Greetings! This is a short note on Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II. Forty people turned up near the Oval Maidan at Churchgate at 8 am yesterday. The landmarks that were photographed included the Babulnath Temple, Nehru Science Centre, Opera House, St Thomas Cathedral, INS Vikrant and Yazdani Bakery. After the photos had been clicked many of the participants proceeded to Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR where they were shown how to upload to Commons using both the usual upload process and by using the mediawiki-uploader mass upload script.
Nikita Belavate and Karthik Nadar put in a lot of work into the event. They helped many people contribute to the Commons while having a good time, and they deserve praise for making all of this happen.
Our heartfelt gratitude to Pranav Curumsey, Vickram Crishna, Dr Nagarjuna, Noopur Raval and Moksh Juneja for all the help and mentoring. Thanks to Shrinivasan T for mediawiki-uploader :) And apologies if I missed anyone out.
Do visit our maintenance category WTMhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:WTM, specially created for the event. 313 pictures have been uploaded so far.
Sincerely Anshuman Fotedar
PS:
1. During the photowalk, some of the participants who were taking pictures of Bombay House were interrupted by private security personnel and asked to handover their cameras so that the pictures could be removed. Pranav and Aditya Sengupta, who were among them, peacefully put forth the fact that they were not not breaking any laws by photographing the structure from the outside since it was not a legally protected one. They were standing on the road, and not trespassing. To resolve the matter, Aditya, Pranav and Krutikaa Jawanjal accompanied the security personnel to the police station where they explained that they were within their rights to do what they did, and that citizens of the country need not take prior permission to take exterior photographs of private property that was not accorded legal protection. The PSI on duty made a noting in his station diary and informed us that Bombay House has security fears, which is why one should speak to their bosses before taking pictures, but agreed with them per se that there is no law that prohibits people from taking pictures there.
2. The group that went to Bombay House (and subsequently to Yazdani Bakery, St. Thomas Cathedral) and other places was delayed owing to the incident at Bombay House and discovered serendipitously that entry to INS Vikrant was open. Covering Vikrant took a while, adding to the delay. Consequently they (this includes me) never reached HBCSE but uploaded from home instead. Although we did get several good contributions from the participants in this group as well, I do recognise that it may have been nice if we could have joined in with the participants who uploaded together at HBCSE. I apologise.