t face problem like I did with costly encyclopaedias. From then I am a regular contributor to Wiki projects. I mostly edit in Tamil Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikipedia, Wikidata and commons. Also sometimes in English Wikipedia and other projects out of interest

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

A: In 2016 in collaboration with Tamil Nadu government (Tamil Virtual Academy) about 2000+ books i.e. more than 4 lakh scanned pages were uploaded to commons. Then by the Google OCR (Optical Character Recognition) script written by T.Shrinivasan (those times OCR for indic languages were not available in Indian Languages) the OCR was done for the 4 lakh pages. Since the proof reading work is huge, I turned my efforts to Tamil wikisource. Since that was the first time proof reading was done in Tamil wikisource many templates were not available. Many templates were imported from other languages, help pages for other users were created, rules were framed. Now the system is maturing. Hence these days the typical work flow in proofreading, validating pages proofread by other people and transclusion of books completed. (Transclusion is a process by which the page wise content is placed in logical sections for easy reading of the public). Interested Tamil wikisource contributors have formed a telegram group. So I help other members with their problems, doubts etc in proofreading the wikisource. Also we have a collaborative proofreading project called “proofreading book of the month” where many people collaborate and work on a single book for a month. I participate in this too.

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

A: The awareness about wikisource in Tamil community is less compared to Tamil Wikipedia. We are trying to place many links from Wikipedia to wikisource. For example if there is an article about famous book we place a template which tells that the complete book is available in wikisource for reading. If there is an author page in Wikipedia whose work is available in wikisource we place a template which tells that the author’s works are available in wikisource. We have twitter and facebook account to increase awareness. In the future some training sessions are also planned to increase awareness and create interest

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?

A: The community needs help in training. Because the editing methods and rules are slightly different from Wikipedia. Sometimes in can become tricky to edit in wikisource for those who come from Wikipedia. Second is the technical support regarding proofreading. Some of the proofreading methods are very complicated. For example, to create a family tree or flow chart is very tedious using complicated table formatting. Technical support would be of great help. Also support with respect to copyright status would be very helpful.

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

A: To perfectly proofread the content with matching styles it takes a lot of effort. Patience is the key. The formatting methods are in wikisource are different from Wikipedia. So wikipedians are finding it difficult to edit in wikisource without an introduction. The young generation are accessing the internet through Mobile. They don’t use laptops and computers much. Though mobile is good medium for creating multimedia content, they are poor in creating text. It is difficult to proofread wikisource using a mobile phone. The challenge is bringing the next generation proofreaders.

Another major challenge is on the copyright side. The copyright status of the authors who have already passed away can be known only if the date of death is known from an authentic source. Many a times this information is missing. Hence there is difficult to judge if an author’s work is in public domain or not.

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

A: The future of wikisource is optimistic. The support and interest is growing day by day. For example, the site views of Tamil wikisource was about 4000 views per day two years ago. It has now increased to 13,000 views in April 2019. The absolute page views of wikisource is very less compared to Wikipedia. Nevertheless it is an important project in the era of fake news and fake information. By documenting the source of printed information it increases the quality of references in Wikipedia. For example if a particular information in an article in Wikipedia quotes a book and the book is available in wikisource then it’s easy to cross verify the facts easily by anyone.

My personal goals for the wikisource is on two sides. One is to increase the number of books available for proofreading in wikisource platform. There is potential for 10,000 books to be uploaded in Tamil wikisource in a year’s time. Then proofreading the pages already in wikisource. With the current rate of proof reading it would be taking decades to complete the work. So the contribution need to be increased by arranging online/offline workshops, proofreading competitions, engaging of similar interested non-profit agencies for proofreading, proofreading education programs, etc.

CIS: Please share one remarkable work which is available at your domain and you had contributed.

A: I don’t want to beat my own trumpet by claiming my work as remarkable. One of the books proofread by me was close to my heart is சோழர் வரலாறு. The book is about history of Chola kings and kingdoms (A major kingdom with its capital in south of India) , documenting history from 300 B.C to 1200 A.D. I did proofreading and transcription for this books. Other few users too contributed for proofreading and validating the pages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indic-wikisource-speak-j-balaji

Indic Wikisource Speak: Dr. Hrishikes Sen

jayanta — 2019-04-26T06:42:48Z

There are plenty of people engaged in digitising Bengali books. Plenty of pirated digitised books are available online. We need to tap into that catchment area. I think, if we can prepare high-grade pdf versions of our completed works and spread those to various online non-wiki reader communities, we are likely to get good contributors. -- User:Hrishikes from English and Bengali Wikisource community, share his journey.

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

Hrishikes: Joined in March, 2007. In Wikisource since 2012.

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

Hrishikes: Method: I work slowly; try to give meticulous attention. Don't skip pages usually. Work page-by-page upto the last, even if a page is problematic. Come back to previously worked pages time and again, and correct any mistake.

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

Hrishikes: Awareness is present in the community, but there is disinclination to work in Wikisource, because of templates and other formatting issues.

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?

Hrishikes: There are plenty of people engaged in digitising Bengali books. Plenty of pirated digitised books are available online. We need to tap into that catchment area. I think, if we can prepare high-grade pdf versions of our completed works and spread those to various online non-wiki reader communities, we are likely to get good contributors.

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

Hrishikes: I like this project. Main issue is getting the time: extracting time from real life commitments. I have not been active in author/publisher liaison.

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

Hrishikes:The main problem is: everybody wants to download books and read them offline. Hardly anyone wants to read online. That attitude is going to stay. So we need to concentrate on giving this to the customers. Books downloaded from our site (transcribed books, not scans) should be of very high quality. If we can achieve this, the future may be good.

CIS : Please share one remarkable work which is available at your domain and you had contributed.

Hrishikes: There are many more ,

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/Indic%20Wikisource%20Speak%20Dr%20Hrishikes%20Sen

Indic Wikisource Speak: Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi

jayanta — 2019-04-17T20:10:28Z

"People are more aware of Wikipedia than Wikisource." - Gitartha Bordoloi from Assamese Wikisource community, share his experience with CIS-A2K team.

Gitartha Bordoloi from Assamese Wikisource community

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

Gitartha: I'm Gitartha Bordoloi hailing from Jorhat, Assam. I edit in Wikimedia projects under the username Gitartha.bordoloi. I'm a doctor by profession and currently I'm working as a faculty in the Department of Physiology, Silchar Medical College and Hospital, Assam.

I joined Wikimedia movement in February, 2011. I tried to write an article in English Wikipedia when a friend of mine informed me that there's even a Wikipedia in Assamese and suggested I contribute there too. I'm now mostly involved in Assamese Wikipedia and Wikisource. I contribute to commons also to the best of my ability.

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

Gitartha: When we started as.wikisource we didn't have any scans and we typed or collected only texts. Then after learning about the detailed process I scanned a few books from my personal collection and uploaded those to commons for proofreading in Wikisource. We are currently digitizing scanned books found in Archive and other online sources. We are putting the list of new additions on the wikisource home page and encouraging the volunteers, mostly through social networks, to work on them. Instead of picking random books for proofreading, we are choosing an author every month (based on the birth or death month) and doing proofreading works penned by the author.

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

Gitartha: The awareness about Wikisource in the community isn't that great reflecting the awareness of the general population. People are more aware of Wikipedia than Wikisource. We're trying to tell people about this project through facebook group, page and twitter. Some articles were published in news papers in the past which we'll have to do again. We'll also arrange some wikisource meets and workshops in near future.

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?

Gitartha: Of late there has been a sharp growth in Assamese Wikisource due to active engagement of a number of users which we would like to sustain in the long term. We're planning to conduct the first Assamese wikisource workshop within a few months. Many new users have shown interest in this. Hopefully we'll get the guidance from CIS at every step. When the community grows we should be given a chance to hold a national level program such as TTT which will catch people's eyes and increase the number of contributors.

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

Gitartha: As a contributor the first challenge I faced in wikisource was its steep learning curve compared to wikipedia. It's one thing to do only the proofreading part, but Wikisource is much more than that. Checking copyright status, uploading, indexing, transcluding, formatting etc take some effort. So the new users have to be kept away from some of the processes. Another major challenge for me is get sufficient time for offline wiki activities which I'm unable to do now. Third major challenge for me is motivating people about developing project without any monetary benefit.

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

Gitartha:Our project is still in the nascent stage and so we're not yet having any social challenges. We hope we face such issues in the coming months with the growth of our community.

CIS : Please share one remarkable work which is available at your domain and you had contributed.

Gitartha: I would like to consider all the works that I've contributed as remarkable and close to my heart. Though one rare book titled "ল'ৰা-ছোৱালীৰ ৰং-ঘৰীয়া খেল" (Lora-suwalir rong-ghariya khel) stands out. It was published in 1849 and teaches a large number of simple sports and physical activities including dance movements which can be practiced in schools. I found it in archive.org and transferred to commons before completing proofreading process with some other users.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Indic-Wikisource-Speak-Dr-Gitartha-Bordoloi

Indic Wikisource speak : Shubha

jayanta — 2019-04-25T15:30:49Z

As the texts are in the searchable format, many students and research scholars can make use of Wikisource. As we all know, Samskrit is a treasure trove of knowledge. There are many such books that can be uploaded and utilised by the public. For this, we are putting effort to upload more and more books and make our Wikisource a rich one. -- Shubha, a Samskrit Wiki-librarian share her experience

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

Shubha: I am Shubha (user id – same) working as a coordinator for wiki wing of Samskrita Bharati, Bengaluru. I joined Wikimedia movement in July 2011. For the first five years we concentrated on Wikipedia project. Now we are concentrating on wikisource. I personally have worked on sa Wikipedia, sa wikiquote and sa wikisource.

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

Shubha: There are many old books in Samskrit language. We search for pdf files of old books and upload them in wikicommons. Then we do editing on Wikisource. We are having the facility of scanning the books also. Currently, keeping the student group in our mind, we have collected the Samskrit syllabus in various universities of Karnataka. Made a list of the curriculum related books , collected and uploaded the pdf files so that it will be useful for the students.

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

Shubha: Awareness about Samskrit Wikisource can be termed as less. We need to reach the people and create awareness in a big way. So keeping this in mind, we have conducted exhibitions in various Samskrit conventions as well as annual day celebrations in universities. These were useful for the public as well as students. We were successful in conducting a couple of workshops in colleges also.

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

Shubha : OCR :- There are many books in Samskrit like dictionaries, Puranas where the text is divided into 2 columns. OCR tool available in the Wikisource cannot perform this task in the correct manner. So updated ocr tool will be a big boon for us. This will help us to upload more such books.

Technical support :- Samskrit wikisourcers are not having enough exposure to technical knowledge. Wikisource tools and gadgets are growing day by day. If we get systematic assistance in this regard, we will be able to increase our efficiency.

Creating awareness :- Awareness can be created in 3 levels. Level one will be an introductory workshop that can be conducted in various educational institutions about the use of wiki. Second level will be to approach student group and teach them the editing the wikisource. Third level will be to contact the Samskrit teachers or lecturers for the proof reading task as it requires Samskrit knowledge.

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

Shubha: As the texts are in the searchable format, many students and research scholars can make use of Wikisource. As we all know, Samskrit is a treasure trove of knowledge. There are many such books that can be uploaded and utilised by the public. For this, we are putting effort to upload more and more books and make our Wikisource a rich one.

CIS: Please share one remarkable work which is available at your domain and you had contributed.

Shubha : Recently, we have uploaded a book named Alankaramanihara, which deals with the figure of speech. This book was published long back and is not in the print now. We happened to come across this and were successful in uploading all the 4 volumes of this book. Now this is available in the Wikisource in the transcluded form.

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

Indic Wikisource speak : Ajit Kumar Tiwari

jayanta — 2019-04-17T20:07:20Z

"Wikisource is going to be as important as Wikipedia because it addresses the issues of citations and references inherently. I will make it as my key pedagogical tool to educate my students and make them a part of this great movement." - Hindi Wiki-librarian Ajit Kumar Tiwari ( अजीत कुमार तिवारी ) share his experience about Hindi Wikisource which approved by Language committee of Wikimedia Foundation Inc , US for separate domain on February 2019.

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

Ajit : I joined the movement in 2012 as a Wikipedian. I am involved in Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikidata.

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

Ajit : I usually upload a book and try to indulge as many editors as possible and distribute the works like header & footer and proofreading to concerned editors.

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

Ajit : Its still in an early state but awareness is spreading rapidly since November 2018. I hope till the end of this year, wikisource will be the next best project in Hindi after Wikipedia.

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?

Ajit : Better knowledge and understandings of the copyright acts, proofreading tools and lowering technical gap in the community.

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

Ajit : Copyright is the key concern, however making authors and publishers understand the ethos of Wikisource or free knowledge access is even bigger challenge.

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

Ajit : Wikisource is going to be as important as Wikipedia because it addresses the issues of citations and references inherently. I will make it as my key pedagogical tool to educate my students and make them a part of this great movement.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/indic-wikisource-speak-ajit-kumar-tiwari

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

jayanta — 2018-12-10T15:08:56Z

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

Volunteers from various Indic Wikisource projects took part in a discussion organized by Centre for Internet and society: access to knowledge (CIS:A2K) in Kolkata recently. Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi participated in this consultation on behalf of the Assamese Wikisource which included other Indic languages like Bengali, Odia, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu and Sanskrit. It is worth mentioning here that Wikisource is another important project like Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc operated by Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone can contribute to this wikisource project which stores copyright-free books, plays, lyrics, speeches, translated works etc. Such works are first scanned and digitalized and then converted to unicode so that everything becomes searchable. Assamese Wikisource (as.wikisource.org), started in 2013, so far includes various literary works of Guru Sankardeva and Madhavdev, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Padmanath Gogain Baruah, Chandraprasad Agarwala, Amulya Barua, Dandinath Kalita etc. Measures to popularize Wikisource among masses, increasing numbers of readers and contributors, correct techniques to digitalize a book etc were discussed at the event in Kolkata.

Translated from Assamese by Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018-report-at-asomiya-pratidin-epaper-highest-circulated-assamese-daily

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018

jayanta — 2018-12-08T18:22:29Z

A group of Indian Wikisource leader from 12 different language communities gathered in Kolkata to attend the Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018

There was a long time required of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for Indic language computing. There was not at per OCR available in Indic languages before 2015. Most of the Indic subdomain was created in 2007 to 2011, but due to not availability of OCR, the Indic Wikisource Community used to type the whole book or import the Unicoded text from other non-reliable sources. In 2015 the after Google Drive OCR released Indic community relief from the typing era.

Later Shrinivasan T developed an OCR4wikisource script to use the Google Drive OCR as Bot. Since the implementation of the OCR, there has been a lot of progress in Indic Wikisource. But we have realized the there should be a common platform where we can share our knowledge. Then one-month planning we have organized Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018. in Kolkata. this is first such consultation at this scale, convened by the CIS A2K team.

The meeting had a representation of one volunteer from the Assamese, Bangla, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu, and Sanskrit language Wikisource communities. Ananth Subray (Kannada ) Bodhisattwa (Bengali) Hrishikes Sen (English ) Gurlal Maan (Punjabi ) Gitartha Bordoloi (Assamese ) Pooja Jadhav (Marathi ) Pankajmala Sarangi (Oriya ) Shubha (Sanskrit ) Sushant Savla (Gujurati ) Ranjith siji (Malayalam ) Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Hindi ) Ramesam54 (Telugu ) Jayprakash (Indic Tech team) Chinmayee Mishra (Oriya ) as well as Tito Dutta, Tanveer Hasan, Subodh Kulkarni and Jayanta Nath, four members of the Access to Knowledge Programme of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) .

The objectives of the consultation are:

Share views and preferences on the most effective ways to pursue our shared vision of creating and sharing free knowledge in India and in the Indian languages (including English) around the world through the Indic Wikisource Project.
Attempt to come to an agreement on a roadmap for a future where our resources are better utilized, our volunteers are better served, and progress on our mission is more steadily attained.

We have started our discussion on day zero with the agenda of the main aims of this consultation and what all participants want from this program. The discussion was started at 6 PM and ended at 10 PM night. After discussion, we have summarized and set-up for two days agenda which was actually coming from the participants. The CIS-A2K team arranged for the travel and stay of all participants, as well as a night stay for all participants between the zero and second day, to ensure that the programme started on time on.

Day one started with Introduction of Wikisource by me were introduce the workflow of Wikisource, adding text, finding the source, basic copyright checking, creating Index pages, OCRed the page, Proofreading, layout with typography, Validation, Transclusion and Finishing touch. Later on, Hrishikes Sen demonstrated each segment broadly. Bodhisattwa (Bengali) demonstrated Wikisource Tool, like IA-UPLOAD, Vicuna Uploader, URL2COMMONS, Fill index Gadget etc. And all participants implement hands-on. Bodhisatta showed the Bengali Wikisource promotional videos.

Day two was started with Google Drive OCR without using Bot solution developed by Jayprakash (Indic Tech team). Later on OTRS process by Jayanta Nath, Wikisource Roadmap by Tanveer Hasan, Institutional Partnership - by Subodh Kulkarni and Transclusion in Wikisource by Susant Salva presented. The most achievements of this meeting were the second day, Jayprakash leads the task myself to clear the Wikisource technical backlog.

There were also some ideas coming up by the session by Tanveer. This included awareness, outreach, followups, and evaluation. A report about this meeting was published at Asomiya Pratidin. Some feedback from the participants can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles

tito — 2017-06-28T10:03:41Z

Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar has completed 1500 Did you know articles. This is the second highest on English Wikipedia.

Indian English Wikipedian User:Nvvchar has completed 1500 Did you know (DYK) articles. DYK is a short piece of fact (hook) taken from Wikipedia's newest content and is showcased on the "Did you know" section on the Main Page. On English Wikipedia 18-24 hooks appear on the Main Page every day. Since mid-2012 Nvvchar has been diligently working on this DYK project and has created (or expanded) articles on a very wide range of subjects such as religion, history, geography, arts, literature, women's achievement, education etc.

On 27 July 2011 Nvvchar completed 500 DYK articles. On 23 August 2013 his 1000th DYK appeared on the Main Page. The DYK nomination and review process need a lot of effort and sometimes it takes weeks to fully finish the process. However after the 1000th DYK in August 2013, in just 2 years 8 months Nvvchar touched another milestone. On 26 April 2016, his 1500th DYK appeared on the Main Page of Wikipedia and the fact was from an article Rudra Mahalaya Temple, an ancient ruined temple located Sidhpur in the Patan district of Gujarat.

A few Wikipedians congratulated him for this achievement. User:Ijon, a Hebrew Wikipedian, appreciated him saying-

Thank you for the persistent and quiet work you do to contribute much-needed knowledge to Wikipedia!

User:Victuallers, an English Wikipedia administrator, wrote on Nvvchar's talk page-

Lets just guess that the average DYK gets read by 100 people - that means you have a readership of 150,000 people. I think its more like 1000 per DYK appearance so that means that your words have been read by over 1 million people and thats just on the first day of publication! There must be multi-millions of people who know a little more about Asian settlements, buildings, people and artefacts then they would have done without the efforts of Nvvchar. . . . . . Great respect for your efforts. Thanks from the Wiki and its many readers

As of 9 May 2016, Nvvchar has 1503 DYKs.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/nvvchar-1500-dyk

India's 23rd regional Wikipedia, in Tulu, goes live

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T10:31:21Z

The Tulu Wikipedia has just gone live, giving another boost to yet another ancient Indian language otherwise struggling to keep up with the times and speedily changing technology.

Originally published by IANS, it was mirrored by Business Standard on August 6, 2016.

The news was announced by two key community organisers on Saturday who helped to make an eight-year-dream come true. Dr Vishwanatha Badikana, a PhD in Kannada literature in Mangalore (Karnataka) and Bharathesha, a mechanical engineer based in Muscat, announced this while attending Wikiconference India 2016, India's second national Wikipedia meet in half a decade being held here this weekend.

Tulu is a language spoken by around two million native speakers mainly in southwest Karnataka and in Kasaragod district, Kerala. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. Some scholars suggest Tulu is among the earliest Dravidian languages with its roots going back some 2000 years.

Wikipedia itself is available in 22 Indian languages, with Tulu becoming the 23rd. There are another one-and-half dozen Indian language Wikipedias in the incubator stage at present. Not all languages have an active wiki community.

Located at tcy.wikipdia.org, the Tulu Wikipedia has been in "incubation" since 2008. This term is used to describe such online collaborately-crafted encyclopedias which are still waiting to to go "live" or active and come online.

Around 2014, it was reactivated. Following some meetings and workshops, the concept was also showcased that year at a "World Tulu Conference" stall in December of that year.

After much work, some 1,100 articles (or 1,050 if one could ignore those which are not redirects) went live. There are currently about 100 editors who have made over 10 edits each.

"Dr Vishwanatha and Bharathesha are the number one and number two contributors," said Dr UB Panavaja, a former scientist and techie and long-term supporter of Kannada computing. Pavanaja currently looks after the CMR (Creating Movement Resources) of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society which works with some language groups to promote their Wikipedia presence.

"After we became live, we will import articles from the 'incubator' site, build the 'village pump', set up policies, administration structure, info boxes and templates," said Pavanaja, describing the tools that any new Wikipedia needs to set up.

Scholars like the nineteenth missionary-linguist Bishop Robert Caldwell have called this language "peculiar and very interesting". According to him, "Tulu is one of the most highly developed languages of the Dravidian family. It looks as if it had been cultivated for its own sake."

The language has a lot of written literature and a rich oral literature such as the Epic of Siri, according to the Wikipedia itself.

In coastal Karnataka, both the Mangalore and Udupi areas today allow the language as an optional third-language in local schools.

This role in schooling makes it all the more mandatory to create encyclopaedic texts in the language, say its Wikipedia promoters. Mangalore University also has a Tulu language chair while St Aloysius's Radio Sarang community radio station broadcasts daily in this tiny language and the local All India Radio also broadcasts in the language.

Some five Kannada language representatives and one from Tulu are presently in Mohali-Chandigarh attending Wikiconference India 2016.

Indian Wikipedias include Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Newari, Odia, Pali, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, besides, now, Tulu.

(Frederick Noronha can be contacted at fredericknoronha1@gmail.com)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/business-standard-august-6-2016-india-23-regional-wikipedia-in-tulu-goes-live

India's 23rd Regional Wikipedia Launches

praskrishna — 2016-08-09T03:14:58Z

A Tulu version has gone live on Wikipedia, making it the 23rd one in an Indian language to do so.

The blog post by Ranu P. was published by CCM.net on August 8, 2016. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was quoted.

Tulu, an Indian language that is popular in the southern part of the country has received its own Wikipedia version — for which over 100 editors created 1,100 articles. The announcement was made on Aug. 6 during the Chandigarh-based WikiConference India 2016 by Vishwanatha Badikana and Bharatesha Alasandemajalu, two community organizers who made an 8-year-old dream come true. The greatest hope is that the Tulu wiki will lend support to the struggling language, which is used by just over 2 million native speakers who largely reside in Karnataka. Some research even suggests that it is among the earliest of Dravidian languages, which would make it roughly 2,000 years old.

"After we became [sic] live, we will import articles from the 'incubator' site, build the 'village pump,' set up policies, administration structure, info boxes, and templates," said Dr. UB Panavaja, an engineer and a longtime supporter of regional language computing. In addition to the 23 already-launched Indian Wiki versions, which include Bengali, Manipuri, Hindi, Nepali, Punjabi, and Urdu, there are another 18 Indian languages that are still in the incubator stage awaiting publishing.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/ccm-august-8-2016-ranu-p-india-23-regional-wikipedia-launches