Centre for Internet and Society

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0

nitika — 2013-11-04T12:14:03Z

Goa University re-released Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m., at the Goa University Conference Hall.

Introduction

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume encyclopedia published by Goa University. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. By releasing Vishwakosh under CC (Creative Commons) license Goa University is making it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

Goa University and CIS-A2K have signed an MoU to work together to digitize “Konkani Vishwakosh” under Creative Common license and build a Digital Knowledge Partnership in order to enhance digital literacy in the Konkani language and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and disseminate the same free of cost through Kokani Wikipedia (currently under incubation). Gos University and CIS-A2K will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this objective during the months of Oct-Dec 2013. Information from the Vishwakosh will also be used to write articles on Konakni Wikipedia by the volunteers.

CIS-A2K is grateful for the support and encouragement received from the Goa University Vice-Chancellor Dr. Satish Shetye; Prof. Alito Siqueira; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; Dr. Madhavi Sardesai; Dr. Gopakumar; and other faculty of Goa University.

We are also equally grateful to Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Noronha who have engaged with CIS-A2K team and been a constant source of support.

Snippets from the Event

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.
“Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public,” said Satish Shetye, Vice-Chancellor of Goa University, speaking at the launch of the project.
"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," said Vishnu Vardhan from Access to Knowlesge Programme.
"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.
“This platform will bring together Konkani speaking people of the world, besides providing an opportunity to learn about digitisation, and write Konkani of global standard.” GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Press Coverage

Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26 (The Times of India, September 24, 2013).
Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow (The Hindu, September 25, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months (The Times of India, September 27, 2013).
For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, September 29, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia in the making (by Prakash Kamat, The Hindu, September 29, 2013).
Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months (Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013).
Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia (by Apurva Chaudhary, Medianama, September 30, 2013).

Invitation

http://bit.ly/1aCQ8hW

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/re-release-konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa-3.0

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

nitika — 2013-10-01T12:23:33Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invite you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.

Click to download the event brochure here

Konkani Vishwakosh

Goa University has generously approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.

Digitization Project

Goa University in collaboration with the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. This is a 2 month project where we will work with group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner.

We’re calling out for students, professors, faculty, professionals or anyone who is interested to preserve Konkani language and culture!

Help preserve Konkani language
Help preserve Konkani culture
Enroll in the program today and make a difference!

What will you gain out of it?

Learn typing skills: CIS-A2K will organize typing workshops for those who are not comfortable typing in Devanagari. This will be a two-day workshop organized in Panjim, Goa. Brilliant opportunity for you to learn a new skill!
Learn about Konkani Wikipedia: The program will also introduce you to Konkani Wikipedia, how does it work, who edits it, how can you edit etc.
Improve your writing, critical thinking, and research skills: Yes, there is so much that you can learn in our workshop. These skills will help you in personal and professional development.
Help preserve your language and culture: Out of 780 spoken Indian languages, 250 died out in last 50 years. Take the first step to save your language.
Go global: Showcase your work, Konkani language and culture on a global platform. That’s the power of digital era!
Earn while you learn: 30 final selected candidates will be remunerated for their work.

Deliverables

Selected 30 candidates will be assigned 100 pages each of Konkani Vishwakosh that needs to be digitized over a span of 2 months (Oct & Nov 2013). Typing 50 pages a month is surely a cakewalk!

Enroll Today!

Please fill the Application Form latest by October 5, 2013.

Contact Us

If you have any further questions please
Mail us at: nitika@cis-india.org
Twitter: @CISA2K
Visit us at: bitly.com/cis-a2k

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-vishwakosh-digitization-project

Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K

nitika — 2013-10-30T06:07:24Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) opened applications for the post of Programme Officer, Pilot Projects for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme on 17th April 2013. The vacancy and call for applications was shared on all Indian language mailing lists, city mailing lists as well as Village Pumps.

Last date of submitting applications was 30th April which was later extended for another week. By the first week of May we had received 35 applications.

First level of shortlisting
Applicants were given an assignment where they had to write at least one new article on their respective language Wikipedia projects (though we encouraged them to write more than one article if they liked). Asking them to write new articles on Wikipedia was a way to assess their seriousness and level of commitment towards this job. Applicants who failed to submit their written assignment were outright rejected in this level. Amongst the ones that did complete the assignment were assessed on the basis of their relevant work experience and skills that matched requirements of the job profile. CIS-A2K assessed these applicants on different parameters such as:

Exposure to digital domain
Exposure in community driven projects
Exposure of working with schools of performing arts or cultural departments
Prior experience of working in multi-cultural environment
Prior experience in program design and management
Exposure to Wikimedia projects and community
Technical work experience

In this level, 9 applicants were rejected due to failure of completing the assignment and 1 applicant pulled out. Out of the remaining 25 applicants, CIS-A2K shortlisted 15.

Second level of shortlisting
Vishnu and Nitika conducted one hour Skype interviews with each of the shortlisted candidates. CIS-A2K tried to assess candidates on their:

Understanding and passion for Wikimedia movement and projects

Level of understanding of the job profile

Level of understanding of open source, open access, open standards.

Clarity of thinking and communication skills

Ability to work with teams and communities

Experience / understanding of community mobilisation & outreach

Skills in project management

Comfort with working in unstructured environments

Ability to learn new things and approach unfamiliar situations

Personal passions and interests

On the basis of Skype conversations, CIS-A2K shortlisted 6 candidates out of 15 for the next level.

Third level of shortlisting
At this stage one more applicant pulled out and remaining 5 were called for personal interviews to our Bangalore office. All participants were requested to come prepared to present on the topic of 'Performing Arts and Wikipedia' for 10 mins. Each interview lasted for approximately an hour. Towards the closure of the day all participants were requested to gather where each one of them showcased their presentations. This further led to an interesting group discussion.

CIS-A2K had requested Wikimedia India to select someone from the Chapter who could be involved in the selection process and we're glad that Sowmyan Tirumurti, Executive Manager of Wikimedia Chapter could join us for a little while on the day of personal interviews.

Final Selection
Based on all the parameters and levels of interviews, CIS-A2K decided to extend the offer to Syed Muzammiluddin for the position of Programme Officer - Pilot Projects. Muzammil's experience, skills and interest matched our requirements the best and we look forward to a long and successful relationship with him.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/selection-of-programme-officer-pilot-projects-a2k

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

nitika — 2013-09-03T10:37:15Z

There has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.

The original details posted on the meta page can be viewed here.

Introduction

There are 30 lakh Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.

We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.

Highlights of the Workshop

A total of 38 students from the Konkani Department took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event.
During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia.
The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.
Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.


Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in Goa University. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

1	धालो	Varsha Kavlekar
2	केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग	Mona Rodrigues
3	देखणी	Fernandes Sandra
4	गोयच्यों परबो	Komal Dhuri
5	जागर्	Cliffa Fernandes
6	गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय	Abigail Dias
7	गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण	Effa Dias
8	चवथ	Shanta Gaundalkar
9	कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ	Dias Neves
10	राणेचे बंड	Fay Fernandes
11	रविंद्र केळेकार	Gaurisha Phal Desai
12	गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ	Safira Ferns
13	शणै गोयबाब	Pratima Fal Desai
14	मांडो	Anisha Gad
15	संगीत	Santoshi Kole
16	म्हणी,ओपारी	Pooja Kavlekar
17	मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर	Sukhada Daikar
18	कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां	Konknni mogi 24
19	कोंकणी लोककाणयो, कोंकणी सिनेमा	Supriya Kankumbikar
20	गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी, कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ	Vaishali Parab
21	कोंकणी नाटक	Darshan Kandolkar
22	विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र	John Noronha

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

1	गोंयचें लोक नाच	Pooja Tople
2	गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था, गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास	Priyanka Kudaskar
3	दिवाळी,शिरगांवची जात्रा	Pritam Barve
4	गोंयची लोकगितां	Rusita Paryekar
5	हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस	Gauri Prabhugaonkar
6	लोकवादय़ा	Suma Parab Gaonkarr
7	गाराणें	Darshana Mandrekar
8	तुळशीलग्न	Heefza
9	बारसो	Nikita Prabhu
10	कोंकणी कथा	Marizma Mascarenhas
11	गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां	Linette Saldanha
12	बेबींक	Frania Pereira
13	तियात्र	Rhakee Santos
14	गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त	Pereira Goreti
15	कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो	Rubiya Komarpant
16	कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप	Savidha Talekar

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Learnings

Pre-course work : Participants were asked to do pre-course work before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.

Limiting number of participants: We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.

Longer duration workshop: Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.

Bite size chunks: The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.

Energizers : Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.

Student co-ordinators: A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.

Varied sources of information: We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (Netha's, Poongothai's, Sriket and Noopur's, and Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheets for typing, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhavi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
- Browse through incubator.wikimedia.org to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
- Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
- Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.
During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?


Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.


				Konkani Wikipedia editor Frania Pereira speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia. (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

What's Next?

A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.

Additional Info:

Konkani Department, Goa University: http://bit.ly/14S87Ci
Central State Library, Goa: http://bit.ly/1dzHmao
Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days

Wikipedia Visual Editor

nitika — 2013-07-11T06:14:00Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/visual-editor.pdf

Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians

nitika — 2013-06-05T05:39:31Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team shared its annual work plan with the larger Wikipedia community. Over the last one month, Access to Knowledge team members were involved in receiving feedback from community members over mailing lists, private emails, Wikimedia Meta, IRC, and one-on-one conversations. In this post, we are sharing a brief summary of the feedback received.

Odia

by Arjun Rao C.
Village/Block/District project in Telugu Wikipedia was not useful for growing Wikipedia, as even five years after stubs were created using a bot, large percentage of articles never grew into regular articles. It is better to take the top down approach of district articles and then based on that experience, expanding to include Block/Village articles.

Kannada

by Arjun Rao C.
Recently we had a press- Wikimedia panel discussion as part of Telugu Wikipedia Celebration in April 2013 at Hyderabad. I also made attempts to do wiki academies for Jouranlists in the past few years in Telugu and Kannada. Based on what I understand, journalists are always pressed for time and while it will be useful for them to know about Wikipedia, they may not turn out to be editors. At best they will be able to provide a good coverage for Wikipedia events. It is better to target journalism training schools and incorporate Wikipedia during their course, as a way to hone their skills while helping Wikipedia. Also my experience with engineering colleges is not that great for promoting Non English Wikipedia’s. Engineering colleges provide is good computing infrastructure. If we can get the non-engineering students to utilize that infrastructure or provide alternate computing infrastructure that can be very helpful.

by Sharihareswara (WMF)
One additional institution to perhaps partner with: the Mysore Folklore Museum.

Konkani

by Frederick Noronha

There is definite interest in a Konkani Wikipedia, but we seem to have hit an air pocket due to lack of interest.
There is a need to build two communities (i) the literary community, who has the content (ii) the tech guys, who can sort out keyboard and other issues -- or popularise available solutions being used by other same-script groups. As of now, there is no bridge between the two.
Volunteering needs some priming. Maybe we should work with a handful of volunteers who are willing to convert the basic strings needed to set up a Wikipedia. I've already been working (at the personal level) with Isidore Dantas, urging him to help with it... and he has been doing a good job (Romi-script Konkani).
Instead of getting caught up with contentious issues like which script is official or the most suited, in my view it would be helpful to build Wikipedia for at least the main three scripts (Kannada, Roman and Devanagari) and let all coexist. The dialectical differences that exist between different scrips makes for difficulties in machine translation and differing comfort levels to use scripts which one is not used to.
Some institutions have been approached too by various quarters (Goa Konkani Academy, Dalgado Konkani Academy in Panjim, Goa University staff) but unless we get something actually going to show, it would be hard to convince people to start volunteering. For a number of reasons, I'd think that Konkani writers are often less computer-savvy than writers of other Indian languages... It's now changing, but still...

Konkani

by Outofindia
Please add St Aloysius College Managlore as an institution where we could consider having workshops like we did at the Nirmala Institute in Goa. I will help set it up. As Frederick suggests, we could have all the three script tracks (Kannada, Roman and Devanagari)and working together in a physical space will probably be helpful.

Bangla

by Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay
<http://tagoreweb.in/>, SNLTR's hosted instance and <http://sarat-rachanabali.becs.ac.in/> are limited in their utility that they provide no means of using the text as a corpus or, trainer. These are efforts worthy of appreciation. However, providing the means for others to re-use the content as opposed to passive browser based viewing is equally important.

I hope your assessment included that fact. Plus, I am always wary when I read statements like "SNLTR has established that Unicode 5.0 and above as the standard that can be adopted for different e-governance applications and is also in parity with the international practice and standard". In my limited understanding of how standardization does happen, this is not the case.

by Ragib Hasan
That's a nice plan. One thing I'd recommend is to get media involved (perhaps you already have that in the plan, sorry if I'm just repeating it). In particular, you need to get the local Bengali language media (newspaper, TV) involved so that they publish news reports on Wikipedia.

In Bangladesh, it was not easy at the start to get people interested. It took a good media campaign in Bengali language newspapers to get people interested. Also, you should get in touch with the Bengali language blogging community in India (if there is one) and try to get them involved.

By the way, the number of native speakers cited at the start of the article is vastly underestimated .... Bangladesh alone has 160 million native speakers, plus at least half of that in West Bengal.

by Dwaipayan Chakraborti
As Ragib mentioned, local media is important. Do we have any plan on this already? Anyone in touch with media? Or knows anybody? Jayanta nath may be of help.

by Jayanta Nath
English news media had already reported about Bengali Wikipedia few times. But Local Bengali news media (Anandabazar, Bartaman, Eisomy, Pratidin, Ajkaal,) no response at all and no interest about Bengali Wikipedia. I had tried with my personal level of contact. All Bengali news print media want business from Wikipedia, then only they can report about Bengali Wikipedia. Anyone in this mailing list in touch with Bengali media for fresh contact?

Overall Languages

by Abhinavgarule
Concept of Wikipedia Student Partners:- Wiki Student Partners are students from colleges who will help students in solving their queries and keeping follow ups of “How to edit on Wikipedia?” Can we start this wiki student partner concept?? In this pilot project??

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/access-to-knowledge-work-plan-synopsis-of-feedback-by-wikipedians

Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges

nitika — 2013-05-08T02:26:36Z

Nitika Tandon, in this blog post, provides an analysis of the Konkani Wikipedia. She reflects on the challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia and identifies four possible solutions.

Konkani is a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighbouring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Kokan belt) – some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. All of these neighbouring states are places where speakers from Goa may have migrated over the past five centuries (Garry, 2001).[1] Each region has a different dialect, pronunciation style, vocabulary, tone and sometimes, significant differences in grammar.

The total number of Konkani speakers seems to have remained remarkably stable for over a century. This is borne out by the census reports over the years. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).[2]

Goa has a high literacy rate of 87.4 per cent.[3] Goa is also in one of the top three states/union territories with highest computer density. In Goa, about 31.1 per cent of households use computers while 12.7 per cent of households use computers with internet.[4]

Konkani Wikipedia is currently in its incubation stage with very few editors. About 86 articles have been added but much work needs to be done 1) to push it as a live Wikipedia project and 2) to improve quality and quantity of articles. Konkani Wikipedia promotes editing in all scripts (Roman, Devanagari, Kannada) equally.

Challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Wikipedia has grown meagerly in the past 7 years ever since the inception of the project (in 2006). It is still an extremely small project with barely 86 articles. The project received maximum number of edits in 2007-2008 and since then the level of activity has been gradually decreasing with negligible edits in 2012-2013.
There are handful of volunteers who have ever edited on Konkani Wikipedia and they too seem to have lost interest/inclination to sustain their edits. There are only 16 editors who have total of 10 edits or more on Konkani Wikipedia. In addition, no virtual/physical meeting of any kind has ever been organised by/for the volunteers. No outreach event had also been organised for Konkani Wikipedia until Dec 2012.[5]
Problem of usage of multiple scripts in Konkani Wikipedia aggravates the massive challenges the project currently faces. Konkani does not have a unique script of its own and hence scripts of the other languages native to the regions are used. Konkani speakers are spread across different states and they use multiple scripts like Kannada, Devanagari, Roman and Perso-Arabic scripts. There is no one/common script - Konkani thus has a unique distinction of being written in four scripts.
Multiple script issue ties in with some religious aspects as well. The Goan Hindus use the Devanagari script in their writings while the Goan Christians use the Roman script. The Saraswats of Karnataka use the Devanagari script in North Kanara district and the Kannada script in Udupi and South Kanara. Malayalam script is used in Kerala, but now there is a move to use the Devanagari script.

Because of these reasons and more Konkani Wikipedia has struggled to grow since its inception. It has been in the incubation stage for the past 7 years with an extremely small number of volunteers.

Fact Sheet

Parameters	Number
No. of scripts used in current incubation project	3 (Roman, Devanagari, Kannada)
No. of articles in Devnagri script	52
No. of articles in Roman script	32
No. of articles in Kannada script	2
No. of system messages translated in Devnagari script	126 (including 30 core messages)
No. of system messages translated in Roman script	500
No. of system messages translated in Kannada script	0
No. of editors with more than 10 edits	16
No. of editors with less than 10 edits	32
No. of articles	86
No. of redirects	4
No. of revisions	1113 (including 254 minor edits)

Multiple script issue faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Developing of Konkani Wikipedia faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. Enabling the users to access and edit all articles in different scripts is the main problem faced by this wiki.

Similar challenge faced by other wikis: Similar problem was faced by Kashmiri Wikipedia which used Pasho, Sharada and Devanagari scripts. Punjabi has the Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts, of which the former is used in India and the latter in Pakistan. Chinese language has two major writing systems; simplified and traditional Chinese. Other Wikipedias that have faced similar challenge are Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Korean Wikipedia, etc.

Possible solutions: Let’s look at what are the possible solutions to this problem of multiple scripts, how some of these language Wikipedias have tackled this in the past, and what might or might not work for Konkani Wikipedia in particular.

Possible Solution 1: Automatic conversion system.

A plug-in could be built into the server end of language Wikipedia to automatically transliterate content from one script into another.
Other Wikis using this solution are Chinese, Serbian, Kazakh, Kurdish Wikipedias. To give an example, Automatic conversion system has been running successfully on Chinese Wikipedia since 2004 and has been well received by the community. In addition to Chinese Wikipedia, Chinese Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks also have the conversion systems.
Automatic transliteration from one script to another might not work for Konkani Wikipedia, as there are dialectical differences and also there is no ready tool available for to convert one script to another. (transliterating between Roman to Devanagari or Roman to Kannada script etc.).

Possible Solution 2: Partial automatic conversion system.

A plug-in could be used that can transliterate one script to at least another; out of all the writing systems used.
Other Wikis using this solution are Tajik, Uzbek, Gan Wikipedia. To give an example, Tajik Wikipedia currently has auto-converting system for two of the writing systems (Cyrillic - Latin) but not into Perso-Arabic.
This could be a possible solution for Konkani Wikipedia if the community decides that they’d like to have transliteration tools installed at least for the Indian scripts.

Possible Solution 3: Multiple writing system

Have multiple articles in different scripts about the same topic. For example, have multiple articles about India in Konkani Wikipedia - one in Devanagari script, another in Roman script and yet another in Kannada script.
Some of the other wikis considering to adopt multiple writing system in the near future are Korean and Javanese Wikipedia.
This could be the short term solution for Konkani Wikipedia. It is something that is currently being used in Konkani Wikipedia in incubation and might also prove to be one of the best solutions for live Konkani Wikipedia project.

Possible Solution 4: Create separate wikis for each script

Create separate wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.
Separate wikis were created for Punjabi-Gurmukhi and Punjabi-Shahmukhi.
This could potentially be the long term solution for Konkani Wikipedia i.e. to have different Wikis for each active writing system - Konkani-Roman, Konkani-Devanagari and Konkani-Kannada. If there is an intersted active community to create content for a particular script; we could push that to a new project in due course of time. As things stand, the Roman script has been active in the recent past, followed by Devanagari and Kannada in that order.

Mitigation or consensus building: The community needs to reach consensus on how to deal with this issue. The best short term solution seems to be having multiple writing systems in the same Konkani Wikipedia project. However, in the long run we could evaluate the option of creating separate wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.

[1]. Garry, Jane, & Rubino, Carl. (Ed.). (2001). Facts about the world's languages: an encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. New York & Dublin: A New England Publishing Associates Book.

[2]. http://bit.ly/RNVq53

[3]. http://bit.ly/13gBsoo

[4]. http://bit.ly/JUUjJ6

[5]. http://bit.ly/12eY4Dn

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-analysis

Wiki Women's Day in Goa

nitika — 2013-03-19T06:32:25Z

International Women's Day (IWD), also called International Working Women's Day, is celebrated on March 8, every year. There were a series of Wikipedia events organised this year with the aim of increasing participation of women contributing to Wikipedia. One such event was organised by the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikimedia India Chapter at the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College in Panaji, Goa on March 8, 2013.

NIE is a respected institution providing pre- and in-service teacher education to thousands of teachers and about a 100 of them (99 per cent of the participants being women) joined in to learn Wikipedia editing and increase women related content on Wikipedia.

Rohini Lakshane from the Wikimedia India Chapter and Nitika Tandon from Access to Knowledge, CIS lead the session jointly. The session began with the introduction of Wikipedia, Wikipedia volunteers, the five pillars, motivation of volunteers to contribute to Wikipedia tirelessly and a brief of different activities that are being organised to strengthen the Wikimedia movement in India. Most of the students and faculty members were curious about two main things:

How to integrate the new community of editors in Goa with the larger Indian and global community?
How can teachers and students use Wikipedia to advance students' knowledge and add useful content to Wikipedia?

Participants watching Netha's video	To answer the first part, participants were informed about regular Wiki meet ups in different cities, several city based and language based Wikipedia mailing lists where one can find volunteer friends, active use of user talk pages and village pumps, Wikimedia India Facebook page amongst many others. To address the second part there was also a brief discussion about wiki project classroom coordination with specific examples from universities around the world. The teachers and faculty members will be sent a detailed outline of the program, list of universities with on-going projects, list of teachers who have used Wikipedia as a teaching tool and are willing to serve as a contact to help others set up a similar teaching courses.

The session was planned to go on until late evening with hands on editing in the computer lab. But unfortunately, we (Rohini and Nitika) were informed that the session will have to close before the scheduled closing time as participants had to leave. Except for two or three participants coming on stage and making their user accounts and another 3-4 article edits, we couldn't include more editing as a part of the outreach session, primarily due to time constraint. We're hoping that at a small percentage of participants would try actual editing at home and contribute to women related articles and some of them will be successful in using Wikipedia as a teacher's tool. We have their contact details and we'll try and monitor their on Wiki activities and provide them support whenever needed.


A picture of participants doing Wiki editing at the NIE workshop in Goa

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

Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:40:41Z

The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society was invited by Nikhil Dixit, Public Relations Officer at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani – Goa (BITS Goa) to organise Wikipedia session on March 7, 2013. Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop and shares with us the developments.

Despite the fact that students were busy with their exams and lab tests nearly 30 of them turned up for the event. Many of the students had already tried a bit of IP editing but had not bothered to create accounts. When asked why they hadn't created user accounts many of them said they didn't feel that it is important to create accounts till they are able to correct or add information that they want to share using IPs. The participants were then told about the importance of creating user accounts: using it as an identity with the Wikipedia community, each edit being added to their edit count, helping them build trust, friends and connections with other editors, being able to become Wikipedia administrators or system operators, etc.

As most of the participants had some knowledge of Wikipedia editing, having made sporadic edits in the past, they wanted to know more about advanced editing. About an hour was therefore spent on actual hands on editing where students tried — adding references, wiki markups, info boxes, etc. Students were also taught on how to use user talk pages to interact with other editors. During the course of the workshop we figured that one of the participants had worked on live.wikimedia.in search in 2011 and we invited him to talk a little about his project, experience and involvement. A lot of students were surprised that one amongst their fellow students had worked with the Wikimedia movement in India and achieved so much success. His story really inspired several in the room and many participants made promises to get more involved as editors. Many participants were also curious to know more about Hackathons.

Our next step is to connect participants from all the workshops organised in Goa at BITS Goa, Goa University, Central State Library and Nirmala Institute of Education, since December last year, to enable and support them to organise regular Wiki meet-ups and programs, etc., and strengthen the Wikimedia movement in Goa.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-session-at-bits-goa

Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University

nitika — 2013-03-05T01:03:05Z

A digital literacy workshop was organised at the Department of Arts, Delhi University for students pursuing their masters in Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies on February 5, 2013. Nitika Tandon shares the developments.

About 30 students and 4 faculty members attended the three hour long workshop. Surprisingly most participants had a clear understanding of how Wikipedia works, who writes the content, who are the Wikipedia editors, where do these editors come from, availability of Wikipedia in different Indian languages and many other aspects that participants are usually not aware of before most wikipedia outreach sessions. I was stunned and pleasantly surprised at the same time. I was then told that many of their fellow colleagues from Hindi department had already attended a session sometime last year and had briefed them about workings with Wikipedia. The main reason to organise this particular session was the curiosity to understand how does one actually 'edit' Wikipedia.

Mid way into the session we moved to the computer lab where all participants had access to computers, laptops and internet. A computer was shared by 2-3 participants because there were'nt enough machines. To begin with students were taught how to do basic and minor editing such as correcting spelling, grammar, punctuations, the importance of show preview button and writing an edit summary. Participants were then taught wiki mark up, adding references, adding inter-wiki links.

Towards the end of the session students filled in feedback forms with their contact information so that we could keep them updated on upcoming events and meetups that are being organised in the city. Many participants had questions about how to add table of contents, pictures and info box but there wasn't enough time to cover it all.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-literacy-workshop

Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level

nitika — 2013-01-25T07:34:34Z

An introductory session on Konkani in Wikipedia was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, Delhi in the Konkani Department at Goa University on December 12, 2012. About 30 participants took part in the event.

The Konkani staff and students were exhilarated to learn about Konkani in the Wikipedia incubation. They showed a keen interest to kick-start the project and get the translations done from all the following scripts: Devanagari, Roman, Kannada, Malayalam and Perso-Arabic for Konkani Wikipedia.

We are in touch with Ms. Madhavi Sardesai, Director of Konkani Department and are also examining the possibility of organising a follow up meeting sometime in January or February, 2013.

Frederick Noronha, one of the Wikimedia incubator members contributing to Konkani Wikipedia, has been helpful in introducing us with more Konkani writers and in organizing a common meeting sometime in early 2013 to take this project to the next level.

Also see:

Konkani in Wikipedia incubator (http://bit.ly/14bTwAi)
Some pages contributed already - much work needs to be done to improve quality (http://bit.ly/Tv5iUh)
List of tasks as viewed by volunteers (http://bit.ly/10Vxwus)
An example of a well-translated article, on the "Pinto's Revolt" by Isidore Dantas (http://bit.ly/XAmliz)


Above is a picture of the faculty and students at the inaugural talk in Goa University.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-in-wikipedia-incubator

Promoting GLAM in Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:27:22Z

We organised an introductory Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) session at Goa State Central Library on December 13, 2012. It was well attended by about 45 interested people coming from over 10 different GLAM institutes in Goa.

Nitika Tandon from CIS and Debanjan from Pune community led the session about Wikipedia and GLAM activities that have been undertaken by our global community since 2010. The talk instilled a lot of enthusiasm in librarians and curators in Goa to start similar programs in their associated institutes.

Some of the institutes attending the session were: Museum of Christian Art, Goa Chitra, Bookworm Library, K.S. Goa State Library, GTL Bicholini, and DFLG District Library. Participants had a lot of interesting questions about starting GLAM projects in English, Marathi and Konkani, starting point of the project, logistical/financial support required to run a GLAM project, etc.

To begin with we'll be meeting Victor Hugos Gomes from Goa Chitra who has shown keen interest to start a GLAM project. Goa Chitra showcases the rich tradition of implements, tools, arts and crafts. Goa Chitra has archived Goa's cultural heritage through documents, books, photographs, handicrafts, electronic recordings, costumes, musical instruments, and artifacts. In the coming weeks we'll be following up with Goa Chitra and more institutions to figure out the possibility of starting new projects in 2013.

Audio

Here's an audio recording of the entire event: http://bit.ly/XEmylE


A GLAM lecture at Goa Central Library

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa

Bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:35:29Z

On December 14, 2012, a meeting was scheduled with the Vice Chancellor Dr. Satish R Shetye to discuss the possibility of bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in public domain. Nitika Tandon shares the development in this blog post.

As for now the four volume Konkani Encyclopedia is under the copyright of the University of Goa. Dr. Shetye has gifted one whole set of Konkani Encyclopedia to the Centre for Internet and Society and is interested to relinquish the copyright to release it under creative common license and digitize it on Wikipedia. In the coming weeks we'll be working closely with Dr. Shetye and his team to bring this free encyclopedia on Wikipedia.

A Special thanks to Goa State Library, Goa University, Dr. Shetye, Prof. Alito Siqueira, and Prof. Gopakumar for such a wonderful gift. And a big thanks to Harriet Vidyasagar and Debanjan and all those who helped to pull this through.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bringing-konkani-encyclopedia-in-public-domain

Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:33:29Z

A three hour Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, in the morning of December 14, 2012 at St. Xavier's College in Mapusa, Goa. Over 30 participants attended the session.

The workshop started with a short introductory presentation followed by a learning session on how to edit the Wikipedia. Since there were lesser number of computers, participants were divided in groups of 2 or 3 at the maximum. Each group made at least 3 edits with the help of volunteers present in the room.

A follow up session will be organised in January or February of 2013 to organise an edit-a-thon for all the interested and enthusiastic participants.

A special thanks to everyone who helped organising this event, especially to Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick, Debanjan - all from the Wikipedia family and Nitin Volvoikar, the Head of Journalism Department from St. Xavier's.


Above is a picture of the whole group of participants at the St.Xavier's College at Mapusa, Goa

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa

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