Dear all,
CIS-A2K would like to share with you the newsletter below for the month of August 2015. We
look forward to hear any feedback or input you might have.
Odia Wikipedia (available at <https://or.wikipedia.org>
or.wikipedia.org), an
Indian-language Wikipedia project, celebrated thirteen years of free knowledge
contribution in June 2015. It was one of the first four Indic Wikipedias (Assamese,
malayalam and Punjabi being the other three)to have started in 2002. The first edit on the
Wikipedia was made on 3 June 2002. Currently the project has over 8,900 articles and about
17 active editors (also known as "uikiali"). The voluntary editor community has
put its efforts into acquiring valuable content, re-licensing them under Creative Commons
(CC) licenses, and building tools for acquiring more encyclopedic content from various
sources.
Odia Wikipedia community assessment survey June 2015. It gives an overview about the
various hindrances for the growth of Odia Wikipedia and the community.
During the thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community came together to assess
community needs, address issues that had been identified earlier via irc and mailing list
discussions, and identify priority areas to focus on in the future. Odia Wikipedia
administrators Mrutyunjaya Kar and Subhashish Panigrahi designed a needs assessment
survey. (
https://or.wikipedia.org/s/tnp) Participating Wikimedians were asked to discuss
various problems they face in editing and outreach two major areas that ensures quality
standards. .
Two-fifths of participants said that problems with the rendering of Odia characters in
different operating systems, ignorance or lack of more documentation about enabling
encoding for Odia, input methods and keyboard layouts, and other font- and
keyboard-related issues as the major reason for low readership and contribution on
Wikipedia.
. . .Read more in the Wikimedia blog at:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/08/21/odia-wikipedia-celebrates-13/
== Event organized/participated ==
(CIS-A2K events page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events)
⬤ Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Annamacharya library
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/rare-telugu-religious-and-historical-w…
):
On 6 August a Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Annamacharya library to
preserve rare Telugu literature text. Annamacharya library has a rare collection of the
religious and historical works in Telugu language. This event was conducted by Telugu
Wikipedia Community and the Centre for Internet & Society's Access To Knowledge
program. The second iteration of the event was organized on 31 August.
⬤ Tamil Virtual University workshop
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/workshop-on-digital-collaborations-in-…
):
On 8-9 August, a two-day long workshop on digital collaborations in Tamil-language was
organized by Tamil Virtual University, Anna University Campus, Chennai. U.B.Pavanaja, on
behalf of CIS-A2K, participated in this event. Four major topics discussed during the
event were: Digitization, Research and Development, e-learning and Open source and
Outreach.
⬤ SDM Ujire Kannada workshop:
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-at-shree-dh…)
CIS-A2K has ongoing partnership with SDM College, Ujire. The college's academic year
started on 12 August. It was followed by a one-day workshop where the students were
introduced to editing in Kannada Wikipedia. The head of the journalism department of the
College Bhaskar Shetty and others supported the event.
⬤ Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Mangalore
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-mangalore-to-bring-t…
):
A three-day edit-a-thon was organized between 14-16 August in Mangalore for bringing good
quality content in Tulu Wikipedia. This event, organized in collaboration with the Tulu
Sahitya Academy and Ramakrishna Pre University College, saw 30 Wikipedia editors
participating and creating about 89 new articles. 12 of these 30 participants crossed more
than 10 edits. Some of the new participants faced problems with using the input methods
and the Wiki-markup. It is important to note that because of the lack of addition of
Tulu-alphabet code points in the Unicode chart, and the speakers being well conversant in
Kannada, they are using Kannada script for Tulu Wikipedia Incubator project. There is a
plan to organize a monthly meetup and/or edit-a-thon to continue the momentum these
editors have brought in.
⬤ Kannada Wikipedia workshop at DSERT
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/edit-a-thon-to-improve-kannada-langu…):
A Kannada Wikipedia workshop was organized between 18-20 August at the Department of State
Educational Research and Training to improve science-related articles that are part of the
Government of Karnataka's high school syllabus. During the workshop the lecturers were
taught about the basics of Kannada Wikipedia, article editing policies, Kannada input,
creating and editing articles on Kannada Wikipedia. U.B. Pavanaja and Tito Dutta from
CIS-A2K conducted the workshop, behalf of CIS-A2K.
=== Sau Dhuni Teen project ===
⬤ Wikipedia workshop in Pune
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-workshop-in-theme-of-sou-dhu…:
A Wikipedia workshop was organized at Srimati Savitribai Phule Pune University on 20
August 2015. Under the scope of “Sau Dhuni Teen” project, the workshop focused on building
resources in Indian languages for women's studies on Wikipedia.
⬤ Wikipedia workshop in TISS, Mumbai:
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/sau-dhuni-teen-project-wikipedia-wor…)
A two-day long and multilingual Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Women's
Studies Department of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai between 22-24
August. This was an outreach event conducted under the scope of the "Sau Dhuni
Teen" project.
== Blog posts ==
⬤ Pavanaja, U. B. "Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore"
(
http://goo.gl/ZxJVnS) (18 August 2015)
⬤ Pavanaja, U. B. "Edit-a-thon to improve Kannada-language science-related Wikipedia
articles"
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/edit-a-thon-to-improve-kannada-langu…)
(19 August 2015)
⬤ Panigrahi, Subhashish. "Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the
youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community!"
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kisorachandrananachampu-on-odia-wiki…) (21
August 2015)
== Media coverage ==
1. ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ:ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ-ಪವನಜ
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/news/sahil-online-august-14-2015 ) SahilOnline; 14 August
2015
2. ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಿಂದ ದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ (
<http://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalorean-dotcom-august-13-2015>
http://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalorean-dotcom-august-13-2015 )
Mangalorean.com; 13
August 2015
3. Telugu religious and historical work preserved at Annamacharya library to come on
Wikisource! (
<http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-08-07/Rare-Telugu-religious-and-historical-work-preserved-at-Annamacharya-library-to-come-on-Wikisource-168454Rare>
http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-08-07/Rare-Telugu-religious-an…
) The Hans India; 7 August 2015
This newsletter is also available on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/August_2015