Hi,
We are happy to announce a Translation sprint on 26th November 2011 at
SICSR between 10 am to 5 pm.
These are the activities in the sprint:
To work on the translation of MediaWiki and MediaWiki extensions used by
Wikimedia for a few hours. (and have some nice chats while doing that :-) )
These translations are done at https://translatewiki.net .
There will also be some discussions related to the topic. We will also have
some session similar to FUEL (www.fuelproject.org)
5 people from the Wikimedia Foundation technical team (Siebrand, Niklas,
Amir, Gerard, Santhosh and Alolita) will be coming for the sprint.
It is not necessary that you should have technical knowledge about
mediawiki or translatewiki but that will surely help. Your (Indic) language
skills are also required for the event. People interested in FUEL
activities are also welcome.
So, do join us for the sprint.
Here are the details:
Date: 26th November 2011
Venue: 3rd floor at SICSR (this might change if we have HUGE response :-) )
Time: 10 am to 5 pm.
Thanks and regards
-Sudhanwa
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
web: www.sudhanwa.com blog: www.sudhanwa.in
Twitter: sudhanwa Check on FB, Linkedin for more.
Dear Community Members across India,
On behalf of the organising committee of WCI 2011, I extend our gratitude to the Indian Community for supporting the event in such droves! In terms of registrations, this was BIGGER than any Wikimania (which as you know is the annual global Wiki Meet).
This event would never have been possible without community support. We are extremely grateful for your support and hope that we lived upto your expectations. There have been several places where we could have done things better, however it has been a big learning experience for us. Once again, a big thank you to the community - we are humbled by your support and hope that we lived upto expectations!
Proceedings in all tracks have been recorded and will be uploaded on Youtube in a couple of weeks.
Kind Regards,
*Time Out Mumbai : "Home videos, audio recordings and Twitter feeds may
soon be cited in Wikipedia articles"*
http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/aroundtown/aroundtown_feature_details.asp?code…
*For much of the year, as they have been doing for centuries, many women in
South Africa’s Limpopo province sit around piles of ripe marula fruit,
peeling and preparing them to be turned into a variety of local liquor. But
if internet users search for information about amarula, the first mention
they will find is for a cream liqueur going by the same name that has been
aggressively marketed by a South African liquor company for the last two
decades. The age-old product made by the women of Limpopo can’t even have
its own Wikipedia page, because the free online encyclopaedia insists that
if articles are to be considered credible, written material must be cited.
Since the women use a recipe that has been handed down orally from
generation to generation, they have no texts to show as references.*
*
*
*The insistence on textual references deters Indian contributors from
helping to expand the online encyclopaedia, says Wikipedia advisory board
member Achal Prabhala. Wikipedia’s standards – which are designed to
maximise accuracy and veracity – make it difficult to create a page on
children’s games, temple rituals or marriage customs. But Prabhala has a
solution: he believes that the online encyclopaedia should allow oral
citations. He’ll make his case for this at the Wiki Conference to be held
this fortnight.*
*
*
*To demonstrate how this can be done, Prabhala made a film called People
Are Knowledge iin August. He and a team of Wikipedia editors travelled to
Limpopo, Bangalore and Kannur and made audio and video recordings of
interviews with people they met. They then created Wikipedia articles about
amarula, gilli-danda and a Kerala temple ritual, using these recorded
interviews as citations.*
*
*
*Prabhala’s work has resonated with Wikipedia editors like Andrew Lih, who
teaches journalism at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and
Journalism and has written a book titled The Wikipedia Revolution. He first
got a sense that the standards of English Wikipedia could be an impediment
for Wikipedia users in other languages when he attended a Wikimedia
conference in Alexandria, Egypt, in 2008. He visited the city’s New Library
to see their efforts to scan Arabic language texts. “They said there was
not enough Arabic language source material on the Internet, so their
scanning effort was very important,” said Lih in an email interview. “We,
in English, German, French, have the first-world luxury of tons of source
materials from libraries, universities and cultural institutions that have
had decades to put content online,” said Lih.*
*
*
*When Lih learned of Prabhala’s project, he realised there was an
alternative to digitisation of reference material. “It meant that we could
depend a lot more on non-textual knowledge sources, and perhaps Wikipedians
should be front and centre in creating these, with story gathering efforts,
such as oral citations,” said Lih.*
*
*
*Since they are open to being edited by any user regardless of academic or
editorial background, Wikipedia’s articles have always faced derision. In
fact, maintaining a high standard is the reason Wikipedia only allows
published work to be used as citations. Prabhala said that the English
language Wikipedia started out with lax rules which made it easy for people
to contribute. “But as the English Wikipedias and the European language
Wikipedias grew bigger, people started focusing on quality instead of
growth,” he said. “The problem with that is when one extends Wikipedia into
parts of the world like India and South Africa, there simply isn’t as much
that is published.” In 2005, according to Prabhala’s Wiki research page,
one book was published in the UK per 372 people, while in India that ratio
was 1 book for 11,371 people.*
*
*
*Some people point out that the published texts aren’t necessarily
error-free. “Why is it always assumed that oral narratives or what people
have to say does not have as much importance or as much weight as the
written stuff?” asked Urvashi Butalia, who has collected oral histories
about the Partition for a book titled The Other Side of Silence. “Actually
both are rich and both are faulty.” Butalia gave the example of the book
Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War by Sarmila Bose. If
excerpts from that book were used as citations, she said, the Wikipedia
article on the Bangladesh war would be skewed in favour of the sources the
author has accessed. “An intelligent researcher looking at that might
think, is there another point of view and is there a way to track it down,”
she added.*
*
*
*Being able to accommodate varying perspectives is one of the best aspects
of Wikipedia, said Prabhala. “A Wikipedia article allows for multiple
perspectivesand we don’t want to forego that,” he said. However, to
maintain maximum accuracy and keep disputes to a minimum, Prabhala said
that he’s more interested in “oral presents” rather than “oral histories”.
“These are things that are seen and done by millions and millions of people
on a daily basis but do not have as much of a place in print,” said
Prabhala. The Limpopo women Prabhala interviewed are “probably the world
experts on the making of this liquor; as a housewife in Chennai would be on
a recipe for a chutney”, he said.*
*
*
*Though many users have supported the idea of oral citations idea, it has
also faced criticism. Said one Indian Wikipedia user on a mailing list:
“Now we can finally have those thousands of articles about cure-alls and
diet-pills, and penis-enlargement exercises, since the manufacturer’s own
research would satisfy those standards.” To maximise the credibility of
non-published citations, Lih suggests using video recordings. “It’s much
harder to ‘fake’ a video piece than an audio piece,” he said.*
*
*
*According to Prabhala, however, a credible oral citation could be “an
audio recording of an individual, a Twitter stream, a Facebook feed, a
television interview, a YouTube home video, a pamphlet, a folk archive, or
anything that is conversational in nature and not printed on paper by the
formal publishing industry”. Wikipedia users are now discussing how to
provide information on the interviewee and the interviewer so that the
reader can decide how much he or she wants to trust that oral citation.*
*
*
*Wikipedia will also have to start recognising more virtual sources like
social media for the online encyclopaedia to grow, said Lih. “I’ve made the
argument to the Wikimedia folks that they should look at social media sites
like Quora and LinkedIn, where you can flag content and recommend others to
participate,” said Lih. “Say you’re looking at a Wikipedia article that
needs work, and even if you don’t know how to fix it, you know the perfect
person who can. Right now there’s no easy way to tap folks to do this.” Lih
imagines a button or hook into Facebook where one could prod or invite
others to fix a Wikipedia article. “It seems only natural to take advantage
of this capability. It sure would be a much more useful thing than to
simply ‘poke’ someone,” he said.*
*
*
*Prabhala believes that adopting oral citations would be a more accurate
reflection of the state of knowledge in developing societies. “In general,
to think of the universe of knowledge not as a hierarchy but as a swirling
universe of surprising sources is, in my opinion, a more honest and more
useful way to approach the idea of knowledge on Wikipedia,” he said.*
*Achal Prabhala will make a presentation on oral citations at the Wiki
Conference to be held between Fri Nov 18 and Sun Nov 20. *
*
*
*
*
*Edit meeting*
*
*
*The three-day Wiki Conference is meant to give Wikipedia editors a chance
to meet in the real world – many of them are already well-connected in
cyberspace – to share their views, exchange tips and discuss the challenges
they face. Each day will start at about 8am; the first will begin with a
speech by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Three simultaneous streams of
events have been scheduled in three areas of the Mumbai University’s Fort
campus: the Convocation Hall and two Seminar Rooms. Some of the
presentations are about using Wikipedia as an educational tool in schools,
colleges and at the post-graduate level. Another presentation is about how
galleries, libraries, archives and museums can work with and benefit from
Wikipedia, while yet another will discuss the possibilities of the online
encyclopaedia helping visually-impaired people. *
*
*
*For an updated and detailed schedule of the conference, visit
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Programs. *
*
*
*To attend, register by visiting in.eregnow. com/ticketing/register/wci11
before Tue Nov 15 and paying Rs.1,550 per person. Only online payments will
be accepted. For more information, write to conference@ wikimedia.in.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
*Important Note :* The publisher ( Time Out Mumbai ) of the above news
article owns the copyrights of the article / content. Request to kindly not
reproduce or circulate the content further. The information is only shared
only with an internal community who have been featured on this article.
All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
*Times of India : "Super 30 founder Anand Kumar to speak at 'Wiki' meet"*
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Super-30-founder-Anand-Kumar-…
*Bihar's 'Super 30' founder Anand Kumar will speak during the
three-day-long 'Wiki Conference'at Mumbai University commencing from Friday.
*
*
*
*For the first time, 'Wikimedia Foundation' is organizing such a
conference in India. Wikipedia founder and head Jimmy Wales will also speak
at the conference.*
*
*
*The objective of the conference is to make Wikipedia a more powerful tool
in dissemination of information. A discussion on expansion of the online
Wikipedia encyclopedia to include various Indian languages under its domain
will also be taken up for discussion.*
*
*
*Hundreds of volunteers, willing to work for Wikipedia, are also scheduled
to participate in the conference.*
*
*
*"I shall speak on ways to make Wikipedia more effective in its reach and
benefits to the users. I shall also try to explore the ways in which
Wikipedia can become more beneficial to students hailing from humble
background," Anand told TOI.*
*
*
*Vishal Mahajan, an organizing committee member, said Anand was chosen to
speak at the meet as both he and Wikipedia had similar objectives.*
*
*
*"Just as Wikipedia believes in free dissemination of information, Anand
believes in providing free coaching to students from poor families," said
Mahajan.*
*
*
*"Dissemination of information, especially education-related, through
Wikipedia will become easier and faster if both Anand and Wikipedia work
together," Mahajan added.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
Important Note : The publisher ( Times of India ) of the above news article
owns the copyrights of the article / content. Request to kindly not
reproduce or circulate the content further. The information is only shared
only with an internal community who have been featured on this article.
All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
Personal attention:Pranav Curumsey
If Jimbo is going to speak to everyone at 0830 hours, you probably want
everybody seated by 0815hours. The registration team will not be able to
handle 700 registrations in forty five minutes, assuming people turn up at
0730 hours. We need to make provision so that registration does not become
a barrier to Jimbo's speech which most people will certainly miss if it is
compulsory to get past the main door.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 1:35 PM, CherianTinu Abraham
<tinucherian(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> *CIOL : "Mumbai to host national WikiConference"*
>
> http://www.ciol.com/Developer/Developer/News-Reports/Mumbai-to-host-nationa…
>
> *Jimmy Wales to deliver the Keynote on November 18 at University
> Convocation Hall*
> *
> *
> *The Mumbai Wikipedia Community and the Wikimedia Chapter, India are
> hosting the first ever WikiConference in Mumbai, India!*
> *
> *
> *The conference will be graced by the founder, open-source evangelist and
> chairman emeritus of Wikimedia foundation, Jimmy Wales, said a press
> release.*
> *
> *
> *According to the release, the Conference will have a distinct Indian
> flavour and deal primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia,
> English and Indic language Wikipedia projects in the country, possible
> partnerships and collaborations and the WikiCommunity editing on these
> issues, whether in India or abroad.*
> *
> *
> *The three day event will be held from 18-20 November, 2011 at
> Convocation Hall, University of Mumbai, Fort Campus.*
> *
> *
> *Arjuna Rao Chavala, president, Wikimedia chapter said, "We look forward
> to organising the conference on an annual basis to bring together Indian
> Wikipedians from 20+ Indian language projects to share learnings and best
> practices. The event will help catalyze contributors in building Knowledge
> Society through free and open education projects."*
> *
> *
> *Speaking on the occasion, Pranav Curumsey, Chairperson, Organizing
> Committee, WikiConference India said, "The conference aims to promote the
> vision of the founder Mr. Wales, 'Imagine a world in which every single
> person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human
> knowledge.'”*
> *
> *
> *He added, “It is very encouraging to see ad-free participation showing a
> keen interest in attending this conference confirming our belief that India
> is free knowledge ready.”*
> *
> *
> *The release further added that, the event will see thousands of
> Wikipedians from all over the country pouring in for sessions covering on
> different topics.*
> *
> *
> *Moksh Juneja, secretary, Organising Committee, WikiConference India
> added, "The conference aims to serve as an annual platform for all Indian
> Wikipedians to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange
> useful tips and best practices.”*
> *
> *
> *“We have been overwhelmed with the ad-free participation across India
> where we received 7000 plus entries for scholarships and 550 plus papers
> were submitted to be presented at the WikiConference India," concluded
> Juneja.*
>
> Regards
> Tinu Cherian
>
> press(a)wikimedia.in
> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiConference-India mailing list
> WikiConference-India(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiconference-india
>
>
*CIOL : "Mumbai to host national WikiConference"*
http://www.ciol.com/Developer/Developer/News-Reports/Mumbai-to-host-nationa…
*Jimmy Wales to deliver the Keynote on November 18 at University
Convocation Hall*
*
*
*The Mumbai Wikipedia Community and the Wikimedia Chapter, India are
hosting the first ever WikiConference in Mumbai, India!*
*
*
*The conference will be graced by the founder, open-source evangelist and
chairman emeritus of Wikimedia foundation, Jimmy Wales, said a press
release.*
*
*
*According to the release, the Conference will have a distinct Indian
flavour and deal primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia,
English and Indic language Wikipedia projects in the country, possible
partnerships and collaborations and the WikiCommunity editing on these
issues, whether in India or abroad.*
*
*
*The three day event will be held from 18-20 November, 2011 at Convocation
Hall, University of Mumbai, Fort Campus.*
*
*
*Arjuna Rao Chavala, president, Wikimedia chapter said, "We look forward to
organising the conference on an annual basis to bring together Indian
Wikipedians from 20+ Indian language projects to share learnings and best
practices. The event will help catalyze contributors in building Knowledge
Society through free and open education projects."*
*
*
*Speaking on the occasion, Pranav Curumsey, Chairperson, Organizing
Committee, WikiConference India said, "The conference aims to promote the
vision of the founder Mr. Wales, 'Imagine a world in which every single
person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human
knowledge.'”*
*
*
*He added, “It is very encouraging to see ad-free participation showing a
keen interest in attending this conference confirming our belief that India
is free knowledge ready.”*
*
*
*The release further added that, the event will see thousands of
Wikipedians from all over the country pouring in for sessions covering on
different topics.*
*
*
*Moksh Juneja, secretary, Organising Committee, WikiConference India added,
"The conference aims to serve as an annual platform for all Indian
Wikipedians to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange
useful tips and best practices.”*
*
*
*“We have been overwhelmed with the ad-free participation across India
where we received 7000 plus entries for scholarships and 550 plus papers
were submitted to be presented at the WikiConference India," concluded
Juneja.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news