This month, we have the opportunity of choosing two articles for the
WikiProject India Collaboration of the Month (abbreviated as INCOTM).
Vide the discussion on India Noticeboard, we need to choose one article to
improve/develop and one former Good Article/Featured Article which will
have to be improved and restored to GA/FA status by improving it and making
it undergo the process thereby restoring it to its previous status.
Please have a look and vote here without fail :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_t…
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Some of us have asked for and/or received rollback rights as experienced
editors in Wikipedia. The feature is one from the administrators set of
tools and should be used sparingly. Recently I saw a case where an editor
lost his rollback rights due to misuse. I realised that I myself was not
quite clued up about rollback rights and got smart very fast.
Extracts from the [[Wikipedia:Rollback_feature#When_to_use_rollback|relevant
page]] are provided below:
Rollback *may* be used:
- To revert obvious
vandalism<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism>and other
edits where the reason for reverting is absolutely clear
- To revert edits in your own user
space<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_space>
- To revert edits that you have made (for example, edits that you
accidentally made)
- To revert edits by banned
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BAN>users who are not allowed
to edit (but be prepared to explain this use of
rollback when asked to)
- To revert widespread edits (by a misguided editor or malfunctioning
bot) which are judged to be unhelpful to the encyclopedia, provided that an
explanation is supplied in an appropriate location, such as at the relevant
talk page[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Rollback_feature#cite_note-0>
Use of standard rollback for any other purposes – such as reverting
good-faith changes which you happen to disagree with – is likely to be
considered misuse of the tool. When in doubt, use another method of
reversion and supply an edit summary to explain your reasoning.
Please be careful in the use of this tool if you are authorised. Misuse is
not taken lightly and mostly results in revocation of rights.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Hello friends,
Its (high) time for the Collaboration of the Month. Lets have a look at
what we achieved in these COTMs.
Last month we had restarted the COTM and decided to take up just two
considering that fewer members were taking interest in it. The one's
selected were :
* [[Mullaperiyar dam]] &
* [[Manmohan Singh]]
During the period under question, Mullaperiyar Dam was the more active of
the two. We had 267 edits from 62 contributors. This was good from the
point of view of COTM. The COTM was a success in this case as the dam
article improved substantially:
* Improved lead.
* Improved material in Infobox
* New image on irrigated area by Captain of Hope.
* Some POV trash removed/rewritten.
* Dispute points clearer now.
* Improved references.
* Article sections were restructured.
* History of its construction improved.
Is it ready for GA? No, there are number of content issues. The article is
not stable. Unless some passionate editor really gets down to sift through
all the dispute points, ensure that they are written well in context, NPOV
and with a timeline, it is not complete from substance point of view. In
parts of TN, Pennycuick, the builder of the dam, is idolised and busts of
his can be found in the countryside. This fact (with reference) and an
image is also needed imho. Someone who is a civil engineer needs to vet the
article to ensure whatever is written makes engineering sense. However, the
article reads much better now.
The top five editors (excluding self) of Mullaperiyar Dam during 01
December 2011 to the time of writing this email were:
* Jponnoly - 51 edits
* Rsrikanth05 - 32 edits
* NortyNort - 19 edits
* 67.189.169.9 (anon) - 14 edits
* Captainofhope - 11 edits
To encourage contribution, the first three registered users have been
awarded a Barnstar for taking time and effort to participate. Captainofhope
also gets a barnstar both for his edits and the new diagram created.
Thumbs down point - the previous month's edits were even more - 348 in
November 2011. Main reason, due to interest generated by Prad2609 and
RSrikanth05, Wikipedia editors started editting the article in right
earnest and over a hundred edits are in the last week of November (Prad2609
was a significant contributor to those already mentioned). Also, the
dispute itself was in the news and saw attention form angry editors on both
sides. Considering the heat with which the dispute raged irl, the article
was relatively serene in December. :)
MANY THANKS TO ALL WHO CONTRIBUTED IN MULLAPERIYAR DAM COTM (Yes, I'm
shouting!)
Manmohan Singh was a different story. Perhaps people did not like his
stance in the Lokpal Bill, but there were only 43 edits of which 14 were by
User:AroundTheGlobe, who gets a barnstar for dogged determination. The
article was cleaned up but overall the effort the community put into the
article was not enough and it was not much improved.
So FAIL for this COTM!
In the next post, I shall be discussing the proposal for next month's COTM.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
We need a free image of M Visvesvaraya. Can anyone from Karnataka community
oblige? Can anyone oblige? Barnstar promised. :) And oh yes, Happy New Year
once again!
Please forward to Kn, Te, Ml & Ta lists too please.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody, (long post, bear with me)
In response to the message given below, I also sent a message to Vinu
Thomas on the lines of messages I write such as the example below. I
usually ask Flickr natural history photographers for permission to use
their images. I use the following arguments as outlined in a specimen mail
(actually sent by me).
For example :
Nest of Red-faced spinetail Hi Scott,
I'm an editor of Wikipedia from India. I'm writing an article on
"Structures built by animals". You can see the article here placed in the
main wiki though it is still under development :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structures_built_by_animals
It has been viewed over 800 times in the last four weeks or so.
Wikipedia needs an image of the nest of the "Red-faced spinetail" for the
above article to illustrate a fact that I shall be adding.
"The red-faced spinetail places bits of grass and other material loosely
streaming both above and below the nest chamber to break its shape and to
cause it to resemble random debris without any underlying structure
(Hansell 2000)."
The image could also be used in the following artcles -
* Red-faced spinetail (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-faced_Spinetail) (this
article is viewed by 70 people on average every month)
* Nest (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest) (this article is viewed by 7600 people
on average every month)
Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not have an image of a Red-faced spinetail's
nest in its repository called Wikimedia Commons. I wanted to request if you
would consider donating your image of the nest for a social cause.
www.flickr.com/photos/certhia/5659454247/
Having an image adorn a main aspect of a creature's life, or an important
fact in natural history on Wikipedia gives great pleasure to the
photographer.
If you would like to oblige, please just change the license of this image
to allow commercial use and derivatives and send me a message. I would do
the rest and keep you informed.
If you have any queries, please do let me know. I will be happy to answer
them
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
I'm glad to say scott_clark generously obliged and you can see his image
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red-faced_Spinetail_Nest.jpg
The other image in REd-faced spinetail was also provided by another Flickr
contributor - Jim Scarff.
The purpose of sending this email is to let you know how I do it and that
its being done quite successfully.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.ghoda(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> WDD,
> thank you. I too sent him a message on Flickr.
>
> I've been too busy requesting people to donate astro pics, first time I'm
> looking at Roads
> --~~~~
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 1:25 PM, <wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As Pradeep mentioned, Iv been doing this for some time - some people are
>> happy to oblige, some feel elated that their pic will be on wiki, some arnt
>> willing, some dont bother to reply. I normally paste the following message
>> in the comments section of the image Im interested in (Since this user has
>> disabled comments, sent him a message):
>>
>> Could you please change your licensing to allow use on Wikipedia. Your
>> pics are brilliant and would be of great use. Only Flickr images tagged as
>> PD, BY (CC-BY) or BY SA (CC-BY-SA) are allowed on Wikipedia. Thanks!
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2012 13:14:53 +0530
>> From: parakara.ghoda(a)gmail.com
>> To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Bangaloreans, help convince this fellow for
>> some photographs.
>>
>>
>> VInu THomas, was invited by Nokia for a Helicopter trip over Bangalore.
>> Here's the photoset of his pics:
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinut/sets/72157628467032159/
>> Help convince him.
>> Another photographer is Vijay, aka @misgeek on Twitter.
>> Do help.
>>
>> Hari, I think this is a good time to ask for a grant for a Kannada Media
>> contest.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
>> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on February 12th.
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>> Aliens invaded Tamil Nadu, left their Spacship and now it is a Toll
>> Plaza.
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IVRCL-Vijayamangalam-Toll-Plaza.JPG
>>
>>
>>
>>
While restarting COTM last month, we had reduced our COTM targets from five
to two and we saw that of these one did well - the other flagged. Perhaps
it means that the number of people interested in COTM are not that many.
User:AroundTheGlobe had suggested last month that we consider developing
the low-hanging fruit ie former GA and FA articles and bringing them back
to quality each month. Personally I like this idea for many reasons:
* it gives a different activity for people to do than just improving an
article.
* brining an article to GA is like a quest or challenge for those who
prefer such.
* the articles have already reached very good quality and relatively little
work is required to improve them and restore them to former status.
* the WikiProject benefits much more tangibly.
* editors get to learn the GA process (lets begin with GA first) which they
can then use to improve their own articles.
So I propose that for January, we choose one normal article as normal COTM
and the other as Good Article Collaboration of the Month.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
The LIFE repository of public domain images has this image on its Google
site
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=7cbc71f276cdecd4
The caption is completely botched up by the Life data input guy
(presumably) - it cant be Rabindranath Tagore who sported a beard most of
his life. I suspect it is RT's famous painter nephew Abanindranath Tagore
(teacher of famous Shantiniketan painter, Nandalal Bose)-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abanindranath_Tagore
Even this blog page says so :
http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2010/04/abanindranath-tagore-famous-artist-of…
What I'm looking from Bengali Wikipedians is to please help me confirm this
with some kind of proof. This image is p-d India and uploadable to Commons
since Abanindranath died in 1951 at age 80 and this image would be around
when he was around 60.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mihály Héder <mihaly.heder(a)sztaki.hu>
Date: Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 20:38
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Beta release of Sztakipedia Toolbar
To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hello,
(sorry if someone already got this on an other list)
please try out Sztakipedia toolbar, which is meant to show how AI
technology could help Wikipedia editing.
The 90 sec intro video explains everything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VW0TrvXpl4
alternatively, please check out the home page of the tool:
http://pedia.sztaki.hu, for installation instructions, etc.
Please give me feedback, good or bad at the talk page of the tool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MHeder/Sztakipedia
For me, your feedback is the most essential thing. As a PhD student my
resarch topic is about how to bring some AI into the editor interfaces
where people create knowledge. My primary target was Wikipedia, even though
I'm an occasional contributor only. Dealing the wiki system is no easy
matter though, so the system I introduce today is not implementing the
whole vision I had when we started the development with some other
students. Not even close.
However, I hope that the new visual editor the foundation is working will
could open up new options for the integration of AI. So even if you do not
prefer the current form of Sztakipedia, please share your vision on how we
should do this in the future.
Many thanks,
Mihály Héder
Computer and Automation Research Institute
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
--
Regards
Srikanth.L
http://srik.me
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Request_for_Comment:_SOP…
A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia community made a decision to blank
all of Italian Wikipedia for a short period in order to protest a law which
would infringe on their editorial independence. The Italian Parliament
backed down immediately. As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much
worse law going under the misleading title of "Stop Online Piracy
Act<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act>'
is working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. I may be
attending a meeting at the White House on Monday (pending confirmation on a
couple of fronts) along with executives from many other top Internet firms,
and I thought this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the
community feeling on this issue. My own view is that a community strike was
very powerful and successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in
this case. There are obviously many questions about whether the strike
should be geotargetted (US-only), etc. (One possible view is that because
the law would seriously impact the functioning of Wikipedia for everyone, a
global strike of at least the English Wikipedia would put the maximum
pressure on the US government.) At the same time, it's of course a very
very big deal to do something like this, it is unprecedented for English
Wikipedia. — Preceding
unsigned<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signatures>comment
added by Jimbo
Wales <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales> (*talk* •
contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales>)
07:42, 10 December 2011
Best - sorry if this is not of relevance for this list,
Bishakha
Just a quick reminder to the list. its not just Mullaperiyar Dam but also
Manmohan Singh which is up for Collaboration of the Month for December
2011. Mullaperiyar is getting a lot of edits both because of the COTM and
the fact that it is controversial. However, Manmohan Singh has got little
attention so far, except for edits by Pranav Curumsey, some by a newbie and
a few flyby edits.
So please take a little time out for one of the most important topics on
India in Wikipedia.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
