Dear all,
Though we added this announcement in our September newsletter, it has
not delivered in most mailing lists. So, I am sharing this again.
CIS-A2K invites applications from Indian and Indic Wikimedians for the
upcoming Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public
Interest.[1] The event, happening during December 15-17 in New Delhi, is
the most significant event on the calendar for scholars and policy
advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest
perspective.
The last date of application is 27 October. Indian and Indic Wikipedians
are welcome to apply in the /event page[2]/ to apply.
/1. https://goo.gl/1uOJ3E/
2. https://goo.gl/kAVkrM
--
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org
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-an…> 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
Dear all,
CIS-A2K would like to share with you the newsletter for the month of
July 2015. We look forward to hearing any feedback or input you might have.
The Goan Konkani Wikipedia (available at gom.wikipedia.org) has gone
live after spending nine long years in incubation.
Konkani Wikipedia has many heroes, Melissa Simoes and Darshan Kandolkar
are two of the many long-term contributors who joined Konkani Wikipedia
during the Konkani Wikipedia @ Goa University program and are still
active even after the program was formally concluded. Darshan is an
Assistant Professor at the Government College Pernem in Goa. His
professor at Goa University, Dr. Madhavi Sardesai—who passed away last
year—played a vital role in inspiring him to pursue higher studies in
Konkani. Darshan realized that there is a lot to be written in Konkani
when he was introduced to Wikipedia, and after that, he became dedicated
towards contributing to the project.
The Konkani Wikimedia community has been using social media actively to
promote the Konkani Wikipedia project, and to celebrate the successes of
its contributors. After Melissa became the top contributor to the
project, her fellow editor Luis Gomes congratulated her. That brought
Melissa into the spotlight, gaining the attention of editors from the
global Wikimedia community. The community is continuing a tradition to
rewarding the most prolific contributor of each month as the "Wikipedian
of the Month".
More in the Wikimedia blog:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/07/15/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live/
== Event organized/participated ==
* Christ university Undergraduate program (July 1-8):
Students were initiated into the Wikimedia activities with hands on
sessions of typing on Wikisource. Faculty of the Christ University
helped the A2K team in deciding on the texts that were to be typed.
These texts will provide much needed impetus for Wikisource related
activities in Indian Languages. Wikipedia Education Programme at Christ
University received support from Ravishankar.A of the Tamil Wikimedia
community and Sayant Mahato from Sanskrit Wikimedia community.
* St. Aloyisius college, Mangalore (July 4-5):
Tulu and Kannada Wikipedia workshops were conducted in St. Aloysis
College, Mangalore. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator and a small community
is growing in Mangalore. Pavanaja U.B. and Rahmanuddin Shaik
participated in this events.
* MediaWiki Train the Trainer Program2015
A four-day long train-the-trainer program aimed at building leadership
among technical contributors to Indic language Wikimedians in the areas
of bugs, bots--Pywikipedia and Auto Wiki Browser, various MediaWiki
tools, and translations. This program was organized during June 24-27 by
CIS-A2K with support from Ravishankar.A from Wikimedia India, MediaWiki
developers Pavithra H., Yogesh Omshivaprakash H.L. and Harsh Kothari,
and Tamil Wikimedian Dineshkumar Ponnusamy.
* Wikimania 2015, Mexico City:
** Learning Day (15 July 2015):
A whole day dedicated for evaluation of strategies and activities by
various major stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement; community members
who lead major activities, Wikimedia chapters, affiliate organizations
and Wikimedia Foundation itself. There were several group activities,
exchange of ideas focused on project and community level outreach and
other activities, tools and techniques, and best practices. Subhashish
Panigrahi participated in this event.
** Talk on Guerrilla GLAM:
Subhashish presented about doing GLAM the guerrilla way--by sharing many
frugal practices, and ways around acquiring cultural content to enrich
Wikipedia and Wikipedia's sister projects where the conventional GLAM
partnerships do not fetch much success.
* * Panel discussion "Edit-a-thons for bridging the gender gap on Wikimedia:
A panel discussion centered around using edit-a-thons as an outreach
tool among women, measuring its impact and comparing it with other modes
of outreach. Subhashish along with Malayalam Wikimedian Netha Hussain as
moderator, and other fellow Wikimedians in the panel Rohini Lakshane,
Emily Temple-Wood, Siko Bouterse (WMF) and Heather Walls participated in
the discussion.
** Indic meetup:
During Wikimania, an Indic meetup was organized where Wikimedians from
India, Bangladesh and Nepal representing various language communities,
Wikimedia India, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Nepal, and Access To
Knowledge (CIS-A2K) gathered to discuss about various challenges,
cross-community collaborative projects, organizing larger events, and
strategies to grow the Wikimedia movement in South Asia.
* "Classical Languages In The Digital Era" conference, Central Institute
of Indian Languages, Mysore (Participated by Tanveer Hasan on 17 July 2015):
Organized by Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore this
conference was aimed at discussing about the future of Indian classical
languages in the digital era. Classical languages that are more of
confined within the print media have to find their way out to reach to
masses using the digital media. Linguists, researchers and scholars
representing various Indian languages gathered at CIIL where Tanveer
Hasan from CIS-A2K participated.
* Hackathon at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay (28 June 2015)
Around 35 students (25 male and 10 female) and interns together from IIT
Bombay participated in a hackathon organized in the institution by the
Wikimedia community led by Santosh Singare and Rahul Deshmukh.
Rahimanuddin Shaik from CIS-A2K delivered a presentation on Wikidata and
bots and Abhinav Garule supported in organizing the event. The students
formed groups and worked on brainstorming about different bots.
* Odia Wikipedia Turning 13 this June 3 (Organized by the Odia Wikipedia
Community and supported by CIS-A2K; Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya
Marg, Sainik School PO, Gajapati Nagar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha; June 3, 2015):
The Odia Wikipedia turned 13 on June 3. The community gathered in
Odisha's capital city Bhubaneswar for a day to celebrate this day.
During the thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community had a day
long session to assess community needs, address issues, and identify
priority areas to focus on for the future. A legacy encoding →
Unicodeencoding converter was released publicly during the event. This
'encoding converter' is a community project led by Wikimedians
Jnanaranjan Sahu and Manoj Sahukar and converts the encoding systems
used by Odia newspapers, the Odisha government websites and many
publications into Unicode.
== Blogs ==
* Panigrahi, Subhashish. Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years'
of Incubation (July 18, 2015)
* Patnaik, Sailesh. Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group
* Hasan, Tanveer. Magic words (29 July 2015)
* Hasan, Tanveer. Train the Trainer: Running effective outreach
activities in India (30 July 2015)
== Team updates ==
Tito Dutta, Luis Gomes and Abhinav Garule have joined the CIS-A2K team
as Programme Associates from March this year. Tito will be working for
internal documentation and resource building, and Luis and Abhinav will
be implementing the Konkani and Marathi work plan respectively along
with community liaison.
Communications:
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CISA2K
* Visit us at: https://cis-india.org
This newsletter is also available on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/July_2015
--
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org
Dear Wikimedians,
It gives WMIN and CIS-A2K great pleasure to announce that we have started
preparations for MediaWiki Train the Trainer Program. It is a matter of
grave concern that while the Indian Language Wikipedias are slowly improving
their content and expanding their volunteer base, there is very less and
often zero representation from the Indian Language Communities towards
MediaWiki software and the available tools around.
CIS-A2K intends to bridge this gap by creating and grooming 'tech' leaders
in the MediaWiki sphere from the existing Indian Language Wikipedians.
MediaWiki Train the Trainer program aims to facilitate discussions around
nurturing leadership regarding tech related issues, file bugs that hinder
the growth of Indian Language Wikipedias, active contribution towards
improving the existing MediaWiki software and understanding the importance
of mediating technology for outreach activities. The 4 day residential event
will happen in last week of June, 2015.
Exact dates and venue will be announced soon.
We welcome specific issues that should be discussed during the MWTTT as well
as feedback and suggestions. Please write to us if there are any concerns.
The event page :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Mediawiki_Train_the_Trainer_P
rogram
Thanks and regards,
Pavanaja
----------------------------------------------------
U.B. Pavanaja, MSc, PhD
Programme Manager <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pavanaja> - Indian
languages,
Access to Knowledge program
The Centre for Internet & Society
Dear Wikimedians,
This is my last day as the CIS-A2K Program Director.
The last 2 years and 3 months have been immensely exciting with tons of
learning and work!
I have loved meeting many Wikimedians, face to face, across the length and
breadth of India. The interactions I had with many of you have been
immensely useful to my learning.
The diversity of our community and the Wikimedia projects in India is so
rich and intricate - I wish I could map out my entire set of impressions to
only give a slight glimpse of it!!
Signing off as the Program Director for now. See you on-wiki, here on the
lists and in real life whenever our paths cross.
A quick update: The next A2K Program Director selection is under process
and hopefully we should all be able to welcome the new incumbent in June,
2015. Until then the A2K team is being internally monitored by CIS
leadership.
Best wishes,
Vishnu
Hi All,Special Attn: Admins.I recently created an Article title "Rochak Inter-College Fest"It's a Hindi Centric event and its 'notable' coz its about our National Language ( One of the many )
Would appreciate if you could weigh in on the deletion discussion page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rochak_Inter-… and help me out if you feel i am right.
I feel subjected to Foreign Admin Brutality as this article was simply speedy deleted previousl ytwice without any scope for discussion.And frankly, I find it Hypocritical that Americans can document every sneeze on Wikipedia and still suppress us and we cant write something about an event which celebrates our National Language.Again, I do not say that the article is complete in any manner, the celebrity listing are totally complete, but then isnt that what Wikipedia is about ? Collaborating ?
Hoping for a quick response and positive outlookCheers.
Thanks and regards,Akshay Agrawalkooldudeakshay(a)Yahoo.in+91-9870794699
Dear Wikimedians,
This is to bring to your notice the proposed change in leadership of the
CIS-A2K Program. The current Program Director, T. Vishnu Vardhan will be
transitioning by June 2015, due to health and personal concerns.
As many of you know, Vishnu has led the A2K Programme since February 2013.
We at CIS are working with Vishnu and the rest of the A2K team to ensure
smooth transition so that the momentum of the A2K program does not lose
pace.
We will soon be putting out an Advertisement for the next CIS-A2K Program
Director and will involve the community members and the Wikimedia India in
the selection process.
Best regards,
Subhashish Panigrahi
Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
Centre for Internet and Society
@psubhashish / https://cis-india.org