Cross-posting to other lists.
Hi all,
Wikimania is the annual international conference of Wikimedians
, jointly hosted by the local team ( usually local chapter) and the
Wikimedia Foundation.
The previous conferences were held in Frankfurt, Germany (2005), Boston,
USA (2006), Taipei, Taiwan (2007), Alexandria, Egypt (2008), Buenos
Aires, Argentina (2009), Gdan'sk, Poland (2010), and Haifa, Israel (2011).
This year, it is to be held in Washington DC, United States of America,
on July 12-14 , 2012. http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
<http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>
I have attended the Wikimanias in Gdansk and Haifa, along with several
other Wikipedians from India.
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wikimania2011
<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wikimania2011>
I highly recommend everyone to apply and attend Wikimania !
Like every year, The Wikimedia Foundation is offering a limited number
of scholarships to offset the cost of select individuals' attendance at
Wikimania.
Both full and partial scholarships are available for Wikimania 2012:
Full scholarships will award round trip travel, dorms
accommodations and registration.
Partial scholarships will subsidize up to 300EUR of travel expenses.
Scholarship recipients have to bear themselves the additional costs of
taxis, visa & travel agent charges etc.
More Information : http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
<http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships>
Apply here : https://secure.wikidc.org/wm/schols/
<https://secure.wikidc.org/wm/schols/>
Deadline : *16 Feb 2012*
Around 30 % of the scholarship are allocated to Asia & Pacific, so there
are more chances of scholarship applications from India to be selected. :)
Please note that the selection is mostly based on the merit of the
applications.
One of the common mistakes that Wikimedians in India make is that we
aren't enough vocal of what we do. So please do write in detail about
your Wikimedia activities.
Please feel free to forward this to various language and city mailing
lists and encourage other Wikimedians to apply.
All the best wishes!
Regards
Tinu Cherian
Cross-posting to other lists. Kindly excuse if you have already received
this via another mailing list.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
Head of Communications,
Wikimedia India Chapter
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Naveen Francis <naveenpf(a)wikimedia.in>
Date: Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:39 AM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter : December 2011 Report
To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
Greetings from Wikimedia India !!!
We are delighted to present the last monthly Wikimedia India report of the
year 2011, almost a year after the chapter received the formal recognition
from the Government of Karnataka on 3 January 2011. The journey so far
wasn't easy, but we appreciate your continued patronage , support and
participation.
*Organisational Updates*
*Formation of Task Forces:*
As announced earlier, with the objective of increasing the engagement and
participation of the members of the chapter actively in various
initiatives, the India chapter has come up with focused Task Forces for
coordinating and driving various chapter activities [1]. There are two
types of Task Forces - Project Task Forces and Operations Task Forces. The
Project Task Forces are focused on growing the Wikimedia projects. The
Operations Task Forces are critical functions to enable the Project Task
Forces and the Chapter in growing the movement. The operations group
consists of Administration, Fund raising, & Communications. The Projects
task force consists of City and Langugage SIGs and Special Projects. The
new task forces will be led by the following people:
- Anirudh Bhati, Head, Fundraising.
- Arun Ramarathnam, Chair, Special Projects.
- Srinivas Gunta, Head, Administration.
- Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Chair, City and Language Special Interest Groups.
- Tinu Cherian, Head, Communications, PR & Media Relations.
*Membership:*
The Chapter membership stands at 190 members as of 31 December 2011.
*Donations:*
Total donations received in Dec 2011 - INR 700
Average donations in Dec 2011 - INR 350
*FCRA:*
Our application for FCRA prior permission under the Foreign Contribution
(Regulation) Act with the Government of India is still pending. An official
from the Home Ministry has visited Arjuna Rao Chavala, President.
*Internet Relay Chat(IRCs):*
>From time to time, Wikimedia India conduct planned online IRC chat
sessions. The Dec 17, 2011 was anchored by Arun with the focus on Chapter
City & Language Special Interest Groups. [2]
*Board Meetings:*
The Chapter Executive Committee had two Tele-conference meetings in the
month of December (dated 07 Dec and 14 Dec, 2011). The Wikimedia India
chapter and Wikimedia Foundation had one joint co-ordination call on 21 Dec
2011, which was attended by Arjuna Rao Chavala, Arun Ramaratnam, Naveen
Francis, Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Tinu Cherian, Anirudh Bhati, Asaf Bartov and
Hisham Mundol. The summary of the joint coordination call was shared
earlier [3].
Community City and Language Special Interest Groups
City and Language Special Interest Groups are a mechanism to engage the
diverse interests of members across India. The objective is to grow the
wiki projects in their areas of interest by reviewing the status, planning
and executing events of interest through growing the community involvement.
The leadership of these groups is part of the extended leadership of the
Chapter.
The Wikimedia Chapter is proud to announce the appointment of the next
batch of City and Language Special Interest Group Chairs [4] as given
below:
*City*
- Delhi SIG - Noopur Raval (noopur [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Bangalore SIG - RadhaKrishna (Arkrishna [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Mumbai SIG - Kundan Amitabh (kundan.amitabh [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Pune SIG - Mandar Kulkarni(mandar.kulkarni [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Kolkata SIG - Kalyan Sarkar (kalyan [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
*Languages*
- English SIG - Ashwin Baindur (ashlin [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Kannada SIG - Omshivaprakash H L (omshivaprakash [at] wikimedia [dot]
in)
- Marathi SIG - Mahitgar (mahitgar [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Telugu SIG - Rahimanuddin Shaik (rahimanuddin [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
The current sign-ups of Members for the SIGs are as follows:
*City Special Interest Groups*
City Members Bangalore 10 Delhi 2 Mumbai 3 Pune 6 Kolkata 2
*Language Special Interest Groups*
Language Volunteers Bengali 1 English 15 Hindi 1 Kannada 3 Marathi
4 Malayalam 8 Nepali 1 Odia 3 Sanskrit 2 Telugu 3 Events
A round-up of Wikimedia events and initatives around the nation is as
follows.
- *Wiki Academy @Jaya Engineering college * ( 10 Dec 2011) : The first
Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering college, Chennai,[5] was organized by the
Wikimedia chapter and co-hosted by Jaya FOSS Club. Odia Wiki Chair &
Chapter member, Subhashish Panigrahi explained basics of Wikipedia, how it
is edited by millions of volunteers, how Wikipedia is exclusively
encyclopedic and kind of articles and notability of articles in Wikipedia,
how Wikipedians communicate and form community, and organization of
Wikimedia foundations and active projects. Then he took the audience
through active editing by signing up, searching for articles, choosing
articles to create. Then he demonstrated about creating an article by using
the Edit toolbar, citing the text by searching the web and uploading and
adding pictures in articles. The editing session was followed by a Q & A
session. Hisham Mundol, Consultant, Wikimedia Foundation India Programs,
connected with the audience via Google Hangout. Hisham interacted with the
audience by giving a talk about the nature of the event, few details about
Wikipedia, WMF and Chapter and foundation are trying to do in India. He
answered questions raised by the audience. Nitika Tandon , Consultant,
Wikimedia Foundation India Programs, later explained about the India
Education program (IEP), how it functions and the
student-teacher-foundation collaborations through the education program.
The photos of the event are available here [6].
- *Coimbatore 1st Meetup*( 10 Dec 2011) : The first Kovai (Coimbatore)
meetup [7] was held at KGISL Campus, Saravanampatti, Coimbatore. The Meetup
was organised by Srikanth Ramakrishnan (User:Rsrikanth05) and
User:Sodabottle.
- *Bangalore Wikimeetup 40* ( 11 Dec 2011) : Around 11 people attended
the 40th Wikimeetup in Bangalore [8]. The Bangalore SIG Chair, RadhaKrishna
presented a talk on the experiences on WikiConference India 2011 and
WikiAcademy events in IT companies. Experiences of Wiki Academy in Jaya
engineering college and way forward was shared by by Subhashish Panigrahi.
Plans regarding Wiki Eleven in January 2012 was discussed. The photos of
the event are available here [9].
- *Wikipedia Meetup1 Salem*( 11 Dec 2011) : A Wikimeetup was organised
at Salem, Tamil Nadu, [10] by Tamil Wikipedians Sodabottle and Surya
Prakash.
- '*Wikipedia Takes Kolkata /Kolkata Photo Walk* (18 Dec 2011) : A Photo
Walk was organised in Kolkata, West Bengal [11] by Kalyan Sarkar (Kolkata
SIG Chair), Jayanta Nath (Bengali SIG Chair) and Biswarup Ganguly. Around
437 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as a part of this
initiative.[12]
- *GLAMcamp Amsterdam * Noopur Raval ( Delhi SIG Chair and GLAM
enthusiastic) attended GLAM worskop in Amsterdam, hosted by Wikimedia
Nederland. [13]
- *Wikipedians participation in CMDA IT Expo , 2011*: Indian Wikipedians
participated in the annual CMDA IT Expo 2011, Pune.[14] The stall were
manned by Sudhanwa Jogalekar ( EC member), Mahitgar ( Marathi SIG Chair),
Ashwin Baindur ( English SIG Chair) , Hisham Mundol and Nitika Tandon ( WMF
India Programs), and Campus Ambassador (IEP) volunteers.
- *Malayalam Wiki-Academies:* Malayalam Wiki-community organised two
Wiki-Academies in Kerala in the month of December at Alappuzha ( Dec 13)
and Kollam (Dec 31). The Alappuzha (2nd Wikiacademy) held at St.Joseph
Vanitha College was led by Adv. T.K Sujith, Adv. M.P.Manojkumar and Akhil
Krishnan. The Kollam (4th Wikiacademy) held at Govt. Higher Secondary
School, Anchal West, was led by Kiran Gopi ( User:Kiran_Gopi) , Faud A.J. (
User:Faudaj) , Kannan Shanmugam ( User:Fotokannan)and Sugeesh (
User:Sugeesh)
Other News
- A new initiative named *"Featured Wikimedian* was started on the
public wiki of Wikimedia India. Every month, one Indian wikimedian will be
featured. [15]
- * Tamil Wikimedia contest*: The Tamil Wikimedia community has
organised an international contest to get more photos, videos and audios
related to Tamil, Tamilians and Tamil culture to the Tamil Wikipedia and
Wikimedia Commons. [16] (themed “Eluthu mattum arivanru” or “Knowledge
beyond text”) . The Tamil Wikipedia Community and the Wikimedia Foundation
have jointly sponsored a prize money of $850 (with nine prizes) for
winners. (The first, second and third prizes are $200, $100 and $50. Three
prizes of $100 each are for those uploading the maximum number of quality
entries. A special prize of $150 is for media files on traditional Tamil
arts and crafts. Winners would be announced on March 15, 2012 and they
would get certificates with their entries displayed on the front pages of
Tamil Wiki projects. The contest (, November 15, 2011 to February 29, 2012)
is open to all and is on Facebook [17].
- India Wikipedians Sengai Podhuvan , Karthik Nadar and Aniruddha Kumar
joins Jimmy Wales among others in the *Wikimedia Fundraising 2011 banners
* [18].
- *New Mailing lists* are created for Gujarati Wikipedia[19], Assamese
Wikipedia [20], GLAM India [21] and India related content on English
Wikipedia & related projects. [22].
Milestones & Anniversaries
* December 2011* [23]
25
- The Tamil Wikipedia<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Ta:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 1,000,000 page edits.
- The Urdu Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur:> has reached
10,000 total pages.
21
- The Malayalam
Wikipedia<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Ml:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
turned 9.
18
- The Bengali Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bn:> has reached
2,000 entries, as a user adds over 1,300 entries for Malagasy words in 5
hours.
16
- The Bihari
Wikipedia<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Bh:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 100,000 page edits.
9
- The Sanskrit Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sa:> has
reached 100 entries.
- The Urdu Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur:> has reached
5,000 entries.
5
- The Marathi
Wikibooks<http://internal.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=B:mr:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 1,000 registered users.
4
- The Kannada Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kn:> has reached
150,000 entries.
Media Coverage
- 28 Dec : Financial Chronicle : Wikipedians say Indian govt should ease
copyright curbs<http://www.mydigitalfc.com/knowledge/wikipedians-say-indian-govt-should-eas…>
- 27 Dec : Ahmedabad Mirror : " Ahmedabad to go Wiki with your clicks"
<http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/article/2/2011122720111227022617405d732bc46/…>
- 24 Dec : The Economic Times : "Wikipedia enlists Indians to be the
standard-bearers for its fund-raising
efforts"<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/wikipedia-enlists-indians…>
- 18 Dec : The Hindu : "Creative Commons: the licence to
evolve"<http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article272537…>
- 16 Dec : The Hindu : "Contest to add files to Tamil Wikipedia gathers
steam"<http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2719118.ece?textsiz…>
- 1 Dec : Tech Marathi: मराठी विकिपीडिया संपादन – अवघड की
सोपे?<http://techmarathi.com/?p=1243>( Marathi)
We look forward to your continued support and active participation.
Best,
On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
Naveen Francis
Secretary
Notes:
- 1)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Announcements/Call_for_participation_of_Members_in…
- 2) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Dec_17,2011
- 3)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Announcements/Chapter-Foundation:_Co-Ordination_Ca…
- 4) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/City_and_Language_SIG_subcommittee_chair
- 5) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Jaya_Engineering_College
- 6)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jaya_Engineering_College_Wiki_Ac…
- 7) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore/Coimbatore1
- 8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore40
- 9)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangalore_Meetup_December2011
- 10) http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SALEM1
- 11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Kolkata
- 12) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Takes_Kolkata
- 13) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_Amsterdam
- 14
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-December/006135.…
- 15) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Category:Featured_Wikimedian
- 16) http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest/en
- 17) http://www.facebook.com/tawmc
- 18)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011#A_Parade_of_Appeals.21_Dece…
- 19) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-gu
- 20) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-as
- 21) http://lists.wmnederland.nl/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wlm-in
- 22) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en
- 23) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Milestones_and_Anniversary
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*The Hindu : "Cracking the Konkani code"*
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article2783403.ece
*The Konkani language is curious in many ways. Although interesting from a
cultural perspective as it is spoken by a cross-section of people, creating
online content in the language is challenging because it is written and
read in multiple scripts.*
*
*
*Written in Kannada, Devanagari, Malayalam, Arabic and Roman scripts, the
challenge for technologists is presenting the same content in multiple
scripts.*
*
*
*Now, a group of people that includes Wikipedians are fine-tuning a
transliteration tool straddling the multiple scripts of Konkani. If the
tool succeeds, it can be used for other multiple-script languages such as
Kashmiri, Santhali and Chinese. “Reviving the language is a challenge, but
we can overcome the script barrier with the transliteration tool, said Santhosh
Thottingal, Wikimedia Foundation engineering staff.*
*
*
*Wikipedian Hariprasad Nadig said the tool could be used beyond Wikipedia
by any website to enable its readers to view Konkani in Kannada and
Devanagari scripts. The tool uses a software module written for the Serbian
Wiki. “The problem is the same…with Indian languages the problem is
escalated as there are more complex scripts and phonetic differences,” Mr.
Nadig said. The tool has two parts: one, to enable the reader to read in
the script he prefers, and two, enabling the reader to add text in his
preferred script. Currently, the tool enables reading Konkani content in
Devanagari and Kannada, but it has to be perfected. The second part
involves using a base script (Devanagari or Kannada) to change content into
other reader-preferred scripts, which is yet to be done.*
*
*
*MIXED THOUGHTS*
*
*
*U.K.-based software developer Roshan Pai Ramesh has mixed thoughts on
whether the tool will help or obstruct the cause of Konkani in the long
term. While it fosters inclusiveness of scripts, which is good, it will
further add to the non-standardisation of the language.*
*
*
*“Devanagari as the single standard script is probably good for the Konkani
language in the long term. Not having a single standardised script hurts a
language's development when one sees the bigger picture,” he said.*
*
*
*Amir Elisha Ahroni, Israel-based software developer, linguist, and
participant at Wikimedia's India Hackathon 2011 held in Mumbai in November,
said Konkani was “particularly an interesting case” because no particular
script dominates and all the scripts are used by a significant number of
people.*
*
*
*“I strongly believe that all languages are equal and all languages must be
supported equally in all software. English is the most frequently used
language in software, but there's no reason why it should have any
exclusive privilege,” he said.*
*
*
*Besides a diaspora, Konkani has 3.6 million native speakers, said Mr.
Thottingal. People along the western coast, across religions, and tribes,
such as the Siddi, speak Konkani, said Gurudath Bantwalkar, Mangalorean
Wikipedian and Assistant Director, World Konkani Centre, Mangalore.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news