We are pleased to announce an event in the first week of February 2013.
BITS-Pilani, K.K. Birla Goa Campus is celebrating an event called Quark
2013. (See: http://www.bits-quark.org/2013/ ). Wikimedia India Chapter will
be conducting a MediaWiki workshop during the event.
Shri Arnav Sonara, Pune City SIG Chair, and Konarak Ratnakar will be
conducting the workshop.
The event is scheduled between 1st to 3rd Feb 2013.
Regards,
Sowmyan
Executive Manager, WMIN
+91 96329 11650
(Originally published at:
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-…
)*
*
*Wikipedia Club Pune, a local community based outreach user group in Pune
has recently organized Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 to spread words about
“Spoken Wikipedia”, a project to add recorded audio for Indic language
Wikipedia articles which will help the disabled to access Wikipedia and
“Bridging Editor Gender Gap.” It was supported by Centre for Internet and
Society, Wikimedia India Chapter, PAI International Learning Solutions and
Kusuma Foundation. Here is a sumary of activities of this two day event.
*
I was in Pune from 12-13th January to attend Wikipedia Summit Pune
2013<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune>,
a two day event organized by Wikipedia Club
Pune<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune>to
promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and
reach out to India, to bring the country under a spotlight through Spoken
Wikipedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Indic_L…>,
and to bridge the gender
gap<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-t…>of
Wikipedia editors. Here is a summary of the activities.
*Day 1:*
12 January has seen more than 100 participants which includes students from
almost 10 different schools, housewives, working professionals and free and
open source activists. Myself from the A2K team of Centre fro Internet and
Society, Sudhanwa Jogelker and Nikita Belavate from the Wikimedia India
Chapter joined for this event. The opening ceremony was started with talks
from Abhishek Suryawanshi, founder member of Wikipedia Club Pune, Sudhanwa
Jogelkar, President of Wikimedia India Chapter, Rishi Aacharya, Principal,
PAI International Learning Solutions, and social activist Mrs. Vibha.
Before the formal opening Abhishek spoke for a while about the Spoken
Wikipedia project which is one of the main agenda of the two day event. He
explained about the need of spoken Wikipedia, especially for people with
disabilities and how effective it would be when it spreads in 20 Indic
languages. In the past Wikipedians in Pune gathered and recorded articles
in various Indian and international languages.
Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President, Wikimedia India Chapter introduced the
chapter's role for Wikimedia movement to the audience. He spoke Chapter's
in few of national events/projects like Wiki Loves Monument, GLAM project
in Crafts Museum, Delhi and many other outreach events. There were few
announcements about the chapter on the MoU to be signed from the chapter
with district collector of Kanyakumari, Chapter being partner to
Springfest, IIT, Kharagpur, Commons day celebration in February and GNUnify
2013, Pune.
Vibha, a social activist based in Delhi spoke about gender discrimination
in many aspects of our social and professional life. Access to knowledge
for free could bridge this and Wikipedia, being so known universally and
accessed by millions of people every day could be the best platform for
this.' says Vibha.
Rishi Aacharya, Principal of PAI International brought the vedic saying “Ya
vidya sa vimuktaye” to explain the real meaning of knowledge which is free
its existence in an Indian context. He spoke about open source movement and
Wikipedia's part in it.
After the formal opening there was a Q&A session for the participants to
clarify various questions they had about Wikipedia. Then they were
explained about the 3 parallel sessions; An open discussion about Gender
gap, Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia. Gender gap session
was attended by many school students. Vibha and few more activists were
coordinating this event. In the Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken
Wikipedia Wikipedians helped participants for the workshop with basic
editing and the participants edited Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia. Articles
from various medical subjects of common interest were chosen. There were 3
medical professionals to support with the medical terminologies for editors
contributing to Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia.
At the end of the day there were separate wrap up tracks to summarize the
learning of whole session. All of the participants gathered together to
educate each other about the work they have done. Many of the participants
spoke about their experience and learnings. Plans for the next day was
announced. Wikipedians gathered for a group photo and socialized after the
closing talks.
*Day 2:*
Second day of Wikipedia Summit Pune was a sequel of the activities which
happened in the first day.More than 40 students took part in this session.
Vibha, Srishti and team were coordinating the gender gap track. Many topics
related to Gender Gap, gender based discrimination, Role of gender gap in
occupation, Gender gap in Wikipedia, Participation of Woman editors on
Wikipedia were discussed.
Participants of the Spoken wikipedia session worked on the articles on
Hindi and Marathi Wikipedia and moved them from sandboxes to article
namespaces. After all of the articles were created they recorded them. They
formed groups of 3-4 members and worked together. One of them would search
information mainly from the English Wikipedia articles and some of the
available Marathi (or Hindi), some other would translate and the other
member would record it using a mobile phone. That was a great team effort.
Over 25 voluntary organizers joined hands for making this a success. No of
participants were around 120. At the end of the day participants from both
the sessions gathered. Many of the participants and organizers shared their
experiences and learnings. The program was concluded with socializing,
taking group pictures, promises to stay in touch and taking active part in
more Wikipedia activities.
*Quick links:*
Blog:
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-…
*
*
Wikipedia Summit Pune:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune
Wikipedia Club Pune:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune
Pictures: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune
Spoken Wikipedia Project:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India
Pune Club facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune
--
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
New Delhi
FYI!
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Simon Shek <simon.shek(a)wikimedia.hk>
wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong are being accept.
> The application window is one month (through 22 February).
>
> Wikimania 2013 scholarship is an award given to an individual to enable
> them to attend Wikimania in Hong Kong from 7-11 August, 2013.
>
> Two type of scholarships will be available this year. Partial scholarships
> will cover travel expenses to Wikimania, capped at 50% of the estimated air
> fare from your nearest international airport according to [[wm2013:Getting
> to Hong Kong]]. Full scholarships will cover round-trip travel, dorms
> accommodations as arranged by the Wikimania Team, and registration for
> Wikimania 2013.
>
> Applicants will be rated on the following four dimensions:
> 1. Activity within Wikimedia (on-wiki and off-wiki) - 50%
> 2. Activity outside of Wikimedia and other free knowledge/software
> projects - 15%
> 3. Interest in Wikimania and the Wikimedia movement - 25%
> 4. Fluency of English language - 10%
>
> To learn more about Wikimania 2013 scholarships, please visit
> https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
> To apply for a scholarship, you can fill out the application form here:
> https://scholarship.wikimedia.hk
>
> If you have any question, email us at wikimania-shcolarship(a)wikimedia.org.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Simon Shek
> Community coordinator - Wikimania 2013 / Wikimedia Hong Kong
> wikimedia.hk
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimania-l mailing list
> Wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
Thanks and regards,
Karthik Nadar,
Secretary, Wikimedia India Chapter.
FYI
---
Harsh Kothari
Research Fellow,
Physical Research Laboratory(PRL).
Ahmedabad.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Ct Woo <ctwoo(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] More Update on Ashburn data center switchover / migration – target date is week of 1/22/13
> Date: 20 January 2013 12:27:28 AM GMT+05:30
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Engineering <engineering(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> All,
>
> We will be proceeding with the datacenter switchover plan this coming
> Tuesday (Jan 22, 2013), unless we discover some unexpected and
> insurmountable issues in our tests between now and then.
>
> During the 8-hour migration window on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th (from 17:00
> UTC to 01:00 UTC hours / 9am to 5pm PST), there would be times (lasting
> about 30 minutes) where the site would be set to "read-only" mode, to
> facilitate master database switchovers from one datacenter to another.
> While the site should be available to readers, no new contents could be
> created, edited or uploaded.
>
> We are aware of the inconvenience and we have put together plans to
> minimize such annoyances, e.g., automating much of the procedures,
> mitigating known risks, and performing tests to identify issues prior to
> deployment. Given the scale and complexity of this migration, we do realize
> not all operational impact is predictable. Some users could experience
> intermittent site unavailability and/or performance issues unfortunately.
>
> You can follow the migration on chat.freenode.net <http://irc.freenode.net>
> (and not irc.freenode.org as mentioned in previous email) in the
> #wikimedia-operations channel.
>
> Thanks,
> CT Woo
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ct Woo <ctwoo(a)wikimedia.org>
> Date: Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 12:07 PM
> Subject: Update on Ashburn data center switchover / migration – target date
> is week of 1/22/13
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Development and
> Operations Engineers <engineering(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> All,
>
> The Migration team is in the last lap on completing the remaining tasks to
> ready our software stack and Ashburn infrastructure for the big switchover
> day.
>
> Per my last update,<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-October/063668.html>
> with the Fundraising activity behind us now, the team has scheduled the *week
> of 22nd January*, 2013 to perform the switchover. We are going to block a
> 8-hour migration window on the *22nd, 23rd and 24**th*. During those
> periods, *17:00 UTC to 01:00 UTC hours (9am to 5pm PST*), there will be
> intermittent blackouts and they will be treated as 'planned' outages. You
> can follow the migration on irc.freenode.org in the #wikimedia-operations
> channel.
>
> The team is putting the finishing touches to the last few tasks and we will
> make the final Go/No decision on 18th Jan, 2013. An update will send out
> then. For those interested in tracking the progress, the meeting notes are
> captured on this wikitech
> page<http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Eqiad_Migration_Planning#Improving_Switc…>
> .
>
> *Please note that we will be restricting code deployment during that week,
> allowing only emergency and critical ones only.*
>
> Thanks.
>
> CT Woo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Dear Wikimedians,
Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2012 Picture of the Year
competition is now open. We're interested in your opinion as to which
images qualify to be the Picture of the Year for 2012. Voting is open to
established Wikimedia users who meet the following criteria:
1. Users must have an account, at any Wikimedia project, which was
registered *before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000*[UTC].
2. This user account must have more than *75 edits* on *any
single*Wikimedia project
*before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000* [UTC]. Please check your
account eligibility at the POTY 2012 Contest Eligibility
tool<http://toolserver.org/%7Epathoschild/accounteligibility/?user=&wiki=&event=…>
.
3. Users must vote with an account meeting the above requirements either
on Commons or another SUL-related Wikimedia project (for other Wikimedia
projects, the account must be attached to the user's Commons account
through SUL <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login>).
Hundreds of images that have been rated Featured Pictures by the
international Wikimedia Commons community in the past year are all entered
in this competition. From professional animal and plant shots to
breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant
images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems,
diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human
portraits, Commons features pictures of all flavors.
For your convenience, we have sorted the images into topic categories. Two
rounds of voting will be held: In the first round, you can vote for as many
images as you like. The first round category winners and the top ten
overall will then make it to the final. In the final round, when a limited
number of images are left, you must decide on the one image that you want
to become the Picture of the Year.
To see the candidate images just go to the POTY 2012 page on Wikimedia
Commons <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012>
.
Wikimedia Commons celebrates our featured images of 2012 with this contest.
Your votes decide the Picture of the Year, so remember to vote in the first
round by *30 January 2013*
Thanks,
the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee
ന്യം എന്നത് പോലെ യ ക്ക് എഴുതാൻ കീമാജിക്കിൽ എന്ത് കോമ്പിനേഷൻ ആണ് ചെയ്യുക.
ഉള്ളൂരിന്റെ ഭക്തിദീപിക യിൽ അവതാരിക പേജിൽ അങ്ങിനെ വരുന്നുണ്ട്. താഴത്തെ
ചിത്രം കാണുക.
*
Around the World with Wikivoyage
by Rohini Lakshane
Wikivoyage, the newest project by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), was
launched on January 15, 2013, the 12th anniversary of Wikipedia. Like its
sister projects, the ad-free worldwide travel guide available in nine
languages can be edited by anyone. All its content is available under a
free (CC-BY-SA) license. WikiVoyage claims to have approximately 50,000
articles as of launch. Wikivoyage is an attempt to club the detailed,
personal and up-to-date nature of content on travel websites with broader
and authoritative travel content.*
*
*
*Full article here:*
*
http://tech2.in.com/features/web-services/around-the-world-with-wikivoyage/…
*
*<http://tech2.in.com/features/web-services/around-the-world-with-wikivoyage/…>
*
--
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan,
Sathyamangalam-Gobichettipalayam Star Gazers, Coimbatore.
Please sign this petition for Volvo buses in Coimbatore:
https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/the-transport-minister-tamil-nadu-in…
