http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore36
Hi folks,
My sincere apologies for the late writeup.
The 36th Bangalore Wiki Meetup was organized on 14 Aug 2011 at CIS,
Bengaluru and attended by 8 Wikipedians.
Talks
*Shiju*
Shiju was formally greeted by the Bangalore community for being appointed as
a consultant by the foundation for Indic initiatives. He shared his
experience in Wikimania-2011, Hafia, Israel, how he interacted with the
attendees over there, the motivation and interest and also the growth
perspectives which could also be part of his initiatives in the coming days.
He spoke about the discussions held over.
*Hisham*
Hisham has explained about the tidbits of the Pune pilot program to the
Bangalore community, the details of the outreach movement and its outcome.
He also explained about the mobo initiatives of the foundation to make
Wikipedia available for handheld mobile devices. Indic initiatives would be
one of the other prime focus of the foundation in terms of facilitating the
growth of Indian Wikipedias. Wikipedias of The Netherlands and Germany might
be used as a helping entity where the substantial growth and the strategy
lying therein would also help program new plans for Indian as well as
English Wikipedia in India. He also spoke about GLAM, successful initiatives
in several museums in the UK and how the same strategies could be applied
here to guide people to contribute more for Wikipedia. Hisham also talked
about distribution of 90,000 laptops in Government schools in Assam and
helping the students use and contribute for Wikipedia. He showed the glimpse
of Pune programs, how Nikhil from the Pune community visited school to
school to bring out an active mass for the pilot program. He also mentioned
the statistics of the Pune how 20 Campus ambassadors with the guidance of
100 teachers brought out thousands of articles.
*Nitika*
Hisham introduced Nitika to the Bangalore community. She then was greeted by
the community and talked briefly about her new position, the motivation and
participation and interests.
*Doscussions:*
*Srikanth R.*
Srikanth spoke about the geo-tagging in commons, explained how it would help
to locate places in off and in-Wiki, demonstrated photo upload in Commons
and spoke about the benefits of uploading high quality photos in Commons
with the commercial tags attached by the photographer as most photographers
about their photos uploaded in Commons can never be sold by them.
EC president Arjuna interacted about the chapter and its coordination with
the community where Arun had interaction with the other members.
*
ସୁଭପାSubhaPa
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia Odia (Oriya) mailing list
wikipedia-or(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-orfacebook.com/OdiaWiki
Tweet @OdiaWiki
*
*The Economic Times : "Oral citations to be part of wikipedia entries"*
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/oral-citations-to-be-part…
*When you set out to make the entire global knowledge base freely accessible
, can you leave out subjects that find very little mention in print? The
question posed by Bangalore based researcher Achal Prabhala, has kicked off
a debate among Wikipedia editors, the volunteers behind world's largest
encyclopedia . The collaborative online encyclopedia , supported by the
non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, has over 19 million articles written by
about 90,000 editors across the world. Achal began working on the problem in
January 2011 and carried out a project called the Oral Citations to find
ways to increase local language entries into Wikipedia . At the crux of the
problem is the lack of printed material in local languages and for topics
related to indigenous culture. Editors find it difficult to add articles
because of the lack of citable material. *
*
*
*Right now, the online encyclopedia relies heavily on published material
like newspapers , journals and magazines for citations . However, when it
comes to vernaculars , there is very little published material available and
editors often find a huge amount of knowledge being left out defeating the
entire objective of Wikipedia. Take for instance, Dabba Kali, a traditional
game played in North Kerala is finds very little or almost no reference in
citable sources. "But that's also an important part of culture," says Achal.
"The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of printed knowledge
," he argues. Of late, the Wikimedia foundation has been trying to make its
projects more global. While this is relatively easy in developed countries
with better infrastructure which generate a lot of citable material, the
problem in developing and underdeveloped countries are acute. *
*
*
*" Germany, whose entire population is a fraction of India's online
population has a massive footprint on Wikipedia. While a country like India
is behind. Why is that?" asks Achal. "Because there is a lot more published
material which can be used for citations out there... maybe, because the
people who made the project largely were from the Anglo European or Japanese
world, there has been a conflation of the sum of human knowledge and sum of
printed knowledge," says Achal who mainly works on intellectual property
issues related to medicine. With Shiju Alex, a Malayalam Wikipedian ,
Mayur,one of the top 20 global contributors to the encyclopedia and
Mohau
Monaledi, a software developer from South Africa, Achal set out to find how
easy it is to create original articles that discuss things that have not
been discussed before and are particular to a linguistic culture. "We found
that the citation rules are a huge problem. What do you do when the largest
university library in South Africa has only 80 books in Sepedi, a South
African language spoken by five million people ? Of that, most are bibles
and dictionaries and fiction and poetry which is not good for citations," he
says. The situation is no different for Malayalam or Hindi. *
*
*
*In Kannur, the number of Malayalam books in the varsity library is not more
than 3,000. "A lot of that is also translation which don't contain original
Malayalam knowledge which don't deal with topics intrinsic to Kerala," he
said. He also points out a relatively newer problem: the rules for citations
were made a few years ago when social media was not big and the Internet was
different. While the Internet culture has changed, to become a significant
part of people's lives, the idea is to broaden the base of citation "to
reflect peoples lives more realistically ." So will this change the way
Wikipedia works? "This is a discussion within a community and the desire is
to take it to its logical conclusion. Now we want to know what we can do
around citations as a whole and depending on the inputs make it more
concrete," he said. The project, however, has not been without its share of
critics within the volunteer community. One of the longest running thread,
in the recent history of the foundations public mailing list, debates the
project with scathing criticism, supporting arguments and balanced
suggestions . *
*
*
*For instance, Ziko van Dijk, a Wikimedian from Netherlands, writes: "So,
when someone believes that those "accessible printed sources" are "biased" ,
he comes up with the video of his grand uncle telling the truth? I don't
think that it fits into the scope of Wikimedia. It certainly does not fit
into the scope of Wikipedia." Achal counters: "First, this is an experiment
- an experiment which those of us working on it, and others around us,
thought might lead to interesting result ... the project is not on "oral
history" - it's on using oral sources as citations." Indian Wikipedians have
not been sparing either. For the new generation which is growing up on the
internet, the whole world of referencing and authority is online instead of
through print and very little of that is allowed on Wikipedia, they counter.
Criticsim of the project comes from local Wikipedians too. A Wikipedia
editor told ET: "I'm a bit sceptical about the project. One of our core
principles is we don't do original research. But with oral citations, we
will begin to do original citations. Wikipedia is a tertiary source and not
a primary source. This will be a breach. Also, oral citations are more
unreliable than printed sources." He, however, concedes that the area of
oral citations is relatively unexplored and has potential for study.
"Perhaps it is time to have a conversation around how you can include these
sources ?" says Achal. The debate still goes on.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#Aug_2011
Excellent! Good to know that it is co-hosted by the Department of Public
Libraries.
I'll try and make some time this Sunday to help. Feel free to connect with
me on phone if you need any help before the event.
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:16 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala <arjunaraoc(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> Hi Members and Wikimedia Community in Bangalore,
>
> I am glad to announce that we are planning for the first Wiki academy<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/File:WikiAcademyCoHostingOpportunityBrochure.pdf>
> co-hosted by Department of Public Libraries, Karnataka for their senior
> Library professionals The draft agenda is as follows
>
> Date: 29 Aug 2011, Monday
>
> Time: 11AM to 2 PM
>
> Venue: Indira Priyadarshini Childrens Library, Near State Central Library,
> Cubbon Park, Bangalore
>
> Agenda
>
> 11:00-11:30 Wikipedia History and Overview
>
> 11:30-12:00 Wikipedia policies
>
> 12:00-12:15 Setting up computer for Indian languages
>
> 12:15-12:30 Break
>
> 12:30-14:00 Wikimedia Lab: Browsing Wikipedia,Editing Wikipedia
>
> We invite volunteers especially Kannada wikipedians to join the Chapter EC
> members in co-facilitate this event.
>
> Cheers
> Arjun
>
>
--
Hari Prasad Nadig
http://hpnadig.nethttp://twitter.com/hpnadighttp://flickr.com/hpnadig
cross-posting to reach pan-India; apologies if you have got it from other mailing lists.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Hisham Mundol <hmundol(a)wikimedia.org>
> Date: August 24, 2011 8:49:42 AM GMT+05:30
> To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: India Programs-Monthly IRC: Welcoming Nitika & Shiju - Thursday August 25th @ 9pm IST (#wikimedia-office)
>
> Hi Folks
>
> As I mentioned earlier, we're scheduling the Monthly IRC of India Programs tomorrow (Thursday August 25th) at 9pm IST. This will be on the #wikimedia-office channel. (For those who are not familiar with IRC, it is an Internet messaging system similar to a regular chat room. It's very simple to use and you can join in by clicking on the following link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office)
>
> The main agenda items are to give an update on India Programs - and also for Nitika and Shiju to introduce themselves, and for you to get to know them better. For those who missed the earlier mail exchanges on this, Nitika Tandon and Shiju Alex have joined the Wikimedia Foundation's team in India. (Nitika has already started and Shiju will be starting shortly.) I'm really excited about the additions to the team and I invite you to come join us tomorrow night to welcome them aboard!
>
> Hope to see many, many of you tomorrow.
>
> Best
>
> Hisham Mundol
>
> Wikimedia India Programs
> skype : hisham.wikimedia
> gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
> twitter : @mundol
>
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
>
Hi Wikians,
Wikimania fever is over!
Those who have attended would have experienced the greatness of interacting
to many Wikipedians over the world. How about sharing your experiences and
learning with others?
We are all set to observe the 36th Bangalore Wiki Meetup just before a day
of India's Independence Day.
*Date & Time:* 14 August 2011, 3.00 PM (IST)
*Venue:*
The Centre for Internet and Society <http://cis-india.org/>
No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross,
4th Main
Domlur 2nd Stage
Opposite to Domlur Club
Bangalore 560 071
Visit the other details and sign up for the event at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore36
Please sign up and write your ideas in the facebook event
page.<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=273269979355472>
Expecting to meet you all who're there in Bangalore.
Warm regards.
*
SubhashishPanigrahi
*
cross-posting pan India (apologies if you got/get this through other mailing lists.)
Hi Folks,
I'm really pleased to send out this email welcoming the first 2 new members of the India Programs team. Just before I introduce them, I thought I'd share with you the background of their selection.
Context
As you might be aware, the Foundation had decided to undertake a catalyst operation in India to promote the growth of the community and projects here. The team is expected to be a small, nimble 5 person group. We had put out 2 job postings - for Indic Initiatives and for Participation. (Please refer: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-May/003007.html) We posted them on linkedin and on the Indian FOSS community list as well as announcing them on various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
The response was wonderful. >110 applications for Indic Initiatives and nearly 175 applications for Participation. These were short-listed to 10 (3 for Indic Language and 7 for Participation.) These were a mix of existing & previous Wikipedians, Wikipedia newbies and open source advocates.
In June, the shortlisted 10 were interviewed and further down-selected to 4. These 4 were then further interviewed by a group of other staff members from the Foundation. I am pleased to inform the community of the final selected 2.
Shiju Alex - Indic Initiatives
Most of you already know Shiju. For those who don't, Shiju is a long-time Wikipedian [User: shijualex] and is active on Malayalam Wikipedia, English wikiprojects and Wikimedia Commons, as well as Wikisource and offline. He has been passionately involved with the establishing and building of Indic language Wikipedias. He's participated in a series of outreach activities and is also (jointly) undertaking a grant from the Foundation for outreach across India. He's a regular member of the Bangalore community.
Shiju is from Palakkad, Kerala and is married with a 2 year old baby. He currently works as a Senior Technical Writer with ABB in Bangalore.
Even those of you who know him might not know the following 2 things that I was lucky to discover during the selection process. Shiju is an MSc in Physics with a specialisation in Astronomy and Astrophysics - and he retains a deep interest in anything astronomical. Feel free to quiz him vigorously on this! He also enjoys trekking and misses his time in Pune where he could be up & close the gorgeous Sahyadri Hills.
Shiju is going to lead our work on promoting Indic language projects across India. The challenges are enormous - from technical constraints to low levels of awareness of these projects to vibrant but nascent communities. However, these only point to the massive size of the opportunity for Indic language projects - which is the joint top-2 strategic priority of the movement in India. After he joins, he'll collaboratively put together a plan for Indic language projects and work towards quality execution of high-impact initiatives.
Shiju is currently serving out his notice period so will be able to join us only around September - October.
Nitika Tandon - Participation
Nitika [User:nitika.t] is relatively newer to the community - and has been brushing up her editing. She's been immersing herself in the Wikimedia world and attended community meet-ups as well as reviews of the Wikipedia India Education Program. She is from Delhi - and is currently based in Mumbai - where she works as a Strategic Partnerships Manager with Directi. (If you're not aware, they are one of the most prominent internet domain & solutions providers in India.)
Nitika has an MBA and has also worked on research analytics. A fascinating detail I discovered about a previous assignment of hers - and you must ask her about it - is how African drums can be used for management coaching! She also reliably informs me that there are 7 Spanish dance forms and she instructs in all of them!
Nitika is going to be working on Participation - which is primarily focussed on increasing the contributor base of non-Indic language projects, primarily Wikipedia. One of her first tasks will be to expand the Wikipedia India Education Program from the Pune pilot to a more national footprint. She'll also work on other initiatives to promote participation - and I can foresee Wikimedia Commons being a potential initiative.
Nitika will join us on August 1st.
Introductions
I'm going to be scheduling the August Monthly India Programs IRC on Thursday August 18th to introduce them both to you. Please do join us. I'll send a reminder closer to the date. Also, needless to say, they'll be attending a series of community meet-ups over the next months.
In the meantime, please do join me in welcoming them onboard. I'm really excited because this means that we will now have the capacity and capability to dramatically accelerate our activities in India.
Warmest Regards,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!