Hello,
I visited the National Museum in Delhi today and I have discovered
that it contains a huge collection of arts which would be very
interesting to have in Wikimedia Commons. I have a decent camera and a
tripod, and I could spend some time taking photographs there, if the
museum would allow.
Would it be possible to contact them officially, either Hisham or
someone from Wikimedia India?
Regards,
Yann
>From Liam.
Dear Wikimedians in India (especially Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore),
Thank you for your hospitality last month on my quick trip around to
talk with local "GLAM" institutions and to discuss with many of you
how we might have closer integration between the Wikimedia Community
and the Indian cultural sector. It was great fun and I learned a lot
too. I've written up a bit of a report on my blog
http://www.wittylama.com/2011/03/horn-ok-please-india-is-great/ and
hope to see many of you again either in India, Wikimania or online :-)
Sincerely,
-Liam Wyatt / Witty Lama
Wikimedia Foundation Cultural Partnerships Fellow
wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fuster, Mayo <Mayo.Fuster(a)eui.eu>
Date: Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:34 PM
Subject: [fcf_discussion] Why don’t more scientists contribute to
Wikipedia?: Survey to find out
To: "fcforum_discussion(a)list.fcforum.net" <fcforum_discussion(a)list.fcforum.net>
Why don’t more scientists contribute to Wikipedia?
The Wikimedia Research Committee is trying to find out why scientists,
academics and other experts don’t contribute to Wikipedia. >>>>
Participate at a survey to find out:
http://survey.nitens.org/?sid=21693
Dario Taraborelli outlines the situation:
Last month, Wikipedia celebrated its 10th anniversary, which saw
considerable coverage in mainstream media. A Chronicle article
observed that, today, the project does not represent “the bottom layer
of authority, nor the top, but in fact the highest layer without
formal vetting” and, as such, it can serve as “an ideal bridge between
the validated and unvalidated Web”.
An increasing number of university students use Wikipedia for
“pre-research”, as part of their course assignments or research
projects. Yet many among academics, scientists and experts turn their
noses up at the thought of contributing to Wikipedia, despite a
growing number of calls from the scientific community to join the
project. The Association for Psychological Science launched an
initiative to get the scientific psychology community involved in
improving the quality of articles in their field, while biomedical
experts recently called upon their peers to help make public health
information in Wikipedia rigorous and complete.
These initiatives remain sporadic and most academics – despite
goodwill to contribute – still perceive major barriers to
participation, which typically include a general lack of time to
contribute, but also barriers of a technical, social and cultural
nature. These encompass the lack of incentives from the perspective of
a professional career, the poor recognition of one’s expertise within
Wikipedia, the widespread perception of Wikipedia as a
non-authoritative source. In combination with the apparent anomaly of
collaborative – and often anonymous – authorship and the resulting
fluidity of Wikipedia articles, these factors create an environment
that significantly differs from the ones experts are accustomed to.
Now, the Wikimedia Research Committee has launched a survey to
understand why scientists, academics and other experts do (or do not)
contribute to Wikipedia, and whether individual motivation aligns with
shared perceptions of Wikipedia within different communities of
experts. The survey is anonymous and takes about 20 minutes to
complete. Whether you are an active Wikipedia contributor or not, you
can take the survey and help Wikipedia think of ways around barriers
to expert participation.
Participate at the survey at: http://survey.nitens.org/?sid=21693
«·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·»
«·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·»
«·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»
Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info
Ph.D European University Institute
Postdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies.
Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Visiting scholar. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute. Open
University of Catalonia (UOC).
Visiting researcher (2008). School of information. University of
California, Berkeley.
Member Research Committee. Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.onlinecreation.info
E-mail: mayo.fuster(a)eui.eu
Skype: mayoneti
Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748
-----
+info http://list.fcforum.net/wws/info/fcforum_discussion
----
Excellent report, Bala. Let's please document such reports at http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and/or wikimedia.in apart from emailing to the list.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
________________________________
From: Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle(a)gmail.com>
>To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, March 8, 2011 10:30 AM
>Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] A tale of two workshops
>
>
>
>
>Hi all,
>
>This is a brief report on the two Wiki workshops in Tamil Nadu in the previous two weeks
>
>==
>Coimbatore - 26 February 2011.
>
>This workshop was conducted in the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, as part of their Technical festival Kriya 2011. I arranged for this workshop through cold calling - I mailed a dozen colleges in the Coimbatore area, proposing a wiki introduction section and the students union head of PSG replied with a request for a formal proposal to present to their dean. I did so and the workshop was okayed. It was a closed workshop - only for students attending Kriya 2011 and had a registration fee of Rs. 100 (for which the attendees got a participation certificate from the college).
>
>150 students had pre-registered for the workshop and about a 100 turned up on the day. The capacity of the computer lab was 50 and we had arranged for three separate sessions. The sessions were about 1.5 hours in length with 45 of minutes of me talking and another 45 minutes of editing wikipedia live. All the computers in the lab had internet connections and so it was easy to teach them edit directly (and earned the lab's IP a couple of warning templates in en wiki). The first two sessions had like 75 people and the last one 10 people (post lunch only a few turned up). It was a typical engineering college crowd - familiar with social networking/file sharing/search the internet for assignment "research", but nothing more than that. They all had used wikipedia but were unsure about editing it - the most cited excuse was they didnt think they were upto it.
>
>The sessions were a mixed success - half the crowd had turned up for the participation certificate and it was difficult to retain their attention. But the other half was eager to learn something new and there were a few very enthusiastic people eager to contribute
>
>(photos and report in Ta wiki - http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…)
>
>
>March 5, Puthanampatti, Trichy
>
>This was a completely different experience from the previous week. While i had arranged the PSG workshop, this one came looking for me. Two of the faculty members of Nehru memorial college at Puthanampatti near Trichy had attended the NIT -Trichy workshop on Feb 20 and had liked what they saw. They asked me if i could do a workshop in their college. It is a rural arts and science college sitting in the middle of nowhere. It has excellent infrastructure - faculty that cares, good labs and a fantastic library but the students are terminally shy.
>
>This workshop was organised under a UGC scheme for students appearing for govt exams, so the theme was slightly different - how to use wikipedia as a learning resource. There were the usual two sessions - a couple of hours of me blabbing and an hour of hands on editing. Nearly 100 students attended the first session where i introduced wikipedia and taught them how to use it as a learning resource (chasing the references, ref desk, commons, wikiversity, wikibooks, wiktionary etc) and how editing an article on the subject would require researching which leads to learning on their part. There were a few IAS/competitive examinations aspirants in the audience and i was to able to show how wikipedia would help them learn faster than say competition success review et al. The intro session went well, but when we reconvened for the live session after lunch, the non-computer science students didn't turn up at the lab. The organisers said they left because they
are unsure of using internet. But the compsci crowd remained and we spent a good one hour editing Tamil wikipedia. We created an article in Ta wiki for their college, added references, photos, internal links, external links, categories etc and they got the general idea of wiki editing very quickly (which led to a rash of experimental articles and an increase in workload of ta wiki admins :-)). Since this was the compsci crowd, teaching them wiki markup was remarkably easy - they immediately grasped it and started editing articles.
>
>The college paid me 2500 Rs allocated to the "resource person" by UGC for such activities. It was an awkward situation accepting money - but they had to present their accounts and show that the money allocated by UGC was actually spent, so i couldnt say no. I took the money and donated 2100 Rs (minus my travelling + pamphlet expenses) to the foundation. Maybe the chapter can work out some sort of guidelines for this whole getting paid in the line of outreach thing. (The donation to foundation minus expenses was an idea i got from the prevailing paid editing practice in en wiki)
>
>Photos and tamil report here - http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…
>
>What i took away from these two workshops is this - urban students have more exposure to internet, but (as is the norm) distracts them from doing anything productive. Rural students haven't been "corrupted" yet by social media and other shiny things, but are very very shy in coming forward to do new things.
>
>regards
>Bala Jeyaraman
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>
Hi all,
This is a brief report on the two Wiki workshops in Tamil Nadu in the
previous two weeks
==
*Coimbatore - 26 February 2011.*
This workshop was conducted in the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, as
part of their Technical festival Kriya 2011. I arranged for this workshop
through cold calling - I mailed a dozen colleges in the Coimbatore area,
proposing a wiki introduction section and the students union head of PSG
replied with a request for a formal proposal to present to their dean. I did
so and the workshop was okayed. It was a closed workshop - only for students
attending Kriya 2011 and had a registration fee of Rs. 100 (for which the
attendees got a participation certificate from the college).
150 students had pre-registered for the workshop and about a 100 turned up
on the day. The capacity of the computer lab was 50 and we had arranged for
three separate sessions. The sessions were about 1.5 hours in length with 45
of minutes of me talking and another 45 minutes of editing wikipedia live.
All the computers in the lab had internet connections and so it was easy to
teach them edit directly (and earned the lab's IP a couple of warning
templates in en wiki). The first two sessions had like 75 people and the
last one 10 people (post lunch only a few turned up). It was a typical
engineering college crowd - familiar with social networking/file
sharing/search the internet for assignment "research", but nothing more than
that. They all had used wikipedia but were unsure about editing it - the
most cited excuse was they didnt think they were upto it.
The sessions were a mixed success - half the crowd had turned up for the
participation certificate and it was difficult to retain their attention.
But the other half was eager to learn something new and there were a few
very enthusiastic people eager to contribute
(photos and report in Ta wiki -
http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…
)
*March 5, Puthanampatti, Trichy
*This was a completely different experience from the previous week. While i
had arranged the PSG workshop, this one came looking for me. Two of the
faculty members of Nehru memorial college at Puthanampatti near Trichy had
attended the NIT -Trichy workshop on Feb 20 and had liked what they saw.
They asked me if i could do a workshop in their college. It is a rural arts
and science college sitting in the middle of nowhere. It has excellent
infrastructure - faculty that cares, good labs and a fantastic library but
the students are terminally shy.
This workshop was organised under a UGC scheme for students appearing for
govt exams, so the theme was slightly different - how to use wikipedia as a
learning resource. There were the usual two sessions - a couple of hours of
me blabbing and an hour of hands on editing. Nearly 100 students attended
the first session where i introduced wikipedia and taught them how to use it
as a learning resource (chasing the references, ref desk, commons,
wikiversity, wikibooks, wiktionary etc) and how editing an article on the
subject would require researching which leads to learning on their part.
There were a few IAS/competitive examinations aspirants in the audience and
i was to able to show how wikipedia would help them learn faster than say
competition success review et al. The intro session went well, but when we
reconvened for the live session after lunch, the non-computer science
students didn't turn up at the lab. The organisers said they left because
they are unsure of using internet. But the compsci crowd remained and we
spent a good one hour editing Tamil wikipedia. We created an article in Ta
wiki for their college, added references, photos, internal links, external
links, categories etc and they got the general idea of wiki editing very
quickly (which led to a rash of experimental articles and an increase in
workload of ta wiki admins :-)). Since this was the compsci crowd, teaching
them wiki markup was remarkably easy - they immediately grasped it and
started editing articles.
The college paid me 2500 Rs allocated to the "resource person" by UGC for
such activities. It was an awkward situation accepting money - but they had
to present their accounts and show that the money allocated by UGC was
actually spent, so i couldnt say no. I took the money and donated 2100 Rs
(minus my travelling + pamphlet expenses) to the foundation. Maybe the
chapter can work out some sort of guidelines for this whole getting paid in
the line of outreach thing. (The donation to foundation minus expenses was
an idea i got from the prevailing paid editing practice in en wiki)
Photos and tamil report here -
http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%…
What i took away from these two workshops is this - urban students have more
exposure to internet, but (as is the norm) distracts them from doing
anything productive. Rural students haven't been "corrupted" yet by social
media and other shiny things, but are very very shy in coming forward to do
new things.
regards
Bala Jeyaraman
*Malayala Manorama :* " Santhosh Thottingal Wikimedia Bhasha Commitiyil " (
malayalam)
http://silpa.smc.org.in/wiki/Santhosh?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Santh…
Malayala Manorama is the largest regional language newspaper in India , also
the newspaper in Malayalam with the largest circulation in India. The news
article talks about the selection of Santhosh Thottingal to Wikimedia
Foundation Language committee. It also talks about Santhosh's contributions
to FOSS and Malayalam language computing.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wikimedia.in/wiki/In_the_news#March_2011
Hello!
Saw something that might be of interest.
http://pincode.datameet.org/
It is "...an effort by datameet to create a reasonably accurate
Creative Commons geomapping of PIN codes in India."
I particularly like that it's under a liberal license we can use and
also submit contributions to it. Should be of use to Wikimedia
projects in India, right?
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam
________
http://social.prathambooks.org/
Dear friends,
A wikipedia introduction and editing session was held at SNDT Pune on 01
March 2011. Ádvance notice could not be given to other members of the Pune
wikipedian community due to short notice and yours truly being extremely
busy with academics - this is deeply regretted.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
*WIKIPEDIA SESSION AT SNDT, PUNE (01 March 2011)*
The Department of Communication Media for Children, SNDT College Of Home
Science, Pune, recently organised a film workshop called "Filmi Chashma" in
conjunction with the Comet Media Foundation on the College premises. I came
to know about it from an email from Bishakha Datta, Trustee (Wikimedia
Foundation) asking Pune wikipedians to please respond to a request from
Comet Media Foundation's Chandita Mukherjee to conduct an editing session
for the particpants. The aim apparently was to get the participants, mostly
students of the department and locals of Pune, to edit in Marathi Wikipedia.
The session was to last one and a half hours and was scheduled for 01st
March 2011, a Tuesday.
Since I am the only "unemployed" member of WikiPuneri, being on a
sabbatical, while my fellow friends are busy earning their living, I agreed
to take on the assignment. I was also happy to earn some brownie points with
my spouse, an SNDT alumnus, albeit from the Mumbai college. So I happily
went to SNDT following the accurate directions given by Dr Radha Misra, HOD
and landed up in time for a sumptious mid-morning snack with the workshop
participants. :-)
Mandar Kulkarni, our local Marathi Wikipedia enthusiast had promised to try
to make it in his lunch break but was unable to do so due to the distance
his office was from the location.
I was warmly greeted by Dr Misra and two members of Comet Media Foundation -
Lajpat Dhingra and Suresh Dhadave. We then moved to a computer lab in the
Education department. There a Ubuntu :-) laptop was connected and my
presentation materials were loaded. One of Dr Misra's colleagues, Ms Payal
Khombhadia, project officer for Filmy Chashma, introduced me and we were
off.
The presentation began with the three-minute W10 video created by JESS3,
followed by a short presentation made by me! Which reminds me that we need
some really good presentations for introduction to newbies! Strangely, that
doesn't seem to be around! We really need improvement in this!
The presentation was followed by an editing session. We had to close on time
though people wanted to go on as another academic event was scheduled in
that lab.
One of the motifs put forth was the utility of Wikipedia in the sphere of
activities of the workshop participants - children. Few people realise that
how lacking the internet is in interactivity. Wikipedia allows children,
like it does all people, to edit and the difference made to the encyclopedia
is not only tangible and highly visible; moreso, it is immediately reflected
back to the editor. This instantaneous response acts like a gratification -
a primary reason why wikipedia can be addictive. So editing in itself can be
rewarding for children, especially today when they have short attention
spans.
The important point that one should make to children is that this is one
program where you can actually change the world; by making more information
available one edit at a time.
There was not much chance to mention schools and wikipedia, or the relevant
resources on the web, as the thread of discussion drifted away to how
editors got to learn new skills through editing on Wikipedia. I was able to
mention the skills I learnt, that a lifetime of education including a B.Sc.
(PCM), B.Tech. (Electrical), M.Sc. (Defence Studies) and now an M.Phil. (Def
Studies) had not or did not teach me - namely, writing accurately,
neutrally, skilfully; with proper citation of all kinds of resources, to
avoid copyright violation; rewriting to avoid plagiarism; how to interact in
online communities; learning the niceties of English grammar, punctuation,
and issues pertaining to copy-editing and desktop publishing.
The editing session, I have found, is the most exciting for people new to
Wikipedia. People like to be shown how to edit. We looked at a typical
Wikipedia standard article, the left-hand panel links, the tabs, navigation
by links, categories and by using search. Featured content and good content
were discussed. We then edited an article first anonymously, undid it and
repeated the edit under my login. We then created a stub about the Pune
campus of the SNDT. Then we ran out of time.
Though the session was scheduled for an hour and a half, activities such as
meeting people, introductions, moving to a classroom, etc takes time and
effectively the session had lasted just about an hour. The lesson learnt is
a session needs to be at least two hours long, especially if its the only
session to be scheduled.
We then moved to the tea-room where I addressed the audience for a few
minutes, mainly acquainting them with details of activities being undertaken
by the Puneri wikipedian community, exchanging contact details and
distributing W10 swag - I am pleased to tell you that I was able to give
away twenty tee-shirts to the participants, an unlooked for treat which
brought out happy smiles of all.
I would like to close with this note - that the participants were mostly
women; there was only one male particpant and we three "faculty" guys were
male. I mentioned the gender gap and how important it was for the health of
the community that we get more women involved. After returning home, a thank
you email was sent to each participant with an invite to the
Wikimedia-IN-PUN list and to WikiPuneri group on Facebook.
My deep gratitude to Chandita Mukherjee of Comet Media Foundation and Dr
Radha Misra of SNDT College Of Home Science, Pune for giving this
opportunity to me and the WikiPuneri community.
Images at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/81267486@N00/tags/sndt/
Ashwin Baindur
_
__,_._,___
Thanks to the translatewiki team for facilitating localisation efforts.
As for Saurashtra language, most of its speakers live in and around the cities of Madurai and Kumbakonam for several generations now.
They speak Saurashtra at home and Tamil outside. (In fact, a veteran Tamil playback singer T.M.Soundararajan was a Saurashtra speaker.)
So, I think the fallback language would be Tamil (although the speakers originally came from the eponymous region in today's Gujarat and the language's kernel is related to Gujarati and Marathi.)
Its autonym in Tamil would be "சௌராட்டிர மொழி" per Tamil Wiki article. In Saurashtra script, it is available as an image at http://www.sourashtra.info/daar.htm (the first word below the image of the person is "Saurashtra" and the second word "Bhasha").
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
________________________________
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
>To: Wikimedia India <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Sent: Sunday, March 6, 2011 12:30 PM
>Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update from translatewiki.net
>
>
>Hoi,
>Yesterday we had quite a momentous day at translatewiki.net. After a lot of preparation our server was upgraded and we now have a much more responsive system. It is a joy again to localise; the system is so much more responsive..
>
>What may be of as much interest to this list is that we had someone asking for another Indian language. Saurashtra is a language that is written in three scripts according to Ethnologue; Tamil, Devanagari and the Saurashtra script. At this stage we are still getting the formalities in place; we have created a portal page and we are at the point where we are asking for the "autonym" or the name of the language in the language. Another question we will ask is what language will be the fall back language.
>
>This new language brings new opportunities to bring Indian culture and knowledge to the Internet.
>Thanks,
> GerardM
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>
