Hello,
Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program
would like to share with you the newsletter below for the month of February
2016. We look forward to hear any feedback or input you might have.
Kannada Wikipedia anniversary: The Kannada Wikipedia (
https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಮುಖ್ಯ_ಪುಟ) is all set to celebrate its 13th
anniversary. The first ever edit on Kannada Wikipedia was made on 12 June
2003 with a message “Kannada Vishwa Koshakke Suswaagatha!” (meaning welcome
to the Kannada encyclopedia in Kannada). However, it took over a year—on12
July 2004 the first article about a city Shimoga (
https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಶಿವಮೊಗ್ಗ) was created. Over the last decade
Kannada Wikipedia has been a great gamechanger for the Kannada language
where the Wikipedians have played a great role in making it a household
name—there were about 700,000 pageviews in December 2015. The annual
average of active editors for last year was 48, 91 (February) being the
highest and 22 (May) the lowest and 80 being the count in last December.
The peaks and valleys also signify that major outreach like Wikipedia
Education Program at Christ University Bengaluru could have boosted the
total number of editors during the months when the program was being rolled
out. Since its inception, the project has gone through many ups and downs
over time, the major one being a small community to edit and curate such a
high-level task of creating new articles in Kannada, editing and enriching
them with more information and citations, and cleaning up many articles.
Vasanth S.N. (
https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಸದಸ್ಯ:VASANTH_S.N.) has been
editing the Kannada-language Wikipedia since 2006. As part of the
WikipediansSpeak series (
https://blog.wikimedia.org/tag/wikipediansspeak/),
Subhashish Panigrahi of CIS-A2K caught up with Vasanth to learn about his
contributions to the Kannada Wikipedia, which just celebrated its 13th
anniversary. In the discussion Vasanth shares his long time involvement in
the Wikimedia movement, and what drives him every day to edit Wikipedia and
helping other fellow Wikimedians.
Read more:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/28/kannada-wikipedia-vasanth-sn/
== Events organized/participated ==
⬤ Digitisation sprint at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada to bring more
books on Telugu Wikisource (
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/digitisation-sprint-at-andhra-loyola-c…):
A digitization sprint was organised during February 12-14 at Andhra Loyola
College, Vijayawada (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andhra_Loyola_College).
The goal of the sprint was to train the students about scanning books using
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and digitize books on Telugu
Wikisource. 35 students from the college participated in this sprint.
== Articles, blogs, learning patterns ==
⬤ Kruusamägi, Ivo; Panigrahi, Subhashish; and Erhart, Ed. Community
digest—Estonians working on a new feedback system for Wikipedia articles (
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/13/wikicomment-kannada-anniversary/).
Wikimedia Blog, 13 February 2016.
Discusses a new feedback system for Wikipedia articles being developed by
Estonian Wikimedians
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Can Wikipedia revive dying Indian languages? (
http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/digital-media/can-wikipedia-revive-dying…).
The Hoot. 19 February 2016
Explains the role of Wikipedia in helping to revive and inject new energy
into some Indian languages
⬤ Panigrahi, Subhashish. ମାତୃଭାଷା ଦିବସ: ଆଜିର ସମସ୍ୟା ଓ ଆହ୍ୱାନ (
http://goo.gl/ES4HDp), Sambad, 21 February 2016
This editorial explains the challenges of expanding a knowledge base in
Odia language and helping it grow beyond just the literature and to a
language of knowledge
⬤ Panigrahi, Subhashish. ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଏକ ଅନୁଶୀଳନ (
http://goo.gl/9FlFaJ).
Samaja. 21 February 2016
This article, written on the International Mother Language Day 2016, looks
back and narrates several success stories of digital activism for languages
⬤ Panigrahi, Subhashish. କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର ଯୁଗରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/suryaprava-subhashish-panigrahi-february-22-…).
Suryaprava. 22 February 2016
⬤ Discusses Ol Chiki script that is used to write in the Santali language
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Looking ahead to the future of the Kannada
Wikipedia: Vasanth S.N. (
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/28/kannada-wikipedia-vasanth-sn/).
Wikimedia Blog. 28 February 2016
⬤ Panigrahi interviews Vasanth S.N., as a part of the WikipediansSpeak
series, about his contributions to the Kannada Wikipedia and his views and
suggestions to improve the project
== Submissions ==
⬤ Cultural institution AKA GLAM for more OER (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cultural-institution-aka-glam-for-more-oer,
Panigrahi, Subhashish; February 27, 2016). Panigrahi's submission under the
theme of "Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections
for education" has been selected for the OER16 conference to be held in
Edinburg, Scotland from 19 to 20 April 2016.
== Media coverage ==
⬤ Youth is responsible for protecting Telugu (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eenadu-telugu-wikipedia-january-14-2016-youth…),
Eenadu, 14 January 2016
⬤ Why aren’t Indians using Wikipedia to hold the government to account? (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/scroll.in-february-6-2016-madhav-gadgil-why-a…),
Scroll.in, 6 February 2016
⬤ Now trending: Regional Indian language social media networks (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindustan-times-kanika-sharma-february-14-201…),
Hindustan Times, 14 February 2016
⬤ Mechanical engineering topics available in Kannada Wikipedia (
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Mangalore/mechanical-engineering-topics…).
The Hindu, 15 February 2016
⬤ International Mother Language Day (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eenadu-february-21-2016-international-mother-…),
Eenadu, 21 February 2016
⬤ The Intellects holds 2nd International Conclave of Odia Language (
http://www.odishanewsinsight.com/events/the-intellects-holds-2nd-internatio…),
Odisha News Insight, 20 February 2016
== Awards ==
⬤ The Intellects, a Delhi-based progressive forum of intellectuals, held
the 2nd International Conclave of Odia Language at the India International
Centre in New Delhi on February 20, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi participated
in the event and was honored with the Yuva Prerana Samman award (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/odisha-news-february-22-2016-intellects-holds…).
This newsletter is also available on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/February_2016